“We are all villains together, eh?” he commented.
“The sympathy stunt is being worked hard for Kadir Dhin,” Clan reported. “You accused him of trying to kidnap Rose Maitland, and flattened him out on the ice, and you repeated the accusation to Colonel Gunn when you got her to Gunn’s house. On top of that, Kess and I tried to make the officers down at Carsonville believe that Kadir Dhin had found you in a faint in your room in the barracks, and had put you in that trunk. I guess we went too fast in that, and there’s where the trouble begins; we couldn’t make the officers believe Kadir Dhin would put you in a trunk that could be so easily identified as his. So when Gunn came down and strung his talk about the soldier Hindu, our idea was canned, and Kadir Dhin was released, with an apology.
“And now Gunn is looking black at us, Rose Maitland is looking blacker, and every enemy you ever had seems to have come to life, and is working against you. Their leader seems to be Duke Basil, and I guess you know what that means.”
Chip knew well enough.
The previous year, Anselm Basil, familiarly known as the Duke, had come over with a number of fellows from Brightwood and entered Fardale, having discovered that it was the better school. The Duke had been the athletic leader at Brightwood, and had no notion of playing second fiddle to any one even at Fardale.
Duke Basil was an original genius. Not because he was rich, and a spendthrift, for many boys and young men are that; but because, with all his assumptions and airs and extravagances, he had athletic ability and brains of a high order, and had so many good qualities with the bad ones.
That Chip and Basil should clash, was a thing not to be avoided. Basil had declared to his friends that he intended to be the leader at Fardale, and that there could be but one. He had not made his boasts good. So the clash was renewed at the beginning of the present school year, yet so far with no very creditable results or decided victories to his account.
Now he believed he had found new leverage. In the first place, it seemed that Colonel Gunn’s good opinion of Chip and his friends had been alienated; which meant that the iron rules of the academy would be made to bear hard on them; and could be worked to their disadvantage. Kadir Dhin, the colonel’s protégé, had been made the implacable enemy of Chip and his crowd. And Bully Carson, a foe not to be despised, even though he was not in the academy, had all his old animosities re-aroused.
Clancy and Kess tried to set these things forth, as they made their way with Chip over the snowy roads from the station to the academy grounds, having preferred walking to riding in the usual “hack,” that they might talk matters over.
Chip Merriwell was thinking of how these things would influence his relations with Rose Maitland, rather than viewing them from the standpoint of his friends. He was hoping that Colonel Gunn’s adverse opinions were not affecting her, even though she were a member of his household, and Kadir Dhin had been her father’s friend and secretary.