Carefully as the arrangement for discovering who the belated visitor to the Marina was had been carried out, it had not served to prevent Harding from learning that some one was interested in his movements. An honest man would probably have been deceived. Knowing that he had nothing to conceal, he would have thought little of the sudden appearance of a launch just as his own boat approached the landing stage. But Harding, who was so used to treading lightly and avoiding exposure, was disturbed, even though he knew that he had done nothing of late for which the law could lay hands on him.
In fact, Harding seldom ventured on any step that rendered him liable to arrest and trial. If a man is a great enough rascal, and a clever enough one, he can usually find means of cheating his fellows that are within the law. He cannot keep that sort of thing up indefinitely; for, as his misdeeds increase, his reputation leaves him, and honest men come to know him as a cheat and a scoundrel, with whom it is unsafe to have dealings if they do not want to be defrauded.
So the men who begin by preying on others with safety for themselves, find, presently, that they have to break the law to ensnare the victims necessary to give them the money they think they must have. Harding was in this class. But, except in New York, where his enormous political influence made him safe, he had never yet put himself within actual reach of the law.
That was the real reason for his refusal to join Barrows in this enterprise. He was ready to admit that it looked safe, and it was obvious that if it were successful, the profits would be great. But Harding, who had once enjoyed political favors in Connecticut almost as great as those extended to him in New York, no longer had any “pull” in that State. His father, long the boss of New Haven, was dying in an insane asylum, and Harding was afraid to risk an encounter with the New London police, always on the alert at the boat-race time.
Moreover, he knew that the police department in New York had lent the New London department a couple of detectives, expert in the recognition and detention of notorious pickpockets, since a flood of these crooks always went about the country, gathering wherever great crowds and a rich harvest were to be expected. In the city these detectives had to let Harding alone, for they knew that his political power was enough to make them lose their jobs if they angered him; but in New London he would be at their mercy.
He had no idea of who was in the launch that he had seen, but he knew enough of Dick Merriwell to leap instantly to the idea that the universal coach might already have suspected something. In fact, he had lectured Barrows sharply for giving Merriwell reason to be suspicious at all, and had told him plainly that he was likely to regret the greediness that had inspired the effort to make the odds on Yale mount so high.
He was not deceived at all by the cry with which Jim Phillips announced his discovery to those waiting off shore in the launch, but understood the maneuver at once.
“Pretty clever,” he said, to himself. “It’s just as well I’m out of this. But I don’t mind pushing Barrows’ game along for him a bit. I’ll get all the money away from him later, anyhow.”
He walked away from the dock with firm footsteps, as if he had no suspicion at all that he was being watched. But as soon as he turned the first corner, he stopped. He beat time with his feet, so that any one who was trailing his footsteps might think that he was still walking on; and then, after giving his pursuer time to come up to the corner, dashed around it. A cry of triumph burst from his lips, which changed to a snarl of hatred as soon as he recognized Jim Phillips.
“It’s you, is it?” he snarled.