CHAPTER L.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, butLynch 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. Merriwellis 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 supposeit 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.”