“Just the thing!” he said.
“What is?”
Bertrand Defarge clapped him on the back.
Pike started and bit his lip.
“I didn’t know I was talking to myself!” he said. “It’s a bad habit, and I shall have to break myself of it. Going to the ball?”
“Certainly. There will he hosts of pretty girls there, and I shouldn’t want to miss it.”
“Another fool!” Pike growled, as he and Defarge separated. “No matter what Merriwell plans, not only his friends but his enemies turn in to make a success of it. Is it dead luck, or is the man positively a genius?”
Hurrying away now to a costumer, Pike hired a cowboy-suit as nearly like that worn by Bill Higgins as he could get, and, with the long lasso that went with it, sneaked back to his rooms.
“Higgins has been drinking a little,” was his thought, “though the fellow has been awfully mild for a plainsman. He wasn’t drinking any to-day, to be sure, but who’s to say that he didn’t fill up this evening? He’s made himself a general nuisance here, whooping things up for Merriwell. He’s Merriwell’s protégé quite as much as Dick Starbright is. If I can bring him down and roll him in the gutter of disgrace, it will be a little something.”
The trick he contemplated was a small one, worthy of a smaller brain than Pike was usually supposed to possess.