CHAPTER XXIX.
SURPRISES FOR FRANK.
It was not the first time Frank had played the part of a shadower.
He believed he had not been observed by the person he was following, and he took care not to let the man suspect that there was a tracker behind him.
The man led Frank straight to one of the lowest music halls in the great city.
Frank did not hesitate to enter the place, and he paid the small admission price.
The hall was packed with men, but not a woman was to be seen, save on the stage, where a girl in short dresses was singing in a high-pitched key, accompanied by a miserable orchestra.
The men had brought bottles of bitter ale with them. Some had brought fried soles, wrapped in paper.
They were eating the soles, and drinking from the bottles.
The seats were long benches without arms. From the ends of these benches spectators were frequently shoved into the aisles, causing no end of amusement.
The men who were thus pushed from their seats seldom or never took offense; but they arose and pounded in the face and ribs of the ones who had taken their places, which they generally recovered.
To Frank’s astonishment, several of these impromptu battles were taking place when he entered. In America the parties thus engaged would have been promptly ejected, or there must have ensued a general riot in a very short time.
But the singer on the stage did not seem to mind it, the orchestra continued to inflict its torture, and the show went on as if nothing of consequence was happening, which was true.
Frank slipped into a seat in a corner, and looked around for the man he had shadowed.
The fellow was not far away, and he was talking in a low tone to a man who was sitting beside him.
After a few moments, Frank obtained a fair look at this man’s face.
He came near uttering a great shout of astonishment.
The face was familiar to him, but it seemed that it must be the face of a dead man.
“I am mistaken,” muttered the excited boy. “It cannot be! That man was blown into a thousand pieces!”
Breathlessly, he leaned forward, and he heard the man distinctly utter some words in French.
At the same time, he once more saw the man’s face fairly.
He fell back, dazed and bewildered, faintly gasping:
“It is Emile Durant, or his ghost!”
Frank looked again. He could scarcely believe the evidence of his eyes, and yet——
“I cannot be mistaken. That fellow is the red-handed wretch, Emile Durant. And he is here in London. His companion at this moment is the man I believe threw the bomb in Warrington Terrace.”
It did not take the boy long to put things together, and he began to understand the meaning of the mysterious attacks upon his life.
Durant hated Frank with undying hatred. He had seen the boy in London, and he had determined that Merriwell must die. It was possible that the first attempt on Frank’s life had been made in the Houses of Parliament. The infernal machine had been placed there to kill him, if possible, with the others who were expected to perish in the general destruction.
Another attempt had been made at the Derby, and it now seemed that it had been thwarted by ’Arry ’Awkins.
The third attempt had been made in Warrington Terrace.
Frank felt that the first warning he had received must have come from a friendly source. The writing was entirely different from that which was written in red ink and delivered after the Derby.
And now that he had found out one of his foes, who could have sent him the friendly warning?
Surely not ’Arry ’Awkins, the illiterate tout and skillful sneak-thief. That was not to be thought of for a moment. Frank wondered if Durant had traced him to London, or if the anarchist had fled from Paris, and had come upon him by accident in the English capital.
Frank knew he could have no more unscrupulous and deadly enemy than Emile Durant, who seemed to have become an anarchist because he knew it would afford him an opportunity to glut his thirst for bloodshed, destruction and ruin.
Frank had ever fancied that, to a certain extent, anarchists were governed by a mistaken and distorted belief that they were patriots whose mission it was to slaughter and destroy the rich and powerful and overturn the existing governments, in order that the poor, the weak and the oppressed might be given a fair and even show in the world.
He had never looked with the slightest favor on anarchy, but he had sometimes felt sympathy for the misguided wretches who believed the cause just.
But he could feel no sympathy for such a creature as Emile Durant, and he wondered that even the anarchists could call such a wretch brother, and accept him as a leader.
The bomb-thrower with Durant understood French, but spoke it imperfectly. It was evident they were conversing in that language so that they might not be understood by those around them.
Frank would have given much to hear what passed, but he could catch only a word now and then.
Then came another surprise for the boy.
Sitting close to the two men, and leaning against the wall, was a man who seemed to be in a drunken slumber.
It was ’Arry ’Awkins!
“Is it possible that he is a greater rascal than I thought, and one of the gang?” was the question Frank put to himself.
A roughly-dressed young fellow came in and looked around. After a time, he sighted Durant and the bomb-thrower. Immediately he approached them.
