CHAPTER XXA 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.