CHAPTER XXVIIWHAT THE BETTING SHOWED.
The astonishing result of the public time trials of the two crews that were to meet in the great four-mile race on the Thames on Thursday soon had its effect on the supporters of the rival colleges. New London was already tilling up, and, while the students at Yale and Harvard did little betting themselves, a great deal of wagering was recorded by others less directly interested in the outcome.
Trains from New York brought up graduates, who were anxious to back the crew of their own college, but, with all conditions pointing to a Harvard defeat by a crushing margin, even the most loyal Harvard men were chary of betting. They were willing to back their own crew, but to bet after such an exhibition of slow running as the Harvard crew had given, looked like throwing money away. Yale men, on the other hand, were naturally eager to bet, and they offered odds with the utmost liberality, feeling that they were justified in giving any sort of inducements.
On Sunday afternoon a number of visitors appeared both at Red Top and Gale’s Ferry. There was to be no work for the oarsmen, and parties were made up from both camps for sails on the sound; invitations enough to take care of twice as many men as were present, having come from the graduates, whose yachts were at anchor in the harbor.
At Gale’s Ferry, Dick Merriwell, still puzzled by what he and Benton had seen, was delighted at the arrival of Jim Phillips and big Bill Brady. Jim looked as if he had been resting for a month; and Dick, who had feared that the pitcher might suffer some bad effects from the terrible experience he had undergone while he was locked in the freight car, was much relieved.
“I’ve been feeding him up, Mr. Merriwell,” said Brady, with a grin. “His appetite is all right—I can testify to that. We’re gentlemen of leisure now—come up for a loaf, and we want to watch these oarsmen do the work.”
“All through work for the season, Bill?” asked Dick, with a smile. “How about you, Jim?”
“Oh, I’ll take a hand if there’s a good game in sight, any time,” said Jim. “But it’s a relief to have the strain of that championship over. I’ll admit that.”
“How about the weights, Brady?” asked Dick. “Have you ever thrown the hammer?”
“Gee!” said Brady, looking alarmed, “I thought I could make people forget that. Yes, I used to throw the twelve-pound hammer a little when I was in school. But I’ve never tried the sixteen-pound thing.”
“Well,” said Dick, looking a little maliciously at the big catcher, “they’re very anxious for weight throwers on the team for the Olympic games. In fact, the committee’s in rather a hole for men for several events. Some of the big men can’t manage to get away, and some of those who were counted on find that they have gone off a good deal since that last meet in London. So it looks as if a good many of us who hadn’t thought much about it will have a chance to go to Sweden after all.”
“Count me out of that,” said Brady positively. “I’m going up to my dad’s cottage on the Maine coast and just loaf all summer. The responsibility of helping to look after Jim Phillips all spring has worn me to a frazzle. I’m losing weight; I can’t sleep; and, in fact, I’m just being wasted away to a shadow.”
Every one laughed except Woeful Watson, who had appeared, and now stood, looking sadly at Brady.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Brady, with assumed fierceness, and staring savagely at his classmate.
“You are thinner, and that’s a fact,” said Watson seriously. “You want to look out, Bill. It’s the big, husky chaps like you that find it hardest to recover if they manage to get sick in some fashion. I’m just warning you for your own good.”
“Stung!” cried Jack Tempest, who had come up with them from New Haven. Jack had won the intercollegiate championship in both the sprints, and the ten points he had thus gathered had done much toward making it possible for Yale to round out a great athletic year by winning the meet in which colleges from all over the United States take part. Also, he was picked in advance as a sure selection for the American Olympic team, since no sprinter was in sight who had a chance to beat him in either the hundred-yard or the two-hundred-and-twenty-yard dashes.
“You’re stung, Bill,” said Tempest, again. “Old Watson here has called the turn on you. We’ll have to start feeding you up on cod-liver oil, eh, fellows?”
There is strength in numbers. Bill Brady was a match, and more than a match, for any man in Yale in a single-handed combat, but the combined efforts of a dozen of the men who were gathered around him on the float soon subdued him, and, to the vociferous delight of all present, the big catcher was forced to swallow a great spoonful of the cod-liver oil which some one found in the training quarters. It was a medicine Bill had particularly hated since his childhood, and he emerged, choking and gasping for breath, when his captors finally decided the joke had gone far enough.
