CLINCHING EVIDENCE
"As near as I can make out, they're C.J.," said Fred, after he had taken
a look, before the match flickered, and went out in the night breeze.
Colon burst into another laugh.
"Told you so, Fred!" he remarked, triumphantly. "You don't need to guess
twice to know whom that set belongs to. Let me mention his name to
you---Conrad Jimmerson, and this is what proves it. I'd just keep that
old hat, and make him eat it, if I were you."
There was another rustling in the bushes, and Fred glanced that way as
though a trifle suspicious, but made no move to investigate.
"Oh! I don't know that I'll go as far as that," Fred observed, "because,
while a fellow may have to eat crow once in a while, swallowing his own
hat would be asking too much of him. But there's another way to rub it
in."
"How?" asked Colon.
"Suppose now I took this hat to school Monday," continued Fred, seriously
enough, "and told the story of how we were waylaid by three mysterious
chaps, who did their level best to injure us about the shins, and without
any doubt meaning to knock us out from taking part in the big race?
Don't you think nearly everybody would be warm about it?"
"Hot about the collar as they could be, and ready to take it out of the
hide of the three guilty ones, if only they knew who they were," the
other boy affirmed in his positive way.
"Well, I might put this old hat on exhibition, and ask every boy to take
a good look at it before seeing the tell-tale initials inside. Then we'd
hear what they thought, and if any of them recognized the same. In that
way, Colon, it ought to be easy to run down the rascal."
"Yes," added the tall boy, "and once you nailed him, it wouldn't be so
hard to make him own up who his cronies were. He's a coward, when you
pin him down. I'd dare him to stand up and have it out with me. Then
p'raps it was C.J. who rammed his old eye so hard against my fist, trying
to feaze me. Oh! the evidence is going to accumulate against him like a
regular old mountain. There's that rabbit of yours moving again, Fred.
Queer all this row didn't start him off, isn't it?"
"I just happened to think," remarked Fred, "that we're on a false
mission, after all."
"Right now, you mean, don't you, Fred?"
"Yes, because it wasn't Bristles at all I was talking with, but one of
this same crowd. No wonder his voice sounded so queer to me, and
muffled." Then Fred had to laugh, after which he went on to say, "And to
think how sly he was making out the cause of it to be that sudden cold
he'd taken."
"That was a mighty clever dodge, let me tell you," Colon went on to say.
"You see, he knew you'd notice the difference in voices, for even over
the wire it's easy to recognize a friend's way of speaking; so he fixed
it up, with a nut in his cheek, and then told you about the cold."
"And that cough, why, I tell you it was splendidly worked, and whoever
carried it out was a sharp one, Colon."
"However do you guess it was done?" asked the tall chum.
"Well, there must have been a fourth member of the gang, who had his part
of the game to play. Chances were he was to go into some place downtown
where they have a public 'phone booth, at exactly eight o'clock, and call
me up. The other three were to be hiding here before that time, waiting
for me to cross over. And I must say it worked out to a charm---only for
the walking-stick, and you, Colon. They didn't figure on my receiving
such important reinforcements at the eleventh hour, as to turn the tide
of battle."
"Talk to me about Blucher coming up to help Wellington at Waterloo, you
were in just as good luck to-night. And the French didn't feel any more
sore when they had to run, than Buck and his pals do right now. I'd give
thirty cents to see what the lot of them are doing this very minute;
rubbing their bodies, and saying everything mean about us they can think
of. Ho! ho! ho!"
Colon seemed to extract a considerable amount of amusement out of this
unexpected happening. He evidently considered that he had been in for
more or less luck simply because he happened to be in Fred's company when
the other ran into the ambuscade. Colon was not averse to an occasional
measure of excitement, and although not all considered a pugnacious
fellow, he could at the same time hold his own when difficulties arose.
"Of course," pursued Fred, "if I thought it worth while I could easily
find out who sent that message to me, and played the part of Bristles."
