“No, sir, not exactly. He asked me when I came away to tell him about anything new that he could use. There wasn’t much, though. I explained our defence for the ‘big shift’ and told him about a lateral pass and about this ‘two-over.’ I guess that’s all, sir. I suppose I shouldn’t have done it, but it never occurred to me that there was any harm in it. You see, Mr. Driscoll, the coach at home isn’t much. He doesn’t know about new stuff, and he just pegs away at the things folks used five years ago. And the teams we play—I mean that the High School plays—are pretty up-to-date. So I tried to help the fellows by telling them about anything I learned here that might be useful. I—I guess I oughtn’t to have, though.”
“No, you ought not to have done that, Bates,” agreed the coach gravely. “You see, you never can tell where a secret is going to land. It would seem safe to say that Kenwood would pay no attention to anything going on in a place like Leonardville, away off in Pennsylvania; would never hear of it. But suppose, for instance, some fellow in your town had a friend at Kenwood and wrote him that the local high school had a pretty nifty play and sent him a diagram of it.”
“I’m pretty sure there isn’t any fellow in Leonardville, though, like that, Mr. Driscoll.”
“I’m not saying there is. I’m only giving you an example of the way secrets get around. There are other ways in which that ‘two-over’ play might reach Kenwood. A newspaper writer might explain it in an account of a game, for instance. It isn’t safe to even write about such things in your letters home, Bates. I didn’t caution you or any of the players, for I supposed you’d realise that what goes on in practice is a secret and not to be spoken of off the field. When was this letter written?”
Dick thought hard a moment. “About two weeks ago, sir.”
“And it wasn’t sent. Why?”
“I hadn’t finished when it came time to go to a recitation and I slipped it in a book and couldn’t find it later. So I wrote another. And then, a couple of days afterward, I came across this one in the book and tore it up and threw it away.”
“Where did you throw it?”
“I don’t remember, sir. I think, though, I dropped it in one of the paper barrels on the Front; maybe the one at this side of Parkinson.”