CHAPTER XVI

A SHOCK FOR THE COACH.

Dick Merriwell had no connection with the faculty of Yale, in an official sense. But his relations with the dean and with most of the professors were cordial in the extreme. They were men who understood fully that the work of teaching was supplemented by the athletics that had grown to be so great a part of Yale life. Men studied and learned the things the faculty had to teach; and, if they did that well, the faculty had no further direct interest. But the professors who really amounted to anything knew perfectly well that the men who went out of Yale really well equipped for their careers, were the ones who, like Dick Merriwell, had taken part in athletics and other activities of college, and had so fitted themselves for their life work.

So it was that Dick really had a good deal to do with the members of the faculty. Many students who shone in athletics were likely, at certain times, to neglect their work. The rules at Yale on this point are very strict. Unless a man keeps up in his college work, he is not allowed to play on the teams. So, when a team man showed signs of falling back in his work, the dean would usually drop a little note to Dick Merriwell, and the universal coach, skillfully and tactfully, would make the lazy one understand that he must keep up in his work or forego the pleasures of athletics.

Dick was especially interested at this time in the seniors, so soon to leave Yale and go out into the world for themselves. He wanted all of them to graduate with credit—Sherman, Taylor, Gray, and the others who had done so much to make the season a great one for Yale on diamond, track, and river. Few of them gave him any concern at all. The period of examination was nearly over, and he had no reason to believe that any of the men in whom he took an interest were likely to fail in their examinations.

And it was a terrible shock to him, therefore, when, on the very eve of commencement, as he sat in the baseball dressing room, Sam, the old rubber, brought him some papers that he had picked up.

“Doan’ know who all these hyah papers b’longs to, Marse Dick,” said Sam, handing him a folded packet. “Ain’t nevah done learned to read.”

“All right, Sam,” said Dick. “Some one dropped them, I suppose. I’ll see who they belong to and give them to their owners. Thanks.”

Idly, he looked at the papers. He had no intention of reading them, or trying to find out their nature, but he had to look to see who should receive them. He was dressing early after a brisk afternoon’s practice, to keep an engagement that evening, and the players had not yet come in. And, as he looked at the papers in his hand, his face went white.

They were complete notes of a course in which the examination had been held that morning, a senior course in history, arranged so that they could be easily and conveniently referred to. He knew the way in which they were arranged—it was a system of cribbing very old, but very seldom used at Yale. And the thing that appalled him was the name at the head of the sheet—for it was that of Sam Taylor. Swiftly he ran through the other papers—they were simply a part of the same crooked device, and one of the other sheets was marked as the property of Bob Gray.

For a few moments Dick was stunned. He didn’t know what to do. He felt that he might be able to excuse himself to himself for saying nothing about his discovery. It had been made by accident. Perhaps he had not even the right to take advantage of it. But Dick was not able, as so many are, to compromise between right and wrong. He knew that the honor system was supposed to prevail at Yale—that any student who discovered, no matter how, that another was cheating, was required to report that fact, and he felt himself to be bound by that.

Suddenly his face cleared.

“They must have just made these up as notes in preparing for the examination,” he said, to himself. “This is no proof at all that they did anything wrong. I am probably making a mountain out of a molehill.”

Just then Sherman, the captain of the team, walked in.

“Hello, Tom,” said Dick, with a cheerful smile. He was very fond of the first baseman, who had made such a fine leader for Yale’s great baseball team on the field. “How about exams? All through now?”

“All through,” said Sherman, with a sigh of relief. “That modern history this morning was the last. Gee! that was a stiff paper. I was worried about Taylor and Gray, too. They had to take a chance on it without any special preparation. But they seemed to go through swimmingly. Finished before any one. Funny thing, too. Give a dog a bad name—you know the rest. Well, about an hour after we got started, Canfield got suspicious, I thought. Anyhow, he sneaked down the room, and got behind Sam Taylor. Sam was looking at something, but when he felt Canfield behind him, he held up a bit of paper to him to look at, and Canfield just grinned and walked away.”

