Then Douglass stepped out from the shadow, his face stern and set.
"Perhaps you will want to stop talking, Mr. Jordan," he called.
"Your conversation has not been a private one!"
With the strong wind blowing away from Jordan, that cadet heard only a rumble of voices. Both he and Henckley, however, caught sight of the advancing figures.
"Hello! What are you fellows doing here?" demanded the money lender, with blustering indignation.
"I might ask that question of you, fellow, but I won't, for I already know," replied Cadet Douglass, fixing his eyes on the stranger.
"You've been listening to our talk?" demanded Henckley angrily, while Jordan, after his first gasp of dismay, seemed to shrivel back against the wall of Cullum Hall.
"Mr. Jordan," continued the class president, facing the dismayed one in gray uniform, "I don't believe the significance of this meeting has escaped you?"
"No-o-o," wailed Jordan in misery.
"Now, see here, young fellows, don't you go and blab what you've been spying on just now," remonstrated Mr. Henckley, a note of dismay creeping into his tone.
"It can hardly concern you, sir," flashed Cadet Douglass, wheeling upon the money shark. "Yet I suppose it does, too. For now I do not see how Mr. Jordan can hope to remain at the Military Academy. That, I suppose, may possibly affect your security for the money which, I take it, Mr. Jordan has borrowed from you."