CHAPTER XXIII—CHESTER FINDS A MASTER
Miguel Bunol was waiting for Chester Arlington in the corridor. Chester started and hesitated when he saw the dark shadow skulking in the gloom by the door of his room.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“To see you!” returned the Spanish lad, in a low tone that chilled Chester’s blood.
“You had better get out!” exclaimed Arlington. “I do not trust you.”
He was afraid of Bunol, even though he knew Dick Merriwell had captured and retained the knife the young Spaniard generally carried. Miguel knew Chester was afraid, and he laughed in a low, cold manner.
“You come,” he commanded. “I want to talk to you. I have some few things to say, and I say them. If I not say them to you, then I go to Professor Gunn, and I talk to him. You take your choice: you talk to me in your room where nobody hear us, or you let me go to Professor Gunn.”
“You had better pack up and get out of here in a hurry. If you go to Professor Gunn, it is likely the professor will have evidence enough to cause you to be placed under arrest. You know what has happened. Captain Thor, of the Springvale team, has betrayed you, and——”
“We will not talk of it out here,” said Bunol sharply. “In your room we talk. Either that, or I go to Professor Gunn and tell him a big lot of many things.”
“Confound it, Bunol! I’m not to blame for the scrape you are in! You brought it on yourself, and now——”
“All right!” exclaimed Bunol, turning away. “I go to the professor.”
He seemed in earnest, but Arlington’s heart was suddenly filled with apprehension, and he called to the dark-faced lad.
“Wait!” he said. “If it is only to talk to me, you can come into my room.”
“As you like,” said Miguel, pausing. “If you like it better for me to talk to professor, then I go to him.”
“I’ll have to make some sort of a bargain with him!” thought Chester. “He can make it very uncomfortable for me if he goes to old Gunn and tells all he knows.”
So he put aside his fear of Bunol, unlocked his door and asked the young Spaniard in.
Arlington hastened to light a lamp, and removed the shade so that the light fell on Bunol’s face. He wished to watch that face, thinking it might be the safest thing to do.
Bunol closed the door carefully. He came and stood by the open fireplace.
“Now, what do you wish to say to me?” asked Chester.
“I am in bad scrape,” said Bunol.
“That’s right,” nodded the other lad.
“You shall help me out of it.”
“I?”
“Si, Chester Arlington; I say you.”
“Well, you must think me a very forgiving chap!” said Chester, with a sneer. “You know how you got into this scrape. You did it trying to hurt me. You misjudged Thor. You had no doubt about his using the plans, and so you placed yourself in his hands. But he did not use them. Instead he turned the papers over to Lawyer Bradbury, who sealed them up and delivered them to Dick Merriwell. In the meantime, you had made arrangements to have the blame of stealing the papers thrown on my shoulders. But it did not work, and you found yourself in the soup when Thor confronted you a few minutes ago in Merriwell’s room and swore that you gave him the papers.
“The jig is up, Bunol. By this piece of business you have ruined yourself here at Fardale, and you will have to leave the academy. Dick Merriwell gives you until morning to depart. He will let you go without punishment if you get out quietly. You’ll have to go.”
Bunol leaned gracefully against the side of the fireplace.
“If I go,” he said, “you go with me.”
Chester’s heart leaped.
“Why, hang it!” he exclaimed; “what do you mean?”
“I mean the thing that I say. You bring me here to Fardale, I take you with me when I go from here.”
“I guess not! You’ll go, and I shall stay.”
“Then soon you will be expelled in disgrace, which will please your mother, which will give your sister great happiness, which will make your father proud!”
“Expelled?”
“I say it, for I shall go to Professor Gunn, and I shall tell him all the many things you do, of which I know. I shall tell him how you do so many things to injure Deck Merriwell. How you cut down the bridge, so that Merriwell and the girl come so near to drown. I shall tell who was there, so they be called to prove my word. I shall tell how——”
“See here, Bunol, what’s your price? I will pay you——”
“Now you talk sense!” said Bunol, in satisfaction. “You know well I can ruin you quick. You should not think my price it is small. If so you think it is to fool yourself.”
Chester was desperate. Already he had drawn so heavily upon his mother that he feared to ask for more money. His mother had confidence in him; she believed him the finest lad alive; it would not do to let her know that he must have money in order to hush the tongue of this fellow who might disgrace him.
“If you ask for much,” said Arlington desperately, “you will not get it, for I cannot get it myself.”
“You get all money you want.”
Chester explained how impossible it was for him to pull another large sum, but his words did not seem to impress Bunol, who grimly said:
“It is one thousand dollars I will have if I go.”
“And you know I can’t get it! Confound you! you’re crazy!”
