“But, Great Moses, something’s got to be done!”
Purdick shook his head.
“Larry won’t do anything, and it’s just about breaking his heart. I’ve tried to buck him up and get him to make a fight and show the Underhill bunch up for what it is, but he won’t do it; says he’s got such a bad temper that there won’t be any end to it if he lets himself go.”
“Yes; he and his temper!” Dick snorted. Then: “It was a put-up job, of course?”
“Not the slightest doubt of it, in my mind. You know what they told him over there at ‘Pat’s Place’—that you’d gone off the hooks and were needing somebody to take you home. Larry fell for it, and then they managed to get him into one of the little card-rooms that had probably been ‘fixed’ for him—alcohol spilled around on the floor. That got him half sick to begin with, and then, when he asked for a drink of water, they doped him.”
“Huh!” said Dick. “So that’s the straight of it, is it? Naturally, I hadn’t heard that part of it. It was after that that Markley and Dugger found him, I suppose?”
“Yes. That part of it is probably true. They found him asleep and helped carry him out to the old cow barn. But it sticks in my craw that they didn’t need to have anybody tell them where to find him.”
“Of course they didn’t. That was part of the plot. And you say Larry won’t try to do anything to clear himself?”
“No.”