It was all very funny—to the sophomores, and to students who, like Dick and Bert, could take the thing coolly and good-humoredly. To others it was gall and wormwood. Morgan was brought back three times and made to moisten the top of “Billie’s” head with his “roseate spoon-bill,” as Jack Ready facetiously termed Dade’s lips, and Dade grew madder and madder, until he was in a fighting-mood.
When released at last he stumbled blindly away, vowing vengeance on the whole tribe of Yale sophomores. As he pitched on in the semigloom, almost too blind to see which way he was going, he heard his name called, and, turning about, beheld what he took to be one of the tormenting sophomores.
“If you follow me any farther, I’ll spread your nose all over your face!” he threatened.
Whereupon the supposed sophomore drew nearer, laughing in a silent, mirthless way.
“My dear Dade, you are losing your customary calm!” came the warning in a familiar voice.
The supposed sophomore was Hector King.
CHAPTER XI
SETTLING A SCORE.
Hector King’s disguise was so very superficial that Dade wondered at the daring of the man. Yet it was more effective than an elaborate disguise would have been. His face and hands were darkened, his hair cut short, and his dress was that of one of the numerous “sweeps” who take care of the rooms of the Yale students. The disguise had served so well that King had been able to hover on the outskirts of the sophomore mob without detection or question.
The last time Dade Morgan had seen the man whom he had come to call Hector King, the latter was in the disguise of a Hindu juggler. The pretended juggler had been unmasked by Frank Merriwell, to whom he stood revealed as Brandon Drood, alias Dion Santenel, the hypnotist, the deadly enemy of Frank and his father, whose ruin and disgrace he sought with a bitterness and tenacity almost beyond comprehension. Dade had dragged him from the room in which Merriwell had hypnotized him, and forced from him an important confession—Frank having overthrown him by his own methods, in his chosen field, and on his own battle-ground—had dragged him away, and thus prevented Frank from making him a prisoner and taking steps for his punishment.