"Dad will think I'm making the wires hot," he mused, as the taxicab careened along, "but I guess I'd better keep him informed right up to date. That Mr. Porter means business, if I'm any judge. Probably he has a syndicate of rich men back of him, and they are trying to get control of father's interests. But we'll put a stop to that if possible.
"What a cad that Porter fellow is, with his billiard shots, and his cigarettes! I could have beaten him easily, if I'd wanted to, but if I had he might have turned sulky, and wouldn't have talked so much. As it is I've gotten some good information out of him."
Dick leaned back on the cushions and let his thoughts wander free. As he had said, there were two big problems ahead of him. He wanted to see the cadet football team triumph on the gridiron, and he wanted to help his father get ahead of his enemies.
Both matters were important to Dick, for he realized that his father's interests, being now so much bound up in the trolley line, would suffer seriously if antagonists got in control.
As for football, our hero, who was one of the best members of the team, wanted to see his eleven at the head of the Military League.
And, for several seasons past Kentfield had been the tail-ender, and practically out of the league. True, they had won some games, and big ones, too, but it was more like a sudden spurt, and then the cadets seemed to go "stale," and played in such poor form that inferior teams beat them.
"It's got to stop," said Dick to himself. "We've got to win, and if I can put my plan through, and I don't see why I can't, we'll be at the top of the heap pretty soon. That is if the fellows will work. And they've got to! By Jove I'm not going to stay at a college where a little dinky team like the one from Blue Hill, can put it all over us, and write such letters as Beeby got to-day.
"Poor Beeby! He felt it a heap. It was like the time when we were marooned on that island, and he managed to snap-shot a lot of birds, and came in to tell us about them. We thought he meant he had killed them for dinner. Oh, that was a time all right!" and Dick fell to thinking of the adventures he had gone through when he was taking the first voyage in his steam yacht.
The taxicab came to a sudden stop. The young millionaire looked out, and through the rain he saw the telegraph office.
"I guess the man will think I'm running a regular brokerage business," he reflected as he alighted and went in. He sent a message to his father, telling what he had heard from Porter during the billiard game, and warning Mr. Hamilton to be on the watch for treachery.