"That letter didn't give me all the information I desired," continued Snell, "but I found I had a friend living in a town adjoining the one Merriwell hails from, so I wrote and asked him to find out a few things for me. He rode over on his wheel, and found out what I have told you."
"Why, you are a regular detective, old man!"
"Merriwell's mother," continued Wat, "has been dead several years. No one seems to know much about his father, except that he was nearly always away from home, and he died suddenly in California a little more than a year ago. I haven't been able to find out that he left any property, so Merriwell is dependent on the generosity of a rather crabbed and crusty old uncle, whose head is filled with freaks and fancies. He seems to be just the kind of a man who would be easily turned against a nephew who had, as he would consider it, gone astray."
"That settles Merriwell! If we cannot get the old uncle down on him, we are pretty poor schemers."
They looked at each other and smiled again. A precious pair of youthful plotters they were!
"We must be slick about this business," warned Snell. "We mustn't let anybody but ourselves get the least wind of it."
"Certainly not."
"And we must do our prettiest to pull the wool over Merriwell's eyes, for you know he is rather discerning in some things, and he may be inclined to be wary. We must seem to think he is the finest fellow in the world."
"That will be pretty hard," said Leslie, with a wry face, "but I have been doing something in that line of late, and I will keep it up. That business doesn't come so easy for me as it does for you."
"You can do it, if you try. And I shall depend on you to skin him with the papers."