Boarding schools -- Juvenile fiction; Football stories
“There’s been a leak over at your place and some dirty work
over here. The enclosed sheet, which, as I understand it,
is supposed to be an explanation of your signals to be used
Saturday, has just come into my hands. I’m sending it to you
thinking that perhaps you will be able to find the sneak who
sent it. We had nothing to do with it here. The fellow who
obtained it did so without authorization on his own hook. I’m
sorry about it, but I guess the only thing for you to do is
to change your signals for the game. Let me know whether this
reaches you. I don’t think it has been seen by more than three
or four people here, including the fellow who received it,
our coach, and myself, and we haven’t made any study of it.
Nevertheless, you’d better protect yourself by changing your
signals before the game. We’ll look after the fellow at this
end, and I hope you’ll find the traitor at your end and give
him what he deserves. You fellows can’t say we haven’t always
played fair and you mustn’t blame us for this business. I hope
we’ll have a good day for the game and a dandy contest.
“Yours truly,
“WILLIAM L. RAYNOR.”
Davis laid down the letter and stared in bewilderment.
“Merriwell got that this morning,” said the coach. “We decided that
the best way to trace the authorship of that document was to get all
the players to make similar diagrams. There’s one peculiar thing about
that first paper, Davis. You’ll notice that Burtis――supposing he did
it, and I can’t see any reason to doubt it――labeled the positions with
small letters. See what I mean? He has written, or, rather, printed,
‘l. h. b.’ in what printers call lower case, instead of ‘L. H. B.’ in
capitals. Now, if you look through all the diagrams submitted to-night,
and every fellow handed one in, you’ll find that Burtis is the only
one who does that. Then, too, there is the evidence of the paper. Both
sheets apparently were torn from the same block. The paper is the same,
a deep buff in color. There’s one other paper there that is buff――I
think it’s Brinspool’s――but it is lighter. Now, two and two usually
make four, Davis.”
“Yes, but――but why should he do it? Why, the fellows were talking of
him for captain!”
“Too bad! It’s beyond me; I can’t see any motive. The only explanation
I can think of is that some Broadwood fellow got hold of him and fooled
him. I’m not willing to think that Burtis did this realizing what it
meant. It――it’s absolutely contrary to my conception of the boy’s
character, Davis.”
“It was Gibson!” declared Perky. “I’ll bet you anything it was that
fellow Gibson! You remember the day he came over to spy on us? We
fooled him then, and so he got back at us. But I didn’t know Burtis
knew him.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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