In an angle of the wall near the steps which he had seen Professor Warburton ascend but a few moments before, Donald Pike crouched in his cowboy garb. Hiding his face was a mask which he had also obtained of the costumer.
“If I can just rope Warburton, and make him think it the playful work of Bill Higgins, I couldn’t ask anything better. Warburton is a fellow who would hate a creature like Higgins by instinct.”
Warburton was, indeed, a man of considerable pomposity and self-importance, whose dignity would have been outrageously offended by such a thing as Pike contemplated.
“If I can do it, and Warburton makes a row over it, as he surely will, Higgins will be in such bad odor that Merriwell will feel precious small. If the thing gets to the faculty, or into the courts, so much the better. I’d like to have the newspapers of New Haven make a few roasting comments on Merriwell’s dear friend from the Western ranches.”
Don Pike had taken roping-lessons from his former chum, Buck Badger, and could throw a rope reasonably well, though he could not be called an expert. He felt sure, though, that if Warburton came down the steps in his customary leisurely way that there would be no difficulty in getting the noose over his head. Even if it only struck him, that would answer, for it would show what Higgins’ intentions were and serve to prove, also, that Higgins was intoxicated.
Pike expected Warburton to come out as he went in, but the man who appeared on the steps five minutes later was masked and wore a cowboy-suit which looked, in the rather dim light, identically like the one worn by Pike himself.
“That costumer lied to me!” was Pike’s thought. “He said I had the only cowboy-suit anything like that. And I had no idea that Warburton would think of attending that ball! He’s masked close and tight, and does not intend to reveal his identity.”
If Pike had been given time for thought, he might have reached radically different conclusions. He was not given time, and thinking that if he made a mistake he could run away and the thing would not be serious, he let fly with his rope at a venture, and caught the supposed Warburton round the neck, giving, at the same time, a sharp jerk on the rope. Then he turned to run.
The roar that went up was disillusioning; but not more so than the noose that now dropped over Pike’s own neck.
“What in time d’ye mean by that?” came in the voice of Bill Higgins himself.