The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna: or, The Crew That Won. Morrison Gertrude W.
as for the gaudy striped shirt and cuffs he had worn, the stripes were surely "fast" colors, in that they had immediately run into the white ground-work of the garment!
"I – I do-do-don't care," chattered Purt. "What are clothes, anyway? I'm dying of cold!"
"And in June," snorted Lance, with disgust.
"Let's build a campfire and warm him," suggested Laura.
"Haven't a dry match," declared her brother.
"I have. Don't catch me canoeing without a tightly corked bottle of matches. I've been upset too many times," laughed Laura.
Chet and Lance gathered the wood; but Purt only lay and moaned and shivered. The adventure was a serious matter for the exquisite.
"And I bet this settles Purt's motor-boating for all time," scoffed Jess Morse. "Got enough, haven't you, Pretty?"
"Weally, Miss Morse, I am too exhausted to speak about it – weally!" gasped Purt.
"And it was the only sport Purt would go into," grunted Chet. "He could get somebody to run his boat for him, you see. All he had to do was to sit tight and hold his ears on."
Purt felt affectionately for his ears – they stuck out like sails from the side of his head, "trimmed flat across the masts" – and said nothing. He could not retort in his present condition of mind and body. But his schoolmates talked on, quite ignoring him.
"What were you two boys doing out in the Duchess this afternoon, anyway?" demanded Laura. "I thought you were going to see the game between Lumberport and the East High team?"
"Why," said Chet, hesitating, looking at Lance, "if we tell you, you'll keep still about it – all you girls?"
"Of course," said Jess.
"All of you, I mean," said Chet, earnestly. "No passing it around with the usual platter of gossip on the athletic field this evening."
"How horrid of you, Chet!" cried Josephine Morse.
But Laura only laughed. "We can keep a secret as well as any crowd of boys – and he knows it," she said.
"Well," said her brother, squatting before the campfire, that was now burning briskly, and spreading out his jacket to the blaze, while the legs of his trousers began to steam. "Well, it's about Short and Long."
"Billy Long!" gasped Dorothy, looking at her sister.
"Poor Billy!" added Laura. "What about him?"
"He's missing," said Chet, gravely.
"Missing: The Short and Long of It, eh?" chuckled Jess.
"This is no laughing matter, Jess," declared Launcelot Darby, sharply. "Haven't you heard of the robbery?"
"At Stresch & Potter's department store?" cried Jess. "Of course. What's that got to do with Short and Long?"
"Nothing!" declared Chet, vigorously.
"Anybody who says that Billy Long helped in that robbery deserves to be kicked. He's not that kind of a fellow."
"But he's accused," said Laura, gravely.
"Somebody said they saw him hanging about the rear of the store with some men Tuesday afternoon. The men appeared to be surveyors. They are supposed to be the robbers, for nobody seems to know anything about them at the city engineer's office," Chet continued.
"A small boy had to be put through the little basement window where a screen was cut out. No man could have slipped through it and then opened that door for the men. Short and Long is accused – at least, he is suspected. A policeman went to his house Friday morning; but Billy had gone away over night."
"That looks suspicious," declared Jess.
"No, it doesn't. It looks as if Billy was scared – as of course he was," exclaimed Chet. "Who wouldn't be?"
"That is so," murmured one of the twins.
"Well," sighed Chet, "we heard that he had been seen to take a boat at Norman's Landing, and thought maybe he'd come over this way. So, as Purt wanted a sail – "
"And a bath, it seems," chuckled Jess.
"We came over this way, looking into the coves and inlets for the boat Billy is said to have borrowed. But we didn't see any sign of it, nor any sign of poor Billy. Of course he is innocent; but he's scared, and his folks are poor, and Billy was afraid to remain at home, I suppose, thinking he would get his father into trouble, too."
"It's a mean shame," said Lance. "What if Stresch & Potter were robbed of ten thousand dollars? They oughtn't to have accused a perfectly innocent boy of helping in the robbery."
"But that's it!" exclaimed Laura. "How is Billy to disprove the accusation if he runs away and makes it appear that he is guilty?"
"Don't we see that?" demanded her brother. "That's what we want to get at Billy for. We want to catch and bring him back and make him face the music. Then we'll all prove him innocent and make these Smart Alecks take back what they've been saying about him. It's a shame!" cried Chet, again.
"It is a shame," agreed Laura.
But just then both the Lockwood twins burst out with:
"Maybe he did come over to the island."
"Huh! What for? To hide?" demanded Lance.
"Perhaps," said Dorothy.
"Maybe to find the robbers himself. Perhaps they are hiding here," said Dora.
"Likely," grunted Chet.
"We saw somebody hiding back yonder at the foot of Boulder Head," declared Dorothy.
"So we did! The lone pirate!" cried her sister.
"'The lone pirate'?" repeated Laura and Jess, in unison. "Who's that?"
The twins told them what they had seen – the bewhiskered man who had hidden behind the boulder. But the boys scoffed at the idea of the stranger having anything to do with the men who robbed the department store safe, or anything to do with Billy Long.
"No," said Chet, wearily, "He's gone somewhere. But we don't know where. And if the police catch him it will go hard with poor Short and Long."
CHAPTER III
TONY ALLEGRETTO
Now, "Short and Long," as the boys called him (christened William Henry Harrison Long) was a jolly little fellow and extremely popular at Centerport's Central High School – not so much with the teachers and adults of his acquaintance, perhaps, as with his fellow pupils. He was full of fun and mischief; but to the boys who knew him to be perfectly fair and honest, the accusation now aimed against him seemed preposterous.
It was true that his father was a poor man, and Billy Long seldom had any spending money. Naturally he was always on the outlook for "odd jobs" which would earn him a little something for his own pocket. He had been seen carrying the chain for the mysterious surveyors who had been in the vacant lot behind the department store that was robbed the Tuesday night previous to the opening of our story; but that should not have made trouble for Short and Long. He did not let many such chances escape him when he was out of school.
Billy was the short-stop on the Central High nine and as Chetwood Belding and Lance Darby were important members of that team, too, they were naturally particularly interested in the missing youth.
The three boys who had so unceremoniously left the motor boat Duchess still stood around the hot fire on the shore, drying their garments. Purt Sweet was really a pitiful sight, his fancy clothing looking so much worse than that of his two companions. The girls were in gales of laughter over his plight.
Laura repeated in a sing-song voice:
"Double, double, toil and trouble,
Garments steam and Purt does bubble!"
"Now, Miss Laura," complained the victim, "This is altogether too serious a matter, I assure you, for laughter. What ever shall we do to get home?"
"Well, we can't walk," chuckled Lance.
"Guess