Part 6

At the start, the tall stranger removed neither his long overcoat nor his satchel. His cigar had gone out, but he still held it, cold, between his teeth.

Little Thurston, who was to fire the pistol a second time, exclaimed, amazedly: "Aren't you goin' to take off those things?"

"No, guess not," was the cool reply. "What's the use!"

Nibsey Morey, Billy Shaw and Jimmy exchanged glances; Billy smiled outright.

"Say," Jimmy snapped somewhat angrily. "Let's get a hustle on and end this--you willing?" He nodded toward the stranger.

"Quite."

"Then--ready!" cried the starter.

Again two figures, sadly matched, crouched at the start.

Another second and the pistol cracked.

Following the report, there was a little instant of dead silence in the street, then there broke forth pandemonium, for half way down the course, his coat tails flying, his satchel standing out behind, the cold cigar gripped tight between his teeth, the stranger led Nibs Morey by a rod. Twenty-five feet from the string, he turned, and running backward, beckoned with a crooked forefinger to the straining Mercury that he faced.

Not in all undergraduate history is there recorded an event which created more excitement on the campus after its occurrence than this.

Nibs Morey had defeated Billy Shaw; and a stranger who had sprung from the earth had defeated Nibs as no man before had ever been defeated.

They shook hands, honorably, after the event, but those who witnessed the incident forgot it immediately in the overwhelming curiosity regarding the newest risen champion among them.

"Who is he?" was the question on the lips of every youth and every maid--"Who is he?"

His name was Bunette, they said. His home? A tiny town on a west Michigan sand hill.

"What is he, then?" the voice of the campus cried. And it became known that he had entered the department of Medicine and Surgery.

And thus was a new god raised among men at whose shrine none worshiped with devotion more intense than Billy Shaw, and the erstwhile idol, Nibsey Morey, and to them and their brethren for all time he was given a name, and the name was "Bunny of '85."

THE CASE OF CATHERWOOD

I

"Stop!"

The command from the rostrum brought the class up in their seats. Every eye was bent upon Catherwood standing at the end of a bench in the second row.

Some one snickered.

Catherwood stared at the floor, a blush of shame mounting his cheek and melting into his thin, bristly red hair at his freckled temples.

The assistant professor of history glared through his spectacles.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he exclaimed, "this is most unseemly! Mr. Catherwood, you may be seated! I should advise you, ladies and gentlemen, to devote a little more time to this course; and a little less, perhaps, to the Junior Hop. I am sure you do not wish me to make general the mailing of conditions next week. As you know the examination is set for nine o'clock on the morning of February 10th. I trust you will act upon the suggestion I have given you...."

The gong in the corridor clanged just then and the class shuffled out of the room.

Shunning his acquaintances in the hall Catherwood disappeared. The blush did not recede from his face until he banged the wide door shut behind him and the cold of the crisp February morning smote him full.

He walked swiftly down Williams Street to his room, not once lifting his eyes from the pavement, which was dirty white from the much trampled snow.

Another flunk! The third in as many weeks! Catherwood with a muttered imprecation reviewed the succession of class-room disasters.

"Confound history!" he growled as he strode into his room. He flung his books upon the bed and himself into the deep Morris chair by the window. A sparrow was hopping on the porch roof without. He rattled the window violently and the sparrow flew away in fright.

"Go it, you imp," he snarled; and again he condemned all history and its study to the deepest depths.

It _was_ bad. The assistant professor had been lenient, but fate seemed to have composed that particular section of every history hater in the junior class.

Catherwood realized this--or thought he did--as he sat staring out of the windows into the skeleton branches of the trees, and from the thought he obtained a modicum of consolation.

He had worked. He had worked hard--but for some unknown reason he couldn't bite into the course, couldn't dig his teeth into the subject. He did not fear; on the contrary he was certain--as certain as a man can be--that his semester's work in class-room was of sufficiently high a grade to assure him his full credit in the course. And yet, he considered, there was the examination, five days away. In two hours he would be required to write out in a thin "blue book" all he was supposed to have learned in twenty weeks.

He ruminated.

