by Bill Peschel
That joyous Junior, Hicks, careering across Bannister Field to fall upon the figurative neck of the Gold and Green eleven, as an expression of his great and exceeding rapture, collided with the selfsame sub who a few seconds later made the direful announcement to the spectators. This harbinger of evil and herald of disaster, perceiving the radiant glow on his fellow-collegian’s countenance, proceeded to turn the shower bath of Despair on Hicks’ enthusiasm, flinging over his shoulder, as he galloped madly past, a few detached sentences—
“Hamilton claims—no goal—say ball didn’t hit ground—before Jack kicked—punt—not drop-kick—goal won’t score—Referee thinks it—punt—!”
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., fully as tranquil as Mount Vesuvius in action, checked his reckless flight to gaze back at the stands, whither the substitute winged his way at top speed. It seemed that he had been changed suddenly to a piece of statuary as he stared at the dazed crowd on the side-line, the Bannister sections stunned at the unexpected blow of Fate!
“‘A punt—not a drop-kick!” breathed Hicks, in dismay. “Oh, that explains why the ball traveled with a spiral movement, instead of end over end! Why, if the Referee upholds Hamilton’s claim, it means Bannister loses the game and the Championship!”
In the stands, the spectators reminded Hicks, even in his consternation, of people in a moving-picture show. Instead of the clamor of so brief a time before, silence reigned; the great crowd sat as though petrified, staring at the Bannister substitute who had roared the announcement. The Gold and Green enthusiasts, paralyzed at this unexpected catastrophe, were speechless; for a while, the Red and Black cohorts, scarcely able to believe that Hamilton had a chance for the game, were silent, and then, as the glorious truth dawned on them, pandemonium broke loose.
The cheer leaders, who had flung down their megaphones when the pigskin hurtled across the bar, rushed out and retrieved them. A tremendous cheer burst from the Hamilton sections, and a substitute led forth their team mascot, a goat adorned with a Red and Black blanket. Bull, loyal to Captain Butch’s team, barked wrathfully at his triumphant rival but vainly, for the sound-waves drowned his protest, as one of the cheer leaders boomed:
“All together, Hamilton—Here’s to Dear Old Ham—”
While the crushed Gold and Green collegians, alumni, and sympathizers, the latter an appropriate word now, sat, bowed with grief, the entire Hamilton contingent arose, acting like lunatics, to put it mildly, with everyone bellowing at the top of his lungs, a mighty paean of Victory surged across Bannister Field:
“Here’s to Dear Old Ham—drink it down—drink it down!
Here’s to Dear Old Ham—drink it down—drink it down!
Here’s to Dear Old Ham—for she ‘am de Ham what am’—
Drink it down—drink it down—drink it down—down—down!”
A thick blanket of gloom settled over the Bannister rooters, obfuscating the great joy that had possessed them. As the Phillyloo Bird afterward quaintly expressed it, in choicely mixed metaphors, “One instant Victory perched on our banners, and the next Hamilton had snatched it from our grasp!” Figuratively, they beheld the game and the championship fading from sight, transferred to Hamilton College! But one flickering glimmer of hope remained; the Referee had not officially rendered his decision, and perhaps—
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., spellbound, still stood midway between the side-line and the scene of argument; his first impulse was to rush out to the disputants, but as he hesitated, his right hand in his coat pocket touched a hard object. Drawing it forth, he beheld a small magnifying-glass such as detectives of fiction always carry, and employ while seeking for clues. In truth, bearing out his role of Sheerluck Holmes, the jocular youth had used this merely as an instrument of torture—for his comrades! Invading their rooms, pretending to be Sheerluck Holmes of the Central Office, the pestersome Junior had driven them wild by his mysterious magnifying-glass inspection of their possessions and themselves!
