The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics Part 28

"I wish we could catch him," sighed Torn, while Greg nodded.

"You two can have the next chance," smiled d.i.c.k. "As for me, I am certain that I can never catch Amos Garwood unless he and I happen to be running toward each other."

"All in favor of supper," proposed Dan Dalzell, glancing at his watch, "say 'aye' and turn homeward."

"But shan't we try, for a while, to trail Garwood?" queried Greg.

"What's the use?" cross-questioned d.i.c.k disconsolately. "We might sight him, but we'd never catch him. Nor do I believe he has stopped running yet."

"If he hasn't," grumbled Dave, "he's twenty miles from here by this time."

So Dan's motion prevailed. The baseball squad of the Central Grammar School turned toward the road that led homeward.

Chapter XV

BLUFFING UP TO THE BIG GAME

"That explosion was fearful, what there was of it," d.i.c.k declared to Chief Coy. It was evening, and the head of the local police department had stopped the boys on the street for additional information on the subject.

"What did it look like?" asked Chief Coy.

"There came a big flash and a loud bang in the same instant, and Mr. Garwood was hurled over on his side. The queer part of it was that the explosion didn't do any real damage to the bench, though there wasn't a piece of the gla.s.s mortar left that was big enough to see."

"The explosion all went upward. It didn't work sideways or downward?"

asked Chief Coy.

"That's the way we saw it," d.i.c.k replied. "And it didn't hurt either you or Darrin?"

"Not beyond the big scare, and the shock to our ear-drums."

"I wonder what the explosive could have been?" mused the chief aloud.

"I don't know what was in the mortar in the first place, sir,"

d.i.c.k Prescott went on. "All Amos Garwood put in the mortar after we got there was some chlorate of potash. Then he put the pestle in and began to grind."

"And then the explosion happened?" followed up Chief Coy.

"Chlorate of potash, eh?" broke in a local druggist, who had halted and was listening. "Hm! If Garwood ground that stuff with a pestle, then it doesn't much matter what else was in the mortar!"

"Is the chlorate explosive, sir?" questioned d.i.c.k.

"Is it?" mimicked the druggist. "When I first started in to learn the drug business it was a favorite trick to give an apprentice one or two small crystals of chlorate to grind in a mortar. After a lot of accidents, and after a few drug clerks had been send to jail for playing the trick it became played out in drug stores."

"But I've seen powdered chlorate of potash," interposed Tom Reade, who was always in search of information.

"Yes," admitted the druggist. "I can show you, at my store, about ten pounds of the powdered chlorate."

"Then how do they get it into a powder, sir?" pressed Tom. "Do the manufacturers grind it between big millstones?"

"If any ever did," laughed the druggist, "they never remained on earth long enough to tell about it. A few pounds of the chlorate, crushed between millstones, would blow the roof off of the largest mill you ever saw!"

"But what makes the stuff so explosive?" queried Prescott.

"I don't know whether I can make you understand it," the druggist replied. "Pota.s.sium chlorate is extremely 'rich' in oxygen, and it is held very loosely in combination. When a piece of the chlorate is struck a hard blow it sets the oxygen free, and the gas expands so rapidly that the explosion follows."

On the outskirts of the little crowd stood a new-comer, Ted Teall, who was drinking in every word that the druggist uttered. d.i.c.k saw him and felt a sudden start of intuition.

"See here, Teall," d.i.c.k called, "you needn't pick that up as a pointer for the way to serve me with a home-made ball at our game to-morrow. The trick I played on you wasn't dangerous, but this chlorate racket is. Mr. Johnson, what would happen if a fellow should hit a ball with his bat, and that ball was packed with chlorate of potash?"

"I'm not sure that the fellow with the bat would ever know what happened," answered the druggist.

"Is it as bad as that?" gasped Teall.

"Worse," replied the druggist grimly.

"So, Teall, if you had any thoughts of playing a trick like that,"

interposed Chief Coy, "take my word for it that such a trick would be likely to land you in a reform school until you were at least twenty-one years old."

"Oh, if it's as bad as that-----" muttered Ted reluctantly.

"What did you and Darry say, when the explosion came off?" asked Dan Dalzell, as d.i.c.k & Co. walked on again.

"I don't remember just what Darry said," Prescott confessed reluctantly.

"As for me, I remember just what I said."

"What?"

"I said just what the man on the clubhouse steps said."

"And what was that?" pressed Dalzell.

"That's what you're going to find out if you win the game from South Grammar to-morrow."

"Then the game is as good as won already," declared Tom solemnly, "for we're in that frame of mind where we've got to know what the man on the clubhouse steps said."

Through the evening, and the long night that followed, Chief Coy had two of his policemen out searching the woods where Garwood had last been seen. Mr. Winthrop added three detectives to the chase. When morning came the "queer" inventor was still at large.

He had not even been seen since d.i.c.k and Dave had lost sight of him.

"The last time that I put this cla.s.s on honor," announced Old Put, when the morning session began, "we had one of the best records of good behavior during the day that I can remember. I will, therefore, announce that this cla.s.s is on honor again to-day, and that, no matter what the breaches of discipline, no pupil will be kept after school to-day. All will be allowed to go and see the great, the glorious game."

Then, after a pause, Old Dut added dryly:

"I haven't the heart to keep any one after school to-day. I am going to the game myself."

At this statement a laugh rippled around the room. Then every boy and girl settled down to the serious business of the day.