“The one that blew in at Adams’s the other day and offered to sell state secrets. Harrigan or Cullinan or Hooligan—I don’t remember his name.” The look of disgust on Harrison’s face showed that he understood. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of him since.” “I wonder if Jason wrote him,” mused Wilmot. “You ought to have given me the job, Harry. I’d have done it in slick style.” Harrison shook his head. “It would be taking too much notice of him. Jason came up next day and acknowledged that it was all wrong. I don’t think he did anything more about it.” “Jason doesn’t know right from wrong, anyway,” observed Wilmot. “You could say that of some others I know,” interposed Talbot, with a significant emphasis. Wilmot, however, showed no curiosity to learn who these others might be. “Why can’t you get the other fellows’ signals right in the game?” he proposed, suddenly alert. “Four-eleven-forty-four!—right half-back outside left tackle. Two-eleven-twenty-three-six-million-and-six!—right half-back crawls between centre’s legs. Deduction: right half-back is eleven. Keep this up through the game, and you’ll have the whole system. You win by mental superiority—solve cryptograms on the run. Sherlock Holmes applied to football!” Talbot smiled with complacent contempt. “That shows how much you know about football. You’re in the class with the person who wrote a football story that I read once in a weekly paper. The two elevens played the game, and after it was over and the one team had beaten the other, it was discovered that some one on the winning team had broken training before the game. The winners, therefore, forfeited the game to the losers.” “No, seriously,” insisted Wilmot, “why couldn’t it be done?” “Because it takes all your attention to play your game,” said Pete. “You can’t be puzzling out conundrums when you’re watching with all your soul to see the ball move. I suppose you’d have us call time to rub a leg, and sit down with a pencil and figure the thing out.” “No, not that, but I should think a few of the old hands like you and Harry and Jimmy Eaton, and quick wits like McDowell—” “McDowell stands ’way back on the defence, you idiot!” interrupted Pete. “He can’t even hear the other team’s signals!” “Like somebody else, then,” continued Wilmot, unabashed by the compliment. “I should think a few fellows might each get a hint, and then all together would have enough to amount to something. What do you say, Harry?” “It’s possible, but not worth while,” answered Harrison. “You’d lose in trying to do it more than you could gain by anything you could find out. The best way is to play a hard, safe game and be ready for whatever happens along. Come on, I want to go to bed!”