WOLFE HAS AN IDEA.
Reaching the street after leaving Mike Lynch’s room, Wolfe and Ditson
paused and looked at each other.
“Well, what do you think of it?” asked Bern, in a disgusted way.
“It beats me,” declared Dunc. “There’s something the matter with the
fellow. There’s been something the matter with him ever since the night
we accidentally ran down Merriwell and Buckhart as they were rowing on
the harbor.”
“Accidentally?” murmured Bern, with a crafty wink. “Are you sure it was
an accident, old chap?”
“Well, we didn’t take particular pains to avoid hitting their boat. I
don’t understand now how it was Merriwell escaped. He disappeared, and
we saw nothing of him. Even Buckhart thought for a time that he was
drowned. You see, Lynch got a foolish idea into his head that he was
haunted by Merriwell’s ghost. When the rest of us learned that Merriwell
was still alive, Mike persisted in fancying him dead. That was the first
indication of an unbalanced mind. He seems to have thrown off that
delusion, but with its disappearance he has suddenly changed in a most
astonishing way. He was the bitterest and most persistent of Merriwell’s
enemies. Now he’s joined the ranks of the Merriwell toadies. All of a
sudden he’s got good. Think of Mike Lynch doing anything like that!”
“When the devil a saint would be, the devil a saint was he,” quoted
Wolfe. “I can’t believe he’s in earnest.”
“Somehow, I think he is. He’s not the sort of fellow to try deception on
us.”
“Well, confound him!” snapped Bern. “If he’s really in earnest, I’d like
to punch him. Only for him I might be playing on the baseball team now.
I’d like to tell you a few things, Ditson. Where can we go?”
“There’s my room,” suggested Dunc.
“The very place,” said Bern eagerly.
Among the anti-Merriwellites Ditson was something of an aristocrat. He
was a fellow who regarded himself as very exclusive and well-bred. He
roomed alone, and his rooms were furnished with something like luxury.
There were fine rugs on the floors, plenty of books, easy lounging
chairs, athletic pictures on the walls, and the usual Yale flags,
crossed foils, boxing gloves, Indian clubs, and so forth.
“You’ve got slick rooms,” observed Bern, as he flung himself on Duncan’s
comfortable, cushion-piled couch.
“Oh, they don’t satisfy me,” said Ditson. “I’m going to have something
decent next term. I’ve got the rooms spotted now.”
“Of course, you’re going to leave this locality?”
“Well, I should say so. You don’t suppose I’d hang around Freshman Row
in my sophomore year? I’ll be glad when I get into a dormitory. Have a
smoke, Wolfe?”
Bern accepted a cigarette, and lighted it.
“This is my only consolation for being dropped from the baseball team,”
he said. “I can smoke as much as I choose.”
“You were going to tell me something,” reminded Duncan, who had likewise
fired up, and was now standing with his elbow resting against the
mantelpiece. “Go ahead.”
Wolfe sat up and eyed his companion askance.
“I don’t know just how to begin,” he hesitated. “You remember that
Hudson A. A. business—the giving away of our signals, don’t you?”
“As if I’d forget it!” exclaimed Ditson.
“Well, you always thought Tommy Tucker betrayed the team, didn’t you?”
“I believe that was practically proven, although Merriwell hired a cheap
bum to shoulder the blame, and Tucker is still on the team.”
“Tucker didn’t do it,” announced Wolfe.
“Tucker didn’t?”
“No, sir.”
“Then who did?”
“I did.”
“Wha-a-at?” Duncan dragged forth the exclamation with an intonation of
great astonishment.
“Yes, I did it,” repeated Wolfe defiantly. “I was forced into it.”
“By whom?”
“Mike Lynch.”
“How did he force you into it?”
“Oh, he knew something about me that I wouldn’t have come out for the
world, and he threatened to expose me unless I went in with him on his
plan to throw down the team. You see, I had a good chance to do that.
Tommy Tucker had quit, and I was almost the only man who could come
anywhere near filling his place at shortstop. They had to have as good a
man as they could get. I believe I can play the position all around
Tucker. I went out and showed them what I could do. Merriwell advised
Jones to give me a chance on the team, and Jones decided to do so.”
“Oh, of course!” sneered Ditson, exhaling a blue smoky breath while his
lips curled with scorn. “Jones is a mere figurehead. He agrees to
everything Merriwell proposes. Manager Robinson is another dummy.
Manager? Why, he couldn’t manage a chicken hatchery. He’s about the
biggest slob in the whole bunch.”
Ditson’s doubled disgust for Robinson came principally from the fact
that big Rufe had at one time seemed inclined to favor the
anti-Merriwell crowd. After becoming manager of the team Robinson had
flopped, cutting out Duncan and his associates.
“Well, I had my chance to make good and nail myself fast to the team,”
Wolfe hastily continued. “I meant to do it. I was in earnest, for I love
baseball more than any other sport. Lynch became infuriated with me. You
know what he thinks of Sam Kates. Kates got his chance on the team the
same time I did. He’s stuck there.”
“But he made a beautiful mess pitching that Highbridge game,” smiled
Duncan, filliping a bit of ash from his cigarette.
“Oh, as a pitcher Sam is erratic. He’s a wizard one day and a slob the
next. That experience will teach them better than to rely on him, even
against the weaker teams. As I was saying, Lynch put up that Hudson job.
He got me to make out a list of the teamwork signals. He told me how we
could make money by handing the signals over to Newhouse, the Hudson
manager. But I didn’t propose to have those signals turning up in my
handwriting, and so we engaged a bummer to get them typewritten for us.
In order to doubly cover our tracks, we actually fooled Newhouse into
believing that Tucker was the one who gave him the signals.
