Larry Barlow's ambition

It was an easy matter for Larry to find out where Casper’s boathouse was located, up the shore, some distance away from the center of Perth Amboy.

His ride on the train had made him hungry, and as it was still early, he stopped at a handy restaurant for a light supper.

He was just finishing the repast, when on glancing up, he saw a man pass the doorway. It was Check Sluggers!

“Hullo! what does this mean!” he asked himself.

He was immediately suspicious, and as soon as he could pay his bill, he hurried out of the restaurant.

But the place was near a corner, and when he got outside Check Sluggers had disappeared.

“Can it be possible that Mary Vern was right and he followed me from New York?” was the question our hero asked himself.

Even yet he did not suspect that the letter he had received was a decoy.

He was pretty certain Sluggers had not seen him, and now took a roundabout way to reach the boathouse where he hoped to meet the girl he wished to befriend.

It was a blustery night, as if a storm was brewing, and by the time he gained the vicinity of the solitary building the big drops of rain began to fall.

“It is odd that Mary should come to this forlorn place,” he reasoned, “but I suppose she was so scared she really didn’t know what to do. Poor girl, I wish I could take her right out of Martin Pollox’s power! Well, she shan’t be harmed, not if I can help it.” And he set his teeth grimly.

Reaching the boathouse he walked around it at first and then made his way to the door, which stood partly open.

No one was in sight and he called out: “Mary! Mary Vern! Are you here?”

No answer came back, and he paused on the threshold, not knowing what to do next. The very loneliness of the place now made him suspicious. How had the girl learned of the boathouse? Was she acquainted in Perth Amboy?

Slowly and cautiously he advanced into the boathouse until he was about four feet inside the doorway. Then he called her name again.

The word had scarcely left his lips, when of a sudden a noose of rope fell down from above, around his neck. There was a jerk, and in a twinkle he was raised up on his tiptoes.

“Go slow now—we have him!” cried a strange voice, and then a man came up behind Larry and caught his hands.

“L—let—go!” gasped our hero, but the words were little more than a gurgle in his throat. He could not struggle, and still standing on tiptoes, to keep himself from strangling, he had to submit to having his hands bound tightly behind him. Then the rope slackened, so that he might breathe freely once more, but he could not move around.

“You villain!” he ejaculated, as soon as he could speak. “What is the meaning of this?”

“It means that you are at last in my power, Larry Barlow,” came in a familiar voice, and Martin Pollox came down a ladder and confronted the young fireman.

“Is this your plot against me?”

“If you must know, yes.”

“Where is Mary Vern?”

“Just where she was before, at Asbury Park,” chuckled Martin Pollox.

“Then she did not write that letter?”

“You are a fool to even ask such a question.”

“Well, now you have me in your power, what do you intend to do with me?” went on Larry, trying to put on as bold a front as possible.

“You’ll learn that fast enough. One thing is certain—you shall not cross my path again.”

“Are you going to have me carried off just as you had my father carried off?”

“I am not here to answer your questions, Larry Barlow. You have played your game against me and lost, and now you must suffer the consequences.”

“I suppose your next move will be to get Mary Vern out of the way,” said our hero, bitterly. “Martin Pollox, you are the most deep-dyed villain I ever saw or heard of.”

“Don’t get complimentary, Barlow,” was the sneering return. “You are in my absolute power, remember that.”

“That shall not silence me, Martin Pollox. You robbed my father, and murdered him for all I know to the contrary. Now you want to get me out of the way so that you can rob poor Mary Vern. But a day of reckoning will come for you, don’t forget that.”

“Bah, boy, if you’re going to preach I won’t listen to you,” stormed Pollox, but his face grew pale. “Conroy, see if Sluggers is around.”

At once the man who had first appeared on the scene ran out of the boathouse.

As soon as he was gone, Martin Pollox began to go through our hero’s pockets, confiscating everything of value.

“You won’t need these things,” he remarked, with a sickly grin on his crafty face.

Presently Conroy came back. He was evidently a seafaring man, and rough to the last degree.

“Sluggers is coming,” he said. “He sprained his foot on the rotten dock above here.”

In a minute more Check Sluggers came in limping painfully.

“Nearly broke my ankle,” he growled. “I see you’ve got him anyhow.”

“Yes, we’ve got him,” answered Martin Pollox. “And now the quicker you get him out of here the better.”

“All right,” answered Conroy. “But you had better come as far as the boat.”

Conroy was an oyster pirate and in his younger days had been a coast wrecker. He had done time in prison more than once, and was hardened to the last degree.

The rope was taken from our hero’s neck and he was marched out of the boathouse and up the shore.

It was now raining furiously and the rascals rightfully calculated that no one living in that vicinity would be stirring.

With the three men against him, and with his hands bound tightly behind him, Larry thought resistance would be foolhardy.

At last they gained a rowboat tied to a stake along shore. Our hero was made to enter this craft, and Conroy took up the oars and began to pull lustily out toward a big schooner which lay at anchor out of sight of the land.

“Boat ahoy!” he cried at last, and an answering cry came back.

Then the rowboat came up to the schooner’s side and Larry was made to climb to the deck.

“Take his things from him?” asked one of the men on the schooner.

“Yes, he hasn’t a thing in his pockets,” answered Martin Pollox.

“Very good.” The man turned to Larry. “Come with me.”

“Where to?”

“Don’t ask questions, but come.”

Larry wanted to resist, but before he could make the least movement, Conroy grabbed him from behind and ran him over the schooner’s deck.

The forward hatch was open, and in a twinkle our hero was pushed down into the black hold of the ship.

Then the hatch was closed and bolted and he was left to his fate.