“That couldn’t have been Stovebridge,” he mused. “Much as the fellow hates me, I don’t believe he would deliberately attempt murder.”
He glanced through the window into the reception-hall. Neither the tall athlete nor his friend Marston were in the room.
Dick shook his head slowly.
“Just the same, it wasn’t him. It must have been that dumb fellow. He’s been looking at me all day as though he would like to knife me, and now he’s tried it. I wish I could get hold of him to convince him that he’s on the wrong track.”
Just now, however, the Yale man was more troubled as to how he could get up to his room and slip into his spare coat without attracting attention by passing through the reception hall. He saw nothing to be gained by letting the clubmen know what had happened. They could do no good now, and Roger Clingwood would be worried to death and tremendously mortified at the thought of such a thing happening to his guest.
He remembered having noticed a small stairway leading from the second floor straight down to an outside door which Clingwood told him opened on the drive at the other end of the house—a door that was occasionally used by members who wanted to go directly to their rooms.
This door might possibly be unlocked. At any rate it was worth trying.
Slipping around the house, he found to his relief that the door yielded to his touch. In a moment he was upstairs, and had taken the coat from his bag and slipped into it. Then he threw the other on a chair and went downstairs again.
No one made any comment on his rather long absence, and presently they all adjourned to the billiard room. Not wanting to tax his ankle, Dick did not play but sat watching the others, and by ten o’clock, he was so sleepy that he could scarcely keep his eyes open.
Niles noticed this as he stood beside the Yale man watching Buckhart run off a string.