THE TELL-TALE KNIFE.
Filled with wonder and speculation over his unexpected and thrilling
adventure, Don returned to the dressing-room where the desperate
encounter had taken place. The knife he had closed and slipped into his
pocket, and he wound a handkerchief around his cut and bleeding fingers.
“I’d give something to know what this fellow was up to,” he muttered,
pausing outside the open door and shuddering as he thought of what
had lately taken place within that room. “He fought like the very Old
Scratch, but I don’t think he tried to strike me with the knife till I
got him down and choked him. Wish I had a match.”
But another search through his pockets failed to bring forth the
article he desired, and so, not without a slight shiver and drawing
back, he again stepped into the darkness of the dressing-room.
Knowing exactly where his clothes were hanging on a peg against the
wall, it was not difficult for him to find them. Having hurriedly
gathered them and flung them over his arm, he lost little time in
leaving the dressing-room, for he could not cast off the feeling that
he might again be attacked in the darkness of that place.
Outside he paused long enough to close the door, which fastened with a
spring lock, after which he walked swiftly from the inclosure, shutting
the gate behind him.
As he reached the road, he heard the sound of voices, causing him to
pause and listen, upon which he made the discovery that several persons
were approaching from the direction of the village. The voices sounded
natural, too, and he decided that, for some reason, a number of boys
were coming toward him.
Not wishing to be seen by them, he hurried across the road and crouched
behind a clump of bushes, which, together with the darkness, completely
hid him from view.
As the party approached, he recognized the voices and learned that it
was made up of Sterndale, Mayfair, Murphy and Chatterton. Listening to
their conversation, he heard Mayfair say:
“You’re right about this thing, Sterndale, and it was a good thought
of yours, for we can take care of the stuff at the club-rooms now, and
everything will be safe.”
“It’s mesilf that nivver left anything up here at all, at all,”
declared the voice of the Irish lad.
“And he was so bub-bub-blamed mad over it that there’s no
tut-tut-telling wh-what he might do,” stuttered Chatterton. “I
ru-ruther think you’ve got a right to tut-try somebody else in his
pup-pup-pup-position, Sterndale.”
“I’ve had my eye on Carter for some time,” the hidden lad plainly heard
the captain of the eleven declare. “He doesn’t mingle with our crowd
much, but he’s a strong, hearty fellow, and he may prove to be a good
man.”
They passed on and proceeded straight to the gate of the fenced-in
grounds. A moment later the sound of their voices told they had entered
by the gate and were within the grounds, upon which Don rose from his
place of concealment, reached the road and hastened toward home.
“They were talking about me!” he grated. “So they’re going to put
Harry Carter in my place! He’s a fellow who never seemed to take much
interest in baseball or anything else of the sort, yet they think he’ll
be as good a man as I am!”
From the disconnected and incomplete bit of conversation that had
reached his ears, he reasoned that the boys must have been speaking of
him; but just why they were visiting the ball ground at that hour was
a question he could not answer. He had permitted all the suspicion,
selfishness and jealousy of his nature to be aroused, and he fancied
his erstwhile companions were ready to do anything to “spite” him.
His nerves were far from steady, which was not at all strange, taking
into consideration the unexpected and violent struggle from which
he had recently emerged. The mystery of that encounter continued to
bewilder him, but he decided that the unknown must have been a common
thief who had entered the dressing-room for the purpose of securing
whatever plunder he could discover there.
Under any condition, Don thanked his lucky stars that he had escaped
with his life, for the fellow had been fierce in his final efforts to
strike with the open knife, having found the athletic boy was more
than a master for him. Up to that time it appeared that his sole desire
was to break from Don’s grasp and escape; but, on being thrown down and
choked, he had used the knife.
Don wondered when the unknown had drawn and opened the knife. It seemed
that the rascal had scarcely been given time to accomplish such an
action after Don’s entrance, for the boy had kept him busy, and he had
struggled madly to free himself and escape.
“I believe he had that open knife in his hand when I came in on him,”
Don finally decided.
So busy was he with his thoughts that he did not observe his
handkerchief had slipped from his wounded fingers. He was nearly home
when he made the discovery, finding his hand was wet and sticky with
blood.