How much of what he had learned had stopped in his head? He asked himself this, seriously, then smiled. He confessed to himself that he had worked merely from recitation to recitation with no effort to hold the subjects in that mathematical brain of his that caused his forehead to bulge.

And the examination only five days away!

As he reviewed the situation Catherwood's brow darkened and he scowled. For a space he twiddled his large thumbs and glared at a horse hitched to a grocery wagon across the street.

"I wish you'd freeze," he muttered viciously to the horse; but of course the horse did not hear for the window was down.

Catherwood counted his flunks on his fingers. Five; five clean, perfect flunks, altogether, he recalled. Not so bad, he considered; that is, not so _very_ bad.

But there before him like a great monster with dripping jaws and green, slimy body, was the examination; and it was creeping, creeping upon him with the passage of the minutes.

He stood up and shook himself nervously.

From the window he saw the assistant professor approaching his home next door. He carried several bulky volumes in his arms, hugged to his breast lovingly.

Catherwood watched him sourly.

There was the man, he mused, in whose hands--now covered with gray-striped woolen mittens--lay his fate! Pretty serious business--one's fate lying in hands covered with gray-striped woolen mittens.

The courses in mathematics Catherwood did not fear; nor those in shop work; not the one in elocution, to be sure, for that was a snap; nor yet the two in political economy; indeed, those were rather fun. But history! Ugh!

The assistant professor turned in at the gate of his house next door, and as he vanished the scowl fled from Catherwood's brow and his face lighted.

He would drop in on the assistant professor within the week and call. Admirable! He wondered if the date might be anywhere reasonably near the birthday of one of his children. A box of sweets might work wonders; a china headed doll greater wonders. He marveled that the idea had never before occurred to him. And, too, he considered, there was the president.

The president!

Ah, _that_ would be different. There were no little tads in the president's family. Then he quickly recalled having read in the '_Varsity News_ of the day before that the president was in the east and would not return until the thirteenth.

Three days after!

Futile--absolutely futile!

And Catherwood scowled again and stared out the window, idly twisting his trunk-check watch fob.

He saw the assistant professor's wife on the walk below with the little Mary.

It was the psychological moment and Catherwood recognized it. Snatching his hat from the book rack he plunged down the stairs. He pulled himself together at the door and stepped, unconcernedly, out upon the porch.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Lowe," he called quite gaily. "Ah, and there's little Mary--sweet child. Come here, Mary, won't you?"

He squatted in the snow at the gate and held out his hands to her. She ran to him with a little cry of delight. The mother's face was radiant.

"Oh, good-morning, Mr. Catherwood," she called.

He smiled and nodded. On the instant he made a vague calculation of the value of Mrs. Lowe's good-will.

He flung his arms around the child and lifted her clear of the walk to her great delight as attested by the cries of glee that escaped her.

Mrs. Lowe stopped at the gate.

"Such a dear child," Catherwood gurgled, holding the tot close to him.

"Do you think so?" the mother murmured.

"So strong and so well," Catherwood added, weighing little Mary in his strong hands.

"Yes, she _is_ heavy," Mrs. Lowe said.

Then the child cried in her pretty _patois_:

"Pleese frow Mary up an' catch her."

"Oh, ho," Catherwood exclaimed gaily, "so _that_ is what Mary wants, is it? Well then, here goes."

"Careful, Mary daughter," the mother cautioned, smiling.

Catherwood never before had felt his strength as keenly as he did that moment. It had for him, then, a definite, precise meaning; even a value; yes, an incalculable value.

"Frow up Mary 'n' catch her like farver do," the child urged.

He tossed her into the air.

"There!" he said as she left his arms.

His hands--broad fine hands--were outspread to catch her.

Afterward, when recollection of that vivid, scarlet instant returned to him, he was never quite able to explain to himself how it had happened. Perhaps he did not reckon with his various courses in physics--certain laws of falling bodies, accelerated motion, and such uninteresting things. In any event it was as though his hands had not been there; for before he could clutch at the little furry ball of falling femininity it had shot between those groping hands of his and in an infinitesimal space of time had struck the low snow-drift beside the walk, no longer a furry ball but a sprawl of screaming child.

