Unsuspiciously, Parked whipped his knife out of his pocket. In a moment Dick had opened it—it was a single-bladed one—and slit open half a dozen envelopes that he snatched from his pocket.
Parker’s face went white with rage.
“What are you doing with my knife?” he cried furiously, and sprang forward, as if to snatch the knife away. But Bill Brady was in his path, and he was sent sprawling to the floor.
“Look here!” cried Dick triumphantly.
He laid the registered letter by the side of the other envelopes that he had opened with the knife. The cut was clean in each, save for a single break, where, evidently, a piece had been nicked from the sharp steel. And the knife blade, when it was compared with the paper, showed a break that corresponded exactly.
“You see?” cried Dick. “That confirms one, and the most important, part of Shesgren’s story. You thought you were safe—but you overlooked a detail that knocks your whole carefully built house of lies to the ground. Will you confess now, or shall I send for a post-office inspector? You’ve tampered with a registered letter—and you know what that means.”
Parker knew, and the knowledge cowed him, blustery as he had been when he thought he held the upper hand. He was white and shaken as he rose from the floor.
“You win,” he said, snarling, with a look of hate for Shesgren, who eyed him angrily, remembering his sleepless and agonizing night.
“Write out a confession of this whole plot,” ordered Dick Merriwell. “Also, you must withdraw as a candidate for the football captaincy. If you will do those two things, I will undertake to keep this matter quiet.”
It was a bitter dose for Parker, beaten and disgraced just as he thought himself on the threshold of success, to have to swallow. But there was nothing for him to do—no way in which, at the time, at least, he could renew the struggle. He was in Dick Merriwell’s power, and in a moment of utter frankness with himself, he realized that he was fortunate. Some men would not have let him off so easily. He sat down at his desk, and, with the universal coach looking over his shoulder to see that he set down the truth and the whole truth, he wrote out a confession of his plot against Jim Phillips, and of the part he had forced Carpenter to play in it.