Larry’s resolution was taken impulsively. There were a thousand chances to one that the thing was a hideous mistake, but where Dick was concerned he was not willing to take the one chance.
“Pitch out and show me,” he said brusquely; and when the man turned back toward the noisiest of the saloons, Larry followed him.
It was at the very door of the noisy place, and just as he was about to enter it at the heels of his guide, that he ran squarely into a boisterous crowd of Sheddonians heading collegeward. Then he remembered suddenly that this was the night when Sock and Buskin, the college dramatic society, was giving a performance in the town opera house. Since, for Dick’s sake, he couldn’t stop to explain anything, Larry tried to dodge into the noisy place quickly, hoping that he hadn’t been recognized. But the hope was a vain one. Welborn, the big-hearted—but loud-mouthed and not too tactful—Aggie Freshman who roomed at Mrs. Grant’s, was a member of the bunch of homing theater-goers, and he saw Larry and bawled out a half-joking warning.
“Hey, you, Donnie! Come out o’ there! You’re on the team, and that’s breaking training!”
Being pretty badly flustered anyway, Larry did the worst thing he could have done—dodged again and made no answer. And it was not until he was following the unshaven loafer into the purlieus of the place that he realized fully what his action must have meant to Welborn and the others.
Welborn’s bawled-out hail had called the attention of every Sheddonian in the bunch to the fact that he, Larry Donovan, was entering a saloon at eleven o’clock at night in company with a fellow who looked as if he might be a bank burglar at the very least. And he had ducked as if he were ashamed to be seen. As certainly as the autumn would ripen little red apples the story would go from mouth to mouth, and while a break of that kind might pass unremarked in the case of a known member of the fast set, it wouldn’t go that way when the one who made it happened to be a potential member of next year’s ’Varsity and was supposed to be in training—at least to the extent of taking respectable care of himself.
“Show me where Maxwell is, quick,” he snapped at his guide. “I haven’t any time to waste fooling ’round such a place as this.”
“I c’n show you where he was a few minutes ago,” said the hard-faced man, leading the way to a row of box-like card-rooms in the rear, and at the word he opened the door of one of the boxes.
Larry looked in and saw that the place was empty. A single unshaded electric light hung over a round table which, with a few chairs, completed the furnishings of the bare cell. The man seemed nonplussed.