“Keep your eyes open for tricks, Merry,” whispered Bart. “There is something behind this, sure as fate.”
Frank nodded the least bit.
“Hashi has taken to the warpath,” explained Fillmore. “He has heard a great deal of talk about jujutsu being a fake. The Sun to-day contained a letter from some duffer who claimed that there was nothing to the Japanese art of self-defense and that any ordinary American athlete could defeat a Japanese expert. It has angered him somewhat.”
“Indeed meek confession I must speak that it has incensed me to the great extremeness,” put in Hashi.
“No one would ever dream it from his everlasting smile and his soft speech,” muttered Raymond Harrow.
“The critic of the Sun didn’t have the nerve to sign his full name,” said Fillmore; “but I have a fancy that I know who the man is.”
“We are honored to meet Professor Hashi,” said Maurice Spaulding.
The Jap bowed very low, after his manner.
“The honorableness is fully upon me,” he asserted. “I am quite overcome in your august presence.”