“He can’t be going to a masquerade in that rig.”
“He might be going to a poverty ball, but Hooker isn’t the sort of chap to take in balls of any kind.”
The shadowed student had changed his respectable clothing for a ragged suit and a battered soft hat, which was slouched over his eyes. In fact, his appearance had been altered by the change of clothing so that he now seemed decidedly disreputable.
“No, he is not going to attend a ball,” said the dazed Merriwell. “By Jove! this affair is becoming interesting, Hodge! It can’t be that he’s been forced to sell his clothes in order to raise some money, can it, Hodge?”
“Sell nothing!” exclaimed Bart. “Do you think he’d wear that sort of rig back to college? Why, he’d be ridiculous!”
“But some of the men who have money to burn sometimes dress almost as bad as that.”
“But not hardly. They do not look like toughs, and Mr. Hooker now looks like an out-and-out tough.”
To himself Merriwell had reluctantly confessed that the change of clothes had made a most remarkable alteration in the appearance of the suspected student, for he now had a sinister, evil aspect that was awakening strange doubts and forebodings in the mind of his only champion and defender in the college. In his heart, Frank could not deny that Hooker now seemed like a genuine sneak and crook. It was a regular Jekyll-and-Hyde metamorphosis.
The old Jew seemed to be laughing in an evil fashion at the alteration in the student, rubbing his hands, nodding his head and making characteristic gestures.
“Perhaps,” said Bart, as if struck by a new idea, “perhaps Hooker is an out-and-out ruffian. Have you read in the papers how a number of persons have been held up and robbed by a mysterious footpad on the outskirts of the city?”
Frank had read of it, and he was obliged to say so. More than that, a thought of the robberies had entered his head at the very moment Bart spoke of them.
“Merriwell,” came eagerly from Hodge, “we may be able to clear up the mystery of those robberies to-night!”
“I know it’s rather hard on you after you had such confidence in the fellow,” said Hodge; “but if he is a thorough scoundrel you want to know it, don’t you?”
“Even though it may shatter all your faith in the natural honesty of human nature?”