“Tell the truth,” interrupted Osgood, reaching out and putting his hand on the other boy’s knee. “We haven’t been even friendly, although you seemed willing enough to be, and I’ve put up a bluff that I was. All the same, you didn’t trust me. You knew I was bluffing.”
“I—I don’t think—that I—actually knew it,” stammered Nelson, still more astonished.
Osgood threw back his head and smiled. The moonlight, full on his rather handsome, aristocratic face, showed that smile to be touched with bitterness, even with self-scorn.
“I’m a bluffer, Nelson—a thoroughbred bluffer,” he declared. “Intuition told you as much. All along I knew you were one fellow in Oakdale that I had not fully blinded. Piper, with all his natural shrewdness—and we’ll admit that he’s naturally shrewd—was deceived in me.”
“What are you talking about, Osgood?” exclaimed Jack. “Why are you telling me this stuff, anyhow?”
“I don’t know just why, but I’m telling it to relieve my mind. Perhaps it will relieve me in a measure, anyhow. I had no thought in the world of talking to you this way when we paused here a few moments ago, but suddenly an irresistible impulse came upon me. Something seemed to say, ‘You may as well tell him, for he sees through you, anyhow.’ Do you know, Nelson, I’ve hated you. Yes, that’s the word. I hated you because I couldn’t deceive you, and that’s why I longed to do something to hurt you.”
“You what? Of course I know I benched you in that Wyndham game, but I had——”
“You should have benched me before,” exclaimed Osgood. “You should have fired me from the nine.”
“Fired you? Why, you were one of our best players. You really knew more baseball than any one else on the team. You were valuable.”
“Even if I could play better baseball than Hans Wagner himself, I was a bad man to have on the team, for I was trying to create insubordination, distrust and a disbelief in your ability as captain.”