CHAPTER XXIXA TWO-SIDED TRAP.
Carefully as the arrangement for discovering who the belated visitor to theMarinawas had been carried out, it had not served to prevent Harding from learning that some one was interested in his movements. An honest man would probably have been deceived. Knowing that he had nothing to conceal, he would have thought little of the sudden appearance of a launch just as his own boat approached the landing stage. But Harding, who was so used to treading lightly and avoiding exposure, was disturbed, even though he knew that he had done nothing of late for which the law could lay hands on him.
In fact, Harding seldom ventured on any step that rendered him liable to arrest and trial. If a man is a great enough rascal, and a clever enough one, he can usually find means of cheating his fellows that are within the law. He cannot keep that sort of thing up indefinitely; for, as his misdeeds increase, his reputation leaves him, and honest men come to know him as a cheat and a scoundrel, with whom it is unsafe to have dealings if they do not want to be defrauded.
So the men who begin by preying on others with safety for themselves, find, presently, that they have to break the law to ensnare the victims necessary to give them the money they think they must have. Harding was in this class. But, except in New York, where his enormous political influence made him safe, he had never yet put himself within actual reach of the law.
That was the real reason for his refusal to join Barrows in this enterprise. He was ready to admit that it looked safe, and it was obvious that if it were successful, the profits would be great. But Harding, who had once enjoyed political favors in Connecticut almost as great as those extended to him in New York, no longer had any “pull” in that State. His father, long the boss of New Haven, was dying in an insane asylum, and Harding was afraid to risk an encounter with the New London police, always on the alert at the boat-race time.
Moreover, he knew that the police department in New York had lent the New London department a couple of detectives, expert in the recognition and detention of notorious pickpockets, since a flood of these crooks always went about the country, gathering wherever great crowds and a rich harvest were to be expected. In the city these detectives had to let Harding alone, for they knew that his political power was enough to make them lose their jobs if they angered him; but in New London he would be at their mercy.
He had no idea of who was in the launch that he had seen, but he knew enough of Dick Merriwell to leap instantly to the idea that the universal coach might already have suspected something. In fact, he had lectured Barrows sharply for giving Merriwell reason to be suspicious at all, and had told him plainly that he was likely to regret the greediness that had inspired the effort to make the odds on Yale mount so high.
He was not deceived at all by the cry with which Jim Phillips announced his discovery to those waiting off shore in the launch, but understood the maneuver at once.
“Pretty clever,” he said, to himself. “It’s just as well I’m out of this. But I don’t mind pushing Barrows’ game along for him a bit. I’ll get all the money away from him later, anyhow.”
He walked away from the dock with firm footsteps, as if he had no suspicion at all that he was being watched. But as soon as he turned the first corner, he stopped. He beat time with his feet, so that any one who was trailing his footsteps might think that he was still walking on; and then, after giving his pursuer time to come up to the corner, dashed around it. A cry of triumph burst from his lips, which changed to a snarl of hatred as soon as he recognized Jim Phillips.
“It’s you, is it?” he snarled.
He looked swiftly around. There was no one in sight. It was a good chance to get some sort of revenge for the way in which Jim had beaten him in every past encounter. He sprang at the Yale baseball captain.
Jim was taken by surprise for the moment, and Harding, in his first swift rush, bore his lighter opponent down by sheer weight. But his advantage lasted only for a moment. Harding was strong, but he was self-indulgent, and took no care of his really fine body, smoking and drinking as much as he liked, and it took only a couple of minutes for Jim to reduce him to complete submission.
“I thought you’d have enough, Harding,” said Jim, panting a little, but quite unhurt, and completely master of the situation. “What did you expect to gain by attacking me in that fashion?”
“I wanted to give you the thrashing that’s coming to you,” said Harding viciously. “You’ll get it some day, never fear, even if you’ve escaped now. Let me up. I won’t try to hurt you now.”
“I know you won’t,” said Jim cheerfully, releasing him, and dusting himself off with absolute unconcern. “You know you can’t—that’s the reason. You’d better clear out of town, Harding, now that we know you’re here. You can’t accomplish anything, with the watch we’ve put on you, and I warn you that the next time you get caught in one of your conspiracies, you won’t get off so easily as you have in the past. Mr. Merriwell is a patient man, but you’ve tried him too far.”
