BARROWS LAYS THE MINE.
Dick Merriwell, at this time, was full of plans. He was interested in a
lumbering enterprise in the Maine woods, which he had always loved, and
he had talked much to Jim Phillips and Brady, among others, of this
business. One of his associates in this business was Chester Arlington,
the engineer who had won such a brilliant success in Valdivia, to whose
sister, June, Dick was devoted.
“There has been a terrible waste of our woods,” said Dick. “Out West,
thousands of square miles of forest land has been completely ruined,
long before it was needed for agriculture. One result is that there have
been terrible floods in the spring, and the damage done in that way is
simply irreparable. Then they have cut the wood so unwisely that fire
traps have been made, and millions of dollars and hundreds of lives have
been needlessly lost, as a result. There’s one Yale man who has done a
lot toward teaching people how to use the forests properly—that’s
Gifford Pinchot. And it’s still possible to make money out of the
forests without wasting them and ruining them completely.”
“That’s mighty interesting work,” said Jim Phillips. “I’d like to get a
closer look at it some time.”
“I’ll give you the chance,” said Dick, with a laugh. “I’m going up there
as soon as we get back from Sweden, and I shouldn’t wonder if you’d come
in pretty handy. There are some people up there who don’t like me or my
system of using forest lands, and they may try to make trouble. So, if
you want to come along, I’ll be glad to have you, and Brady, too. You’ll
be in fine condition for football after you get through, too, I can
promise you. There’ll be lots of work, and just enough play to keep you
feeling good.”
“Always talking about work,” said Brady sadly. “Which reminds me, Jim,
that you seem to have lost all idea of how to keep that cross fire of
yours within reach of any catcher whose arms are less than six feet
long. If you’ll get a ball and come out with me, we’ll have a little
lesson in that.”
And Bill, who was always calling himself lazy, and bemoaning the
necessity of practice before games, wondered at the laugh that went up.
As a matter of fact, he never neglected a chance to perfect a play, no
matter how much practice it required, and he was the first to help Dick
Merriwell in keeping every man on a team up to the mark.
“You practice better than you preach, Bill,” said Dick Merriwell, much
amused. “I guess you’ll find that Jim will be all right on that ball
when he has to use it in the game. His arm is just a little bit stiff,
that’s all. I wouldn’t do any more work to-day. Just take it easy, and
pitch a little each day until the game. All you fellows are in good
condition, and you just want to stay that way. No use getting stale and
overtrained.
“That Boston team is coming down here primed to give us the licking of
our lives, and we went to be all ready for them. They’ve been going
around ever since the first game, I understand, telling every one in
Boston and Cambridge that would listen to them that it was just an
accident. Bowen told me that. He didn’t have any part in it, and he
tried to make all his friends understand that it was a fair, stand-up
game, and that the best team won. But he’s had trouble doing it, from
what he tells me. So if they lose this time, too, they can’t make any
excuses; while, if they win, it will look as if they had been right
about the first game.”
“By the way,” said Brady, “who do you suppose I saw in town to-day? That
chap Barrows, that faced us down so on the _Marina_ until I called his
bluff and told him what would happen if Jim had been hurt. He pretended
that he didn’t see me, but he did all right. In fact, I had an idea that
he had been looking at me pretty closely, and trying to figure out what
I was doing.”
“I wonder what he’s doing here,” said Dick, with a frown. “I should
think he wouldn’t be anxious to show up around New Haven very much after
that trouble he ran into at New London. That must have cost those
fellows a pretty penny.
“I understand they haven’t got enough money to repair the _Marina_, and
they must have lost a great deal if they bet at all heavily on Harvard
to win the race, even at the odds they got. I understood that our boys
and the alumni won about forty thousand dollars altogether on the race,
and I don’t believe the Harvard men themselves bet very heavily. It
looked as if they were hopelessly beaten after that time trial. But they
put up a wonderful fight. I never saw a closer, better race.”
“I was in the Elm National,” said Brady. “It’s a secret so far, but my
father has just bought practically all the stock of that bank. He’s
interested in a number of Connecticut enterprises, and he needed a very
close banking connection up here. So he has picked up all the stock
pretty quietly, and I guess he’ll soon reorganize it and go to work to
make a big bank of it.”
“That’s where I keep my account,” said Dick. “I’m glad to hear your
father is interested in it, Brady. He’s the sort of a man to inspire
confidence in those who deposit in any institution that he controls.”
“I don’t believe any one has ever lost a penny through any enterprise
the governor was connected with,” said Brady, with pardonable pride.
“He’s never believed in taking chances with the money that other people
have intrusted to him, like some of these high financiers, and I guess
he’d rather lose some money than do it. Anyhow, it was while I was in
there that I saw Barrows. He was hanging around on the other side of the
street, and he seemed to be rather interested in my movements. I went in
there to cash a check—they don’t know, in the bank, except for some of
the high officials, that my father’s connected with it at all.”
“Maybe he’s planning to rob the bank,” said Watson.
“Hardly,” said Brady, with a smile. “They’ve got a really modern system
of vaults and safeguards in there. It’s only been installed for about
two years, and the biggest house in the country put them in. It’s
practically impossible for any burglar to break in there. The detective
company that protects the bank says it’s the best and safest
institution, physically speaking, outside of New York and Chicago, in
the whole country. And that’s a pretty high compliment from them.”
