How?" asked Colon.

"Suppose now I took this hat to school Monday," continued Fred, seriously
enough, "and told the story of how we were waylaid by three mysterious
chaps, who did their level best to injure us about the shins, and without
any doubt meaning to knock us out from taking part in the big race?
Don't you think nearly everybody would be warm about it?"

"Hot about the collar as they could be, and ready to take it out of the
hide of the three guilty ones, if only they knew who they were," the
other boy affirmed in his positive way.

"Well, I might put this old hat on exhibition, and ask every boy to take
a good look at it before seeing the tell-tale initials inside. Then we'd
hear what they thought, and if any of them recognized the same. In that
way, Colon, it ought to be easy to run down the rascal."

"Yes," added the tall boy, "and once you nailed him, it wouldn't be so
hard to make him own up who his cronies were. He's a coward, when you
pin him down. I'd dare him to stand up and have it out with me. Then
p'raps it was C.J. who rammed his old eye so hard against my fist, trying
to feaze me. Oh! the evidence is going to accumulate against him like a
regular old mountain. There's that rabbit of yours moving again, Fred.
Queer all this row didn't start him off, isn't it?"

"I just happened to think," remarked Fred, "that we're on a false
mission, after all."

"Right now, you mean, don't you, Fred?"

"Yes, because it wasn't Bristles at all I was talking with, but one of
this same crowd. No wonder his voice sounded so queer to me, and
muffled." Then Fred had to laugh, after which he went on to say, "And to
think how sly he was making out the cause of it to be that sudden cold
he'd taken."

"That was a mighty clever dodge, let me tell you," Colon went on to say.
"You see, he knew you'd notice the difference in voices, for even over
the wire it's easy to recognize a friend's way of speaking; so he fixed
it up, with a nut in his cheek, and then told you about the cold."

"And that cough, why, I tell you it was splendidly worked, and whoever
carried it out was a sharp one, Colon."

"However do you guess it was done?" asked the tall chum.

"Well, there must have been a fourth member of the gang, who had his part
of the game to play. Chances were he was to go into some place downtown
where they have a public 'phone booth, at exactly eight o'clock, and call
me up. The other three were to be hidin