“Well, it’s the same thing, you chump! Let’s get this settled, Tucker. What do you know about it, anyway?”
“I thought I knew all about it,” replied Toby in puzzlement, “but I guess I don’t know anything. If it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t me, and Frick says it was me, and——”
“Hold up! Better begin at the beginning. I’ve heard a lot of crazy stories about it. You tell me it the way it was.”
So Toby did. And when he had finished Tubb shook his head bewilderedly. “I don’t blame you for suspecting me,” he said. “But I was over in Dudley and I can prove it by two or three fellows. And that knuckle really did get skinned just as I told you. But that doesn’t explain the business, does it? Some one else had it in for Frick and laid for him. Either Frick knows who did it or he doesn’t know. If he does know he lied to Doctor Collins, if he doesn’t know—well, he still lied perhaps, but he might have thought it was you, Tucker. Is there any other chap in school that looks like you?”
Toby shrugged. “There may be. I don’t know. I don’t suppose I know just what I look like, for that matter. I guess there are other fellows with—with hair like mine, though. That won’t get us anywhere.”
“No, I guess not. Look here, why not go to Frick and put it up to him? Both of us, I mean. I don’t believe he’d dare lie if we were both there.”
“Why not? He lied, if he did lie, when Doctor Collins and I were there. Oh, there’s no use bothering, I guess. Let’s drop it. I’m sort of glad, though, that it wasn’t you, Tubb.”
“Well, yes, but if you thought it was me why didn’t you tell the Doctor so? Why did you let him sock it to you the way he did?”
“Oh, what was the use? You’d have got probation and lost the team, and you’re too good a player to lose.”