“How does the Referee know whether the ball touched the earth, or not, before Jack kicked it?” reflected Hicks, gazing at his detective apparatus. “Still, he must render his honest opinion, and it did look like a punt! I’ll study the place where he kicked, instead of kicking at the Referee. Perhaps I’ll get a clue, and—”
John Hollingsworth Merritt, on the thirty-yard line, gazed despairingly at the excited group and at the Referee. In that official’s serious expression, as well as the sorrowful countenance of Butch Brewster, Coach Corridan, and several one-time Bannister football heroes, the erstwhile idol of the hour saw doubt. To a majority of experienced football men, it seemed sure that they had beheld a punt; the ball had bored through the air with a spiral, twisting movement peculiar to perfect punts, and without the end-over-end drive of a drop-kick. There was no hope, however, that the Referee, whose honesty was unquestioned, would rule otherwise!
“I have a precedent, gentlemen,” said the Referee, “in the St. Johns-Johns Hopkins University game, some years ago. A Hopkins man kicked a field goal. His ’Varsity fellows went wild, for it won the contest, but he went to the officials and confessed that in his haste to get the kick away, he had accidentally punted; the ball had failed to hit the ground first. Now—”
“But mine did hit the earth!” stormed Jack Merritt, tears of rage furrowing his dirt-crusted face. “I’m as square as any Hopkins man, and I’ll fight anyone who says I’m not honorable, too! The ball hit something soft, and bounced up in a peculiar manner, so that instead of my toe hitting it, my instep made the kick, which gave it that spiral, punt-like movement! But it does not matter if I kicked with my knee, does it, so long as the ball struck the ground before I kicked!”
“That is true, Mr. Merritt!” answered the Referee. “I am not doubting your honor! But I must give my decision as I see the affair, and I sincerely believe your kick to be a punt, as do many others, even Bannister men. If you can offer evidence or proof that the ball struck the earth before you kicked—”
Captain Butch Brewster with a sob turned away. There was no hope, even the Gold and Green leader believed Jack had punted in his haste to kick before the berserker Hamilton backfield broke through to block. The drop-kicker was excited now, but when he became less tense, perhaps he would remember events more clearly, the game and the Championship were lost, and—
At that tragic moment, the well-known foghorn voice of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., usually employed in raucous chants to the wrath of the campus, shattered the silence that hovered over the group around the Referee. Standing near the spot from which Jack had made his memorable drop-kick, winning and losing the game for this team, the happy-go-lucky youth howled, “Referee—Butch—Jack—Coach Corridan—everybody—come here! It was a drop-kick, after all, and—”
There was a rush for the thirty-eight line. There, guarding a heap of whitish powder as carefully as though it had been gold-dust, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., crouched. With him waited the Hamilton fullback, right-end, and bulky center who regarded the excited collegian as though they believe him seized with a mild sort of insanity. As the Referee, the Red and Black players, and the coaches, trainers, and followers of each team hurried up, Hicks, yielding to his in-born love of the dramatic faced the interested crowd.
“Mr. Referee and others,” he began importantly “I shall prove beyond the specter of a doubt that Jack Merritt made a legal drop-kick! If you will follow me carefully, and heed the testimony of these witnesses—also, gather each point I make, and listen to the summary, I feel sure the decision will favor Bannister!”
The State Intercollegiate Football Championship hung in the balance. Over in the stands, on the side-lines, pouring on the field, the crowd, wild for the verdict, shouted impatiently. The Referee, puzzled by the debonair Hicks’ theatrical manner, yet anxious to be relieved of embarrassment, waited. The Hamilton supporters, bewildered at the collegian’s blithesome grin, crowded nearer, and as for Butch Brewster, knowing the splinter youth’s past achievements, he and the Bannister students
felt hope stir within them. Surely Hicks would never grin in that confident, Cheshire cat fashion, unless he had been seized with an inspiration, literally, in this case, was sure of his ground!
“I must prove,” continued Hicks, winking at Butch, “that the football touched the ground before it was kicked; naturally, so far as Jack and the kick in question are concerned, it could not have done so afterward! But first, Mr. Referee, I must positively establish supplementary points. Will you and the Hamilton captain take the evidence of these three Red and Black players here?”
“Surely!” exclaimed the Referee, and the other Hamiltonites nodded a vigorous assent. “They would certainly not offer false evidence against their own team!”