"Oh! Mr. Catherwood!" cried Mrs. Lowe.

There was an instant's silence and then the atmosphere was punctured by the piercing yelps of the little Mary.

Mrs. Lowe snatched her daughter from the drift and, clutching her close, cooed to her, consolingly.

"Did the great horrid man drop mother's darling?" she murmured.

Catherwood, stricken momentarily dumb by the accident, finally found his voice though it was unsteady and very much in his throat.

"Mrs. Lowe," he exclaimed, despairingly, "I'm very sorry; believe me; I guess, I must----"

She shot him one glance of injured motherhood, and without replying turned and strode out of the yard still hugging close to her maternal bosom the wailing Mary.

The shrieks had penetrated to the study of the assistant professor and as she turned in at her own gate he appeared upon the porch.

"What's the matter?" he asked sharply.

"The young man next door dropped Mary on the tar walk."

Catherwood clearly distinguished below the child's still frantic yells the grunt of the man who waited on the steps.

He was prompted to shout: "You lie; it was a drift," but a quick second thought restrained him.

As it was he took the stairs in the darkened hallway in three bounds and, rushing into his room, raved impotently. He kicked the legs of the Morris chair; he kicked the legs of the table; he kicked the backs of the books on the lowest shelf of the rack. He seized a pillow from the divan and proceeded to punch it violently, viciously. Then he flung himself face down upon the divan, and from the heart of the cushions came the muffled words:

"I wish the confounded kid had never been born!"

After some minutes he rolled over and for a space stared blankly at the ceiling. Then he rose, took a book from the rack and flinging himself into the Morris chair by the window opened it upon his knee.

It was a volume of the marvelous and enthralling adventures of the redoubtable Sherlock Holmes.

II

There are two kinds of hazing, as practiced by undergraduates at Ann Arbor; the plain and the ornamental.

The first may be a mere practical joke, as the "stacking" of a room, the kidnapping of a freshman toastmaster, or the "losing" of a fraternity initiate in the broad fields that lie between the town and the North Pole.

But ornamental hazing is quite a different thing. It is the sort most indulged in by practical hazers, professionals, as it were; by juniors; even by seniors; and as such is found to have many and varied forms. Moreover it differs from the plain brand in that a genuine injury is, by its application, wrought upon the hazee. Thus, a man may be lost in a swamp and made to find his own way home by the tenets of the plain hazing code; whereas, if, in the swamp, he is "injured," that is to say if he is painted with iodine, if a broad pink parting is shaved across his scalp, or if his hair is cut off in scrubby patches, he may quite properly consider himself to have been allowed a taste of the ornamental sort.

It may be seen from these distinctions therefore, that plain hazing is really harmless; no one is hurt, unless, as not infrequently occurs, and justly, the hazers, themselves; and as a consequence of this the University authorities seldom concern themselves in these really feeble attempts to smirch the honor and destroy the valor of the freshman class, which in most instances is sufficiently lusty an infant to take excellent care of itself.

For instance, no excitement is created by the appearance on the campus, or even in the corridors of the recitation buildings, of a lanky youth in exceedingly snug knee breeches who drags about behind him by a long string a gaudy little horse on squeaking wheels. Indeed, men whose height reaches a flat six feet have not infrequently ridden to classes on very small tricycles to the ecstatic delight of certain upper classmen and to the pitying sneers of their instructors.

As has been observed, the authorities of the University are not wont to interest themselves in such manifestations of under-class idiocy.

But a hazing of the second sort!

That, truly, is a different matter.

There was the case of Cleaver, for instance, whose disappearance from Ann Arbor on a wet night in March six years ago was telegraphed to every paper of consequence in the country and which furnished a delectable topic of conversation at faculty dinners for the entire two months of his absence.

Hazed?

Of course he was hazed.

