CHAPTER XXXIXBARROWS LAYS THE MINE.

CHAPTER XXXIXBARROWS LAYS THE MINE.

Dick Merriwell, at this time, was full of plans. He was interested in a lumbering enterprise in the Maine woods, which he had always loved, and he had talked much to Jim Phillips and Brady, among others, of this business. One of his associates in this business was Chester Arlington, the engineer who had won such a brilliant success in Valdivia, to whose sister, June, Dick was devoted.

“There has been a terrible waste of our woods,” said Dick. “Out West, thousands of square miles of forest land has been completely ruined, long before it was needed for agriculture. One result is that there have been terrible floods in the spring, and the damage done in that way is simply irreparable. Then they have cut the wood so unwisely that fire traps have been made, and millions of dollars and hundreds of lives have been needlessly lost, as a result. There’s one Yale man who has done a lot toward teaching people how to use the forests properly—that’s Gifford Pinchot. And it’s still possible to make money out of the forests without wasting them and ruining them completely.”

“That’s mighty interesting work,” said Jim Phillips. “I’d like to get a closer look at it some time.”

“I’ll give you the chance,” said Dick, with a laugh. “I’m going up there as soon as we get back from Sweden, and I shouldn’t wonder if you’d come in pretty handy. There are some people up there who don’t like me or my system of using forest lands, and they may try to make trouble. So, if you want to come along, I’ll be glad to have you, and Brady, too. You’ll be in fine condition for football after you get through, too, I can promise you. There’ll be lots of work, and just enough play to keep you feeling good.”

“Always talking about work,” said Brady sadly. “Which reminds me, Jim, that you seem to have lost all idea of how to keep that cross fire of yours within reach of any catcher whose arms are less than six feet long. If you’ll get a ball and come out with me, we’ll have a little lesson in that.”

And Bill, who was always calling himself lazy, and bemoaning the necessity of practice before games, wondered at the laugh that went up. As a matter of fact, he never neglected a chance to perfect a play, no matter how much practice it required, and he was the first to help Dick Merriwell in keeping every man on a team up to the mark.

“You practice better than you preach, Bill,” said Dick Merriwell, much amused. “I guess you’ll find that Jim will be all right on that ball when he has to use it in the game. His arm is just a little bit stiff, that’s all. I wouldn’t do any more work to-day. Just take it easy, and pitch a little each day until the game. All you fellows are in good condition, and you just want to stay that way. No use getting stale and overtrained.

“That Boston team is coming down here primed to give us the licking of our lives, and we went to be all ready for them. They’ve been going around ever since the first game, I understand, telling every one in Boston and Cambridge that would listen to them that it was just an accident. Bowen told me that. He didn’t have any part in it, and he tried to make all his friends understand that it was a fair, stand-up game, and that the best team won. But he’s had trouble doing it, from what he tells me. So if they lose this time, too, they can’t make any excuses; while, if they win, it will look as if they had been right about the first game.”

“By the way,” said Brady, “who do you suppose I saw in town to-day? That chap Barrows, that faced us down so on theMarinauntil I called his bluff and told him what would happen if Jim had been hurt. He pretended that he didn’t see me, but he did all right. In fact, I had an idea that he had been looking at me pretty closely, and trying to figure out what I was doing.”

“I wonder what he’s doing here,” said Dick, with a frown. “I should think he wouldn’t be anxious to show up around New Haven very much after that trouble he ran into at New London. That must have cost those fellows a pretty penny.

“I understand they haven’t got enough money to repair theMarina, and they must have lost a great deal if they bet at all heavily on Harvard to win the race, even at the odds they got. I understood that our boys and the alumni won about forty thousand dollars altogether on the race, and I don’t believe the Harvard men themselves bet very heavily. It looked as if they were hopelessly beaten after that time trial. But they put up a wonderful fight. I never saw a closer, better race.”

“I was in the Elm National,” said Brady. “It’s a secret so far, but my father has just bought practically all the stock of that bank. He’s interested in a number of Connecticut enterprises, and he needed a very close banking connection up here. So he has picked up all the stock pretty quietly, and I guess he’ll soon reorganize it and go to work to make a big bank of it.”

“That’s where I keep my account,” said Dick. “I’m glad to hear your father is interested in it, Brady. He’s the sort of a man to inspire confidence in those who deposit in any institution that he controls.”

“I don’t believe any one has ever lost a penny through any enterprise the governor was connected with,” said Brady, with pardonable pride. “He’s never believed in taking chances with the money that other people have intrusted to him, like some of these high financiers, and I guess he’d rather lose some money than do it. Anyhow, it was while I was in there that I saw Barrows. He was hanging around on the other side of the street, and he seemed to be rather interested in my movements. I went in there to cash a check—they don’t know, in the bank, except for some of the high officials, that my father’s connected with it at all.”

“Maybe he’s planning to rob the bank,” said Watson.

