TUCKER GETS WARMED.
By this time the tiny furnace was glowing redly. Its heat had reached
Tucker, who made a wry face as the Turk seized the handle and started to
move the furnace nearer.
“Really,” said Tommy, “I think you kind gentlemen are awfully obliging,
but you’re greatly mistaken in fancying me at all troubled with cold
feet. I beseech you not to disturb yourselves to warm me up.”
“You’ll do a great deal more begging before we finish with you!” growled
Satan. “Push the furnace up close, Turk. Now get him by the ankle,
clown—that’s right. You take the other leg, Hooter. Hold his feet
extended so the bottoms will be thoroughly warm.”
With a sudden kick, Tucker upset both the clown and the owl.
“What’s the matter with you fellows?” snarled Satan. “Aren’t you strong
enough to hold his feet?”
“Hoo? hoo?” cried the owl, scrambling up. “You bet we are! If he kicks
me again, I’ll warm his foot by soaking it right plumb against the
furnace.”
“Oh, look!” grinned the clown, as Tommy began making both feet fly like
paddle wheels.
“He’ll get tired of that in a minute,” said the crimson-clothed imp. “Be
ready to grab the instant he lets up.”
In truth, Tommy was unable to keep up those kicking movements for more
than a few moments. He soon began to pant, and the instant he ceased
snapping his bare feet through the air the owl seized an ankle. On the
opposite side the clown did the same, and both clung fast with such
strength that Tucker could not jerk his feet away.
“Oh, say, I don’t see any fun in this,” protested the little chap.
“Ouch! Thunderation, that’s warm! Look out, you’ll have my Trilbys
against the old thing! Wow! wow! I can’t stand that. It’s too much! Oh,
say, let up, will you? If this is a joke, you’re carrying it too far.”
“It’s no joke,” grimly declared Satan. “We mean business. When you fully
understand that, you may come to your senses and decide to sign this
little confession of your treachery to the baseball team.”
“Say, give me a chance to think it over, will you?” panted Tucker.
“You’re blistering my feet now—on my soul you are!”
“That’s where we intend to blister them, on the sole,” said the leader.
“Lower his toddlers a moment, boys. Let’s see if he is coming to his
senses. But keep a firm hold on his ankles. If he doesn’t agree to our
terms, we’ll warm him up again in a moment.”
“You’re very rude and cruel,” said Tucker. “Jinks, I believe you did
blister my feet! If you have, I’m going to murder somebody! I’ll murder
the whole bunch of you!”
“Isn’t he dangerous!” mocked the clown.
“Better let me put an end to him,” said the executioner, spitting on his
hands and grasping the ax handle.
Beyond the flaring pan of burning grease the bear grinned and yawned.
“Do hurry up,” he said. “This confounded rig is sweating me to death.”
“Evidently you know how I feel,” said Tommy. “I’m perfectly willing to
change places with you, Teddy.”
“Come, come!” said Satan, flourishing the paper in front of the
captive’s eyes. “Are you ready to sign this confession?”
“What would it amount to if I did sign it?” sneered Tucker. “You
couldn’t make any use of it.”
“Couldn’t we?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d tell the truth and let everybody know how I was forced into
putting my name onto that lying document. The moment one of you fellows
showed it he’d find himself in a lot of trouble.”
“But I don’t think you’ll do anything of that sort,” said the leader of
the disguised chaps. “This is a fair and square statement of the truth.
You are the traitor who betrayed the team.”
“You are a liar!” said Tommy, slowly and distinctly.
“Wait a minute, Tucker—you’ll get all that’s coming to you if you don’t
get humble. I say you betrayed the team. I’m not the only one who
believes it. Merriwell saved your pelt by hiring a disreputable
character to take the blame on his own shoulders. Every one knows that
man Smith lied when he said he was the one who stole the signals and
gave them to the manager of the Hudson team.”
“I think he lied myself,” said Tommy. “I’m satisfied that some one on
the team gave Smith the signals and paid him to have them copied.”
“And you’re that some one,” declared the Turk.
“I’ll hand you out the same remark I just applied to old Sate,” flashed
the captive.
“You’ll have to sign this paper,” asserted the wearer of the crimson.
“If I sign it,” said Tommy, “I’ll lose no time in telling every one
under what circumstances I was forced into it.”
“And if you tell any one that,” threatened Satan, “you’ll get it again,
and next time we’ll blister you from your heels to the nape of your
neck. We don’t propose to make this confession public, but we’re going
to use it to force Merriwell and his friends to give certain fellows of
the freshman class a square deal at baseball.”
“And a sillier scheme I never heard of!” derided Tucker. “You can’t
force Dick Merriwell’s hand in such a manner, and you ought to know it.
Of course I know you’re Merriwell’s classmates and enemies. I think I
could name you all. I’m dead sure I can name four or five of you. It
seems astonishing to me that by this time you have not learned that Dick
Merriwell cannot be forced or browbeaten into anything.”
“Will you sign this paper?”
“Sure.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Yes, I mean it because I realize that you’re just fools enough to cook
my feet unless I do sign.”
“Release his hands, boys,” directed Satan. “Stand close around him and
be ready to jump on him if he makes a scrap of it.”
“I’m not as big a fool as you fellows are,” mocked Tommy. “You’re six to
my one, and I have no idea of scrapping.”
In a few moments they set his hands free, and he stretched and rubbed
his arms with grunts of relief.
“I hope some time I’ll have the pleasure of giving a few of you fellows
some of the same medicine I’ve had to take to-night,” he said.
“Here,” said Satan, placing a short piece of board across Tucker’s knees
and spreading the confession upon it. “Get ready to make your autograph.
Here’s a fountain pen.”
“Goodness! give me time,” urged Tucker. “How do you expect a fellow to
write when his blood is stagnated? Why, even my fingers are stiff.”
“Watch him,” warned the Turk. “He’s tricky.”
The executioner lifted and poised the ax.
“If he tries any tricks,” he declared, “I’ll let him have a taste of
this where Nellie wore the beads.”
Tucker glanced around at all of those grotesque figures and then twisted
his face into a comical look of disgust and resignation.
“Give me the goose quill,” he said. “Here goes my Thomas J. right at the
bottom of this lying mess.”
Being a very little chap, Tommy wrote, like most undersized persons, in
a large, bold, flourishing hand. In a moment he had dashed off his
signature.
“There’s my John Hancock,” he said. “I hope you can see it.”
The leader took the paper with a nod of satisfaction.
“So far everything is satisfactory to us,” he chuckled, folding the
document and thrusting it into a pocket.
“So far?” murmured Tommy questioningly. “Well, I wonder how much farther
you’re going? Isn’t this about the limit?”
Satan made a gesture, and in another instant the captive was once more
seized and pinned fast to the chair.
“Here! here!” he spluttered, in disgust. “What the dickens are you up to
now?”
“We’re going to put you on your oath now,” announced the leader. “We’re
going to make you swear by all things sacred, by all you hold dear, that
you’ll never tell under what circumstances you affixed your signature to
that document.”
“Oh, you make me sick, the whole of you!” said the little chap. “I’ll
never swear to anything of the sort.”
“His feet are getting cold again,” snickered the clown.
“Go ahead and warm them up,” directed Satan.
Tommy squirmed and twisted and yelled at the top of his voice. In the
midst of his struggles the basement door was hurled open with a bang,
and, shouting loudly, a dozen boys, headed by Dick Merriwell, came
rushing to the rescue.