“I guess that bank is reasonably safe from that sort of danger,” said
Dick Merriwell. “In fact, I’ve heard that some of the other banks here,
when they have unusually large sums of money on hand, use its vaults for
greater safety.”
“I don’t think Barrows is the type of the bank robber, anyhow,” said Jim
Phillips. “He might try forgery, or something of that sort, but the
regular work of going into a building at night and blowing a safe, or
something of that sort, requires a sort of a courage he hasn’t got—or,
at least, didn’t show when I saw him on the _Marina_.
“He was pretty sure, for instance, that I had overheard something that
endangered his plans that night. Yet he was afraid, when I bluffed him,
to tie me up. Svenson wanted to drop me overboard, I think, and fix me
so that I wouldn’t come up again very easily, but Barrows wouldn’t stand
for it. He just made excuses to keep me on board, and he was mighty
anxious to avoid anything that would even look like a fight. I think
he’s a coward. He’s a dangerous man, and he’s certainly a clever one,
but he hasn’t got the animal courage of Harding. Another thing I’ve
noticed about these gamblers, since they’ve been bothering us, is that
they are very anxious, especially when they get outside of the big city,
to keep on the safe side of the law. Harding was really terrified in New
London when he thought that Brady and I were going to have him sent to
jail for assault. I rather believe that it injures their prestige among
their companions to be sent to prison.”
“I think that’s just it,” said Dick Merriwell. “It isn’t that they mind
the disgrace, but it makes them look as if they couldn’t take care of
themselves. None of these fellows work alone. They have to have a lot of
lesser criminals that will do what they tell them, and those fellows
depend upon their employer to keep them out of trouble. It’s like that
poor little rat of a burglar that Harding sent here to rob Jim’s rooms.
He seemed to be perfectly willing to tell all he knew until Harding
showed his power with the politicians by getting himself released at
once. Then he lost his nerve at once, and the police down there couldn’t
get a thing out of him that would incriminate Harding.”
“Still,” said Brady, “there’s no telling what he would do under the
present conditions. I guess he’s pretty nearly broke—and that must be
almost as humiliating for those fellows as going to jail.”
Jim Phillips chuckled suddenly.
“Of course,” he said, “I don’t want to see the bank robbed, but I was
just thinking of what our friend, Detective Jones, of the New Haven
Police Department, would do if he had a bank robbery to handle. He’s
always complaining of the absence of a chance to distinguish himself
here in New Haven, because they don’t have any sensational and important
crimes. I think he’d be tickled to death at the chance to show his real
powers. He’s firmly convinced that he could give the United States
Secret Service and the New York Detective Bureau all sorts of hints on
the proper way to solve any sort of a mystery, from an Italian kidnaping
to a big smuggling case.”
“He’s a well-meaning little chap,” said Dick Merriwell, “and not at all
a bad detective, really. I think he’d do pretty well with a little more
experience.”
Dick got up then, after looking at his watch.
“Nearly three o’clock,” he said. “I’ve got to go over to that bank and
deposit some money. I intended to go up to Maine, but this game with
Boston has made that impossible. So I’m going to deposit this five
thousand dollars I’ve got with me, and get a bank draft to send up
there. It’s a safer way to send money, anyhow.”
He counted out the money, in shining, new hundred-dollar bills,
glistening with their yellow backs, and Harry Maxwell sighed enviously.
“Gee!” he said, “I’d have knocked you on the head myself, I think, if
I’d known that you had that much with you.”
“I’ll appoint you all a bodyguard to go with me while I deposit this,”
said Dick, laughing. “Brady, you’d better keep a sharp eye on Maxwell.”
Laughing, they all went out together to make the trip to the bank. It
was a hot day, and they walked slowly. Moreover, they were all talking
among themselves, and they did not happen to notice that their progress
attracted the close attention of Barrows himself, who walked along, a
large Panama hat shading his face, on the other side of the street, and
waited in the doorway opposite the bank until they had completed their
business and emerged. They all went down to the water, intending to take
a little trip to cool off with a swim at a near-by beach later on. But
Barrows did not follow them. Instead, as soon as they had passed out of
sight, he entered the bank, and signaled to Riggs, who was making a
bundle of the yellow bills that Dick had deposited.
“Did Merriwell make a deposit?” asked Barrows peremptorily. He had
caught Riggs in his landing net now, and there was no longer any need to
be polite and diplomatic with him.
“Yes,” said Riggs. “Fifty hundred-dollar bills.”
“You are required to make a note of the numbers of such bills, are you
not?” asked Barrows, who seemed to know a good deal about the banking
business.
“Yes,” said Riggs. “I’ve got the note here.”
“Give it to me!” commanded Barrows. “And enter up series numbers for
those bills well ahead, do you see? So that no one can trace the real
ones properly. Keep a note of the false numbers that you enter up, and
give that to me to-night. And, when you come to-night, bring all the
other information I asked for. At half past ten, remember, at Marston’s
place.”
“All right,” said Riggs, trembling. He was nervous, though there seemed
a chance for him to escape.
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