“Good Lord!” croaked Hull, standing on his tiptoes in order to glare down over his collar at Gene. “What’s this I hear? One of our number talking like a Merriwell saphead? I must be dreaming! I know I am!”
“Oh, Gene is joking!” said Ives.
“Gwathuth! What a queer joke!” murmured Lew.
“I want to tell you fellows what I did with Defarge before I left him the next morning,” said Gene, who had risen to his feet. “All night I listened to his ravings. Now, you all know I’m not squeamish, but I confess that some of the things I heard gave me cold chills. He had some of the most horrible fancies, and through them all he was hunted by Merriwell’s eyes. Those eyes seemed to follow him everywhere. He fought them, he threw the furniture at them, he covered his own eyes to shut out the sight of them, but he could not get away from them.
“I pitied the poor fellow. His face was ghastly and drawn, and great beads of perspiration started out on it at times. His lips would be drawn back from his teeth, and he looked like a grinning death-head. Of course, I knew that the most of the things he raved about were fancies, but with those he mixed lots of facts. I found that more than once he had thought of murdering Merriwell. He had even tried it. Now, I’m no saint, and I have fancied that I could kill Merriwell; but never have I been ready to carry it to that extent when the time came to lift my hand. In listening to the mutterings of Defarge I found that Merriwell had caught and baffled him. Still, for some reason, Merriwell had not crushed him. He had seen at last that he must make his peace with Merriwell if he was to get into ‘Bones,’ and so he went and played a part.
“He tried to fool Merriwell into thinking him repentant, and he thought he had succeeded; but I do not think it so easy to fool that man, even though he may let one fancy he is being fooled. Merriwell saw through Defarge all the time. In fact, I think Merriwell must have hypnotic power over Defarge, and so he could read Bertrand’s secret. That is why those eyes seemed to hunt Defarge so. The eyes were before his fancy, just as he had seen them boring into his soul more than once. Now, it’s likely that somehow there was an understanding that Defarge was to go to ‘Bones.’ Whether Merriwell found a way to stop him or not I cannot say, but it was just punishment for the injuries Defarge has tried to do Merriwell, and so I told the fellow before I left him that morning.
“He was pretty sober when I talked to him, and I told him we were both thundering scoundrels and pitiful fools. Had we been decent fellows we might have belonged to Merriwell’s crowd, and that would have helped carry us anywhere. But our greed and our hatred had made us outcasts. We were getting our dues. He had to listen to me, for I held him while I talked. That night with him was just what I needed to open my eyes at last, and now I’m aware that I have made a howling idiot of myself.”
They stared at him in wonder. Was this Skelding? He had been the worst of the lot.