“Somebody call the police,” he said. “We’ll have this crazy chap locked up.”
“Let them lock me up!” hissed Buckhart. “I am ready to tell the judge why I jumped on Fernald.”
“All right,” nodded Dick, “go ahead and call your policemen.”
Then he turned to the crowd that had gathered.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “some of you were present at the ball game to-day, I fancy. You must remember the singular behavior of our catcher here. He complained of feeling wrong directly after dinner. Yesterday Tom Fernald tried to bribe him—tried to induce him to throw the game to-day. Deny it if you want to, Mr. Fernald; we have proof of it. Buckhart induced Fernald to make the offer in a room of this hotel, and several of us heard all the talk. If you doubt my word, ask Uriah Blackington; I fancy you won’t doubt him. He was present and heard it all. That’s why Fernald was compelled to resign as manager of your team. Evidently he has been looking for revenge. It’s my belief that no man who makes a living as a professional gambler can be on the square. I doubted the squareness of Fernald from the first. He has been proved a crook. I mean it, Fernald—you’re a crook!”
The deposed manager of the Rockford team was pale, but he forced a sneering laugh.
“You will find I have some friends in this town,” he declared. “You think yourself very smart, young chap, but in time you will get what’s coming to you.”
This speech was promptly hissed by some one in the crowd, and as if that hiss was a signal, a storm of hisses followed it.
Fernald shrugged his shoulders and snapped his fingers defiantly.
“You go to blazes, the whole of you!” he exclaimed.