"You mean by going to telephone headquarters, and learning who connected
with your number tonight about eight; is that it, Fred?"
"And after they had told me it was, say, Dudley's drug store," Fred
continued, as if figuring it all out, "I could step in there and ask
Gussie Lightly what boy used the booth about that time."
"Easy enough, because of course Gussie knows all the boys about town, and
if it was Ben Cushing or Clem Shooks or Oscar Jones, he could tell you
right off the reel. Why don't you do it, Fred?"
"I may when I get home, because it can all be done just as well over the
wire you know," the other replied. "Gussie is a good friend of mine, I
feel sure, and if only he knew what a mean game had been set up on me,
he'd do anything to square matters."
"And at school Monday," Colon suggested, "it might be a good thing for
you to be able to prove it was one of Buck's cronies that talked with
you, making out to be Bristles, who hasn't any cold at all."
"I'm glad of that, too," Fred observed, "because I was feeling that he
couldn't go along with us tomorrow on the trial spin."
"It was a dirty trick, Fred, but I must say pretty well worked out. I
can see the fine hand of our old friend, Buck, back of it all. There
isn't another fellow in all Riverport who could get up such a
combination. Buck's as full of schemes as an egg is of meat. That's why
the others all flock after him. He's got the brains, and carries the
money too."
"Now, while it seems that Bristles didn't call me up, and beg me to come
over, as we're already part way there, we might as well finish the lap,
Colon."
"Oh! you know I gave him to understand that maybe we might run in on
him," he was told by the other.
"But it's too bad," remarked Fred, grinning broadly.
"About what?" demanded his friend.
"We're going to be badly disappointed, I'm afraid."
"We are, eh? I'd like to know how that comes, Fred?"
"Why, we laid out to hear the most thrilling thing that ever happened,
you see," the other told him, in a voice of mock disappointment. "When
Bristles with the muffled voice and the bad cold told me he'd just burst
if he didn't have someone to confide in right soon, he got me worked up
to fever pitch. Now I've had to cool down. There isn't going to be any
development. Our hair won't have to stand tip on end like the quills of
the fretful porcupine. In so many words, Colon, it's all off, you know."
"I'm afraid it is, Fred," admitted the other, sadly, "and I'm some
disappointed, too, because you had my curiosity whetted up. Why, I
couldn't begin to tell you all I expected to hear when Bristles got busy.
Course, knowing about that Corny as you did, it was easy to figure out
how he might be the one Bristles meant to tell about. Well, that ends
it, and Fred, hadn't we better be hunching out of this, if you think
there's no more hats or other trophies of the great victory lying
around?"
"Yes, we'll be over at Bristles' place inside of five minutes more," Fred
announced.
"If he happened to have his window open I wouldn't be surprised if he
heard us carrying on high over here in the field," suggested Colon, and
there was an air of expectancy in his voice, as though such a thing would
not have been at all unpleasant to him.
"One thing sure," Fred asserted, confidently, "he'll kick up an awful row
just because he didn't happen to be in the little affair. Bristles never
wants anyone to get ahead of him, when there's action stirring."
"No more he does," Colon echoed. "Here, suppose you keep this old hat.
I'm given to being careless, and I'd be apt to drop it somewhere. No
danger of you doing that, Fred; you're always as particular about such
things as an old maid."
"You can make your mind tip that when the evidence is needed to show up
the owner of this hat at school, it will be forthcoming. I'll take it
home with me, and keep it safe and sound."
The two boys were already moving off, heading across the field. They
could easily see the lights in the Carpenter house, which was only a
short distance away, though if one went around by the road it would take
some fifteen minutes to make the journey.
They did not bother to look back after they had quitted the vicinity of
the big cluster of bushes. Had they done so, and the starlight been
strong enough for them to see as a cat does at nighttime, Fred and Colon
might have discovered a bare-headed figure that came creeping out of the
bushes. This wretched person looked after them with more or less
grumbling and complaining, as though not at all relishing some of the
things so recently spoken by the two chums.