Then came the crowning surprise of all.
This person was none other than the stylish and supposed-to-be aristocratic Kennington Glanworth!
Glanworth knew the men, and he spoke to them. He sat down beside them, and Frank edged a little nearer.
Then the listening boy heard Glanworth soundly berating the bomb-thrower. The young man had been drinking, and he was very angry.
Glanworth seemed to be furious because the bomb had been thrown into the rooms occupied by Mr. Burrage and Inza.
“You ought to be hanged, Linton, for that little piece of business!” he snarled, glaring at the bomb-thrower.
Linton protested that he had not the least idea who occupied the rooms, and declared that his only object had been to “dispose of the boy.”
“You are a bungler at best,” growled Glanworth; “and you should not be intrusted with such jobs.”
Then Durant warned them to lower their voices, and Frank could not understand what followed.
But the boy had heard quite enough, and he wondered if he could find policemen near at hand and bring them down on the three villains.
His own position was one of extreme peril, as he very well knew.
“I must get out at once,” he decided. “It would be all up with me if I were seen and recognized by one of that trio.”
Then the very thing which he feared happened, for Kennington Glanworth turned squarely about, saw him, and recognized him!
Glanworth leaped to his feet, as if struck by a red-hot arrow.
“A thousand fiends!” he grated. “It is Merriwell!”
“I had better hustle,” muttered Frank, as he sprang toward the door.
“Stop him!” shouted Glanworth. “Stop that fellow!”
“Hall right, my ’earty,” said a big ruffian, placing himself in Frank’s path. “Has ’e snatched somethink?”
He reached out to grasp the boy.
Frank ducked, avoided the hand, arose quickly, and struck the big man on the chin with terrific force.
It sounded as if the man’s jaw cracked when the fist of the boy landed, and the big fellow was fairly lifted off his feet by the blow.
The man fell on his back, and Frank leaped over his body, darting out by the door, and dived around the corner into a dark alley.
His enemies were not far behind, but he was congratulating himself on escaping them, when, of a sudden, he felt himself clutched by hands of Titanic strength.
He had been caught from behind, and he tried to squirm about to defend himself.
He was astounded by the wonderful strength of his unknown assailant, for he seemed like a child in the hands of this person.
“Let go!” panted the boy.
There was no response, but a hand crept up and fastened itself on Frank’s throat—a hand that was cold, clammy and deathlike.
For a moment Frank seemed paralyzed with horror. He had felt that touch before, and he knew it well.
It was the grip of doom!
He had been warned that when the icy hand closed on him again it would crush out his life.
“I must break away!” was his one thought.
He fought with desperate energy, trying to tear that deadly grasp from his throat, for the chilling fingers had stopped his breathing and were choking him to death.
It seemed that the bones in his neck cracked beneath the frightful pressure, and that those terrible fingers must crush through flesh and sinew.
Horrible pains darted through his chest, which seemed on the point of bursting. There was a great roaring in his head, upon which he fancied the blows of a great hammer were falling.
Then a bright glare of light flared before his eyes, as if the whole of London had taken fire in an instant.
The roaring in his head was like some mighty Niagara. The light died to appalling darkness, and flared forth again, changing to a hundred colors.
Everything began to whirl around and around, following which he thought himself on a railroad train.
“This is strange,” he thought. “Never before have I traveled on a train that could make such speed. We must be covering more than a hundred miles an hour. It is decidedly jolly.”
No longer did he struggle. He lay supine and helpless in the grasp of the dreaded being with the death-cold hands.
In a moment it seemed that he had left the train and lay reclining on a barge of flowers that was floating down a sun-kissed river into the blue haze of the distance.
He felt quite at ease, and the perfume of the flowers was most delightful. Amid the flowers bees were humming and butterflies were flitting.
Looking forward, he saw that where the blue haze lay the river broadened to a great bay. The haze became bluer and blacker, until it lay on the bosom of the water like a pall.
Then, for the first time, he observed in the boat a grim, stern-faced old man who was guiding the craft.
“Where are you taking me?” asked the boy.
The old man made no reply in words, but he lifted his hand and pointed toward the eternal darkness that lay heavy and impenetrable on the surface of the water.
“It is Charon, the grim boatman,” thought Frank, “and he is ferrying me over the Styx. This is death!”
They floated onward, and with the darkness came sleep—a cold, chilling, but peaceful slumber.