He was _persona non grata_ to the sophomore class as represented by the fraternity contingent and that contingent had simply done away with him temporarily. When he _did_ return it was a wan and haggard figure that he presented. The belief gained currency that his people had known his whereabouts, but no one ever knew to a certainty. As for Cleaver himself, he would not--or perhaps could not--tell what had been done to him or who had planned and carried out the adventure of his disappearance. The faculty was nonplussed. No one else had been missed. Who, then, could have accompanied Cleaver to his dungeon, if dungeon had been his residence for two months? No one, to this day, has solved the mystery. As for Cleaver, he was given his credits and permitted to graduate in due time. And to-day whenever he speaks of a certain individual--now a lawyer in Syracuse--who was a sophomore during his own freshman days, it is with a twinkle in his eyes. But he still keeps a sacred silence.

Ann Arbor was shaken to its foundations by the incident. Shaken, too, has it been by circus riots; but it is doubted if ever within the period of the University's establishment has it been so tremendously excited, for a little period, as it became over the case of Catherwood.

In the first place Catherwood had incurred the enmity of no one. A student of fair attainments and average record who, during his three years in the University, had taken but small part in undergraduate activities, he found himself, of a sudden, standing in the blinding lime-light of an official investigation. And an official investigation at the University of Michigan is not to be considered lightly. All over this broad land are men who have the questionable privilege of looking back upon a time when they were the unwilling subjects of such investigations.

Catherwood's case, to be sure, was different in that he was the sufferer from others' depredations, but the odium of participation rested upon him nevertheless, and so delicate and shrinking was his nature that he was known to suffer miserably from the publicity of his position.

For three days he was conscious that every man's eye was upon him; that every finger pointed at him, that every tongue discussed him. An attempt was made to heroize him, but he withdrew to the seclusion of his room and would see no one. His, indeed, was a case to defy, in its solution, the most subtle reasoner, the most invincible logician on the faculty.

In detail it was as follows:

Mrs. Turner, Catherwood's landlady, a most estimable woman who had moved into town from a not-distant farm for the purpose of "putting Willie through school," was away from the house all the evening of February ninth. A "social" at the Congregational Church--socials were her chief, indeed, her only, diversion--on the arrangement committee of which she was most active, delayed her return until nearly midnight. Willie accompanied her to the church and at nine o'clock was put to bed in a pew up-stairs. Therefore Mrs. Turner could not know what had transpired in one of her second-floor rooms between the hours of seven-thirty and twelve on that momentous night. Moreover, as Mrs. Turner varied the monotony of house work with "plain sewing by the day" and was, all the morning of the tenth, at the Alpha Phi house "fitting" Miss Houston, she did not set about to "do the room work" until eleven-thirty.

At that hour, tired beyond measure,--Miss Houston had been so finicky about the hang of the skirt--she suddenly realized that if she did not make haste Mr. Catherwood would return from college to find his room in the condition of untidiness that he, presumably, had left it on going out.

So she dragged her leaden limbs up the stairs and from force of habit knocked on the door of the second room, back. There was no reply. She had expected none. She pushed open the door.

The scene of chaos that met her gaze defies description. The room had been completely and most effectively "stacked." Strewn about the floor were papers. The inverted waste-basket was cocked rakishly upon an arm of the chandelier. Books from the rack were lying everywhere. The rack lay flat on the floor. The face of every hanging picture was turned to the wall, and the Morris chair, which had been carefully taken apart, was piled upon the writing table. Mrs. Turner at a single sweep of her eye noted these details and also certain splotches that were unmistakably ink spots on the walls and on the carpet.

The divan had reared itself and now stood upon one end. Three chairs were piled upon the bed.

These Mrs. Turner noted last.

She understood the meaning of the chaos. Someone, during his absence, had entered Mr. Catherwood's room and "stacked" it. And as she calculated the time necessary to complete a restoration of its usual neat appearance, the poor woman sighed deeply.

Suddenly she started.

Was it an echo of her sigh she heard? Surely she had heard a human sound. She peered, stooping.

"Mr. Catherwood!" she called; her face pale.

A distinct, graveyard moan was the answer.

The blood fled from Mrs. Turner's lips and her eyes bulged. She cautiously approached the bed, whence, seemingly, had come the moan. She peered between the legs of the chairs. Then, with a cry that rang through the house, she fled from the room, down the stairs and into the freezing out-of-doors.