“Let the old handkerchief go,” he muttered. “I’ll find out how much I’m
cut.”
He succeeded in entering the house quietly, and was hurrying up to his
room, when his father called to him:
“Is that you, Don?”
“Yes, sir,” he answered.
“I thought you were in bed.”
“I am just going to bed now, sir.”
“Good-night, my boy.”
“Good-night, father.”
He did not wish to stand before his father again that day, for he felt
that he could not carry out his determination to make a confession of
the truth, and a discovery of his injury might lead Dr. Scott to ask
him unpleasant questions.
In his room, he flung his clothes over the back of a chair, hurriedly
washed the blood from his hand, and examined his fingers, finding that
three of them had been cut, but not seriously.
“I can attend to them myself,” he said, and he proceeded to do so,
taking from a drawer an old handkerchief, which he tore into strips to
bind about the bleeding digits.
When this was done, Don took off his coat and discovered in the left
sleeve a long slit from the shoulder nearly to the elbow, made by the
knife of his antagonist that now lay in his pocket.
This wound in his shoulder proved to be scarcely more than a scratch,
and he easily attended to that with some strips of plaster.
“But he came near fixing that arm!” he exclaimed, picking up his coat
and looking at the slit in the sleeve. “Jupiter! Just see that! My best
coat, too! What can I tell Aunt Ella? It won’t do to tell her just how
it happened.”
Happening to glance at a mirror, he found his face was very pale
and that he still showed signs of agitation. He also noted that his
handsome red necktie was gone, having, without doubt, been torn off in
the encounter.
“I don’t want to lose that necktie,” he said. “I ought to go back, and
look for it.”
But at that moment he heard his father close and lock the front door,
and he knew the house was being shut up for the night.
“I’ll look for it in the morning,” he decided. “It isn’t likely I could
find it to-night, anyway.”
Having flung himself down on an easy-chair, he fell to thinking the
entire adventure over from start to finish, it being of a nature to
take his mind for the time from his trouble with Renwood. When he
had reviewed it up to the moment when he concealed himself behind
the bushes on the approach of four members of the village eleven, he
speculated again over the cause of their visit to the football field
at that hour of the night. Then he remembered that Mayfair had spoken
of their being able to take care of some “stuff” at the club-rooms,
and all at once it dawned on him that they were proceeding to the
dressing-room under the grand-stand with the intention of removing to
the club-rooms the paraphernalia and suits of the football team.
Then his face hardened, and he sprang to his feet as he thought of
Chatterton’s words.
“So they had an idea that, because I was angry, I might do some sneaky
thing!” he snarled, his eyes flashing. “I wonder what they thought I’d
do? Did they fancy I’d steal the football and suits? That little cub,
Chatterton, said I was so mad there was no telling what I’d do! I’d
like to wring his neck!”
The village stammerer might have been handled roughly had he been
within reach of Don Scott at that moment.
“I’d like to know what cause any one has to think such things of me?”
the doctor’s son muttered, walking up and down the room with quick,
nervous strides. “Even if I have a temper, I’ve never played the sneak,
and no one has a right to even suspect that I’ll begin now!”
For a time these outraged thoughts prevented his mind from reverting
again to the encounter with the unknown, but at length he came back
to that, and once more fell to wondering over the identity of his
mysterious antagonist. Then he thought of the captured knife, being
seized by a sudden hope that it might reveal to him what he wished to
know, or, at least, serve as a clew.
In a moment the knife was in his hand. It was covered with blood,
and this Don proceeded to wash away, wiping the knife dry with a
handkerchief.
“By Jupiter! it’s a beauty!” he exclaimed, regarding it with
admiration. “New, pearl-handled, four-bladed; don’t look as if it’d be
carried for a deadly weapon by a ruffian; looks more like a gentleman’s
knife. Hello! Here are the initials of the owner engraved on the plate
in the handle. What are they? ‘R. G. R.’ Now, what do they stand for?”
He was silent for a moment, staring at the handsome knife that lay in
his uninjured hand. Of a sudden, he panted:
“By my life, I have it! Those initials stand for Randolph Grant
Renwood, and this knife belongs to Dolph Renwood!”
Then, seemingly bewildered by this startling discovery, he sat down and
continued to stare at the tell-tale knife.