The Spanish lad shrugged his shoulders.
“It is the price,” he said coldly.
Arlington paced the room, his face pale and his eyes gleaming. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets.
“I was a lunatic to place myself in your power!” he finally snarled.
“I have seen you use your power on others,” said Bunol. “I know how you have no pity. I know how you make the members of the athletic committee do just as you say, because you find some of their secrets and you threaten to expose them. I know what you do to Joe Savage when you have the I O U papers he give you and he is afraid you send them to his father. Now I treat you just as I see you treat them. You have to come to time.”
Arlington threw up his hands.
“I’ll quit!” he groaned. “I’ll get out of Fardale! It’s all I can do!”
“No,” said Miguel “There is one thing other you can do.”
“What?”
“Deek Merriwell make to your mother a promise not to do some thing to injure you.”
“Well?”
“You go to him; you tell him it ruin you if Miguel Bunol must leave the school. Then you say to him that if he does not mean to be to you the ruin he must keep it still about Miguel Bunol. He must not make it so that Bunol must leave the school. You do that, so that I can stay, and I will be still about you.”
“Great heavens!” groaned Chester, dropping on a chair and passing a trembling hand across his forehead. “You ask me to go to Dick Merriwell and beg—beg, beg! I can’t do that!”
“Oh, all right!” said Miguel, coolly rolling a cigarette.
The fellow was not disturbed, for he felt that he had conquered. He saw that Arlington was wavering and ready to surrender. It was gall and wormwood to Chester to be forced into appearing as a supplicant to Merriwell, whom in his heart of hearts he still hated as much as ever, but there was no other escape for him. He must humble himself before Merriwell or get out of Fardale. If he defied Bunol the fellow would disgrace him; he had not the least doubt of that.
“I’ll pay you the thousand dollars,” he suddenly said.
Bunol lifted his heavy black eyebrows in surprise.
“Why, you say you cannot get it,” he observed, and it was plain that he felt disappointment in this decision of Chester.
“I can’t—all at once.”
“Then——”
“I’ll get part of it—say a hundred dollars at first. I will pay you that. You leave the academy. Later I will get the rest as fast as I can and send it to you.”
Bunol struck a match and lighted his cigarette.
“I am not so much a big fool,” he said. “I take it all at once. That is the only way.”
“But you’ll get it! I can’t pay you all at once. It will be hard to raise the hundred. I shall have to sacrifice many things. I shall have to let some of this stuff here go. But I will do that. It is all I can do.”
Bunol had not taken three whiffs from the cigarette, but he flung it into the grate and turned toward the door.
“Where—where are you going?” asked Chester unsteadily.
“To Professor Gunn,” was the answer.
“Come back here—come back!” cried Arlington, jumping up in the greatest agitation.
Bunol paused.
“Why come back?” he asked. “It is no arrangement we can make.”
“Yes, we can!” declared Chester. “I’ll go to Merriwell and see what I can do!”
He had surrendered.
It was the hardest thing in the world for Chester Arlington to humble himself to Dick Merriwell, but he realized that it was the only thing he could do to save himself. Chester was proud, and the thought of disgrace at Fardale galled him terribly. He had felt confident of final triumph over the lad he hated.
To leave Fardale Academy in disgrace—he could not think of it! But Bunol had made it necessary for him to go to Dick Merriwell and beg a favor in order to save himself. He could not force himself to it at once. That evening Dick went over to the village, and Chester waited for him on the road.
The moon was shining clear and cold as Dick came out of the village and strode briskly away toward the academy. His shadow kept close beside him, gliding along over the ground.
Beneath a leafless maple-tree just on the outskirts of the village Arlington waited until he saw Dick appear. He had been kicking his heels together and moving about to keep warm. At once he stepped out to meet Merriwell.
“Hello!” exclaimed Dick in surprise, for he recognized Chester.
“Thought you would be along soon,” said Arlington. “That’s why I stopped here and waited.”
“You were waiting for me?”
“Yes.”
Arlington walked at Dick’s side. He hesitated and choked as he attempted to speak.
“What’s his game now?” thought Merriwell.
“See here,” Chester suddenly exclaimed, “I’m compelled to ask a favor of you, Merriwell. I don’t like to do it, you may be sure of that, but I have to do it, regardless of my feelings.”
“Go ahead,” said Dick, suppressing a smile.
“You know Bunol?”
“I should say so!”
“You know the fellow came here with me. My father and his father were friends, that’s how it happened,” lied Chester. “I’m sorry I suggested to him that he come here. He’s a treacherous rascal.”
“Which he proved in stealing those papers and trying to put the theft on you. Evidently he wishes to injure you now.”