“Hardly,” said Brady, with a smile. “They’ve got a really modern system of vaults and safeguards in there. It’s only been installed for about two years, and the biggest house in the country put them in. It’s practically impossible for any burglar to break in there. The detective company that protects the bank says it’s the best and safest institution, physically speaking, outside of New York and Chicago, in the whole country. And that’s a pretty high compliment from them.”

“I guess that bank is reasonably safe from that sort of danger,” said Dick Merriwell. “In fact, I’ve heard that some of the other banks here, when they have unusually large sums of money on hand, use its vaults for greater safety.”

“I don’t think Barrows is the type of the bank robber, anyhow,” said Jim Phillips. “He might try forgery, or something of that sort, but the regular work of going into a building at night and blowing a safe, or something of that sort, requires a sort of a courage he hasn’t got—or, at least, didn’t show when I saw him on theMarina.

“He was pretty sure, for instance, that I had overheard something that endangered his plans that night. Yet he was afraid, when I bluffed him, to tie me up. Svenson wanted to drop me overboard, I think, and fix me so that I wouldn’t come up again very easily, but Barrows wouldn’t stand for it. He just made excuses to keep me on board, and he was mighty anxious to avoid anything that would even look like a fight. I think he’s a coward. He’s a dangerous man, and he’s certainly a clever one, but he hasn’t got the animal courage of Harding. Another thing I’ve noticed about these gamblers, since they’ve been bothering us, is that they are very anxious, especially when they get outside of the big city, to keep on the safe side of the law. Harding was really terrified in New London when he thought that Brady and I were going to have him sent to jail for assault. I rather believe that it injures their prestige among their companions to be sent to prison.”

“I think that’s just it,” said Dick Merriwell. “It isn’t that they mind the disgrace, but it makes them look as if they couldn’t take care of themselves. None of these fellows work alone. They have to have a lot of lesser criminals that will do what they tell them, and those fellows depend upon their employer to keep them out of trouble. It’s like that poor little rat of a burglar that Harding sent here to rob Jim’s rooms. He seemed to be perfectly willing to tell all he knew until Harding showed his power with the politicians by getting himself released at once. Then he lost his nerve at once, and the police down there couldn’t get a thing out of him that would incriminate Harding.”

“Still,” said Brady, “there’s no telling what he would do under the present conditions. I guess he’s pretty nearly broke—and that must be almost as humiliating for those fellows as going to jail.”

Jim Phillips chuckled suddenly.

“Of course,” he said, “I don’t want to see the bank robbed, but I was just thinking of what our friend, Detective Jones, of the New Haven Police Department, would do if he had a bank robbery to handle. He’s always complaining of the absence of a chance to distinguish himself here in New Haven, because they don’t have any sensational and important crimes. I think he’d be tickled to death at the chance to show his real powers. He’s firmly convinced that he could give the United States Secret Service and the New York Detective Bureau all sorts of hints on the proper way to solve any sort of a mystery, from an Italian kidnaping to a big smuggling case.”

“He’s a well-meaning little chap,” said Dick Merriwell, “and not at all a bad detective, really. I think he’d do pretty well with a little more experience.”

Dick got up then, after looking at his watch.

“Nearly three o’clock,” he said. “I’ve got to go over to that bank and deposit some money. I intended to go up to Maine, but this game with Boston has made that impossible. So I’m going to deposit this five thousand dollars I’ve got with me, and get a bank draft to send up there. It’s a safer way to send money, anyhow.”

He counted out the money, in shining, new hundred-dollar bills, glistening with their yellow backs, and Harry Maxwell sighed enviously.

“Gee!” he said, “I’d have knocked you on the head myself, I think, if I’d known that you had that much with you.”

“I’ll appoint you all a bodyguard to go with me while I deposit this,” said Dick, laughing. “Brady, you’d better keep a sharp eye on Maxwell.”

Laughing, they all went out together to make the trip to the bank. It was a hot day, and they walked slowly. Moreover, they were all talking among themselves, and they did not happen to notice that their progress attracted the close attention of Barrows himself, who walked along, a large Panama hat shading his face, on the other side of the street, and waited in the doorway opposite the bank until they had completed their business and emerged. They all went down to the water, intending to take a little trip to cool off with a swim at a near-by beach later on. But Barrows did not follow them. Instead, as soon as they had passed out of sight, he entered the bank, and signaled to Riggs, who was making a bundle of the yellow bills that Dick had deposited.

“Did Merriwell make a deposit?” asked Barrows peremptorily. He had caught Riggs in his landing net now, and there was no longer any need to be polite and diplomatic with him.

“Yes,” said Riggs. “Fifty hundred-dollar bills.”

“You are required to make a note of the numbers of such bills, are you not?” asked Barrows, who seemed to know a good deal about the banking business.

“Yes,” said Riggs. “I’ve got the note here.”

“Give it to me!” commanded Barrows. “And enter up series numbers for those bills well ahead, do you see? So that no one can trace the real ones properly. Keep a note of the false numbers that you enter up, and give that to me to-night. And, when you come to-night, bring all the other information I asked for. At half past ten, remember, at Marston’s place.”

“All right,” said Riggs, trembling. He was nervous, though there seemed a chance for him to escape.

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