“Sure thing,” nodded the advance man for the “Julian King Stock Company.” “We seem to be traveling in the same direction.”
Frank was not pleased. He did not like Riddle. There was something about the fellow that struck him unfavorably.
“Yes,” he said, shortly.
“Been having an after-breakfast smoke,” explained Riddle. “Bad habit to smoke in the morning, but I’ve fallen into it. Old Haley was looking for me last night, wasn’t he?”
“I believe so.”
“Well, I knew better than to let him find me. He’s ugly sometimes, and he hates King as much as King hates him. He got King into a wild-cat scheme once and did him out of a pretty little boodle. When they saw the show was going to pieces, Haley planned to sell off a lot of the stuff and get enough money to jump back to New York and leave the company. King got ahead of him, though, and did the trick first. Since then they have been ready to shoot each other on sight.”
This was a different version of the story from the one told Merry by Haley, and was an illustration of the old axiom “there’s always two sides to a story.”
Riddle rattled away with his talk. He told some stories, one or two of which were not at all to Merriwell’s relish. He cracked a few jokes, and he tried to show himself as an all-round good fellow.
“The real fact is,” he finally said, “that old Haley is a skin. He does everybody he can, and he’ll do you. Bet he’ll stick you a right good bit by the time he gets ready to drop you—that is, if he is able to hold his old show together, which I doubt most mightily. Think he’ll be able to keep it running another month?”
“Do you think I would tell you if I didn’t believe he’d be able to do that?” asked Frank.