To his surprise he found Santenel sitting before the grate, awaiting his coming.
These mysterious appearances and disappearances of the man he obeyed, loved, and feared were often quite puzzling to Morgan. Time and again he had walked into his rooms, after carefully unlocking the door, and found sitting there the strange man of mystery; and often, after leaving the man there, he returned in a very few moments to find Santenel gone for an absence of a week or more. Santenel’s abiding-place seemed to be as changing and unsubstantial as that of the Wandering Jew; and where he stayed while in New Haven Dade had never yet been able to learn.
“Waiting for your report,” said Santenel. “I heard a few things myself, but I thought it unwise to appear too publicly.”
“Everything has gone on swimmingly!” was Dade’s jubilant preface. “Things worked right from the start. I found two men at New London who played right into my hands. One of them I knew before, and that made the thing easy for me. He had done dirty work for me before, and he’s all right. They had been talking of organizing a polo-team out of some fellows who had been rejected or expelled from the other team, and they organized it on the spot, and wired their challenge.”
Then he gleefully told of the bets that had been made, dwelling especially on the bet which Charles Conrad Merriwell had made with one of Dade’s tools from New London.
“The challenge will be accepted, and the game will be played,” was Santenel’s satisfied comment. “I’ll see that Charles Conrad Merriwell stays in New Haven that day and meets me. You must have the game early in the afternoon—Saturday afternoon. Not a night game! I want plenty of time to do my work. Have the New London men stand to that.”
He rubbed his fingers joyously, and, sinking into the chair, stared into the grate with his burning eyes.
“Merriwell will accept the challenge!” he declared, as he rose to go.
He was a true prophet. Frank accepted the New London challenge the next morning.