Chapter 4. The Traitor Gets His Deserts

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_ CHAPTER IV. The Traitor Gets His Deserts

Mr. Morton hesitated a moment, ere he trusted himself to speak.

"Yes," he murmured. "I fear we all suspect the same young man."

"Phin Drayne!" cried Dave, in a voice quivering with anger.

"I didn't intend to name him," resumed the coach. "It's a serious thing to do."

"To sell out one's school---I should say 'yes'!" choked Darrin.

"No; I meant that it is a fearful thing to accuse anyone until we have proof that can't be disputed," added Mr. Morton gravely, though his muscles were twitching as though he had been stricken by palsy.

"Listen," begged Dick, "while Mr. Jarvis tells you all he knows of this dastardly business."

The Tottenville captain repeated his short tale. Then Coach Morton asked several rapid questions. But there was no more to be told than Dick Prescott already knew.

"I'm tremendously sorry about that envelope," protested Jarvis. "I'd give anything to be able to hand that envelope over to you, but I'm afraid I'll never see it again."

"We appreciate your anxiety to help, Mr. Jarvis, as deeply as we appreciate your manliness in coming to us without an instant's delay," replied Mr. Morton, earnestly.

At this moment the office boy entered with the mail sack.

"Mr. Pollock!" he bellowed, tossing the sack down on the editor's desk. Then the office boy hurried to the rear of the building, intent on other duties.

Mr. Pollock returned to his desk, opening the mail. The football folks in the further corner lowered their voices almost to whispers.

"Letter for you, Dick," called Mr. Pollock, tossing aside an envelope.

Excusing himself, Dick darted over to get his mail. In an instant he came back, with a flushed face.

"Here's something that may interest you all," whispered Dick, shaking as though fever had seized him.

Mr. Morton took the sheet of paper, from which he read:

"Dear Old Gridleyites: If the enclosed is a fake, it won't work. If there's really a traitor in your camp you ought to know it. Milton High School doesn't take any games except by the use of its own fair fighting devices.

Decker, Captain,
Milton High School
Football Team."

"And here's a duplicate set of our signals, returned by our Milton friends," went on Dick, with almost a sob in his voice. "Fortunately, Mr. Decker thought to preserve the envelope that contained our signal code. Here is the envelope, addressed in some person's handwriting."

Coach Morton seized the envelope, staring at it hard. He studied it with the practiced eye of a school teacher accustomed to overlooking examination papers in all styles of handwriting.

"The writer has tried to conceal his handwriting," murmured the coach, rather brokenly. "Yet I think we may succeed in tracing it back and fixing it on the sender."

"Oh!" growled Dave Darrin savagely. "I believe I know on whom to fasten this handwriting right now."

"I have a possible offender in mind," replied Mr. Morton more evenly. "In a case of this kind we must proceed with such absolute caution and reserve that we will not be obliged to retract afterwards in deep shame and humiliation."

"I think I've done all that I can, gentlemen," broke in Mr. Jarvis. "I think it is my place, now, to draw out of this painful business, and leave it to you whom it most concerns. But I am happy in the thought that I have been able to be of some service to you. I will now state that I am authorized to offer to postpone Saturday's game, if you wish, so that you may have time in, which to train up under changed signals."

"If you consent, sir," proposed Dick, turning to the coach, "we'll go on with Saturday's game just the same. There has been a big sale of tickets, the band has been engaged, and a good many arrangements made that will be expensive to cancel."

"Can you do it?" asked Mr. Morton, looking doubtfully at thee young captain of the team. "It's Thursday afternoon, now."

"I feel that we've got to do it, sir," Dick replied doggedly. "Yes, sir; we'll make it, somehow."

So the matter was arranged. The Gridleyites followed Jarvis out to the sidewalk, where they renewed their assurances of regard for the attitude taken by Tottenville High School. Then Jarvis hurried away to catch a train home.

"Now, young gentlemen," proposed Mr. Morton, "we'll go home and see whether we can engender the idea of eating any lunch, after this unmasking of villainy in our own crowd. But at half past two promptly to the minute, meet me at the High School. Remember, we've practice on for half past three."

"Of all the mean, contemptible-----" began Darrin, after the submaster had left them.

"Stop right there, Dave!" begged his chum. "This is the most fearful thing we've ever met, and we both want to think carefully before we trust ourselves to say another word on the shameful subject."