“Yes. He’s sore on me. That’s just it. He wishes to injure me, and he’ll do it, I’m afraid. You know every fellow gets into some pranks. Well, I’m no saint—never pretended to be. This snake has found out everything I have done. You know about that bridge trick, Merriwell. I cut the bridge, but I did it to duck you, because you ducked me before that. I wanted to get even. I didn’t mean to throw Doris Templeton into the water.”
“If I had fancied that you did,” said Dick grimly, “you’d not be in Fardale now, I tell you that! If you had not done your best to save her after she was swept into the pool, I should have carried the matter before the faculty. The fact that you nearly lost your life trying to save her caused me to hold my hand and let you off without further punishment.”
“That was kind of you,” said Chester humbly, although his heart was seething with rage at the thought of being humbled before his enemy. “I appreciate it now, even if I haven’t before. Then you know about that little joke of shutting you in the old vault. You got square for that, too.”
Chester shivered as he thought of the ducking-stool rigged up by Dick and his friends. Arlington and his four companions were all ducked in the cold waters of Lily Lake.
“Yes,” laughed Dick, “I believe that little piece of business was beautifully squared up.”
“In fact, you have evened up for about everything.”
“Perhaps you are right.”
“And you have not been the fellow to blow on me; I give you that credit.”
“Thanks!” said Dick, with a touch of sarcasm.
“But now here is this snake Bunol who swears he will go to the faculty and tell all he knows before he leaves Fardale!”
“Well, that’s rough!”
“Rough! Why, he’ll ruin me!”
“He may, that’s a fact.”
“If he does it I’ll be hauled over the coals and expelled from the school.”
“It looks that way.”
“Now, see here, Merriwell, you’re not such a bad fellow.”
“Thanks!” said Dick again, with still greater sarcasm.
“I know I have no claim on you, and it takes a lot of nerve for me to come to you and ask a favor; but you can keep this Spaniard from throwing me down, and——”
“I can do that?”
“Sure thing.”
“How?”
“By letting up on him. By not forcing him to leave the school.”
“And you have come to ask me to let up on him?” asked Dick, in great surprise, for it seemed impossible to him that a haughty, overbearing fellow like Arlington could bring himself to that.
“I have. I confess that I do it to save myself. But you know it would be mighty rough on me.”
“I am not to blame,” said Dick grimly. “If Bunol betrays you, blame yourself for choosing such a companion and confidant.”
Chester’s heart dropped.
“You—you mean that you’ll carry out your threat—that Bunol will have to go?” he faltered.
“Why shouldn’t he?” said Dick. “He is not a fit fellow to have in the school. The matter is out of my hands. Lawyer Bradbury——”
“But you might keep him still. I am sure he would keep still if you asked him.”
“Why should I do such a thing? Bunol is my enemy. He is a treacherous, dangerous fellow. You are not my friend.”
Arlington began to feel desperate.
“I have not been,” he said; “but it might be different in the future.”
“No!” exclaimed Dick. “I do not believe it possible that you and I can ever become friends. There is nothing in common between us.”
Chester was surprised at this, for he had fancied that by his actions within the last few days he had led Dick into thinking him a friend at last. Now he realized that he had not deceived Merriwell in the least.
“He seems to see right through me!” thought Chester despairingly. “What can I do?”
A thought came to him of a last resort.
“Very well,” he said, with a sigh. “The jig is up with me! I’ll have to skip out before I’m kicked out. My sister objected in the first place about coming here to this out-of-the-way place to see me. She won’t have to come here any more.”
Dick’s heart gave a great thump. June Arlington would not come to Fardale any more! True, if Chester left the school there would be nothing to bring her there.
Arlington walked along with his head down, but he glanced sideways toward Dick to note the effect of his words. Again Dick felt that he could read Chester’s motive in speaking as he did. He knew Dick was interested in June, that Dick would wish to see her again; and for this very reason he had hinted that she would come no more to Fardale. But it was true that there would be nothing to bring June to Fardale if Chester left the place.
Dick walked onward in silence, a tumult of thoughts in his mind. If he forced Bunol from the school then Arlington would have to go. If Arlington went, June would come no more to the village.
This was the thought that made Dick waver and hesitate. He remembered her as he had seen her last. Her eyes had smiled upon him. She was his friend. Even at this moment he carried her locket, in which was her picture.
Arlington was wise enough to give Dick time.
“Hold your hand until I can pack up and get away,” he finally said. “I’ll leave some time before Monday night.”
After a few minutes, Dick observed:
“I’ll think this matter over, Arlington. Perhaps you won’t have to go.”
“I’ve won!” thought Chester exultantly.