“If it is over,” said Dick Merriwell, to Benton, “it’s certainly a good thing. I don’t think it’s worth while, as matters are now, to say anything to Harvard about it. There’s really nothing we can tell them, except a lot of vague suspicions, and, even to explain those, we’d have to go into a lot of ancient history that it’s better not to mention at all.”
Benton was still doubtful. He knew the methods of Harding of old, and, like Dick himself, he was inclined to think that the gambler had surrendered too easily.
“We haven’t accounted for it having happened at all yet,” said Benton nervously. “If it’s happened once, it may happen again. That’s the rub. If we knew exactly what had been done, and how they had managed it, we could guard against anything of the sort in the future. As it is, we are helpless. It’s as plain as daylight. If some one, outside of the boat, and outside of the two training camps, can affect the speed of those shells, so that no matter how well the men row they can’t get the speed out of the boats, that race can be settled just as the man who’s doing the dirty work likes. And the profitable thing for any one of that sort to do would be to make Harvard win. The heavy betting, at long odds, is all on Yale.”
“You’re right there, Benton,” said Dick anxiously. “But I don’t see just what we can do. You see, the trouble is that we haven’t got the slightest sort of a clew to what agency they’re employing to check our speed. I’ve been over every foot of our shell, and, if I thought it would do any good, I’d tell Neilson, and examine the Harvard boat with him.
“But, unless they show their hands a bit more openly than they have done, I’m afraid we’re doomed to trust to luck and the fact that Harding had to leave town. It’s certainly a good thing that Phillips and Brady got rid of him. Even if he still tries to carry out any plot, he’ll have to trust to his assistants to do the work, and they’re not at all likely to be as clever as he is himself.”
But in all that day and the next there was no sign of any further activity. Even the betting in New London fell away. The Harvard men were by no means ready to put up their good cash when, as they were convinced, their boat had no chance of winning, and the activity of the gamblers who had infested the place, seizing at once the chance to cover the bets at long odds, which enthusiastic Yale men offered, was apparently at an end.
On Tuesday night, too, Brady learned something that reassured him mightily. He was in the lobby of the Iroquois when he saw a familiar face, that led him to sit up and take notice. It was Barnes, Harding’s agent and companion in two or three nefarious plots that had come to nothing. But Barnes, though he had a big wad of money, was not trying to bet on Harvard. Instead, he was offering liberal odds on Yale, and finding it hard to get any takers.
“Hedging their bets,” commented Brady, to himself. “They must have made up their minds that they can’t work their scheme, and they’re trying to make sure that they won’t lose, by betting enough on Yale to offset their losses if Yale wins a square race—which we probably would. I bet he’ll find it hard to cover, too, even if he does offer to bet five to one.”
This was, as a matter of fact, the most convincing evidence that had yet been obtained as to the probable course of Harding and any allies he might have, and Dick Merriwell was almost satisfied.
“That certainly looks as if Harding had decided to keep his hands off this time,” he said. “But I would certainly like to find out just what they were up to. And, by the way, Bill, have you noticed that that big schooner, the Marina, that Harding was going ashore from when we spotted him, is still in the harbor? We know that he had friends aboard her. And I must confess that the fact that they are still around New London makes me feel uneasy. Harding is a dangerous customer. I think we ought to make sure that he’s not on board of her now. He might have managed to sneak back in the dark, or even have come in on a small boat of some sort, without being observed.”