“His name is Dick Merriwell.”
Somehow, as he handed the paper to the wild-eyed youth, he had the odd feeling that he had signed a death warrant.
CHAPTER III.
A SCRAP OF PAPER.
The Clover Country Club had acquired a wider reputation than is usual with an organization of that description.
Intended originally as a simple athletic club, with out-of-door sports and games the special features, it had one of the finest golf links in the Middle West. Its tennis courts were unsurpassed, its running track unrivaled. There was a well-laid-out diamond which had been the scene of many a hot game of baseball, and which was used in the fall for football. Indoors were bowling alleys, billiard, and pool tables, a beautiful swimming tank in a well-equipped gymnasium.
But in the course of time other and less desirable features had been added. The younger set had developed into a rather fast, sporting crowd, and, slowly increasing in numbers and in power, they gradually crowded the old conservatives to the wall, until finally they controlled the management.
To-day the club was better known for the completeness of its buffet, than for the gymnasium; and it was a well-known fact that frequently more money changed hands in the so-called private card room in a single night than in the old days had been won or lost on sporting bets in the course of an entire season.
In spite of all this, however, out-of-door sports were still a feature, and now and then, when some especially well-known athletes were at the club, matches and contests of various kinds were arranged.
That very afternoon a mile race had been planned between Stovebridge and Charlie Layton—a Columbia graduate reported to have beaten everything in his class from Chicago to Omaha—who was coming on from the latter city especially for the occasion.