But Parker went too far when he said that. His own friends cried out that he was unfair; that Carter, as he said, had said nothing to make a fight necessary, and that, even had he done so, training rules made it necessary for hostilities to be postponed until baseball was at an end for the year.
“Perhaps you won’t feel so good about Merriwell and his gang when you see your baseball captaincy taken away from you by Jim Phillips,” sneered Parker. “That’s their little game, if you haven’t had sense enough to see it for yourself. You think you’re sure to be elected. Don’t be surprised when you find them expecting you to take your orders on the field from Phillips next season.”
“It won’t surprise me at all,” said Carter, with a smile. “I’m not looking for the captaincy. When it comes time for the election, I’m going to nominate Phillips myself and try to have the election made unanimous. If ever a man deserved a captaincy, he’s the one!”
Parker was furious. He had no love for Carter, but the junior was necessary in his plans, and he had never suspected that Carter had given up his own well-known and honorable ambition to lead the Yale baseball team in his senior year. If Carter would not aid his fight, even passively, how could he hope to defeat Merriwell and Phillips, who, as he saw them, were allies, trying to get hold of the chief power in all Yale athletics.
“Well,” he cried, carried away by his anger, and led into a rash move he had not contemplated; “Jim Phillips won’t be captain of any Yale team, I guess. He’s a professional. He’s played ball for money. They’ve caught him with the goods. There’s a receipt for a registered letter in the possession of people who have shown it to the Harvard team, and that letter contained a hundred dollars. That’s what he got for playing for the country club team the other day. How does your little good boy look now?”
If to create a sensation was all that Parker wanted, he certainly succeeded most brilliantly. He was surrounded in a moment by an eager crowd, that demanded details, most of them scoffing at the idea that such a charge could be true, but some, who, for one reason or another, were jealous of the sophomore pitcher, inclined to rejoice mightily in the news that he was in danger of disgrace.
Carter waited only long enough to hear exactly what sort of charges these were that were being made, then hurried off to see Dick Merriwell and tell him what had happened. He was furious, but not by any means dismayed. It never even entered his head that Jim could be guilty of such a thing. The enmity between them was something that had been buried deep, and he was now loyal to Jim in spirit as well as in action, and his first thought was to go to Jim’s most powerful friend, who might, for all he knew, be in ignorance of what Parker had said, that steps for his defense might be promptly taken.
It was important news he brought, as Dick Merriwell at once recognized. The universal coach knew already more of the charge than Carter could tell him. But that Parker, of all men in Yale, shared his knowledge, and was busily engaged in spreading a scandal that, until it was proved to the hilt, most Yale men would have kept strictly to themselves, was a surprising and illuminating fact.
“There can’t be any mistake about this, can there?” asked Dick, when he had heard Carter’s story. “Parker was actually the first man to tell the story? He couldn’t have heard it talked of about the campus and just repeated it as a bit of gossip?”
“He certainly could not,” said Steve Carter. “He knew all about it, and he was so mad at me for saying that I wasn’t going to run against Phillips for the baseball captaincy that he blurted it out without doing much thinking about it. I don’t believe he’d have started it at all if he’d known what he was doing. But his temper got the best of him, and when he once started, he had said so much that he had to keep on.”