CHAPTER XXI.

MERRIWELL’S RESERVE POWER.

“Fancy,” said Packard.

“Nothing of the sort!” declared Defarge.

“Then beyond a doubt you have been hypnotized by the fellow. It is useless for you to squirm and deny it, that’s just what has happened. I know he has hypnotic power, although he does not make a practise of displaying it. You cannot make a physical move to do him harm?”

“No.”

“But mentally——”

“I dislike him as much as ever. I fear him more than ever, and I keep away from him. But it is not natural for a Defarge to fear anybody, and my heart grows hot when I think he has brought me to this pitiful state. I would harm him somehow! If I cannot do it with my own hand, at least I can use my brain to do it.”

“And succeed as you have in the past—by getting it in the neck.”

“Not this time.”

“Why not?”

“Because I shall bring to bear on him something of which he has no knowledge, and, so long as I keep out of his way, can have no intimation. But I need assistance.”

“That’s why you sent for me?”

“Exactly.”

“Do you mean that I am to pull your chestnuts out of the fire?”

“Not that. You dislike him as much as I.”

“Well?”

“And there is nothing to hinder you from helping along any scheme to reach him.”

“In other words, you will do the brain-work and I will be your tool?”

“No, no, no! Why do you put it that way? Have I not in the past always been ready enough to strike when I could? My time is past. If I make another open move that fellow will expose me, and out of Yale I’ll have to go. But I can’t do anything if I would.”

Roland eyed the decanter.

“Do you keep that stuff to look at?” he asked.

“No, of course not—but you—I thought you——”

“Don’t say anything nasty now, Defarge. I’m not drunk, but I am mighty dry. I can talk better if my throat is oiled a little.”

“Help yourself,” invited Bertrand, rising to place the glasses and decanter nearer his visitor.

Packard’s hand shook a little as he poured out a brimming glass of whisky. Defarge shrugged his shoulders again as he noticed this, and went over to a sideboard, from which he brought a pitcher of ice-water. Defarge poured a very little of the liquor for himself, mixing it with double the amount of water.

“Here’s hoping you’ll have better luck,” said Packard, lifting his glass.

“Amen!” said the French youth, with almost ludicrous solemnity, and their glasses clinked.

Packard tossed off the liquor without blinking, taking a small swallow of water as a “chaser.” It seemed to make him feel better, for he rubbed his hands together and brightened somewhat.

“Anyhow, you know good stuff, Defarge,” he nodded. “Now I’m ready to hear you unfold your scheme, but I make no promises in advance.”

“You will promise not to say anything about it if you do not go into it with me?”

“Oh, yes, of course. I didn’t mean promises of that sort. I know Merriwell, and I know that it does seem as if Satan himself could not get the best of the fellow. Therefore, I look askance on any scheme to strike him till I am satisfied that it is good. His position is so secure now that there seems little prospect of shaking it in the least. He is king at Yale.”

“But kings have been deposed, you know. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,’ and so forth. The Easter trip of the nine has covered Merriwell all over with the glory he loves to bask in. The prospects for Yale on the diamond are better this year than ever before. But the nine is made up to a large extent of Merriwell’s friends, and no one can dispute that. Hodge, Browning, Ready, Gamp, Carson, and Carker are all of his flock. Lots of good fellows have been left out in the cold in order to squeeze those chaps in. The ones left out are hollering for Yale and the nine just the same, but, if I know anything of human nature, they are simply hiding their wounds, which rankle all the while.”

“But what has this to do with your scheme?” asked the medical student impatiently. “Those fellows who did not make places on the nine can’t say a word, for Merriwell has made no blunders thus far. You cannot count on a single one of them standing in with you. The only men in Yale to-day who are known to dislike Merriwell belong to Rupert Chickering’s set of asses. They are worse than nothing and nobody. They have won the contempt of everybody outside their own circle.”

“I am not counting on them, or on any man in Yale. But I know a man who can take the starch out of Merriwell.”

“I doubt it.”

“I’ll convince you.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Hawkins. I met him in Paris last summer. It happened that my father was able to do him a favor, as he had gotten into some trouble through a duel in which he came within an ace of killing his man. Father had a pull, and enabled him to get off and leave the country. Naturally, he feels under obligations. He is here in New Haven.”

Packard snapped his fingers.

“What of all that?” he asked.

“Wait a little. This fellow is not over twenty-two or three years of age, but he is the most wonderful swordsman I ever saw. You know I can handle a rapier a little myself. Well, this chap can toy with me as a cat toys with a mouse. And he can fight with his fists and feet. You know Merriwell learned in France to fight with his feet as well as with his fists. Here is a man who can box as well as Merriwell, and can kick better. It is marvelous the way he can handle those feet. He is the only fellow I ever saw in America who could defeat Merriwell at that trick. He can do it! I know it! But that is not the limit. As an athlete my man is a wonder. I have no hesitation in saying that he can outpoint Merriwell in any feat of strength.”

“How do you know about that last? Merriwell, you know, believes it is a mistake for any athlete to be continually performing great feats of strength. It is his argument that any athlete who follows up such a practise must overstrain and weaken himself some time, which will do him permanent injury. I don’t like Merriwell, but I have a belief that the fellow never displays the full capacity of his athletic powers.”

“And I,” cried Defarge, “believe he is much overrated in that respect.”

“I used to think so; but I have come to change my mind. I was forced to change my mind, to tell the truth. I didn’t like to, but I couldn’t help it.”

“And now you think he really is a wonder?”

“I think he is a remarkable athlete. Mind you, I dislike the fellow just as much as I ever did; but I have been forced to acknowledge to myself that he is a wonder.”

