"We are not used to this kind of language at Bellwood School, Mr. Mace,"
observed the professor with dignity and sternness. "You will kindly desist from using the same and act like a gentleman, or leave this room."
"If I do, it will be to have that Jordan boy behind the bars mighty quick!"
declared Mace.
"It would be the mistake of your life, Mr. Mace, and a costly experiment for your pocket. This boy is innocent of the outrageous, and I might say cowardly and unfounded, charge you make against him. I shall ask you to remain here for about an hour, while I attend to some details of this case which will enable me to give you a clear statement as to who stole your property."
"If it's no scheme to sneak Jordan away----" began Mace.
"Silence, sir!" ordered the professor. "Foreman, kindly show Mr. Mace to my private office and get him the morning paper from the city to read."
"I'll take my bracelet first, if you don't mind," said Mace, extending his hand.
Professor Elliott took out the little packet that Frank had given him, and turned it over to the jeweler. Mace opened it eagerly. Then he gave a jump and uttered a howl that fairly electrified those about him.
"What's this?" he yelled, displaying a piece of jewelry and nearly choking with excitement. "You're all in a scheme! You're all thieves! I'll have you all arrested!" and he flung the bracelet to the farther end of the room.
"What's the matter, uncle Sam?" inquired Gill Mace.
"Matter?" screamed the jeweler, hopping madly from foot to foot. "That isn't my bracelet at all."
"What?" involuntarily exclaimed the startled Frank.
"It's a cheap imitation affair with paste stones in it."
"Is this possible?" inquired Mr. Elliott in surprise.
"Yes, 'tis, and somebody knows it. Don't you crow nor laugh over me, Frank Jordan!" raved Mace.
"We had better not talk about crowing and laughing just now, Mr. Mace,"
said Frank seriously. "I think I understand about the bracelet, which I believed until this moment to be the one stolen from Tipton."
"Yah! Yes, you did!" derided the jeweler.
"I think I now guess out the mystery of this substitution. As that explanation and the fate of the real bracelet may hang on the words of a dying man, you had better get down from your high horse and help us reach the facts in the case."
Then in a low tone Frank told the professor that they had better see the wounded man, Dan, at the village hotel at once.
Mace was induced to await the movements of Professor Elliott, and within five minutes the latter and Frank and Ned Foreman were wending their way to the village.
It was arranged that Frank should visit the man Dan at the hotel, while President Elliott went to his lawyer with Ned.
It was an hour later when Frank, his mission completed, hurried his steps to overtake Professor Elliott and Ned, just returning to the academy from the lawyer's office. While in the town Frank stopped at the post-office and received a letter from his father, in which his parent stated that he was much improved in health.
"That's the best news yet," said the boy to himself.
"My lawyer believes that there is some plot afoot on the part of that man Brady to rob Foreman of some fortune," explained the school president. "He knows who this 'Judge' Grimm is, and will see that Foreman gets his rights."
"Yes," said Frank, "I have learned that this is true, and a good many other important facts in the case."
"Then the man Dan was able to see you?" inquired Ned eagerly.
"Yes, and he has told me everything," replied Frank. "He explained about the bracelet. It seems that Dan is not as bad as Brady and Jem, who stole it originally, right after I had visited the jeweler's shop. It was left in charge of Grimm, the lawyer. It was given with a sum of money to Jem after he and Dan brought me, supposed to be you, Ned, to the lawyer's office.
After they brought me back to Bellwood, Jem and Dan went to the old cabin to settle up. Jem had the real bracelet. He palmed off a brass one on Dan.
The latter discovered the fraud. There was a terrible fight. Dan is getting better. Jem has the real bracelet."
"Which Mr. Mace will have some trouble in recovering, I fancy," observed Ned.
"That is his business," remarked Professor Elliott drily. "We can now with the evidence of this man Dan positively prove your innocence, Jordan."
"About Ned, here," said Frank, "it seems that recently a distant relative left his dead stepsister a legacy consisting of some mortgages and a house and lot. Brady learned of this. His wife being dead, the legacy goes to Ned. What Brady was figuring on was to become Ned's appointed guardian so he could manage, or, rather, mismanage the estate until Ned was twenty-one years of age."
"We will soon have that phase of the case adjusted," observed the professor in a confident and satisfied tone.
"Hi, fellows, look there!" shouted Bob Upton.
It was two days after the arrival of Samuel Mace, the jeweler, at Bellwood School, and the boys were engaged in their usual late afternoon sports on the campus. Bob was up and around again now, not much the worse for his experience with the "doctored" shoes.
"A fight!" exclaimed several, and there was a rush for two combatants, who seemed sparring in dead earnest on the outskirts of the Banbury contingent.
Banbury himself had just come striding from the school building in a great huff. He had rushed up to Gill Mace, and pulling him away from the others had engaged him in combat.
All the fellows knew that when Professor Elliott came home a few days previous quite a lot of complaints and delinquencies awaited him. Among these the only one very serious was the burning of a haystack belonging to a farmer named Wadsworth.
Suspicion had pointed to the Banbury crowd. The farmer had once caught several members of that group smoking in his barn, and had driven them out violently. Banbury had threatened revenge, and the day before Frank had returned from his trip in the covered wagon one of Farmer Wadsworth's haystacks had burned to the ground.
Banbury had been summoned to the office of the president. Just now returning from it, he had started the present fight.
As Frank and his crowd reached the scene of the conflict and joined the ring about the combatants Banbury struck out with a blow that sent Gill Mace reeling to the ground with a bloody nose.
"Take that, you sneak!" shouted Banbury furiously.
"Hello!" exclaimed Bob Upton. "He knows his right name at last."
"I'll fix you," blubbered Gill, "you great big coward!"
"You shut up, or I'll give you worse," threatened Banbury. "A nice fellow you are! Went and peached on me about that haystack."
"You lied to the professor about us, saying we had a hand in it," declared Gill.
"Well, you've got me suspended, sent home, and I'll probably be expelled."
"You ought to be!" yelled Gill, as a twinge of pain made him howl anew. "It was you who got me sick smoking cigarettes and thought it was funny. Yes, and it was you, too," blabbed the mean-spirited traitor, "who put those brads in Bob Upton's shoes, so he would lose the race."
"What?" shouted Dean Ritchie.
He made a vigorous break through the ranks of the crowd with the word. "The cat was out of the bag" at last, the secret told. Banbury saw the doughty Ritchie coming for him. He turned in a flash.