“Will you please state,” Hicks addressed the visiting fullback, who looked as bewildered as the others of the interested group, “just what you and your comrades did when the ball sailed over the crossbar?”
The Red and Black collegian, a behemoth, honest-appearing youth, answered, without hesitation, “I, with our center and right end, having broken through Bannister’s line too late to block the kick, turned and watched the ball sail over the crossbar. Then, because there remained a few seconds of play, we thought we might have to line up again, so we sat down here. We have been here ever since and—”
“Now,” Hicks resembled a State’s Attorney cross-examining a star witness, “please answer these questions. First: with the exception of myself, has anyone but you three fellows been here where the disputed kick was made? Second: has any football whatsoever, including the one in play, been here since Jack Merritt kicked? Third: did I tamper in any way with this pile of powdered resin?”
From the three Hamilton players the responses came promptly, they had sprawled on the turf at the thirty-eight yard line, where the kick had been made, immediately after the ball crossed the bar. They had rushed up to Jack Merritt, trying to block the kick, and failing, had sat down beside the spot where he stood when he kicked. No one else, except Hicks, had been near them, and no football whatsoever, after the one in play had started for the goal-posts from Jack’s kick. They all three had watched Hicks carefully from the time he neared them.
“He didn’t touch the pile of powdered resin!” declared the Hamilton right end, a clean-cut athlete, and his colleagues agreed. “He nosed around in a crazy fashion, saw the powder, and said, ‘Aha! I thought as much—a clue!’ Then he got on his knees, and taking a magnifying-glass from his pocket, he squinted at the heap a few seconds like Sherlock Holmes, after which foolish actions he fired a thousand questions at us. If you ask my opinion, the State provides a place for such—”
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., unperturbed by the laughter that followed the right end’s final statement, turned to the Referee in triumph. While that official, striving to understand each point, listened closely, and the blithesome Hicks’ Bannister comrades racked their brains to find his purpose, he dramatically prepared for the denouement—his grand climax!
“Now,” he said slowly, and with distinctness, “I shall make a few statements. If they are admitted as proof, keep quiet, and if any objections are to be made, speak up and contradict! First; all remember that just before the Bannister backfield shifted to the kick formation, Julius Caesar Jones, our rubber-out, brought this same powdered resin to Jack Merritt; alarmed, when the whistle blew, he ran back several yards from the scrimmage line, dropping the bag on this spot, where it bursted, spreading it out several inches! This pile, you admit, is the one left by Jones just before Jack dropped back to kick, and it is the only powdered resin brought on the field today!
“No denials? Listen. Second: we have shown that no one but the three Hamilton fellows and myself have been near this resin—after Jack kicked—that no football has been here, since his kick, and that no one has tampered with the powder in any way. These Hamilton fellows have been here since immediately after the kick, and, as you say, they would not give false evidence against their own team. Therefore, this pile of powdered resin is just the same as it was one fraction of a second after Jack kicked! Any mark in this powder, by a football, must have been made by the football Jack kicked, and any such mark must have been printed by the football striking the pile of resin just before he kicked, in other words—when it was dropped on the earth for a drop-kick!
“Therefore,” Hicks concluded clearly, “the existence of any mark, admittedly made by a football, must prove conclusively that Jack Merritt made a legal drop-kick, for the ball passed in air from the center’s hand to his! And we know that this powder was spilled immediately before Jack kicked, eight yards back of center, who held the ball from before the powder was spilled, until he passed it to Jack for the drop-kick, just after Jones dropped the bag!”
There was no contradiction! The word of the Red and Black triumvirate was unassailable. Hence, it was established that no one had tampered with the pile of powder, that no football had been near it, after the kick was made. Everyone recalled the laugh at Julius Cesar Jones when he spilled the resin several yards back of the scrimmage line where Jack then stood by his center! Hicks had proved completely that any mark made by a pigskin on the powder, must have been made by the football Jack Merritt kicked.
“Remember,” added Hicks, “the powder was spilled on the thirty-eight-yard line after the scrimmage passed that point, and at no time after it once passed or after Julius Caesar dropped the bag, did any football come near the thirty-eight-yard line until the one in play was passed to Jack when he fell back eight yards to kick!