So the two chums walked along in silence, soon parting to take their different ways home.

At half-past two both chums met Mr. Morton at the High School. The submaster led the way to the office, producing his keys and unlocking the door. They had moved in silence so far.

"Take seats, please," requested Mr. Morton, in a low voice. "I'll be with you in a moment."

The submaster then stepped over to a huge filing cabinet. Unlocking one of the sections, he looked busily through, then came back with a paper in his hand.

"I think I know whom you both suspect," began coach.

"Phin Drayne," spoke Dick, without hesitation.

"Yes. Well here is Drayne's recent examination paper in modern literature. It is, of course, in his own handwriting."

Eagerly the two football men and their coach bent over to compare Drayne's handwriting with that on the envelope that had come back from Milton.

"There has been an attempt at disguise," announced Mr. Morton, using a magnifying glass over the two specimens of writing. "Yet I am rather sure, in my own mind, that a handwriting expert would pronounce both specimens to have been written by the same hand."

"We've nailed Drayne, then," muttered Darrin vengefully.

"It looks like it," assented Mr. Morton. "However, we'll go slowly. For the present I'll put this examination paper with our other 'exhibits' and secure them all carefully in my inside pocket. Now, then, let us make our pencils fly for a while in getting up a revised code of signals."

It was not a long task after all. From the two typewritten copies Dick copied the first half of the plays, Dave the latter. Then Coach Morton went over the new sheets, rapidly jotting down new figures that should make all plain.

"Ten minutes past three," muttered coach, thrusting all the papers in his inside pocket and buttoning his coat. "Now, we'll have to take a car and get up to the field on the jump."

"But, oh, the task of drilling all the new calls into the fellows between now and Saturday afternoon!" groaned Dave Darrin, in a tone that suggested real misery.

"We'll do it," retorted Captain Dick. "We've got to!"

"And to make the boys forget all the old calls, so that they won't mix the signals!" muttered Dave disconsolately.

"We'll do it!"

It was Coach Morton who took up the refrain this time. And it was Prescott who added:

"We've got to do it. Nothing is impossible, when one must!"

It was just twenty-five minutes past three when the coach and his two younger companions turned around the corner of the athletic grounds and slipped in through the gate.

Most of the fellows were in the dressing quarters.

Phin Drayne sat on the edge of a locker chest. One of his feet lay across the knee of the other leg. He was in the act of unlacing one of his street shoes when Coach Morton called to him.

"Me?" asked Phin, looking up quickly.

"Yes," said Mr. Morton quietly. "I want to post you about something."

"Oh, all right; right with you, sir," returned Phin, leaping up and following the coach outside.

"What is it?" asked Phin, beginning to feel uneasy.

"Come along where the others can't hear," replied Mr. Morton, taking hold of Drayne's nearer elbow.

Phin turned white now. He went along, saying nothing, until Mr. Morton halted by the outer gate.

"Pass through, Drayne---and never let us see your face inside this gate again."

"But why? What----"

"Ask your conscience!" snapped back the coach. "You'd better travel fast! I'm going back to talk to the other fellows!"

Mr. Morton was gone. For an instant Phin Drayne stood there as though he would brave out this assertion of authority. Then, seized by another impulse, he turned and made rapidly for a town-bound street car that was heading his way.

"What's up?" asked two or three of the fellows of Dick Prescott. Perceiving something out of the usual, they spoke in the same breath.

"Oh, if there's anything to tell you," spoke Prescott, suppressing a pretended yawn, "Mr. Morton may tell you----some time."

But Mr. Morton was soon back. Knocking on the wall for attention, he told, in as few and as crisp sentences as he could command, the whole story, as far as known.

"Now, young gentlemen," wound up the coach, "we must practice the new signals like wild fire. There's mustn't be a single slip not a solitary break in our game with Tottenville. And that game will begin at three-thirty on Saturday!

"In reverting to Drayne, I wish to impress upon you all, with the greatest emphasis, that this must be treated by you all with the utmost secrecy until we are prepared, with proofs, to go further! If it should turn out that we're wrong in our suspicions, we'll turn and give Phineas Drayne the biggest and most complete public apology that a wronged man ever received."

"All out to practice the new signals!" shouted Prescott, the young captain of the team. _

Read next: Chapter 5. "Brass" For An Armor Plate

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