Lefty turned swiftly from the bureau, a queer look on his face. “Just what do you mean by that, Jack?” he asked slowly.
Stillman snorted. “You know very well what I mean,” he retorted forcibly. “I’m not supposed to be wise, but Bob Ferris told me the whole story, and it’s my opinion you were blamed fools to keep still about it. Any man who’ll steal from one college mate and then deliberately work to throw the blame on another isn’t fit for decent fellows to associate with. When you had him where you wanted him, why didn’t you come out with it, and let everybody know what kind of a mucker he was?”
Lefty slipped into his coat, and dropped down beside his friend.
“You know why we didn’t,” he said quickly. “He’d have been fired, and the varsity would have lost about every other game that season. You don’t suppose it was on Elgin’s account we kept still after we’d found how he was trying to throw the blame on me?”
“I’m not quite a fool. All the same, you were wrong. We might have dropped a game or two, but you could have jumped into his place, all right.”
“You know I couldn’t. I was slaving about ten hours a day to make up work I missed on account of that beastly typhoid. How long would I have lasted at Princeton if I tried to play ball, too? No; Bob and I thrashed it all out, and, though it came mighty hard, we decided it was the only thing to do, unless we wanted the team beaten to a frazzle.”
“Why didn’t you come out with it the next year?” demanded Stillman. “You could have pitched then, all right.”
“That would have looked fine, wouldn’t it? How would we have accounted for keeping quiet so long? I will say, Jack, that we were both sorry more than once afterward; but, having started out, there was nothing else to do but keep on. I don’t see how Bob came to tell you. It was understood that we should keep it entirely to ourselves.”
“It wasn’t till a year after we’d graduated,” the reporter explained, his face still clouded. “It was one right at the Princeton Club. I don’t remember just how the subject came up. I suppose he thought there wasn’t any need of keeping still any longer.” He paused and glanced at his companion. “How’s he acted since you showed up? Same old Elgin, I suppose?”