“Well, I didn’t know,” said the Duke smoothly. “But you can see how it would finish Merriwell. His excuses that he didn’t know what he was doing wouldn’t go, if Gunn were primed in advance to expect him.”
“Why don’t you get up a plan to beat him to pieces?” said Carson, expressing the bruiser in him. “Fix it so’s the blame’ll be on him; and then when he makes the crack you’ve planned for, sail in and jest put him to sleep. Then you’ve got your excuse ready, and what can be done about it? He was the aggressor.”
“Same old Carson,” commented the Duke, “always seeing blood. But that wouldn’t get him out of Fardale.”
“You see,” said Avery, trying to back the Duke. “Just putting him down for a few days or so wouldn’t do; he’d get over it and come back, and still be cock of the walk here; that’s what the Duke means.”
“I’ll say what I mean, Avery,” the Duke snapped. “I didn’t mean that. We simply want to get rid of the Merriwell influence at Fardale.”
Avery collapsed.
“I understand,” he said; “I beg your pardon!”
Kess hardly heard Carson’s words, he was thinking so intensely of the queer plan which the Duke had unfolded for Kadir Dhin.
“Uh-huh! Dot vos saidt for two ears more; der two ears uff der Hindu who iss pehindt me! Der Duke iss schmardt. He iss know der Hindu is in here. Idt vill gif dot Hindu—ouch, his knees iss now digging in my back!—idt vill gif him der itea uff idt. So he vill hypnotize my friendt Chip, unt all der resdt uff idt vill habben. I see I got to fighdt somepoty sooner; I got to fighdt dot Hindu who iss behint me to-night, and cabture him, unt stob der whole pitzness before idt sdarts. I am glad I haf came, unt I am vishing dot I tidn’t.”
“Another plan that has just come to me,” said the Duke, though he had thought it out earlier, “is to queer Merriwell with Gunn by getting him intoxicated. Two or three times the fellow has either been jagged or drugged—he claimed he was drugged; and if this is worked right, Gunn can be made to believe that he was drinking at those other times.