“This seemed to strike Tileson as a grand thought, and so I went right along with my remarks. ‘Of course,’ says I, ‘I’ll be handicapped by not knowing the country, but I’m reasonably certain that I can start out from this club with two minutes lee-way, and lead you a chase for forty-five minutes, without being caught. I’ll carry a basketful of paper, and drop a handful of it, every twenty yards, as long as it lasts. I’ll also agree not to enter any house or building during that three-quarters of an hour; my time shall be entirely devoted to going cross-country. Moreover, after leaving the club, and making one turn, I’ll lay my course in a crow-line—I mean, as the bee flies—for a distance of at least a half-mile, thereby giving you a chance to run me down by a straightaway sprint. Now, what do you say?’
“‘It’s a go!’ says Tileson, gobbling down the bait, without a thought for any hook that might be hidden inside it. ‘Well,’ says I; ‘that’s all I wanted to know. Now I’ll just slide over to the hotel, and shift out of these togs. I’m not going to travel cross-country in a brand-new dress uniform. Can’t afford it. I shall have to insist on entering for the event in citizen’s dress. I’ll be back in a minute, and we’ll draw up final articles.’
“Naturally, Tileson claimed the same privilege, and made a break for home, to change his outfit; while I tooled across to the hotel, to look after a few arrangements of my own. First, I rushed up to my room, stripped off my full-dress, and packed it into my travelling bag, strapping my overcoat on the outside, with my sword snugly tucked underneath it. Then I went down to the office, explained that I had made other plans for the night, paid my bill, and asked for the night porter. I bought him outright with a shining half-dollar, took him into a corner, and carefully coached him in the part I’d laid out for him to play in my programme. Furthermore, I grabbed a sheet of paper, and wrote out exactly what I wished him to do, so that there could be no possible slip-up. And then, having given him my bag and his written orders, I went back to the club.
“I got there just before Tileson. When he came in, the fellows sent up a yell that opened great cracks in the plastering, for he appeared in the most marvellous get-up that ever was seen outside of comic opera. I hadn’t believed it, but it seems that, in his day, he really used to be something of an amateur athlete. Well, he’d gone down into his old-clothes box, and had fished out all the sporty duds that he could lay hand to: and there he stood, after he’d thrown off his ulster, in a pair of spiked running shoes, his legs bare to the knee, a pair of white flannel knickerbockers coming next, a striped sweater a-top of that, and a faded old rowing cap crowning the whole crazy-quilt combination. It was very obvious that he hadn’t appeared in his nondescript regalia for some time previously, for the billiard-room reeked like an apothecary shop with the odor of camphor.
“Wasn’t he a gaudy object! I had to sit down to laugh, and it really was quite a time before I got into shape enough to put in a protest against his turning up in such light marching order as that. But it was no use. He maintained that his rig was citizen’s dress and nothing else, and the rest of the fellows backed him up in his claim. So I gracefully yielded the point. ‘If this isn’t citizen’s dress, what is it?’ says he. He certainly had me there.
“By this time the excitement in that club was quoted at a high figure. It was after two o’clock in the morning, and the men were beginning to drop in from the ball in squads. At least a dozen of The Fourth’s officers were there, besides a lot from out of town. All the odds were on Tileson—nobody had the nerve to bet against that fearful and wonderful rig of his.
“Well, we sent a select committee into the reading-room, and set them at work tearing up the old papers on the files for the ‘scent’ that was to be left along my trail. And they worked with a will, until they’d filled a waste-basket heaping full. Then we selected judges, and umpires, and referees, and time-keepers, until about everybody in the place had some office or other. And all the while I kept one eye on the clock that stood in the corner of the billiard-room. It was an old-fashioned, tall clock, and I’d noted the fact that it was eleven minutes slow. This, I’ll state, made it necessary for me to perform some wonderful problems in mental arithmetic; and trying to figure, in the midst of the row that was going on up there, wasn’t any intellectual picnic. I managed it, though.
“Now, the billiard-room was at the rear, and in the third story, of the club-house, and we’d agreed that the start should be made from it. This, of course, was because I didn’t care to have anybody know just what I was up to during the first two minutes of the race. I also had stipulated that Tileson and all hands should stay in that room until my time-limit had expired. Well, when the venerable clock alleged that it was two-thirty-nine, I tucked the waste-paper basket under my arm, shook hands with Tileson, and got on my marks at the head of the stairway. ‘Start me at two-forty,’ says I, scooping up a fistful of paper, and nodding up towards the clock. ‘’Tention!’ sang out Major Brayton, whom we’d made head time-keeper. ‘By the numbers: one—two—go!’ And at that I pitched a bunch of torn paper up into the air, so that Tileson wouldn’t have any trouble in finding where my trail began, and then bundled myself down those stairs like a thousand of brick.
“But as soon as I landed on the sidewalk, I took it more easily; for two minutes’ start was ample for my requirements. I lighted a cigar, and then headed down the street at an ordinary gait, conscientiously dropping paper at every twenty yards. You may bet that I didn’t run: I wasn’t planning to have any country policeman scoop me in for a suspicious character. Wherein I displayed great brain-power.
“Now, the club up there, you’ll remember, is located on the main street of the town. Very likely you’ll remember also that the railway station lies only about a hundred yards down the street from the club-house. Furthermore, the tracks of the railway run across that street at grade, in the comfortably reckless way that they have in towns of that size. Well, now you have the whole situation, and you can see, of course, what my plan of campaign was like.