WHEN Chip Merriwell returned to Fardale, he found himself against the line-up of which Bully Carson had spoken to his father.
But he had received word of it before, Clancy had written to him about it. And it was the first subject that Clan took up, when he met Chip at the station on the latter’s return.
“I suppose Kess and I are to blame,” said Clan remorsefully, “just because we weren’t satisfied with getting you out of that trunk, but tried to unload on Kadir Dhin the crime of putting you there. But they oughtn’t to hold that againstyou. Colonel Gunn oughtn’t, anyway.”
“Sure nodt,” agreed Kess, who was with him. “Vodt dhey ar-re saying apoudt me ton’dt hurdt nopoty, but dhey ar-re making you oudt a willain yoost like us.”
Chip laughed; Kess amused him. And he was feeling physically fit again, which, of itself, makes for light-heartedness. He had been sent home “all in”; now he was back, at the end of the Christmas holidays, ready again to enter the old Fardale school and reassume the leadership of the loyal fellows who were always his friends.
“We are all villains together, eh?” he commented.
“The sympathy stunt is being worked hard for Kadir Dhin,” Clan reported. “You accused him of trying to kidnap Rose Maitland, and flattened him out on the ice, and you repeated the accusation to Colonel Gunn when you got her to Gunn’s house. On top of that, Kess and I tried to make the officers down at Carsonville believe that Kadir Dhin had found you in a faint in your room in the barracks, and had put you in that trunk. I guess we went too fast in that, and there’s where the trouble begins; we couldn’t make the officers believe Kadir Dhin would put you in a trunk that could be so easily identified as his. So when Gunn came down and strung his talk about the soldier Hindu, our idea was canned, and Kadir Dhin was released, with an apology.
“And now Gunn is looking black at us, Rose Maitland is looking blacker, and every enemy you ever had seems to have come to life, and is working against you. Their leader seems to be Duke Basil, and I guess you know what that means.”
Chip knew well enough.
The previous year, Anselm Basil, familiarlyknown as the Duke, had come over with a number of fellows from Brightwood and entered Fardale, having discovered that it was the better school. The Duke had been the athletic leader at Brightwood, and had no notion of playing second fiddle to any one even at Fardale.
Duke Basil was an original genius. Not because he was rich, and a spendthrift, for many boys and young men are that; but because, with all his assumptions and airs and extravagances, he had athletic ability and brains of a high order, and had so many good qualities with the bad ones.
That Chip and Basil should clash, was a thing not to be avoided. Basil had declared to his friends that he intended to be the leader at Fardale, and that there could be but one. He had not made his boasts good. So the clash was renewed at the beginning of the present school year, yet so far with no very creditable results or decided victories to his account.
Now he believed he had found new leverage. In the first place, it seemed that Colonel Gunn’s good opinion of Chip and his friends had been alienated; which meant that the iron rules of the academy would be made to bear hard on them; and could be worked to their disadvantage. Kadir Dhin, the colonel’s protégé, had been made the implacable enemy of Chip and his crowd. And Bully Carson, a foe not to be despised, even though he was not in the academy, had all his old animosities re-aroused.
Clancy and Kess tried to set these things forth, as they made their way with Chip over the snowy roads from the station to the academy grounds, having preferred walking to riding in the usual “hack,” that they might talk matters over.
Chip Merriwell was thinking of how these things would influence his relations with Rose Maitland, rather than viewing them from the standpoint of his friends. He was hoping that Colonel Gunn’s adverse opinions were not affecting her, even though she were a member of his household, and Kadir Dhin had been her father’s friend and secretary.
There was always an unpleasant memory tucked in the back of Chip’s mind, which he seldom cared to take out of its pigeonhole there and consider. His first meeting with Rose Maitland could not have been more inauspicious than it was. He had knocked Kadir Dhin down in the snowy path on account of his treatment of Kess; and Rose Maitland, rushing frantically to the side of the young Hindu, had called Chip a coward, with such a sting in the word that Chip could still feel the burn of it whenever he permitted himself to let it enter his mind.
As Chip and his friends turned into the path, beyond Mrs. Winfield’s boarding house, that led to and through the parade ground, Kadir Dhin was seen standing there, much as he had been on that previous occasion, only that this time he was in conversation with Duke Basil.
“They are regular Siamese twins lately,” said Clancy, with a grin. “They knew you were to arrive to-day, and have been wondering why you didn’t ride up in the hack.”
“Uff he standts in my roadt, like vot he dit pefore——”
But Kadir Dhin was moving on toward the barracks before Kess finished his sentence. The Duke had turned toward the village, moving to meet them.
“Ah, there!” he cried, putting out his hand as Chip came up. “You’re looking fine as silk again, old top. I didn’t expect it. That little rest at home has done you a lot of good.”
