“The solution! Old Middleton was attacked outside the room and went in there and locked the door himself! How’s that?”
“That might do,” conceded Dick, “but how about the clews?”
Fudge’s face fell. “That’s so. I guess I could change that about the clews, though. What’s this fellow going to do? Play a banjo? Gee, this is a bum show!”
“Sixty-two dollars and sixty-five cents,” announced Louise Brent disconsolately. “I don’t believe we’ll ever get enough!”
“I wonder who gave the five cents,” murmured Lanny.
The Twenty-fifth of October Fund Committee was assembled on the side porch at Brentwood, facing a problem.
“We need about twenty-eight dollars more, don’t we?” asked Gordon. Louise nodded.
“Unless we left off the filing-cabinet,” she said.
“We figured the cabinet at eighteen dollars. Maybe it would be less, though.”
“Eighteen,” reminded Morris, “was before we took off thirty per cent. So it would only make it about twelve dollars.”
“Yes, and I so hoped we could get the cabinet too,” said Louise.
“Well, we’ve tackled about everyone in school,” said Gordon. “I can give another dollar, I guess, but that doesn’t help much.”
“The trouble is,” said Morris, “that most of the fellows are down on Mr. Grayson about the coaching business.”
“Don’t see why they should be,” said Lanny, “after Saturday’s game. Seems to me that ought to prove that we can win without paying money for a professional coach.”
“Of course,” agreed Morris hurriedly, darting an anxious glance at Dick, fearing he had said something to hurt him. “Maybe they think differently about it now. How would it do to ask fellows again?”
Gordon groaned. “I absolutely refuse,” he asserted. “If we have got to do that someone will have to take my list.”
“How many are there who haven’t been asked?” inquired May Burnham.
“Only about twenty,” replied Louise, “and most of them are the younger boys.”
“And they don’t give much, anyway,” said Gordon. “We may be able to make up another five dollars, but I guess that’s about all. There’s only two weeks more, about.”
“Well, supposing we got seventy dollars altogether,” asked Dick. “Is there anything we could do without, so as to bring the whole bill to seventy?”
Louise referred to her list. “The easy-chair would be about fourteen,” she replied. “But we simply couldn’t do without that, Dick.”