As she ran down the walk, slipping, stumbling, the bells in the library tower rang out twice, musically clear on the frosty air--fifteen minutes past twelve. And approaching, she saw her neighbor, the assistant professor of history, returning from the examination.

Mrs. Turner flung herself heavily upon him. His spectacles slipped from his nose. The armful of thin "blue books" he was carrying littered the walk. He parried awkwardly with hands that were encased in gray-striped woolen mittens.

"Madame! Madame!" he cried, "what the--what is the matter--are you crazy?"

Mrs. Turner gasped--gasped like a pickerel dying on the grass. It was quite half a minute before she found her voice and when she spoke it was with many vocal quavers.

"Oh, Professor Lowe! Professor Lowe!" she wailed, "Mr. Catherwood--Mr. Catherwood----"

"Well, well; what of him, madame, what of him?"

The assistant professor spoke sharply.

"_He's been murdered!_"

"WHAT!"

She seized him by the arm.

"Come--come, quick," she cried. "He's on the bed: his face is all blood."

"Yes, yes," he replied, stooping and hastily gathering up the "blue books"--"I'll fling these in the hall; you run on ahead--I'll be right there."

From the doorway he called to his wife,

"Young man murdered next door, Jenny," and from the porch at the end nearest Mrs. Turner's house he leaped into a snow-drift. He floundered out and into the house as his wife appeared upon the porch wringing her hands and moaning.

He bounded up the stairs in the wake of Mrs. Turner and brushed past her into the room of horror.

He brought up stock still and looked about.

"There's the corpse! There; over there on the bed!" the woman wailed, frantically.

He pulled away the piled chairs, and seizing the body rolled it upon its back. Over Catherwood's eyes was bound a strip of cloth and a gag made of a stocking was tied across his mouth. The assistant professor unknotted the gag with trembling fingers and tore away the blindfold and Catherwood blinked up at him owlishly.

"Are you dead?" the assistant professor asked with bated breath.

Catherwood's mouth worked convulsively and then he muttered hoarsely: "Water! water!"

Mrs. Turner hurried to the bathroom and returned with a cup, which the assistant professor took from her and held to the young man's lips. He gulped eagerly.

"Look at his face!" cried Mrs. Turner.

It was streaked and spotted with a brown stain.

"Is it blood?" The woman shivered.

The assistant professor sniffed.

"Iodine," he exclaimed. "And see," he added, stooping, "here's the bottle." He held up the phial that had caught his eye where it lay on the floor at the foot of the bed.

"Untie my hands," Catherwood gurgled--"Here, behind me!"

They were tied securely by two handkerchiefs knotted together. The assistant professor fumbled at the loops. He disengaged the swollen wrists and Catherwood sat up in bed. He loosened the bindings of his ankles himself and stood up.

"Whew!" he whistled.

He caught sight of his brown-streaked and spotted face in the dresser mirror.

"Cæsar!" he exclaimed, "that was a fine job!"

Satisfied that a rescue had been accomplished in good time, the assistant professor said:

"Sit down, Mr. Catherwood, and explain, if possible, the meaning of this--this hazing. I observed you were not present at the examination to-day."

Mrs. Turner, who till now had stood by wringing her hands, commenced, with mechanical precision, to wrest order out of chaos in the room.

From time to time during Catherwood's recital she stopped in her work long enough to voice an ejaculatory "oh," or exclaim--"Well, _I_ declare."

"It is clearly a case of hazing--hazing of the most malicious sort," observed the assistant professor, "and as such merits the fullest investigation on the part of the faculty, which I have no doubt the faculty will undertake. Do you know your assailants, Mr. Catherwood?"

"Yes--and no," the young man replied, rubbing a red and swollen wrist.

"Why do you say that?" the assistant professor inquired, significantly.

"I thought I did from the writing of the note I received yesterday afternoon----"

"Ah--you received a note then?"

"Yes--wait." Catherwood dove a hand into the inside pocket of his coat. "Here it is," he said, and held out to his questioner a crumpled bit of paper written in a hand obviously disguised.

The assistant professor examined the writing closely.