So Dick told and Stanley snapped his fingers in triumph. “Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face, Dick!” he exclaimed. “Either Sandy came across that piece of paper by accident or he saw you tear the letter up and pulled it out after you’d gone on. Then, yesterday, he fixed up that envelope to look as if it belonged with the letter! You didn’t ask Mr. Driscoll when he got them, did you? Well, I’ll wager it was last night after you’d thrown Sandy down or early this morning. It’s a mean thing to say, Dickie, but the thing’s just the sort of low-down plot that Sandy would take to. Shows ingenuity, too, and Sandy’s no fool if he is a villain! Why don’t you put it up to Driscoll straight! Tell him you know who supplied the incriminating evidence and tell him the whole yarn.”
“But I can’t prove anything, Stan.”
“What of it? You can show that Sandy has a grouch and Driscoll’s got sense enough to see that the whole thing’s a frame-up.”
“I might go to Sandy and make him tell the truth,” said Dick.
“How? He’d deny it, of course. Well, after all, it’s no great matter. Driscoll doesn’t believe it and when your Leonardville chum gets here he can clear the whole thing up. Best thing to do is forget it. It’s rather a sell on Sandy, though, for I guess he expected Driscoll would fire you off the team!”
“Somehow, I sort of think that’s what he meant to do when I first went in there.”
“You can bet he didn’t want to, Dick! He’d have done it, though, in a minute, if he hadn’t believed your story! Say, if I was you I’d take a crack at Sandy, just for luck, the first time I met him!”
But Dick didn’t do that. For one reason, he didn’t see Sandy that day or the next. He might have found him, but Dick concluded that his hold on the position of substitute quarter-back was uncertain enough at present without taking any chances! And so long as Sumner was coming to clear up the mystery he could afford to keep the peace.
That Thursday evening Dick and Stanley went over to Goss to call on Blash and Sid. It was raining great guns and an easterly gale was howling around the corner as they set forth and, in violation of a school ordinance, cut across over the turf and under the dripping branches of the bare lindens. Both Blash and Sid were home and hailed the arrival of visitors with loud acclaim. Blash pulled the “larder,” as he called it, from under the window-seat and produced sweet crackers and the remains of a pineapple cheese and Sid disappeared down the corridor and presently returned with three bottles of some sweetly sickish concoction called Raspberry Squash. It was a quarter of an hour later, after the last bit of cheese had disappeared that Dick, idly prospecting among a pile of magazines and papers—many of them moving picture monthlies—happened on something that brought an exclamation of surprise to his lips. The others, busy in talk, neither heard nor noted and Dick drew from concealment a copy of the Leonardville Sentinel, opened with the third page uppermost. “Leonardville is Proud of Him,” read Dick. He didn’t go on, for he remembered the rest of it perfectly. Instead, he laid the paper down and thoughtfully stared across at Blash, who was too enthralled in the conversation to heed. Dick kept silence for a good five minutes. Then, to the astonishment of the others, he broke in rudely and abruptly.