CHAPTER XXI.
BENTLEY TELLS HOW IT HAPPENED.
Don’s first feeling was one of annoyance and anger, and he was about to sharply command the fellow to go away when he suddenly changed his mind.
Leon could tell him all about the game, and there was nothing he then desired to know quite as much as the full particulars of the contest that had resulted in a victory for the Highlanders.
“I’ll let him in and find out all about it,” he decided, as Bentley nodded and beckoned. Then he motioned for the boy outside to come round to the front door, at which he admitted him a few moments later.
“Where’s the old gent?” asked Leon, with an assumed air of carelessness. “I was slipping round to throw some pebbles up against your window, in which I saw a light, when I happened to notice you in here.”
“Father is out,” said Don, somewhat gruffly. “He won’t be back before ten. Come into the office.”
Leon followed with a swaggering air, and Don closed the door when they were in the room.
“So aunt won’t hear us talking,” he explained. “What do you want, anyhow?”
“Oh, I just came round to tell you,” chuckled Leon, coolly appropriating the office chair in front of the desk, where Don had been sitting. “It would have done you good to see that game to-day. Oh, my! but it was a slaughter!”
“Rockspur was beaten?” said Don, trying to repress a show of eagerness and great interest, but betraying his exultant satisfaction in his gleaming eyes.
“Beaten! I should guess yes. Rockspur wasn’t in it for a minute. It was a walk-over for Highland.”
“What was the score?”
“Thirty-three to nine. How does that suit you? Isn’t that a beautiful record for Sterndale’s champs? Oh, but Sterndale is sick!”
“What did you do?” demanded Scott, sharply. “Did you do anything crooked to help lose the game?”
“Didn’t have to, my boy,” snickered Bentley. “It was a cinch for Highland from the start, and you can bet I did my prettiest to make a good record, for I knew the eyes of several fair maidens from Rockspur were upon me. I made our only touchdown.”
“You did?” cried Don, with incredulous emphasis on the pronoun.
“Sure thing,” nodded Leon. “Oh, I’m one of the heroes of the day! We didn’t get a goal off that touch, either. It was in the first half, and the wind was against Sterndale when he kicked, so we got only four points for the touch.”
“Then the other five must have been a goal kicked from the field?”
“It was. Sterndale found in the last half that he could not get the ball nearer than the fifteen-yard line to save his soul, and so, in order to make the score look somewhat more respectable, he took chances on getting a goal from the field, and made it with as pretty a drop-kick as ever you saw. But it was all chance,” Leon hastily added, “for he failed once before that and once afterward. All of Renwood’s coaching hasn’t shown him how to kick.”
“How did Highland make their points?”
“Oh, just piled ’em right up. They had a touchdown and goal in less than three minutes after play began. They made four touchdowns in the first half, but failed to get goals off two of them.”
“That was twenty of their thirty-three points. Then Rockspur must have done better in the second half?”
“She did, rather,” nodded Leon. “Why, we even had to give Highland two points by making a safety in order to hold the ball one time in the first half. That gave them twenty-two points out of the thirty-three.”
“Then, in the second half, they made only eleven points to Rockspur’s five.”
“But they had the advantage and they just fooled with us. They were playing against the wind, too, same as we were in the first half. But, you see, we couldn’t do anything, even though we had the wind with us. Oh, this game has shown up Renwood’s coaching in great style!”
“What did Renwood do?”
“Nothing at all that helped us any. Why, he actually blocked Smith once and spoiled a run that might have meant a touchdown. That was early in the game, when we had the ball after Highland’s first goal. Of course, it seemed like an accident that Renwood jumped square in front of Smith, but I know it was nothing of the kind. After that, when Highland had made a good lead, it wasn’t necessary for him to spoil any of our plays, for he saw we weren’t in the game, anyhow.”
“Then you think it was his intention to throw the game, in case it was close and he found an opportunity?”
“I don’t think anything about it, I know it!” declared Bentley, as he produced a package of cigarettes and prepared to smoke.
“Hold on!” came sharply from Don; “you can’t do that in here.”
“Eh? Why not?”
“Father would smell the smoke. Put them up.”
“But I’m dying for a whiff.”
“You’ll have to die or go outside. I’m not fooling. I won’t have one of those things lighted in here.”
So Leon was compelled to reluctantly abandon the intended smoke, although he did so grumblingly.
“What makes you so positive that Renwood meant to throw the game?” asked Don, with mingled eagerness and doubt. “He couldn’t do such a thing all by himself.”
“Not unless it happened to be close and he found a good chance. But I know that’s what he’d done, just the same.”
“How do you know it?”
“Oh, I have a way of keeping my eyes and ears open,” wisely asserted Leon, piling his feet upon the doctor’s desk in the midst of the papers.
“Then you saw something?—you heard something?”
“I should say I did.”
