Frank was never able to understand one fellow despising another because the other was popular, for it was natural for him to wish everybody good luck and success, and he always rejoiced in the success of any fellow he knew, providing, of course, that the success was of the right sort.
Lieutenant Gordan made a rigid investigation of the racket caused by the "centipedes," but he failed to fasten the blame firmly on any one.
Not one of the boys who knew the facts would expose Merriwell, and both Barney and Hans, discovering their wounds were not fatal, grinned and declared they were not sure there had been anything in their beds, but they thought they had felt something.
Professor Gunn was very indignant to think the culprits could not be discovered.
"It is a disgrace to the school!" he told Lieutenant Gordan.

"Just look at my face, sir! I am a picture!" The lieutenant did not crack a smile.
"You have no one but yourself to blame for your condition, sir," he said.
"Eh?
eh?
How's that?
how's that ?" sputtered Professor Gunn.

"I don't think I understand you, sir." "Then I will make it clear.

If you had remained in your room, as you should when the disturbance occurred, you would not have received those injuries." "But, sir--but I am the principal of this school.

It is my place----" "It is your place to keep in your room, sir, when there is an outbreak like the one under discussion, and allow me to straighten matters out.
If you had done so, I might be able to get at the bottom of this affair and discover the guilty jokers; as it is, you and your associates complicated matters so that I do not seem able to do much of anything." Having spoken thus plainly, Lieutenant Gordan turned on his heel, and left the professor in anything but a pleasant frame of mind.
It was a day or two after the occurrence of the "great centipede joke," as the crawfish affair came to be termed, that Paul Rains and Hugh Bascomb were having a bout with the gloves in the gymnasium.