“This has just come, Trevor,” he said.
“All right. Put it down.”
The fag left the room. Trevor picked up the letter. The handwriting was strange to him. The words had been printed. Then it flashed upon him that he had received a letter once before addressed in the same way—the letter from the League about Barry. Was this, too, from that address? He opened it.
It was.
He read it, and gasped. The worst had happened. The gold bat was in the hands of the enemy.
XIII
VICTIM NUMBER THREE
“With reference to our last communication,” ran the letter—the writer evidently believed in the commercial style—“it may interest you to know that the bat you lost by the statue on the night of the 26th of January has come into our possession. We observe that Barry is still playing for the first fifteen.”
“And will jolly well continue to,” muttered Trevor, crumpling the paper viciously into a ball.
He went on writing the names for the Ripton match. The last name on the list was Barry’s.