“Well, is that all?” inquired Hollister at length, in a cold, cutting voice.
“Why, yes,” Hildebrand answered in surprise. “I should think it was enough.”
Hollister was evidently keeping his temper with an effort.
“Entirely too much!” he snapped. “I hope you’re pleased with your attempt to blacken the character of one of my friends. Nice, pleasant occupation, isn’t it, running down a man when he isn’t around to defend himself? However, you’ve had your trouble for your pains. I don’t believe a word of it.”
Hildebrand caught his breath suddenly and his face turned scarlet. Stopping abruptly, he turned fiercely on Hollister, with blazing eyes and clenched fists. Another moment and he would have landed a smashing blow on the face of the man who had called him a liar, but, just in time, he got a grip on himself and realized the utter impossibility of two seniors indulging in a fist fight in the street.
“You’ll be sorry for that, Hollister!” he said, in a voice which quivered with suppressed anger. “I might have known that this would be all the thanks I’d get for trying to do you a good turn. I’ll send you written proof of the statement I just made. Luckily there were two other men in the game.”
Without another word, he walked quickly away, leaving Hollister alone, a feeling of regret that he had been so hasty, struggling with the anger which Hildebrand’s accusation against his friend had aroused in him.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have said that,” he murmured regretfully. “But he made me mad with those rotten insinuations against Jarv.”
Then the thought came to him that Hildebrand had not contented himself with insinuations. He had made a downright, matter-of-fact statement, which he proposed to back with written proof. But even then Bob could not bring himself to believe that Blake would descend so low as to cheat at cards.
There must have been a mistake made somewhere—must be some explanation of the thing. Blake was one of his special friends whom he had known and liked ever since they first entered college together, and in all that time he had never known Jarvis to do anything which was not quite square and honorable.