It was Bloss’ throw-in, and Felber, left guard, picked it up. Captain Murphy called a quick signal, dodged under the arm of the player who was covering him, and took the throw in the extreme left-hand corner of the court, in Landon territory. The other three players shifted to the boundary lines. Vernon Judd, dodging free, sped down the middle of the unprotected court.
Hazel Wayne watched him with fascinated eyes. She knew the play; it was the old crisscross forward pass. Why didn’t the Landon boys cover Vern? Must he assume the entire responsibility for the failure at the end? For she told herself positively that he would fail, that he had done all they might reasonably expect of him.
Murphy threw, gauging ball and player to a nicety. Ten feet beyond the center Vern caught it while running at full speed. Then, with a single bewildering movement, he lifted it high above his head and shot another basket with clean precision.
The score was now: Bloss, 4; Landon, 0. The Bloss adherents raised the rafters with their mad cheering. In the little balcony at the other end, Hazel Wayne leaned back with clenched hands.
“He doesn’t care enough for me to do what I asked,” she told herself bitterly; and she forced herself to smile and nod when the girl at her right expressed the hope that something would happen to Vern Judd before the game was done. She wished something would—almost! Not a serious hurt, of course, but——
By the time the ball was in play again, the Landon team seemed to have found itself. It reasoned rightly that if the other four Bloss players were to act as “feeders” to Judd, counting on him to shoot the baskets, the thing to do was to corner and pocket and guard him so closely that he would have no opportunity for unhampered throwing. So effectively did they carry out this campaign that for ten minutes or more he was hopelessly entangled in the mesh of opposing players.
They went farther. The Bloss star now began to bear the brunt of every attack. His arm was hacked on throws. He was tripped and fouled in all the artistic ways that could escape the eyes of the official. Twice he went to the floor with a crash, and once he was tumbled headfirst out of bounds.
But Hazel Wayne, watching the game with the eye of an expert, dared hope there was another reason for Vernon Judd’s sudden eclipse. And when the Bloss rooters began to move uneasily as he failed to score goals, and shrunk back when he should have charged, and submitted tamely to an opponent’s making a pass when he should have scrimmaged for a toss-up, she grew more and more convinced that he was no longer doing his best.
A little later, the referee caught a Landon player fouling him, and Vern took the ball for a free throw. Poising it carefully, he shot it high in the air, a good five feet to one side of the basket. The Bloss sympathizers, mouths open to cheer the scoring point, allowed them to close with dumb amazement. It wasn’t even a good try.
“Now watch us!” bragged the girl by Hazel’s side. “I heard this afternoon that Vern Judd had sold out, and I guess he has.”