“Then—if there is a mark made by a football in this powder, it is proof positive that the kick was a legal drop-kick. Why? Because, as no football has been near that pile since the kick, and if the kick were a punt not touching the earth, no football could have registered a mark; any such mark in this pile will show that the ball in play, the one kicked by Jack, made the mark when he dropped it, before it rebounded, and he kicked the goal! And—if it did touch this powder, registering a mark, it is certainly a drop-kick, and the goal must score for Old Bannister! So—”
“You mean,” shouted the Referee, kneeling to inspect the heap of powdered resin. “Why, you are right—there is the print of a football!”
Through the magnifying-glass there on the whitish powder showed the unmistakable pebble-grained leather end of a football! Even without the “detective glass,” it was clear and distinct, but with Hicks’ sleuth apparatus, there was no question. The end of a pigskin had left its print on that powder, writing its proof that the kick was a drop-kick, and not a punt!
The Referee’s official decision, announced a few seconds later, to the excited spectators, changed the Bannister gloom to exuberant happiness, transformed the transient joy of the Red and Black contingent to sorrow, and gave the Gold and Green the big game, and a chance for the championship!
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., the idol of the hour, with his fellow-hero, Jack Merritt, after the game ended by the time the teams had lined up again, was borne from Bannister Field on the broad shoulders of Captain Butch Brewster, Heavy Hughes, Babe McCabe and Bus Norton. The Bannister collegians and alumni, when the game ended, swarmed on the gridiron, and snake-danced around the field, a writhing, serpentine line, flinging hats, caps, and pennants over the crossbars. After the yell for the defeated enemy was given, the Gold and Green players shouted the score, following an old campus tradition:
“Hamilton—One-two-three-four-five-six-seven!
“Bannister—One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine!”
When several hundred voices brought out the “Nine!” scenes of joy that were indescribable followed. Hicks, Merritt, all the Bannister eleven, were caught in a maelstrom of yelling humanity, and carried to the campus. The country for miles around was scoured for bonfire material, and preparations made for the biggest celebration ever seen on College Hill. Everything was forgotten but the glad memory that victory, won in the last minute of play, lost for a time, and retrieved by T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., belonged to Bannister.
> That night at almost midnight, Hicks’ room in Nordyke was crowded with elated collegians. Butch, Beef, Pudge, Jack, all of the team, the worshipful Theophilus Opperdyke, a few awed Freshmen, in fact, almost everybody, had visited the happy-go-lucky youth. The celebration was ended now, and the great bonfire had died down. In the dormitories, however, it seemed that the excitement would never cease.
“A great victory!” breathed Pudge Langdon with a contented sigh. “Won by brains and—brawn? Hicks, I never read a dime-novel detective story to beat your work today!”
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., chuckled. The cheery Junior realized that in going straight to the spot where the kick was made, he had stumbled on the explanation. As soon as he saw the powdered resin he had muttered, “Say, Jack made a record of his kick the other day in the powdered lime. What a shame he didn’t do it today!” Then he heard Jack loudly protest that the ball had struck something soft, and—the problem was solved by a typical Hicks’ inspiration! Naturally, since the powdered resin had caused the twisty kick, the mark would be printed on the pile, but the difficulty remained to prove to the Referee that the ball in play, the one Jack kicked, had made the imprint!
The gladsome youth’s masterly case, proven point by point, had aroused Bannister’s highest enthusiasm. In fact, it had been necessary to convince his hearers beyond all doubt, and Hicks succeeded! Small wonder, then, that to the collegians he was nothing short of a mental phenom! All that evening, excited groups had talked of his wonderful deductions; it had been the topic everywhere.
“I told you so, Butch!” shrieked Ichabod’s steam-calliope voice, as the skyscraper Junior shook big Butch Brewster violently. “Hicks is a real detacative, and I helped him to be it! Didn’t I lend him my How to Become a Detacative in Six Weeks? I influenced him, for I saw he could be a sleuth, and now—”
