“I’m going to confront him with this evidence, and have him run out of college!” burst out Sid. “This ends his course!”
But Gerhart had anticipated what was coming, when he saw that the cruel telegram he had sent Phil had had no effect, and that the plucky quarter-back continued playing. He evidently knew the game was up, and fled. For, when Sid called at the fashionable eating club, where Gerhart and Langridge had recently taken a room, he found only the former ’varsity pitcher there.
“Where’s Gerhart?” asked Sid savagely.
“Gone,” said Langridge, and he began to shake. He trembled more when Sid threw down the incriminating evidence, and blurted out the story.
“It’s all true,” confessed Langridge. “Gerhart stole the telegraph blank and an envelope, while I kept the agent busy talking about some money I expected to get. Gerhart made me go in the scheme with him, but I—I couldn’t stand it, and I sent Tom the tip. I’m done with Gerhart. He faked the message to Phil and hired a boy to deliver it. I’m through with him!”
“I should think you would be!” burst out Sid, walking about the room. It was in confusion, for Gerhart had hurriedly departed. Sid’s eye saw a bottle on the closet shelf. “What’s this, Langridge?” he asked. “Why, it’s liniment! The same kind Phil had, and which stiffened my hand! How did it get here? It’s the same bottle that was broken—no, it can’t be, yet there’s the same blot on the label. How in thunder——”
Then Langridge confessed to that trick of Gerhart’s also.
“He ought to be tarred and feathered!” cried the angry Sid. “If I had him here! But you’re almost as bad, Langridge. You helped him!”