Page:Baseball Joe on the School Nine.djvu/242

228 made inquiries, but had neither seen nor heard anything of Mr. Holdney.

Meanwhile the affairs of Mr. Matson—due to the theft of the models—were in anything but good shape. Still nothing could be done.

Joe bitterly felt his position. So did his chums, and they even tried their hand at amateur detective work, endeavoring to discover who had pulled down the statue and put Joe's telegram where it had been found. That it was put there was certain, for Joe, on the night in question, had not gone near the statue. In the meanwhile the bronze had been put back in place and repaired. Among the students there were those who thought they knew the guilty ones, but nothing definite was disclosed.

The school term was drawing to an end. After the hard work of getting the ball team into shape for championship honors it was hard to see it begin to slip back. Yet this is what took place. Brown and Akers could not keep up the pace set by Joe, and several games were lost.

By hard work, and more due to errors on the part of their opponents, Excelsior won victories over Trinity and the preparatory school. This made her percentage just high enough so that if she should win from Morningside in the final game