[CHAPTER XXIII.]
GETTING THE EVIDENCE.
Merriwell was not disposed to be at all considerate of Jode Lenning. Into Merry’s mind, again, came those ugly suspicions of the favorite nephew.
It was conceivable that Lenning, jealous of his half brother, had plotted to have him cast off and set adrift, just as he had, Merriwell felt sure, engineered that robbery plot against him. What had caused the accident on the cliff still remained a mystery; yet, terrible as that accident had been, if the result of a plot, then the plot was less heinous than the one by which it had been made to appear that Ellis Darrel was a forger. Through the first, life might have been lost; but, through the second, honor, which men of integrity hold dearer than life, hung in the balance.
The blood ran hot through Merriwell’s veins as all these thoughts trooped through his mind. Here was a chance to do something for Darrel, was the idea that filled him, to the exclusion of anything and everything else.
Taking his place on the field, opposite Lenning, Merriwell strove to note the exact place where the note from Bleeker had been stowed. His eyes, peering hawklike from either side of the rubber nose guard, sought the lacings of the other guard’s jacket. Between two of the crossed thongs he believed he caught a flash, the merest flash, of something white. Then, while Merriwell’s brain was still lashed with those ugly suspicions of Lenning, the playing began.
Ophir ran the kick-off back a bare seven yards. Line plunges, during which Merry sought in vain for a chance at that scrap of white, netted another gain of four yards. Then, as in some weird dream, Merriwell found himself crouching in the middle of the line, staring into the face of Lenning, with its shifty eyes and its overtopping mop of black hair. The swaying lines locked and clashed as the ball flew out of the scramble and into the arms of the Gold Hill half back.
Merry plunged forward in an attempt to break through. Lenning threw out a leg to trip him. Merry’s hands pawed at the jacket as he went down, but he was up again in a flash with something clutched in his fist.
“You’re not so much!” snarled Lenning.
Merriwell laughed. He could afford to. The evidence was in his possession now.
The playing went on, and gradually Merriwell began to take more interest in the battle and less in the scrap of evidence which had come into his hands.