CHAPTER XV.
THE MAN BEHIND THE MYSTERY.
With doubled up fists, firmly planted in a scientific attitude of defence, Jack awaited the onslaught.
“I’ll teach you a lesson!” bellowed his assailant.
Jack said nothing, but stood his ground firmly. However burly his opponent was, he had never been taught even the rudiments of what has been called the “noble art” of self-defense.
His tactics were those of a wild bull. He swung his arms wildly, and even in the darkness Jack could see the gleam of his clenched teeth. All this the boy rightly judged to be, like the yells which had been directed at him, part of a plan to frighten him.
But while Jack was alarmed, it is true, he was not so easily scared as all that. At school he had been one of the best fellows in the “gym” with the gloves. His muscles, what with right living and lots of exercise, were like so many bundles of steel cords under his healthy skin.
On the other hand, the road agent, or highwayman, for Jack felt that he could be nothing else, was big, but flabby. As again and again Jack met his onrushes with swift and skillful side steps and ducks, he generally managed, too, to leave some memento of his athletic skill on one portion or another of his opponent’s anatomy.
In the meantime, what of Tom?
Like Jack, he was no unskilled novice in the art which Jack was practicing with such good effect. Like his cousin, too, he had no lack of courage; but it must be confessed that as he heard Jack’s shout of warning and realized that they had been trapped for no good purpose, his heart gave a frightened bound.
But he had no time in which to dwell on his sensations. As the voice which had struck Jack as familiar boomed out, Blinky made a rush at Tom not unlike the other rogue’s onslaught. But Blinky was more skillful with his fists than his companion.
Tom speedily found that it was all he could do to defend himself, strive as he might with every ounce of trained strength in him. He defended his face to good purpose against a tornado-like rain of blows. Blinky could not beat down his guard there.
Nevertheless, all about his body the rascal’s fists played like lightning. Tom pluckily defended himself, his grit rising as the odds against him grew more desperate. But at last, in warding off a heavy blow aimed at his ribs, he, for an instant, relaxed his guard on his face.
Instantly, with the snake-like swiftness of a fencer’s foil, Blinky’s burly arm shot forward. But if it had the swiftness and precision of a sword, it had also the force of a battering ram. Tom was lifted right off his feet and fell blunderingly into a patch of brush. It was lucky for him that the tangle of bushes broke his fall, saving his head from coming in contact with the ground.
“He’s safe for a while,” muttered Blinky, examining poor Tom’s white face and closed eyes by the light of the lantern which had been knocked over but not extinguished.
“Hey, Blinky! Gimme a hand here! This kid’s too much for me,” came from the rascal’s companion, who was busily engaged now, not in attack, but in defending himself.
The owner of the voice which had urged Blinky and his companion on, was not in evidence. Perhaps he thought discretion the better part of valor, and kept himself carefully out of the fray. However that may have been, he was not to be seen.
At his companion’s appeal for aid, Blinky, with a haste worthy of a better cause, hurried to his side.
“Rush him!” he cried.
Together they charged on Jack like the forward rush of a football team sweeping across the gridiron.
“It’s all off now,” flashed through Jack’s mind.
There was not time to turn and run, not a second in which to think up a line of defence. Besides, had Jack been able to run, he certainly would not have fled and left Tom’s fate in uncertainty.
It was all over in an instant, and it could have had no other conclusion. Jack found himself lying on his back one minute and the next he was turned on his face and his hands tied behind him.
“What’s the meaning of all this?” he managed to gasp out indignantly. “I am Jack Chadwick. You fellows are going to get in a lot of trouble over this.”
“Oh, I guess not. Master Chadwick,” came a low, sneering voice not far from Jack’s ear, “I guess not.”
It was the familiar voice that Jack knew he had heard before. But where? For the life of him he could not imagine. Nor indeed was his mind in a condition right then to be at its clearest.
“Who are you?” demanded the boy. “What have you attacked us for?”
“Partly to get even for a certain occasion in which you interfered with my plans, and partly to trouble you for that money you have in your shoes.”
As a flash of lightning illumines a whole landscape, so did the first words of the other instantly recall to Jack why his voice had sounded so puzzlingly reminiscent. “A certain occasion on which you interfered with my plans!”
“You’re Adam Duke!” he gasped out.
“Confound you! So you recognize my voice, do you? I didn’t mean you to. But, after all, it doesn’t much matter. By the time you rejoin your friends again I’ll be far away. Take his shoes off, Blinky.”
Jack flushed with indignation.
“What for?” he asked angrily. “What do you expect to find?”
“About five hundred dollars, and a similar sum in your friend’s shoes.”
Jack’s heart sank. How Duke had obtained his information he could not imagine, but it was true. He and Tom had decided to draw that sum each from their substantial deposits in the Camwell bank. Fearful of carrying such a large sum in bills of big denomination on their persons in ordinary fashion, they had decided to conceal them in their shoes.
It was not hard to hide the five one hundred dollar bills, placing three in one shoe and two in the other.
How could the man Duke have guessed where they carried their valuables, and how came he to know the route that they would take home—not the usual one between Camwell and their destination?