The Hilltop Boys Part 18

You were to let Brooke know?"

"Yes, to-night."

"Good! Tell him that I will call for the papers and to deliver them to no one else."

"Why don't you phone him?" asked Arthur. "That will save a lot of trouble."

"And perhaps cause more," laughed Jack. "I don't like telephoning myself. There are too many listeners."

"I have a wire," said d.i.c.k. "You may use it if you like. I do often and I don't know that I am bothered much."

"Just now the old ladies on the party wire are not doing their afternoon gossip," chuckled Arthur. "They are busy getting supper instead. I don't believe we would have any trouble. Go ahead, Jack."

Thus urged Jack stepped to the telephone, took down the receiver and called:

"Let me have one two three Riverton, please. Office of the _News_, yes.

They are not busy?"

"Here's your party," said the operator on the other end of the wire.

At the same moment Jack heard some one say, not at the 'phone but evidently in the room where the instrument was kept:

"Well, I done it but I wanted the money."

Jack recognized the voice as that of the boy in the _News_ office.

"How much did you get?"

This time the speaker was the editor, Mr. Brooke.

"Five dollars."

"Who paid you? Here, wait, till I answer that confounded call. h.e.l.lo!

who is this?"

"John Sheldon, of Hilltop. Is this Mr. Brooke? d.i.c.k Percival will call for the bundle in the morning."

"Very good. Now then, you rascal----" the voice being less plainly heard, "who was it paid you for doing it?"

"Keep still, boys," said Jack, turning his head. "I am on the track."

CHAPTER XIV

"SUSPICION IS NOT PROOF"

Jack listened attentively to catch the reply of the boy for upon it much depended.

Some one had paid the boy to set up and insert the obnoxious article and Jack knew that his theory that a poor compositor had done the work was correct.

Now the thing to be learned was who had paid him for what he had done and Jack believed that he was about to be enlightened.

Then he heard the click of the receiver being put back upon the hook and the connection was cut off.

"That's too bad!" he muttered as he hung up. "I thought I was going to find out something. Maybe I can yet."

"Did you get him?" asked Percival.

"Yes," and Jack told what he had heard over the wire.

"It's too bad that Brooke hung up so soon," said d.i.c.k, "but can't you get him again?"

"I suppose I might."

"And ask him pointblank who it was that hired the office boy to do this dirty work."

"I will, for he must know that I could hear all that was said in the room. That is a common occurrence."

Jack took down the receiver again and called up the office of the _News_, presently getting an answer after some delay:

"Line is busy."

"Call me up when it is not, please," said Jack, giving the number of d.i.c.k's 'phone.

Then he hung up again and said to the eager boys:

"The line is busy, of course. It always is when you want it particularly. However, they will call me up when it is free."

"Somebody paid the boy to get this thing into the _Gazette_," observed Percival, "and that somebody was an enemy of ours. Who was it?"

"Some one who wants to do Jack an injury," said Harry. "There are Pete Herring, Ernest Merritt and a few others like them but Herring and his side partner are the most likely ones."

"It is really narrowed down to those two when you come to it," suggested Arthur, "for they hate him the worst and are more active than the others."

"I think we'd better take that for granted," added Harry, "and work along those lines. I think it was one of them, just as I think it was one of them who pushed Jack off the bank."

"They may have hired a third party to do the work," remarked Percival.

"They would know that they would be suspected on account of their opposition to Jack and so wish to hide their tracks."

"That's all right on the supposition that they are clever fellows,"

laughed Harry, "but your rascals are always weak somewhere and trip themselves up. They say it takes a smart man to be a rogue and neither Herring nor Merritt has any medals for brilliancy of intellect."

"No, and yet they have a certain shrewdness. Detection in a case of this sort would mean expulsion from the Academy and I do not believe either of them would care to face that."

"No, but all the same I think it was one of them and I believe we will eventually discover this."