Cope told of Riley’s visit and his threat, Bent listening with great interest, which the expression of his face indicated.
“You’re the only person ’round here,” the storekeeper concluded, “who has said anything about Tom Locke bein’ anybody ’cept what he calls himself. You come to me and tried to pump me ’bout him. You said you’d got the notion that Locke was Hazelton, of Princeton. Now, somebody put Riley onter that, and if it wasn’t you, who was it?”
“I’m unable to answer your question, Cope; but I assure you that it was not I. But it is quite evident that I was not wrong in believing I knew Mr. Locke; he is Hazelton, of Princeton—isn’t he?”
“Now, that don’t have nothin’ to do with it. I told ye before when you asked me that you’d have to go to somebody else to find out.”
“Which was practically a confession that I had scored a bull’s-eye. I was right.”
Cope puckered his face and rapped impatiently on his desk with his knuckles.
“Well, now, s’pose you was right, do you want to make a heap of trouble for the team by publishin’ it and gittin’ us mixed up with Bancroft in a fuss over him? Was that your objec’? Is that the way you help your own town team to down them Bullies?”
“Hardly. I had quite a different object, believe me. What it was does not concern you at all, Cope; it’s my own affair. However, if the fellow has been using Bancroft as a cat’s-paw to help him squeeze Kingsbridge for a fancy salary, it will serve him right if he gets it in the neck, and finds himself barred from both teams. That’s the way I look at it.”
Cope sprang to his feet excitedly, almost choking in the effort to utter the words which rushed to his lips. He was mightily disturbed, and, as usual when overwrought, he perspired freely.
“But he says he never done nothin’ of the sort, and he wouldn’t lie.”