Dick had not been in New Haven two hours before he heard news that worried him. He learned that some one had sold the baseball team’s signals to the enemy. He quickly discovered the guilty person, and, knowing that no further useful steps could be taken in the matter, he told his friends that the incident was closed.
But the incident was not closed. For the guilty man’s friends took the matter up. Not knowing that Dick Merriwell already knew the identity of the traitor, they resolved to capture Tommy Tucker for the purpose of forcing him to sign a supposed confession.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ABANDONED CAPTIVE.
Try as he might, he could not make a sound louder than a smothered, choking groan. After repeated attempts to shout he gave it up in despair, although the cords which bound him to the chair had been drawn so tight that they were cutting into his limbs and stopping the circulation of his blood, and the thick cloth tied over his mouth was nearly smothering him.
From the wall at his right projected a feebly fluttering gas jet. The faint light, flickering on the face of the captive, showed him to be a slight, slender, undersized lad some seventeen or eighteen years of age.
It was Tommy Tucker, and the freshman was in a decidedly unpleasant and apparently serious situation.
Returning along a dark block after having seen a charming and interesting girl to the door of her home, Tucker was suddenly pounced upon by three or four fellows, who seized him, flung a blanket over his head, tripped him up, sat on him, and held him helpless until a cab drew up at the curb. The victim was bundled into the cab and carried away. After his first efforts at resistance he made very little struggle, realizing it was folly to fight against such odds.
By the time his assailants had pulled the blanket off him inside the cab Tucker was feebly gasping for breath. The curtains were closely drawn, and it was so dark in the cab that he could not discern anything whatever.
“Gug-golly!” he gasped, catching his breath. “I’d been cooked in ten seconds more. I was almost smothered.”
“I always did like smothered chicken, ta-ra-tum,” sang a hoarse voice in Tommy’s ear.