For an instant Chip hesitated, then held out his hand; he would be as gentlemanly as the Duke. Indeed, it was hard not to be friendly with Duke Basilon all ordinary occasions. He had a smile and a bright way with him. It was this that made him so formidable when he pitted his strength against Chip; for this, quite as much as his money, enabled him to gather and hold friends.
“I’m all right again,” said Chip, taking the measure of the fellow with his eye. “You went home yourself, I think?”
“Sure. Had a fine time, too.”
He did not offer to shake hands with Kess and Clancy, whom he had seen before that day; but he swung on along the path, after greeting Chip.
“He iss smile like a raddlesnake pefore idt pites der handt vot feedts idt,” Kess observed. “Idt iss too badt apoudt dot veller. Aber a man iss my enemy I vandt him to look like idt.”
They found that Kadir Dhin had gone on to his room.
Chip went to his, which he occupied with Clancy. But they were soon drawn out of it by hearing Kess in a clatter of noisy words with the young Hindu.
Villum’s capacity for blundering was notorious. He had seen that Kadir Dhin’s door stood open, and had entered without apology, apparently to notify the young Hindu that Chip Merriwell had returned, and to ask:
“Undt vot vill you do apoudt idt?”
Chip was not at all averse to invading the Hindu’s room, for he wanted to get a look at the trunk in which he, unconscious, had been immured on that journey which might readily have ended in his death. The noisy words ceased when Chip and Clan came to the door.
“He iss say dot I am anodher,” Kess protested.
Chip and Clan stepped into the room, Chip with a smile which he hoped would temporarily disarm Kadir Dhin’s enmity. He glanced over at the queer, Hindu trunk or traveling chest, of itself an interesting specimen of Oriental workmanship.
“So that was the thing I was in?” he commented, ignoring Kess’ complaint. “It seems that I ought to remember it, but I don’t.”
“You remember as much about it as I do, in spite of the charges of your friends,” Kadir Dhin asserted.
There was a malevolent glare in his shiny black eyes.
Chip sat down in the nearest chair; he did not intend to be ruffled. He had long since discovered that no one gains anything by turning his quills out like a porcupine.
“I was in no position to make any claims about it; but I’ve wondered about it hundreds of times. As I was found in that thing, somebody put me there.”
“Perhaps you did it yourself,” said the young Hindu, with a sneer, though his manner was guarded; “it’s as credible as thatIdid it.”
Chip looked at him, when his attention was not directed toward the queer trunk. He was hoping that if Kadir Dhin really knew anything about that odd happening, by some slip, or by the expression of his face, he might reveal it.
“What is it about that Hindu soldier?” he asked. “That is, what do you know? I heard what Colonel Gunn said at that investigation, but I wasn’t in a mental condition to take it all in. Did you know the man?”
Kadir Dhin stared at him, hesitated, and then answered:
“He was my uncle.”
“Do you think he is here?”
“I know nothing about that,” said Kadir Dhin. “Ask Colonel Gunn.”
“He says the man is here, and did that.”
“Then you know as much about it as I do,” asserted Kadir Dhin, with an impatient wave of his hand.
“But do you believe it?”
“That is my business. If I say I don’t, you will then declare that I musthave put you in the trunk. You’d better talk to Colonel Gunn about it. I don’t know anything.”
“You’re a Hindu?” said Clancy, butting in.
A flush of anger put color into the dark cheeks of Kadir Dhin.
“I have that honor,” he declared.
“Yet you speak English better than most Americans!”
“I was educated at the English school in Madras. If I was ignorant of the language, could I have taken a place in this school? You talk like a fool. Remember that I was Lieutenant Maitland’s secretary, translating all his written orders to his Hindu soldiers into their native dialects. I am doubtless a fool—for talking with you, but I am not an ignoramus.”
He turned to Chip:
“If you have looked at that trunk long enough, and have asked all your questions——”
“Fired!” cried Clancy. “Come on, Chip!”
“This German beer keg came in to insult me, and you followed to back him up,” said the young Hindu.
“Not at all.” Chip insisted. “But we’re going. We’ll have no words. I had a natural curiosity to see that trunk, that’s all. Thank you for the permission. Good day!”
“Oh, we’ll meet again,” said Kadir Dhin. “There’s a settlement coming, for the accusations you made against me, when you brought Miss Maitland to Gunn’s. I’ve a good memory.”
“Mine is quite as good,” Chip retorted, with a sudden scowl. “I couldn’t have been tossed into that trunk like a bag of meal if you and Bully Carson hadn’t doubled on me and pounded me senseless. Recollect that there will be other debts to pay, when you begin to pay off yours.”
Clan and Kess followed him, grumbling.
“Why didn’t you punch his head for that?” Clan demanded.
