The following morning, shortly after breakfast, Dick received a call over the telephone. It proved to be Henry Duncan, of Maplewood, and after talking a few moments Merriwell told his companions that they had been invited to Maplewood as guests of the Maplewood Canoe Club. “I think we’d better go, fellows,” he said. “Mr. Duncan wants us to come. He says the sympathy of the summer visitors at Maplewood is with us, and they hope we’ll win the game to-day.”
“Where be we going to eat?” questioned Obediah Tubbs anxiously. “We was put out of the Maple Heights Hotel, you know, and the only place up there where we can git anything is at that dirty little restaurant. I s’pose you might git plenty of pie there, such as it is.”
“Don’t worry about that,” laughed Dick. “Mr. Duncan says he’ll have a spread at the clubhouse.”
“Then lul-lul-lul-let’s go!” cried Jolliby.
“Yes, let’s go!” exclaimed the others.
Thus it came about that Henry Duncan’s invitation was accepted and the boys left Rockford on the nine-o’clock car. They were in good spirits, every one of them, Buckhart having fully recovered his former condition. As the car passed Uriah Blackington’s office, the lawyer thrust his head out of the window and waved his hand at them, crying:
“Do your best to-day, boys. We’ll take one off Seaslope, and if you beat Maplewood there’ll be fun the next time we meet.”
It was a beautiful morning, and the boys sang and joked as the trolley car bore them toward the Maplewood hills.
Perhaps two-thirds of the journey had been made when the car stopped to let a passenger off. It started up and proceeded slowly onto a curve of the track, where there was a high embankment on one side.
Suddenly, without warning, the car left the track, but the motorman instantly shut off the power.
They stopped with one corner of the car lurching over the embankment.
Already some of the boys had leaped off, and there was a general scramble when the car stopped.
“Pretty near a bad accident,” said Hodge, shaking his head.
“Pretty near it!” exclaimed the pale-faced motorman. “I should say so! If I hadn’t stopped to let that passenger off, I should have been driving this car at usual speed round the curve here, and we must have gone down the embankment.”
“I’d like to know how it happened, anyway,” declared the conductor. “There was no reason why we should jump the track. We were apparently creeping along.”
Together with the motorman he made an examination, and in a few moments both men betrayed consternation and excitement. They called the passengers to look at one of the rails.
“See here,” said the motorman, “this rail has been monkeyed with! It is loose. The rails are spread here. This was no accident! Some one did the job with the deliberate intention of running this car off the track!”
“What do you think of that, Dick?” asked Hodge, in young Merriwell’s ear.
“I may be mistaken,” muttered the boy; “but it looks to me like more of Benton Hammerswell’s work.”
“But it doesn’t seem possible,” said Bart, shaking his head. “Why, many of us might have been killed had the car gone off this bank. It’s certain some of us would have been severely injured.”
“In which case,” said Dick, “Maplewood would have had an easy thing this afternoon.”
“It doesn’t seem possible,” continued Hodge; “that man Hammerswell must be a scoundrel of the worst type.”
“Didn’t I tell you so?”
“But he’s the limit! He’s not only a scoundrel, but he’s crazy to try such things.”
“You can bet he had no direct hand in it himself. I believe he was the instructor, and some of his tools did the work.”
There was a long delay, but finally a car from Maplewood picked up the passengers and carried them on to their destination.
As they came in sight of the Maple Heights Hotel, Hodge betrayed his keen interest in the surroundings.
“It was through me that Frank came here to play baseball long ago,” he said. “I induced him to come. Those were hot times, and it appears that they are just as warm nowadays. I remember old Artemus Hammerswell and his son Herbert. Artemus had money, and Herbert thought himself a thoroughbred. There’s bad blood in these Hammerswells. They got the worst of it in the old days, and I fancy Benton Hammerswell will get the worst of it now.”
“There he is!” exclaimed Brad Buckhart, pointing toward the veranda of the hotel. “He’s there on the steps talking to another man. Yes, by the great horn spoon, the man he’s talking with is Tom Fernald!”
The Texan was somewhat excited. Dick clutched Brad’s shoulder to prevent him from getting off the car at once.
“What do you think you’re going to do, Buckhart?” he demanded.
“I’d just like to prance up there and put my brand on both those varmints!” declared the Westerner.
“But they’re men, and you’re only a boy,” said Hodge. “They would be two to one against you.”
“I certain don’t opine that would hold me up any. I reckon Fernald got something from me last night.”
The excited Texan was restrained until the car stopped at the platform built for the passengers who wished to get off at the hotel.
On that platform were a number of summer visitors, both ladies and gentlemen. Three men stepped forward as the boys left the car. They were Henry Duncan, William Drake, and Eustace Smiley. Duncan clasped Dick’s hand.
“Good morning, my boy!” he exclaimed heartily. “I’m glad you accepted our invitation. Hammerswell found out about it, and he’s hot under the collar. I don’t know what he’s been doing, but he made a great hustle when he learned you were coming.”
“I think we know what he was doing,” declared Dick. “We’re lucky to arrive uninjured, Mr. Duncan.”
He then told of their narrow escape from a serious accident.
“Do you think it possible any one actually tampered with those rails?” gasped William Drake, in horror.
“My goodness! my goodness!” cried Eustace Smiley, his pudgy hands uplifted. “It must have been an accident.”
“It will be investigated,” said Dick. “Both motorman and conductor declared the rails had been loosened and spread.”
“Dreadful! dreadful!” said Smiley.
Bart Hodge now stepped forward and made himself known to Duncan, who remembered him well and welcomed him once more to Maplewood.
“In order to avoid trouble with Hammerswell,” said Duncan, “we decided to entertain you at the clubhouse instead of at the hotel. Hammerswell has been keeping his team at the hotel, and he has some sort of a pull there.”
“We’re well aware of that,” nodded Dick, smiling grimly. “He had a pull sufficient to push us from the place the day we first arrived in this town.”
“A most disgraceful piece of business,” said Smiley.
Dick refrained from mentioning the fact that on the occasion spoken of Eustace Smiley had supinely agreed to anything Hammerswell proposed.
Led by Duncan and his two companions, the boys marched down the winding road to a small, cleared grove on the shore of the lake, and there they found the cool and comfortable home of the Maplewood Canoe Club.
The clubhouse was built at the water’s edge, and dozens of canoes were to be seen. Some were floating in the water, several were drawn up on shore, while still others were found in a part of the clubhouse built for the purpose of storing them. Five or six club members were sitting on the veranda, smoking and chatting. Out on the mirror-like surface of the lake a few were paddling around in canoes.
It was a peaceful spot, and the boys eagerly sniffed the agreeable odor of the pines which grew in that vicinity.
“Well, dern my picter!” chuckled Obediah Tubbs. “I’d just like to come right down here and loaf through the rest of the warm weather!”
“Make yourselves at home, boys,” said Mr. Duncan. “Everything about the place is yours as long as you stay here. Use any of the canoes you wish to use.”
There were plenty of comfortable chairs, and the boys promptly accepted the invitation to make themselves at home.
“Hey!” cried Jolliby, as he discovered a ............