“No, sir!” gasped Toby. “Only—only I guess you’d better not try to use me, Mr. Lyle, because I don’t know the signals very well.”
“Do you know them at all?”
“Yes, sir, a little. I room with Deering, and he’s coached me some so I could sort of coach him.”
“Get Curran to go through them with you. I’ll speak to him. If you’ll get them pat between now and the last half, Tucker, I’ll see that you get your letter. Now get some food into you.”
Toby seized on as many sandwiches as one hand would hold and poured out a glass of milk. Then he made his way around the table to Tubb. “What happened?” he whispered.
Tubb grinned. “Thought you’d be over here to ask pretty soon! I’ll tell you all about it, Tucker. Wait till I get another hunk of cake. Cake’s pretty good stuff when you’ve been off it a month or so! Guess this sort won’t hurt you if you eat a loaf of it! Now, then. Remember telling me that Frick——” Tubb lowered his voice and glanced about him, edging further from the throng. “Remember telling me that Frick had a row with some of the town boys one night a long while ago?”
Toby nodded. “Arnold told me about it,” he said.
“Well. Then do you remember telling me about a red-headed chap who punched you in the face the day the Second played Greenburg?”
Toby began to see light. “You mean he was the one who——”
“Sure! All I did was put two and two together. Then, last night, I risked being caught out of bounds and hunted the guy up. It wasn’t hard. The first loafer in Greenburg I asked recognized the description and sent me to a pool parlor. He was there all right and I got him to come outside and talk. He was willing to talk, too. Seems that he and two or three others got into a scrap with about the same number of our fellows one evening just across the bridge and he and Frick sort of took to each other and were having a merry scrap until Frick pulled something hard from a pocket and cut this chap’s scalp open. Sheehan—that’s the guy’s name—says he thinks Frick used a bunch of keys or something like that. He doesn’t think it was a knife, anyway. Our fellows got away—or the others did, and that ended it. Sheehan says it was a nice little scrap, only Frick shouldn’t have sprung the ‘rough stuff’! So he got sore and decided he’d lay for Frick and get even. Says he tried three or four times, but each time he saw Frick there were fellows with him. But the other night he found him and got him!”