“Hang it, Jim! answer my question, won’t you?” cried Dick, desperate. “Did you run last summer in a Fourth of July race with professionals, or not?”
“Of course I didn’t,” replied Dickinson, sulkily. “You ought to have more sense than to take stock in such a yarn. I never ran a race in my life except in this school and at Hillbury last year.”
Melvin drew a long breath. His courage was coming back and his wrath was cooling, but the mystery was yet to be explained.
“How did this story start, then?”
“What story?” snapped Dickinson.
“Why, that you did take part in some such race in your town last summer,” returned Dick, patiently, yet feeling that Dickinson’s present balkiness certainly warranted suspicion of past folly if not of guilt.
“I don’t know anything about any story,” answered Dickinson. “I was asked to run in the races and declined. Through some misunderstanding my name was mentioned in the advertisements, but I did not run,—in fact, was not even present.”
“Was your name down in the handbills?”
“It may have been. I don’t know about that.”
“Who was the manager?”