“Oh, I just thought I’d drop around,” said Brady, who was enjoying himself hugely. “I thought, perhaps, our little friend here might not be alone, and I didn’t want you to get hurt, Jim. I got here just in time to see him rush you. You settled him rather nicely, I thought. Know where the town lock-up is?”
“Oh, I say,” protested Harding, with a whine, “you’re not going to press a charge against me, are you? I’m not doing any harm. I’m just here to look on this time.”
“If you swore you had a broken leg, Harding,” said Bill Brady, amiably enough, “I wouldn’t believe you unless you brought a doctor along to testify to it. We sure do mean to press the charge. The inside of a jail is a darned sight too good for you, but I can’t think of anything that would please me more than to see you there for ten days or so. I’ll come and bring you nice, improving books to read, too, so that, when you come out, you’ll reform and decide to live a sober and virtuous life ever after; just the way the bad men do in the stories.”
Jim Phillips laughed openly. He could not help it. Brady was so obviously enjoying himself, and Harding was so evidently scared by the picture of himself in jail.
Harding was scared, as a matter of fact. Ten days in jail did not appeal to him particularly. If he could have served such a sentence under an assumed name, he wouldn’t have minded it so much. But he knew that if Brady carried out his threat, which he certainly had the power to do, the story would go all over the country, and that his friends and cronies would never be done laughing at the story of his discomfiture by two college boys.
His influence would be gone, for, once a man is laughed at, people are not likely to go on being afraid of him; and Harding knew this. He had a certain crowd of hangers-on, who at present admired him immensely, though the continual defeat of all his plans to undo Dick Merriwell had rather alienated some of his most loyal supporters.
“Oh, drop this,” he said finally. “What do you want me to do? It won’t do you fellows any good to make trouble for me here. I don’t believe you can do it, anyhow. But, even supposing you can, what object have you? There’s nothing in it for you. Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. That’ll be better for you than trying to get me sent to jail.”
The two Yale men looked at each other. Brady’s look was dubious; he was questioning Jim with his eyes, as he had so often done in a critical moment of a baseball game. And Jim nodded his head, as he used to do from the box when he approved of Brady’s signal for some particular ball.
“If we let you go,” said Brady, “will you promise to leave New London and stay away until the boat race is over? There’s a train down to New York in about half an hour. You’ll have to get off at the Harlem River, and take the elevated down, but I guess that’ll be better than the town jail here. They tell me that isn’t a very comfortable place—no private baths with the cells, and a very poor table for the boarders.”
“Sure I will,” said Harding. “You’ve got me where you want me, and I’d be a fool not to admit it. I’ll get you some time, but this isn’t the time, and I can see as far into a stone wall as the next fellow.”