“Is she dead?”
The expression of languid indifference vanished from their faces with the rapidity and completeness of chalk under a wet sponge. Their eyes were full of eager interest, and, as soon as the clamor was quelled, Dick told the story with a brief eloquence which made more than one man curse fiercely and blink his eyes.
Once or twice the Yale man darted a keen glance at Stovebridge, but the latter had turned away so that only a small portion of his face was visible. He seemed to be one of the few to remain unmoved by the recital.
Another was his friend Fred Marston, a man of about thirty, with thin, dark hair plastered over a low forehead, sensuous lips, and that unwholesome flabbiness of figure which is always a sign of a life devoted wholly to ease.
As Dick finished the story, he shrugged his shoulders.
“Very likely she ran out in front of the car, and was bowled over before the fellow had time to stop,” he drawled. “Children are always doing things like that. Sometimes I believe they do it on purpose.”
Merriwell looked at him fixedly.
“That’s quite possible,” he said quietly, but with a certain challenging note in his voice. “But no one but a coward—a contemptible coward—would have run off and left her there.”
Marston flushed a little and started to reply, but before he could utter a word, a number of the club members began to voice their opinions, and for a time the talk ran fast and furious.
Merriwell noticed that Stovebridge took no part in it. He stood leaning against a pillar, his hands in his pockets, apparently absorbed in watching a putting match which was going on at a green just across the drive.