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.
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