“Lynch made the bargain with Newhouse, and arranged that I should meet
the man on a certain dark corner, and give him the typewritten document.
I kept the appointment, wearing an old ulster, with the collar turned
up, and a wide-brimmed hat pulled low down over my eyes. When Newhouse
inquired if my name was Tucker I said yes. That’s the way the trick was
worked. It was a mighty rotten piece of business, but Lynch was to blame
for it all. He drove me into it. I’m satisfied that Merriwell got at the
truth, and that’s why I was bounced from the team and Tucker taken back.
You can’t blame me, Ditson. You see the kind of a fix I was in. I didn’t
want to do it, but I had to.”
Duncan tossed the butt of his cigarette into the open grate.
“I see,” he said, with a shrug of his shoulders; “and I’ve been thinking
all the time that Tucker did it. I’ve been despising Merriwell because
he kept Tucker on the team. I must acknowledge that you and Lynch fooled
me, all right. I’m sorry to learn that Tucker was not the traitor.”
“I didn’t want to be a traitor,” said Wolfe. “Do you wonder I’m sore on
Mike Lynch? I tell you I love baseball. I’m not playing, and Lynch is to
blame for it. Now he suddenly has a spasm of virtue, and it looks as if
he might get a chance to play on the team himself. Think I’m going to
stand for that? Not on your life! Say, I’m going to make a howl. I’m
going to rip up things generally.”
“Are you?” smiled Ditson, as he selected and lighted a second cigarette.
“I wonder how you’re going to do it. It seems to me you’re in a tight
corner, and you haven’t much chance to make a disturbance. Didn’t I
understand Lynch to say he had written a full confession of his errors
and sent it to Merriwell?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Well, there you are. Merriwell has read that confession, and yet this
very day Lynch was given a chance to practice with the team. What does
that look like to you, Wolfe? Doesn’t it strike you that Merriwell has
accepted Mike Lynch’s protestations of regret and promises to reform as
genuine? If Merriwell didn’t believe Mike in earnest, the contents of
that confession would be public knowledge now. Merriwell is going to
keep still until he can satisfy himself whether Lynch means what he says
or not. If Mike proves that he’s sincere, that confession will be
destroyed.”
“And Mr. Lynch will come out on top of the heap, while you and I will
remain in the soup,” snarled Wolfe, leaping up and excitedly pacing the
floor. “You’d like to play baseball yourself, Ditson. Have you had a
chance to play this spring?”
“Oh, I suppose I might have played if I had bowed the suppliant knee to
the great mogul, Merriwell.”
“But you wouldn’t do that.”
“Not much!”
“Nearly all the rest of the crowd have squealed and given in to him.”
“I’ll never squeal. The squealers make me sick! Mike Lynch was the last
one I’d ever thought would lie down. I’m more disgusted with him than
any one else.”
“I’m glad you are—I’m glad of it!” said Bern exultantly. “I hate him!
I’d like to get a good twist on him! I’d like to hold his nose to the
grindstone! It would do my soul good! And to think I witnessed his
signature to that confession! To think Merriwell has that document with
my name attached as a witness! I’d give something to get hold of that
paper.”
“It would be rather valuable,” murmured Duncan, as if struck by a sudden
thought.
“You bet it would! With that document in his possession, a fellow could
just about make Mike Lynch do as he pleased. Mike said that he had
shouldered all the blame for the betraying of those signals. If that’s
true, and I could get hold of that document, I’d have the power to drive
him out of college. Say, Ditson, isn’t there any way we can get our
hands on that paper?”
Duncan meditated a moment, puffing softly at his cigarette.
“It’s not easy to get anything away from Merriwell,” he said. “I presume
Merriwell will carry that paper in his pocket. If some fellow could find
an opportunity to go through his pockets——”
“At the gymnasium, say?”
“Not so easy there, for he has a locker into which he puts his
valuables. Of course, a man might find an opportunity to break open that
locker, but it’s dangerous trying such a thing.”
“He might be held up on the highway and robbed.”
“That gives me an idea,” muttered Dunc, scratching his head. “Saw my
sister this afternoon, and she told me that Merriwell and Buckhart were
going to call on her this evening. Unless they’re taking the girls out,
those chaps usually walk when they call there. The Midhursts live pretty
well out toward the outskirts of the city. I suppose a man might be held
up out that way. It would be much easier, though, if one of those chaps
was going out there alone.”
“Don’t you suppose that we could do it?” asked Wolfe. “We could wear
masks and turn our coats, and have a couple of pistols, and I’ll bet we
could pull off the job.”
“I don’t know,” murmured Dunc, rubbing his chin. “It would be better to
have two more fellows with us.”
“But we don’t want to let anybody else in on this. Besides, I don’t know
whom you’ll get. The most of our crowd wouldn’t have nerve enough to
tackle the job. They got pretty well upset after that racket with
Tucker, when the old warehouse burned.”
“I wouldn’t try to get any of the old crowd,” said Dunc. “I think I know
one chap we might induce to take a hand. He’s a tough customer, and I
don’t suppose it would be the first holdup he’s ever participated in.
More than that, he has a grudge against Merriwell. It would be well
enough to take him into the game in case he’ll work for a reasonable
sum. I think he will, as he’s on his uppers at the present time. He’s a
big brute, and he might make some impression on Buckhart and Merriwell.
Unless we can get some one like that, I hardly think we had better
tackle the job.”
“If—if you can—get hold of this—this person,” faltered Wolfe.
“I’ll try it,” said Duncan promptly. “Meet me at Fred’s about eight this
evening. I’ll let you know, what success I’ve had and whether we’ll try
this holdup scheme or not.”
“All right,” said Bern, turning toward the door; “I’ll be there.”