"I'm all right," replied Perry; "a little bit dizzy, that's all. King fouled me! Did you see him as we started down the stretch?"
"Listen to that!" snorted Chub fiercely. "Some of your gang played a low-down trick on Matt, Dace Perry, or he wouldn't have got in your way."
"Tut, tut!" growled the major; "that's enough of that sort of talk. It was an accident, and nothing more. King would have been an easy winner, and there wasn't any cause for him to foul Perry. You boys are lucky to get out of the scrape as well as you did. How are the wheels?"
"Perry's is pretty badly smashed," reported some one who had taken a little time to look at the two bicycles, "but Tuohy's will be all right with a little tinkering. There's a hole in the rear tire, and the track is perfectly clean where the bicycles came together."
The significance of these words was not lost upon the crowd. Major Woolford turned to Horton and Coggswell, two members of the club who were making the race with Matt and Perry.
"You fellows were coming toward the lower end of the grand stand when the accident happened," said he; "did you see any one there?"
"We were 'tending to our knitting strictly," answered Coggswell, "and had no time to look at the grand stand. But we both thought we heard the report of a revolver."
"You didn't, though," declared the major. "That report was the tire when it let go. You'd better try another brand of tires, Tuohy."
As neither of the lads had been seriously injured it became necessary that another trial be made in order to determine who was the better man; and this time Matt started with grim determination in his eye, never once being headed, so that he wheeled across the line ten yards ahead of Dace.
This time there was no suspicious bursting of a tire, and at the conclusion the major spoke up: