“It’s absurd!” she exclaimed aloud presently. “There’s been some misunderstanding between them. I won’t believe that Phil is anything but straightforward and absolutely honorable. He couldn’t do or think a mean thing. I’ll forget that I ever heard a whisper against him.”
But this was not quite possible. In spite of her determination, a nagging little doubt returned more than once to trouble Janet Harting. Somehow, she could not forget that Bert Elgin had known Hazelton at college—known him for years probably, with chances for seeing phases of his character which the intimate life at a big university alone can give; while her own acquaintance with that selfsame individual was limited to nine brief months.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MAN IN THE CORRIDOR
“Hang such weather!” grumbled Buck Fargo, gazing disconsolately out of the dripping window.
It was not a strictly original remark, considering the fact that it had been uttered, in some form or another, on an average of every five minutes since breakfast time. Nevertheless, it was fervently echoed by each one of the players who lounged within hearing distance in the lobby.
It had been pouring all day, a cold, driving rain, which kept some forty-odd active, vigorous athletes cooped up in the confines of the hotel.
It was not so bad in the morning, but by the middle of the afternoon pool had lost its charm, craps failed to interest; and even the inveterate poker players were becoming satiated with that game.
“I can feel myself putting on pounds and pounds,” mourned “Splinter” Jones, one of the outfielders, whose winter of luxurious idleness had resulted in about fifteen pounds of troublesome and unnecessary weight. “It’ll set me back a week.”
“Too bad there ain’t a Turkish bath in this blooming village,” yawned Cy Russell. “If we was only in little old New York you could sit in a steam room and lose all the weight you wanted to.”