“You forget, Clan. I didn’t go there to quarrel, in the first place. Then, we’re in the barracks. And, you’ve said yourself, that Colonel Gunn would be pleased to get me in chancery. I’ve got to be careful.”
However, though he knew that Colonel Gunn was explosive and crotchety, Chip was not ready to accept the notion that the colonel would not treat him fairly in any situation.
So it was not because he wanted to test the colonel’s feelings that Chip went over to Gunn’s house that afternoon; he wanted to see Rose Maitland. The last time he had seen her she was bewildered and hysterical.
That had passed off entirely; she came in to meet him bright-eyed and smiling. Yet Chip thought she looked pale, and that her smile hid a feeling of anxiety. She soon admitted that she stood in deathly fear of the Hindu, who was still the man of mystery to Chip.
“I was feeling so safe, you know,” she said in her frank way; “the constable had given Colonel Gunn such assurances. I had been going about with confidence. So I thought I needed no one to guard me while I went out on the ice a little while. And down there everything was so quiet and peaceful that I really went farther than I meant to go; I skated on and on until I was down by the boathouse. I supposed the place was unoccupied.”
“We’ve stored our ice yacht and snowshoes and skis and things like that in it,” said Chip.
“But no one has been staying there regularly?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought. Yet the Fardale students go in and out of there, as I knew. So when I heard some one call to me from the boathouse I thought at first it was you, and then thought it must be Kadir Dhin; and, as I didn’tunderstand just what was said, but got the impression that you—I mean Kadir Dhin—was hurt and needed help, I ran up to the door on my skates.
“I knew that it wasn’t you—I mean Kadir Dhin—when it was too late; I was blinded by a cloth that struck me in the face as I opened the door; it fell over my head as if it would smother me; and it was filled with the odor of a powerful drug. While I fought to get my head out of the cloth, the drug overcame me.”
She was trembling; the color had left her cheeks.
“Before I became so dizzy and bewildered,” she added. “I heard the man speak, and I recognized his voice as that of Gunga Singh, the Hindu soldier who murdered my father. The odor of the drug I had encountered before, in India. A man was once murdered there, and that drug was used; I was with father when he made an investigation of the murder.”
“You didn’t see the man at all, then?” said Chip.
“No.”
“You couldn’t have been mistaken about him?”
“I know what you mean,” she said; “but I recognized his voice.”
“I found you wandering around in that cove beyond the pavilion.”
“I don’t know how I got there; by which I mean I have no remembrance of it. Of course, Gunga Singh took me there. Kadir Dhin frightened him, and he fled through the trees. Kadir Dhin was trying to guide me home. They say you accused him, and attacked him. I’m sorry. Kadir Dhin was my father’s friend, and is mine. Colonel Gunn knows that.”
Chip did not know what to say: he did not like to declare he was unconvinced.
“Kadir Dhin had come down to the lake and had gone in that direction; I thought he was not trying to lead you home. I didn’t see the other man.”
“You do think that of Kadir Dhin now?” she urged.
“I have no right to, if you are sure I am wrong.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“I was excited when I brought you home. When I rushed on him, Kadir Dhin tried to shoot me; or I thought he meant to. So when Colonel Gunn came, asking questions, I said that, and accused Kadir Dhin. I saw that what I said offended Colonel Gunn.”
“Then, you had trouble with Kadir Dhin at the barracks. I’m sorry you were so quick, and did him a serious wrong. It’s too bad. I wish you could be friends. Don’t you think you were too quick?”
Chip saw that Kadir Dhin had been telling lies here.
“At the barracks I did no more than defend myself; that is, I tried. I didn’t succeed very well.”
“You again attacked Kadir Dhin there?”
“No, he attacked me. And he had Bully Carson with him. You don’t know Carson, but he’s a big fellow, and a bruiser.”
“Kadir Dhin says you attacked him there, and then that Carson rushed in and knocked you down. Oh, dear, I dislike to talk about it; it’s horrible! You were too quick.”
“In one thing I was too quick,” said Chip. “I was too quick in going on to the barracks. I ought to have gone back to the lake. I didn’t see this Hindu, Gunga Singh. But then was my chance to follow his tracks into and through the woods there, and see what became of him. I’d like to get on the track of him now, and will watch out for him. How was he dressed?”
“Kadir Dhin says he wore a Fardale uniform.”
“So? That’s odd. A Fardale uniform. But I recall that it was reportedthat some one, thought to have been a burglar, had stolen clothing out of the barracks.”
“Kadir Dhin fears Gunga Singh as much as I do; he is watching for him, and will have him apprehended if he can. He and Colonel Gunn have been laying some plans about it. I wish you would apologize to Kadir Dhin. He is sensitive, and is very much hurt.”
Having pieced into the story of the affair the scraps with which he had not been familiar, Chip soon took his leave.
His meeting with Rose Maitland had not made him as happy as he had anticipated.