It was impossible for Don to repress his eagerness. Leon’s free-and-easy manner annoyed him, but he greatly wished to know just what the fellow had seen and heard that made him so absolutely positive of Renwood’s treachery.
Don forgot for the time, at least, that only a few days before he had told Leon that he wished to have nothing further to do with a fellow of his sort. Having again admitted the foxy young rascal to his home, having apparently accepted him once more as a friend, his greatest desire seemed to be to learn the full extent of the accusation Bentley could make against Renwood.
Leon saw this. At first he had been somewhat surprised by Don’s readiness to take him back on the old footing without a show of continued resentment and anger, and he had anticipated that he would have to whet Scott’s appetite by hinting at the queer things he could tell him about the game at Highland. Already devoured by curiosity and a longing to know the full particulars of the affair, Don had welcomed Leon almost with open arms, and Bentley believed friendly relations between them had been re-established.
“What did you see and hear?” breathed the doctor’s son. “Tell me all about it.”
“Well, just as soon as we arrived in Highland, I left the others and hustled right up to the field where we were to play. Renwood, with his sister and Dora Deland, had passed us on the road, and he was in Highland when we got there. I got to the field ahead of the others, and there was Renwood talking with Winston, the Harvard man, who has been coaching the Highlanders.”
“What of that?”
“They had their heads close together,” Bentley went on, “and they were talking low. They didn’t see me, and I just walked past them, stepping soft. I heard something.”
“Yes!” panted Don. “What did you hear?”
“I heard Winston say: ‘It means a heap to me if Highland wins, and you don’t care a rap if Rockspur loses.’ Renwood answered: ‘Not a rap,’ and he laughed.”
“The sneak! the traitor!” cried Don, springing to his feet. “Did you hear anything more?”
“Yes. Winston said: ‘These country yokels of mine can’t kick much, and the centre of the line is weak. Just get your captain to let the centre alone. Keep him trying to go round the ends. Where is your weak point?’”
“Did Renwood tell him?” demanded Scott, clutching his companion fiercely by the shoulder.
“Ouch!” exclaimed Leon, with a squirm. “I hurt that to-day! Don’t! Yes, he told him all about it.”
“What did he tell?”
“He said: ‘Our right end is weak, and the backs can’t catch punts for a cent. As you say your men can’t kick, you’ll have to keep hammering at our right end.’”
“Is that all?” panted Don.
“Oh, Winston said: ‘Much obliged, old man; I won’t forget it.’ And Renwood returned: ‘That’s all right; I haven’t forgotten what you did for me once.’ That was all.”
“It was enough!” Don snarled, driving his clenched right fist into the open palm of his left hand with a cracking smack. “I’m beginning to see through that dirty dog Renwood! At first I didn’t understand why he should do anything to damage the team with which he was playing, but now it’s plain enough that Winston has done him some favor that he is trying to return in this treacherous manner. And Sterndale thinks more of him than of me! Did you tell Sterndale about this?”
“I tried to, but he wouldn’t hear a word against Renwood, and told me I’d better keep still. I saw it was no use, and so I closed up.”
“He’s a fool!” raved Scott. “I’d like to tell him so!”
“That wouldn’t do any good. The only way to convince him is to show Renwood up so he can’t get around it.”
“How can that be done?”
“I don’t know now,” admitted Leon; “but I may find a way.”
He had picked up Dr. Scott’s check-book and was coolly looking it over, which, being in an excited condition, Don did not observe for some time. When he did become aware what Leon was doing, after storming about a while, he exclaimed:
“Put that down! What are you handling that for?”
“Oh, I just happened to pick it up by accident,” said the visitor, tossing it back on the desk.
“Don’t be so free with your hands!” advised the doctor’s son.
“Don’t get so excited,” calmly retorted Leon, fishing into the waste-paper basket and pulling out a sheet of paper on which there was some writing. “Say, your old man’s scrawl is rather queer, ain’t it? But I guess I hit his style all right in that note I faked up for you to carry to old Alden, didn’t I?”
“That was all right,” admitted Don, shortly, not fancying the reference to that matter; “but you won’t have to write any more for me.”
“You never can tell, my boy,” chirped Bentley. “Say, these are odd pens your dad uses. I rather like them, and I think I’ll just take one to try it.” Whereupon he calmly slipped one of the pens into his vest pocket.
For some time the boys talked over the football game and Renwood’s treachery, as charged by Bentley. Finally, Don said:
“You’d better be getting out, Bent; father’s liable to come pretty soon.”
“Well, I don’t care about being seen by him,” grinned Leon. “I know he doesn’t love me a great deal for some reason or other.”
He arose to go. Neither of the boys had heard the sound of wheels outside, being absorbed in their talk about Renwood and the game, and now both were startled by a footfall beyond the door.
“It’s aunt!” breathed Don.
But it was not. The door opened, and Dr. Scott stood before them.