“I thought so,” said Dick Merriwell, with a sigh. “Well, Harding has tried to put a number of things over lately, and hasn’t succeeded very well. I don’t know just what his game is this time, but there’s one thing: forewarned is forearmed. I’ll have to get time to talk this over with Neilson. It’s morally certain that some sort of an attempt is being made to tamper with the odds on this race, and there’s no telling what may not be done to interfere with the race itself.”
“They can’t do anything there, I guess,” said Benton. “In the first place, the course is well guarded. In the second, unless they got at some man in one shell or the other, I don’t see what they could hope to accomplish, anyhow.”
“They’ve accomplished something already, with both crews,” said Dick gravely. “That’s proof enough that they’ve got something dangerous up their sleeves. And the mere fact that they’ve done their best to make Harvard’s chances look as poor as possible, looks as if they wanted Harvard to win. The longer the odds, the bigger their winning will be if they bet on Harvard to beat us when every one else wants to bet the other way. I think that’s the nigger in the woodpile just now.”
“I’ll admit that those two practices are rather puzzling,” said Benton, “but I’m by no means sure yet that the whole thing wasn’t accidental. There might have been something wrong with both the crews that would cause a poor showing. They may be a little bit stale and overworked—they usually are, in fact, at this stage of the game. But that doesn’t mean they won’t pick up. In fact, our fellows showed they were all right this morning in that trial.”
The launch was picking its way gently up the river now, and, once past the navy yard, Dick began looking attentively about him.
The race, owing to tidal conditions, was that year to be rowed upstream, at six o’clock in the evening. With that arrangement of the course, the shells get over almost directly under the wooded western shore of the Thames after passing the navy yard, and the finish of the race is almost opposite Gale’s Ferry.
Dick, as they passed along, noted carefully every house or cottage on that side of the river. There were not many, but he had them all mapped in his mind before they had gone very far. He could not rid his head of the notion that there was danger of some outside interference on the day of the race, almost impossible though he knew such interference to be, and he plied Benton and Hargreaves with continuous questions when he himself did not at once recognize a house, or had forgotten who owned it or lived in it.
But, beyond the knowledge that Harding was in New London, and a renewal of his old-time familiarity with the course, Dick accomplished little by his trip that was evident to his companions, who were beginning to get sleepy. He himself, however, was well satisfied. He had seen a number of things, and he had drawn deductions from some of them that would have surprised both Barrows and his own friends and associates.