Dick was mightily disturbed by what Sherman told him. It seemed to destroy his hopes that the papers he had found were innocent. Dejectedly, letting his engagement go by default, he waited for the two seniors, who were to be Yale’s battery in the second game against Harvard, to return. And when they did, waiting for Taylor to get dressed, he called him aside.

“Did you lose any papers, Taylor?” he asked him gravely.

“Don’t think so,” said Taylor, with a laugh. “I never carry many.”

But his hand went to his breast pocket, and suddenly his face went white. He stammered, and then colored, in much confusion.

“By Jove,” he said, “I don’t see—yes, I did lose something, Mr. Merriwell. Or, rather, I remember leaving it in my room. Mighty careless of me, too.”

“What was it you lost, Taylor?” asked Dick, more gravely than ever. Everything was working together to confirm the suspicions he had so reluctantly formed.

“I can’t tell you that, Mr. Merriwell,” said Taylor, looking a little surprised, and rather angry. “It was a private affair—that’s why I was rather annoyed at finding I had been so careless.”

Dick suddenly held out the folded papers, still looking just as they had when Sam handed the packet to him.

“Was it this you lost?” he said.

Taylor’s eyes lighted up as they fell on the packet, and he reached a hand to take it. But suddenly he drew it back.

“I thought for a moment—no, it isn’t,” he said. His confusion was evident. Dick, looking at him with concealed sorrow, thought his confusion was that of guilt. It certainly seemed so for the moment.

Dick Merriwell was almost dazed as he left the dressing room, and, catching a street car, made his way back to New Haven. The whole affair puzzled and disgusted him. He had trusted Taylor implicitly of late. The senior had aroused his anger and suspicion early in the year, but he had proved himself sincerely repentant since then, and it cut Dick to the quick to think that Taylor had proved himself, by the meanest of college crimes, unworthy of the forgiveness Dick had given him so freely.

“I’ve got to put this up to the dean,” he decided finally. “I may be wrong, but there’s enough evidence here for me to feel that I would be shirking my duty if I didn’t see to it that the whole business was investigated.”

* * * * *

Parker and Foote had taken their dinner together at an eating house, and, when the meal was over, they lighted cigars and walked toward the campus.

“I don’t see that you’re doing much,” sneered Parker. “You talked mighty big about your plans, and about how you were going to queer Merriwell. What have you done?”

“I’m sorry for Merriwell,” said Foote, without giving a direct reply. “He talks a lot about high standards of morality and all that sort of thing. He’s got a nice little problem on his hands now, and he’s going to decide it the way any other man would. He thinks it’s in his power to spoil the chances of two of his precious team from graduating. And he’s going to keep quiet. You mark my words. He doesn’t know, you see, that I’ve taken steps to see that the dean and others know of the evidence he’s got.

“Every one will know about it by to-morrow morning, and he’ll be sorry that he didn’t practice what he preached. He’ll find that by keeping quiet he’s just got himself into a hole without doing his friends or his team any good. And I guess that will be about the finish for Mr. Dick Merriwell’s pose of being superior to every one in Yale. But, if that isn’t enough, I’ve got another scheme that will settle it in a hurry.”

“You’re blamed mysterious,” said Parker angrily. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing? Hello! What’s the row about?”

They had come to the entrance to Dwight Hall, and there they found an excited crowd of students. They heard the news from half a dozen men at once.

An investigation was to be made of the senior examination in modern history, held that morning, and it was rumored that charges of cribbing had been made against Gray and Taylor. In any case, those two men were suspended from the baseball team until further notice. No reason was given for this action in the notice, signed by the dean, which had announced the suspension, but every one seemed to be able to explain it.

Foote’s jaw dropped as he turned to Parker.

“By Jove!” he cried. “He fooled me there—he’s had sense enough to save himself with the faculty. I didn’t think he’d go to the dean. However, I’ll find some way to queer him yet.”