CHAPTER XLV
THE FORGERY
Benton King, called upon, rose and expressed regret that circumstances had involved him in the unfortunate affair. He spoke hurriedly, without looking at Locke, although he was well aware that Tom’s eyes were fixed upon him all the while.
At the first sight of Kingsbridge’s left-handed pitcher, he stated, he had been struck by the thought that he had seen the man somewhere before, and, after racking his brain, he suddenly recalled that it was at a game played the previous year, between Princeton and Harvard, when Locke, to use the name he had given in Kingsbridge, had sat in uniform upon the Princeton bench.
He went on to explain, with an effort to hide any personal animosity in the matter, that the man’s denial that he was Hazelton had led him to communicate with a friend in New York, requesting this friend to go to Princeton for the purpose of obtaining the photograph of the college pitcher. This the friend had done, getting the picture from the photographer who was generally patronized by the undergraduates. Concluding, King produced the photograph and the letter that had accompanied it in the same mail, and placed them in evidence.
Locke listened and watched, without making a movement, a scornful smile on his lips. He heard the letter read by King, and saw it turned over, with the picture, to Anson Graham. The president glanced at the letter, then seemed to make a comparison of the photographed features and those of the young man standing so enigmatically cool beside the chair of Henry Cope.
“Sir,” said Graham, extending the picture, “do you deny that this is your likeness?”
Locke barely glanced at it.
“It is my picture,” he acknowledged.
“And that,” exulted Mike Riley, “does settle it! He’s Hazelton, and here’s a letter from him, dated December twenty-seven, last year, answering a letter o’ mine, in which I offered him twenty-five a week and board to pitch fer Bancroft this season, a-sayin’ he wanted forty ’n’ board. Take notice that he don’t say he won’t play for twenty-five, but that it’s jest a clever try to boost me t’ forty. I base my claim on that letter.