“Of course, I didn’t want to get anybody else into a mess. I—I wouldn’t have helped to do it if—if I could have helped myself. He—he made me, though. And the way it all happened—why, somehow, I couldn’t seem to do anything right. He—he had seen me take the book in. He just joked me a little about it at first, but afterward—after the faculty began to poke around—he came down on me like a thousand of brick. The things he’d do to me if I didn’t follow his lead! I—I’d always been sort of afraid of him, but now—well, he was different and worse—a lot worse. And then he mixed in soft soap and promises. He’d do things for me, all sorts of things. I’d be right in with the right crowd. And we’d run the school! And the way it all worked—you saw that?” He turned appealingly to Sam, who nodded. “It was queer. When the principal was asking his questions, it seemed as if all I had to do was to say as little as I could, and let everything drift. And then he got me in a corner and——”
“Oh, out with it!” said Zorn. “You’re talking about me, now. Make it plain. I got you in a corner, you say. Well, go on.”
Hagle’s voice trembled, but he obeyed. “Ed put it this way: he went light on the Trojan, and heavy on Parker and the club. He declared Sam had as good as given Trojan away, and said a lot about your crowd being yellow. And he said you had played into our hands. And he told me he could straighten everything out after a while, when we’d got what we wanted.”
There the Shark intervened. “How was he going to straighten things without showing you up?”
“I—I don’t know—I never understood.”
“No; I don’t think he did,” Zorn corroborated. “I had him bluffed. He was afraid of me. As it was, though, once or twice I had to rough him to keep him up to the mark.”
“Look here!” It was Poke’s turn to question. “Remember that day I was trying the flying machine and ended by almost running into you two? It seemed to me as if I was breaking into one of those thrashing bees.”
“I remember—and you were right,” Hagle testified. “He hadn’t trusted me altogether after I voted for Trojan at the election. But I—I just had to do that! I was mighty sorry for Trojan. And the more I thought it over, the worse I felt. Ed kept a close watch on me. He made me trail ’round with him; he made me do things with him.”
“Like starting that?” Sam asked sharply; and waved a hand at the great fire.
“No!” cried Jack and Zorn in a breath.