“I’ll get even with some of you fellows for that,” he promised, when he had rinsed his mouth out with fresh water and felt a little better. But he could appreciate a joke, even when he was its victim, and he dearly loved to play them on others.
“I met a Harvard man in town,” said Tempest presently, “and we had a little argument about the crews. He seems to think they’ve got a chance, even after that trial this morning, but he wouldn’t bet until I gave him three to one. At that I understand that the professionals were offering as much as that, and, in some large bets, five to one. That was at the Iroquois House. That’s where they’re all gathered. I’ve got a fine room there with Harry Maxwell. Only eight dollars a day—regular rates, too. That’s not so bad, though. If you waited until Wednesday night, you’d be lucky to get a chance to sleep in the billiard room, on top of a pool table.”
“I reserved a room for Brady and myself three weeks ago,” said Jim Phillips, “and there weren’t many left, even then. I think that’s pretty reckless betting, Jack. Three to one, on a boat race, is plain foolishness. There’s too many things that might happen.”
“If you ask me,” said Woeful Watson, “those Harvard fellows were just rowing under a pull this morning, with the idea of sending the odds up a bit. They’ve done better than that, and they’ll do it again in the race. I’ve heard of things like that before. My idea is that we’ll be pretty lucky to beat them at all.”
Dick Merriwell was doing a lot of thinking just then, and had no part in the conversation. But he heard Watson’s prophecy, as well as the howl of derision that greeted it from the others, and he was struck by the possibility that the class pessimist might be right. He found it almost impossible to take the things he had seen with his own eyes seriously, for he knew that eight men, rowing as those Harvard men had done, should have been nearly two minutes faster over the course than they had actually been. It was not possible to deceive Dick, or any other man who knew as much about rowing as he did, about the pace that certain efforts should give.
He wandered off to see Benton, and found that his aid agreed fully with him.
“I don’t see how there can be anything in the idea that they were holding back,” said Benton. “We could see the way they were rowing, and you know as well as I, Mr. Merriwell, or, probably, a good deal better, that they were doing everything in the best possible way. That’s the best Harvard crew I ever saw on the river here. It’s been better coached and has learned more about rowing than any Harvard crew I’ve ever seen. They hardly ever expect to win that race with Cornell that they row on Decoration Day, because they’re never coached for a two-mile race, and their condition for practice don’t touch those that Courtney has up at Ithaca. But I saw the race this year. The Charles was rotten that day—for them, but it might have been made to order for Cornell. And still Harvard won only by about half a length. There’s something funny going on, and I’d like to know what it is.”
“I’d think less of it except for what you told me about our own crew’s work on Saturday,” said Dick. “No one much knows about that, and I’m just as glad. It gives us a chance to investigate quietly, if that seems to be necessary. Neilson invited me to go out with him again to-morrow morning, and see what his fellows do, and I guess I’ll take him up this time. I’ll leave the practice to you. If there’s anything queer afoot, I’ll stake my word on it that Neilson hasn’t anything to do with it, nor any one else officially connected with the Harvard crew. They’re good sportsmen, and I think they’d rather lose the race than sanction anything that wasn’t absolutely square.”
“I agree with you there,” said Benton. “Neilson’s all right, and I happen to know that he doesn’t believe at all in betting on college sports. I think it’s something that ought to be stopped, myself—among the students, at least. Of course, there’s no way of controlling alumni and outsiders. You can ask them not to bet, but if the anti-gambling laws of three States won’t stop them, I guess it would be pretty hard for us to do it.”
“Betting will spoil any sport that it gets a hold on,” said Dick. “It’s ruined horse racing, so that now they have to quit the racing when they can’t bet, and it would have ruined professional baseball if the leagues hadn’t united to make it impossible for the betting to be done in the baseball parks. I’m very much afraid that there’s something crooked afoot here, but I can’t make out yet what they’re driving at. However, we’ll find, I think, that betting’s at the bottom of it, if anything of the sort is going on.”