“Yes, sort of. He scouts for them, I guess. Anyway, I heard they caught him snooping around the grounds of Chancellor last year and mighty near tore his shirt off. Kenwood has a fine old spy system, Foster, but it never gets her anywhere except back home!”
Myron set the pace for the rest on the way back, his thoughts appearing to affect his feet. It was still only a little after a quarter past one and they were not due at the gymnasium until two. In that scant three-quarters of an hour, reflected Myron sickeningly, he must find Coach Driscoll and make his humiliating confession. Whether he had given Millard, or Cooke, enough information to affect the game, Myron didn’t know, but he did know that the manly and honest thing to do was to tell the coach all about it and let him decide that question. That Mr. Driscoll would let him play on the team after his confession had been made was highly improbable, but there was no help for that. In front of Parkinson Hall he made some sort of confused excuse to the others and hurried away.
[CHAPTER XXVI]
BEHIND THE STAND
“You mean to tell me,” said Coach Driscoll incredulously, “that you talked about the team to a perfect stranger, Foster, to a fellow met on a station platform?”
“Not so much the first time, sir,” answered Myron miserably. “It was when he came here. He didn’t seem like a stranger then, and I thought he was what he said he was.”
“You did, eh? Why, he has prep school written all over him! I simply can’t understand it, Foster!” The coach looked helplessly to Jud Mellen and from Jud to Farnsworth and Chas and Katie. Myron had run Mr. Driscoll to earth at last in the gymnasium, in consultation with the trainer, and now they were in the little office of Mr. Tasser, the physical director. The others had been summoned from the locker room downstairs, being the only players then in the building. Having produced them, Billy Goode had discreetly closed the door behind them and retired to the entrance, where Myron could see him now through the glass partition, his purple and white sweater radiant in the sunlight that flooded through the doorway. Myron rather preferred looking at Billy to meeting the accusing gaze of the coach. He was not having a very happy time of it.
“Cooke’s crafty,” offered Katie. “I guess he could easily make you believe he was a travelling salesman if he wanted to try, and you didn’t know him.”
Chas nodded, scowling, but the coach said impatiently: “What of it? Even if Foster thought he was that, he shouldn’t have talked. A travelling man is the last person on earth to tell secrets to! Didn’t it even occur to you, Foster, that the fellow might repeat what you said?”