“I g-g-get you now, Dick,” he said, pocketing his blank-book. “You l-l-leave it to m-m-me! I thought of a dandy play this morning in church, but I’ve got to work it out. I’ll show it to you to-morrow. Talk about deceptiveness! Gee, this is a c-c-corker.”
“That’s fine,” said Dick, with a smile for Fudge’s confidence. “What’s it like?”
But Fudge refused to divulge any information regarding it, taking himself off with renewed requests for Dick to leave it to him! Which Dick, having lost faith in Fudge’s ability as a football tactician, was perfectly willing to do.
Tuesday morning the Clearfield paper made a startling assertion. “In practice yesterday,” it said, “Morris Brent, High School’s phenomenal goal-kicker, made what is probably a record hereabouts. Brent put over seventeen goals from twenty tries, most of them from difficult angles. If more than half of Clearfield’s total against Springdale is not made by this player’s clever right foot we lose our guess.”
“Now where in the name of common sense,” gasped Dick, “did they get that tale?” Lanny, when Dick repeated the question to him, laughed.
“That’s some of Chester’s nonsense,” he said. “Billings—he does the High School news for the paper, you know—met Chester after practice yesterday and tried to work him for news. Chester told him he wasn’t allowed to say anything of what went on at practice. ‘But,’ says Chester, ‘you’re a fellow who’s seen a lot of football, Billings, and I want to ask you one thing. Did you ever know of any drop-kicker putting over seventeen out of twenty, and from hard angles?’ Of course Billings said he hadn’t and wanted to know all about it. But Chester wouldn’t talk, begged Billings not to use what he had told him, or, if he must use it, not to tell where he’d got it, and then beat it. So that’s how that happened.”
Dick smiled and frowned. Finally he laughed. “Well, that’s what I’d call a near-lie, Lanny. Still, it is funny! And it won’t do us any harm, either. I hope the Springdale paper copies it.”
It did, the next morning. It not only copied it but it enlarged on it and declared that five of the successful attempts had been made from the forty-yard line! Chester was vastly amused over the success of what he termed his diplomacy, but Morris, oddly enough, was as mad as a hatter about it.
“It makes me look like a fool,” he declared. “Anyone knows you couldn’t drop five goals over from the forty in twenty tries! Who started that yarn?”