A NEW CONSPIRACY.
Foote had been so supremely confident of the success of his plan to
disgrace Gray, that he had inspired an equal degree of confidence in
Parker. When, therefore, they saw the senior go out in the last inning
of the game with Harvard and perform his remarkable feat of striking out
the whole Harvard side, they had been completely staggered. They were
nervous, too, and, as soon as the game was over, made their way back to
New Haven.
“You’re a false alarm, Foote,” said Parker bitterly. “You make promises
as fast as you can talk, but I notice that you’re not so quick when it
comes to making good on them afterward. I thought you said you had it
fixed so that Gray couldn’t possibly pitch. You took enough chances,
going into Dwight Hall that way last night—that’s one sure thing.”
“You’re a lot of use,” stormed Foote. “You stand around and talk about
what I do, but I notice you never start anything yourself—and, when you
did, you got caught at it. I’ve got enough on my hands to worry me now,
without listening to you. If that plant went wrong, it means that they
got onto the fact that Gray hadn’t turned in a blank paper, after all,
and that means, too, that they must know that some one switched his book
around.”
“For Heaven’s sake!” said Parker, almost admiringly. “You had your nerve
with you, all right. Was that what you did?”
“Yes,” growled Foote, “and I’ll be in a nice pickle if they catch me,
too, won’t I? I suppose you’ll step up and take your share of the
blame—not! I can just see you doing a decent thing like that.”
“I guess I’ll go as far in that direction for you as you would for me,”
said Parker angrily. Parker had plenty of courage, of the animal sort.
It was morally, not physically, that he was weak. And Foote, who was
really terrified at the failure of his scheme, was playing on this
weakness of Parker’s.
“I want to get those leaves back,” said Foote. “I didn’t want to have
them on me, in case of any accident, so I hid them in Dwight Hall. Now
I’m afraid they’ll find them, if they think there’s any reason to look
for them, and then the fat would be in the fire for both of us.”
“You were a fool to leave them there,” said Parker, glad of a chance to
reproach Foote for something, as Foote had been reproaching him since
they had formed their sneaky and treacherous alliance. “How do you
expect to get them back?”
“I can’t go after them myself,” said Foote. “It would be too risky. You
stand in all right with Merriwell now—he doesn’t know that we’re working
together. Why can’t you try to get them? That would be the best of all.
I’ll tell you just where they are.”
Parker, loathe at first to do anything of the sort, was finally
persuaded, as Foote knew he would be. And, as Foote explained matters,
there was little risk. Foote, with a cunning and cleverness worthy of a
better cause, had not hidden the leaves he had torn from Gray’s book in
any elaborate fashion. He had remembered that when a search is being
made the obvious places are the ones most likely to be overlooked, and,
seeing on Canfield’s desk an old Yale catalogue, of several years
before, not at all likely to be looked at at this time, he had simply
put the leaves inside of it, trusting to luck to give him a chance to
get them away without suspicion later on.
Parker really saw no risk in it. A call at Dwight Hall was nothing to
excite remark, and for him to turn the leaves of an old catalogue, as
Foote pointed out, wouldn’t make any one pay any attention to him. So
Parker went.
He was not gone long. But when he came back, his face was rather white.
“I got at the catalogue, all right,” he said, “and no one saw me do it,
either. But either you’re mistaken about where you put that stuff,
Foote, or else there was some one ahead of me, for it wasn’t there.”
For the moment Foote was dismayed. But he braced up when he had thought
it over.
“That’s just cursed bad luck,” he said. “It explains how Gray cleared
himself, too. Some one must have been inspired to go to that book and
open it up, and, of course, found those leaves. That disposed of the
case against Gray, but I don’t see that it gives me anything to worry
about. If they suspected any one of being concerned in this, it would be
you. They’ve got no reason at all to fix on me, although they must know
by now, of course, that some one was mixed up in a deal. But, as long as
they don’t get onto me, it’s all right. They might suspect you, but they
couldn’t prove anything, so that wouldn’t do any harm.”
But lightly as he took it, Foote wondered who had actually got
possession of those stolen pages from Gray’s examination book. He would
have given a good deal to know, for the knowledge might well have been
useful. Foote, as soon as he was relieved from fear for his own safety,
was all anxiety again to work out some plan for the undoing of Dick
Merriwell. Gray and Taylor were beyond his reach now, and he turned
naturally to Jim Phillips as the victim most likely to serve his
purpose. He had nothing against Jim, nor, for that matter, against
Merriwell, but he needed Parker’s help to attain his own objects, and
there was only one way to make that available, as he well knew.
“Is it at all certain that Phillips will be elected captain of the
baseball team?” he asked Parker.
“It’s just as certain as that you’re looking at me now,” said Parker. “I
tried to put him out of the running twice last week. If he had been
found guilty of taking money for playing, he couldn’t have been elected,
and when that failed I thought I could manage it by making him miss the
game at Cambridge. If he hadn’t turned up to play, every one would have
thought his story of how he was kept away pretty fishy, and it might
have turned the crowd against him. I thought it was a good chance,
anyhow. But now he’s solid, and there isn’t any one to fight it out with
him. Jackson and Carter are both out of it, and they are the only
ones—juniors, I mean—who are sure of holding their jobs next year. They
might take Brady, if Phillips were out of it, but I’d just as soon have
Phillips as that big stiff.”
“If Phillips didn’t pitch against Harvard on Saturday, there might be
some trouble, I should think,” said Foote slowly, as if he were thinking
hard.
“Yes,” said Parker, with a laugh. “But what are you going to do about
that? You told me that if I’d managed to keep him away from that
Cambridge game they’d never have let up until they found out the truth.
Wouldn’t that go just as much for anything you tried?”
“Suppose there wasn’t any way for them to find out?” said Foote.
Foote got up and walked around the room. A new idea had just come to
him, one that seemed to promise absolute success, with no risk at all
for himself. He was debating with himself as to whether he should tell
Parker about it or not. He decided that he would not. It was too
dangerous. He was inclined to distrust Parker. Moreover, he did not know
how readily Parker would enter into this particular plan that he was
evolving. It was a plan so devilish and so filled with danger for its
intended victim that he was inclined to think he had better carry it out
by himself, which he could easily do, since he needed no help.
“I’ve got the plan we need,” he told Parker finally. “I’m not going to
tell you what it is, but it’s a good one—take that from me. Mr. Jim
Phillips won’t be able to pitch against Harvard on Saturday, and he’ll
never be able to prove, either, that it wasn’t his own fault that he was
away. Whether it will hurt Merriwell or not I don’t know. The thing to
do now, as far as I can see, is to put Phillips out of the running. We
can settle Merriwell’s hash some other time.”
“I want to know what you’re going to do,” said Parker sullenly. “We’re
working together here, and you expect to get a lot out of me. I don’t
like going into things in this blind fashion.”
“Stay out, then,” snarled Foote. “I’ll tell you this much: Phillips will
go to the station to-morrow night to start for New York. But he won’t
get there with the rest of the team.”
Parker’s most insistent urgings couldn’t make Foote tell him anything
more. But Parker was determined to find out, if it was at all possible,
and he treasured the hint as to the station. It was all he could do.
------------------------------------------------------------------------