So the matter was arranged.  The Gridleyites followed Jarvis out to the sidewalk, where they renewed their assurances of regard for the attitude taken by Tottenville High School.  Then Jarvis hurried away to catch a train home.

“Now, young gentlemen,” proposed Mr. Morton, “we’ll go home and see whether we can engender the idea of eating any lunch, after this unmasking of villainy in our own crowd.  But at half past two promptly to the minute, meet me at the High School.  Remember, we’ve practice on for half past three.”

“Of all the mean, contemptible-----” began Darrin, after the submaster
had left them.

“Stop right there, Dave!” begged his chum.  “This is the most fearful thing we’ve ever met, and we both want to think carefully before we trust ourselves to say another word on the shameful subject.”

So the two chums walked along in silence, soon parting to take their different ways home.

At half-past two both chums met Mr. Morton at the High School.  The submaster led the way to the office, producing his keys and unlocking the door.  They had moved in silence so far.

“Take seats, please,” requested Mr. Morton, in a low voice.  “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

The submaster then stepped over to a huge filing cabinet.  Unlocking one of the sections, he looked busily through, then came back with a paper in his hand.

“I think I know whom you both suspect,” began coach.

“Phin Drayne,” spoke Dick, without hesitation.

“Yes.  Well here is Drayne’s recent examination paper in modern literature.  It is, of course, in his own handwriting.”

Eagerly the two football men and their coach bent over to compare Drayne’s handwriting with that on the envelope that had come back from Milton.

“There has been an attempt at disguise,” announced Mr. Morton, using a magnifying glass over the two specimens of writing.  “Yet I am rather sure, in my own mind, that a handwriting expert would pronounce both specimens to have been written by the same hand.”

“We’ve nailed Drayne, then,” muttered Darrin vengefully.

“It looks like it,” assented Mr. Morton.  “However, we’ll go slowly.  For the present I’ll put this examination paper with our other ‘exhibits’ and secure them all carefully in my inside pocket.  Now, then, let us make our pencils fly for a while in getting up a revised code of signals.”

It was not a long task after all.  From the two typewritten copies Dick copied the first half of the plays, Dave the latter.  Then Coach Morton went over the new sheets, rapidly jotting down new figures that should make all plain.

“Ten minutes past three,” muttered coach, thrusting all the papers in his inside pocket and buttoning his coat.  “Now, we’ll have to take a car and get up to the field on the jump.”

“But, oh, the task of drilling all the new calls into the fellows between now and Saturday afternoon!” groaned Dave Darrin, in a tone that suggested real misery.