“I’m not afraid of Merriwell or you, either,” said Harding, with a coarse laugh. “You’re four-flushers, both of you. But you can’t bluff me out. You haven’t got anything on me, and you never will have, that will do you any good in a court, and you know it as well as I do.”
“Well,” said a new voice, “I don’t know about that. Assault and battery isn’t a hanging offense, of course, but I guess they’d send you to jail for ten days or so, even at that. And you wouldn’t like that, you know.”
Harding’s first instinct was to run away. But he didn’t obey that instinct. The reason was that the hand of big Bill Brady was firmly fixed in his coat collar, and that he couldn’t have got away if he had been even stronger than he was.
“Where did you spring from, Bill?” asked Jim, in great surprise.
Harding was speechless with rage and astonishment. He was fairly trapped.
“Oh, I just thought I’d drop around,” said Brady, who was enjoying himself hugely. “I thought, perhaps, our little friend here might not be alone, and I didn’t want you to get hurt, Jim. I got here just in time to see him rush you. You settled him rather nicely, I thought. Know where the town lock-up is?”
“Oh, I say,” protested Harding, with a whine, “you’re not going to press a charge against me, are you? I’m not doing any harm. I’m just here to look on this time.”
“If you swore you had a broken leg, Harding,” said Bill Brady, amiably enough, “I wouldn’t believe you unless you brought a doctor along to testify to it. We sure do mean to press the charge. The inside of a jail is a darned sight too good for you, but I can’t think of anything that would please me more than to see you there for ten days or so. I’ll come and bring you nice, improving books to read, too, so that, when you come out, you’ll reform and decide to live a sober and virtuous life ever after; just the way the bad men do in the stories.”
Jim Phillips laughed openly. He could not help it. Brady was so obviously enjoying himself, and Harding was so evidently scared by the picture of himself in jail.
Harding was scared, as a matter of fact. Ten days in jail did not appeal to him particularly. If he could have served such a sentence under an assumed name, he wouldn’t have minded it so much. But he knew that if Brady carried out his threat, which he certainly had the power to do, the story would go all over the country, and that his friends and cronies would never be done laughing at the story of his discomfiture by two college boys.
His influence would be gone, for, once a man is laughed at, people are not likely to go on being afraid of him; and Harding knew this. He had a certain crowd of hangers-on, who at present admired him immensely, though the continual defeat of all his plans to undo Dick Merriwell had rather alienated some of his most loyal supporters.
“Oh, drop this,” he said finally. “What do you want me to do? It won’t do you fellows any good to make trouble for me here. I don’t believe you can do it, anyhow. But, even supposing you can, what object have you? There’s nothing in it for you. Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. That’ll be better for you than trying to get me sent to jail.”
The two Yale men looked at each other. Brady’s look was dubious; he was questioning Jim with his eyes, as he had so often done in a critical moment of a baseball game. And Jim nodded his head, as he used to do from the box when he approved of Brady’s signal for some particular ball.
“If we let you go,” said Brady, “will you promise to leave New London and stay away until the boat race is over? There’s a train down to New York in about half an hour. You’ll have to get off at the Harlem River, and take the elevated down, but I guess that’ll be better than the town jail here. They tell me that isn’t a very comfortable place—no private baths with the cells, and a very poor table for the boarders.”
“Sure I will,” said Harding. “You’ve got me where you want me, and I’d be a fool not to admit it. I’ll get you some time, but this isn’t the time, and I can see as far into a stone wall as the next fellow.”
Secretly, Harding was elated. He was not at all unwilling to quit New London. He had seen Barrows, and there was nothing to cause him to stay. Moreover, he saw that the two Yale men thought that he was at the head of whatever plot they thought was stirring, and he saw a chance to throw them off their guard, and, through them, to remove any suspicions that Dick Merriwell had formed. Altogether, he decided, the luck had turned. So long as he got his revenge, he didn’t care at all whether he got it himself or whether some one else did the work. It was the result, not the method, that interested him.
So they saw him off, and got a mocking laugh as the train went out.