“Well, hanged if I’ll ever acknowledge that, even to myself! He is athletic, I know; but he is no wonder. I won’t believe he is a wonder!”

“That will not make him any less so, Defarge. He has a great amount of reserve force. By that I mean that he seldom calls into play the full amount of his will-power and strength. When he does so, the result is something astonishing.”

“Tell me when he has ever done it and accomplished anything astonishing.”

"Do you remember the football-game with Harvard? Of course you do! No Yale or Harvard man will ever forget that game. Well, you must remember that, on the very morning of the day of that game, Frank Merriwell was ill in bed. He had been delirious, and in his delirium he had fancied he was playing the game against Harvard. He kept giving signals and calling on the team to take the ball over the Harvard line, to block the Harvard rush, to hold Harvard or die. A fellow who was at his bedside a few minutes told me all about it. He writhed and strained, and sweat poured off him in streams.

“He was fighting that game there in bed, and the terrible exertion, according to what the doctors said, was enough to kill any man—that is, any ordinary man. The doctors thought the fever must turn against him on account of that. But it turned in his favor, and he grew better so fast that everybody was amazed. If he had not been an athlete with perfect development, marvelous strength, and almost perfect natural health, he must have been left weak and limp for a week or more after that fever turned—he could not have got onto the football-field for a month or more.”

“Go on,” laughed Defarge, with curling lip. “I rather enjoy hearing you crack up Merriwell.”

Packard frowned and looked displeased.

“I am not cracking up Merriwell; I am simply telling you the actual facts. On the morning of the day of that game Merriwell was in bed, kept there by the doctors, who fancied it might prove fatal for him to get up. But he would get up, and he did so. Then he called the men of the team to his room and talked to them there. As he talked, so those men say, his eyes began to shine, a healthy glow came into his face, he stood erect amid them, and when he grasped their hands as they were about to leave the room, his grip was strong and firm, as usual. In fact, it hardly seemed that anything ailed him at all. That was the reserve force of the man asserting itself. I have studied enough to understand the meaning of it. Every athlete has to a certain extent the same reserve force, though it may not be fully developed, or may be impaired by some organic weakness. In Merriwell it is at its full meridian.”

“By heavens!” cried Defarge, smiting the fist of one hand into the open palm of the other. “You are becoming an admirer of Frank Merriwell, Packard!”

“Nothing of the sort. I have been studying the fellow, to discover the secret of his marvelous power, and I believe I have discovered it. That’s all. He is a man worth studying, and I’m not going to let his personal friends be the only ones to do so.”

Bertrand shook his head, as if he did not quite understand this hard-drinking medical student who made a study of his enemies as well as his friends.

“To go on,” continued Roland, toying with his whisky-glass, "and to show in the man the remarkable extent of this great reserve power of which I speak, just think of what followed on the day of that game. Merriwell insisted on having reports of the progress of the game brought to him constantly, and half a dozen messengers were kept busy running from the telegraph-office to his room in Vanderbilt. He sat there watching the progress of the game, tracing out every move on a diagram, and he knew just what was taking place.

“In his mind he saw Harvard slamming Yale all over the field in the first half, while Yale made desperate stands at critical times, and so kept the crimson from scoring. To watch that, for a man in his position, captain of the Yale team, should have been enough to put him back into bed. Did it? No! He grew stronger! He felt that he could go onto the field and lead his men. He began to walk the floor of his room like a caged panther, and with every minute he felt the reserve force taking fuller possession of him.”

Defarge was silent now, held thus by the singular earnestness of the speaker, who had been one of Merriwell’s most active and bitter enemies.

“The second half of the game began,” pursued Packard, "and Merriwell soon saw that the case had become even more desperate. Yale was swept down before Harvard’s rushes. In short order Harvard got a goal from the field. When the message telling of that was brought to Merriwell it changed him completely. He sent the messenger for a cab, and he literally flung himself into his football-suit. Then he went leaping down to that cab, flung himself in, and gave the driver ten dollars to drive like the devil to the field. You know what happened when he arrived. Yale was making a last-ditch stand, with Harvard having things her own way. It looked like a touch-down for Harvard. Then Merriwell came rushing onto the field, yelling for Yale to ‘tear ’em up.’

“The whole Yale side saw and recognized him, and you must remember that ten thousand people rose up as one man and roared his name. Then he ordered one of the men out and went in himself, despite the protests of his friends. And that fellow, who had been sick and delirious a short time before, was a holy terror the moment he reached the field. Nothing could stop him. He set everybody mad with excitement. He made perfect Trojans of his exhausted men. He dumfounded Harvard. He caused those ten thousand watching spectators on the Yale side to yell like ten thousand maniacs. And, last of all, he got the ball himself, went through Harvard’s tacklers, ran the length of the field, leaped square over the head of a Harvard man who was in his path, and made a touch-down! You remember that, Defarge?”

Bertrand groaned and nodded.

“I guess I do!” he muttered. “Oh, if any other man had done it!”

“No other man on the Yale team could have done it,” asserted Packard. “When he had kicked a goal and knew the game was won for Yale, his great reserve power gave out and he toppled over. Now, that is the kind of man you are up against when you buck Merriwell. If you put a man against him, you must have a wonder who can overcome the most remarkable fellow Yale College has ever developed. I, his bitter enemy, tell you this. Now, do you think for a single moment that you have such a man?”

“I know it!” declared Defarge loudly and confidently. “I can prove it!”

“Where is he?”

“Here!”

The door had opened to admit a remarkable-appearing youth.