CHAPTER XIX.
AN INSUFFICIENT DISGUISE.
Jack turned quickly and found himself facing a tall, lanky, sharp-featured man dressed in homespun clothes and cowhide boots. On his chin was a fine specimen of the type of facial adornment popularly known as a billy-goat. On his chest flashed a huge nickel star.
“Stand where ye are, by gosh!” he warned.
“Why,” began Jack, “I’ve——”
“No lip, young feller!”
The constable, for such he evidently was, drew out a huge old-fashioned revolver and flourished it.
“Look out what you’re doing with that,” warned Tom, whose sense of humor had come back again with his recovered good health, and who was now an interested spectator of the scene.
The constable glared at him, as if undecided whether or no he was being made fun of. The boys now saw what they had not noticed before, that quite a crowd, made up of farming folks attracted by the glare of the flames, had assembled. No effort was made to put out the fire. It had gone too far for that. The barn’s heaviest timbers showed now like a row of blackened, stumpy fangs against the red glare of the flames within. The roof had fallen in long since.
“Wall, I swan to goodness!” demanded one old gaffer in the crowd, “what’s all this, Officer Hake?”
“By hemlock, I don’ jes’ know, Squar’,” came the reply. “I seen ther flames same as you did, an’ hitched up ole Bess yonder ter drive out hyar.”
“Go on, officer,” said the old man who had been addressed as “Squar’,” with judicial coolness.
“Wa’al, I found ther barn all on fire—it’s Gus Davis’s, Squar’,—an’ these two young fellers lookin’ about dazed-like, while them three characters yonder lay bound on ther ground.”
The squire expectorated profusely.
“Great Doctors!” he exclaimed, “I’ll call court right hyar an’ inquire inter this. Young feller, in ther name of ther great an’ sov’ran commonwealth of Massachusetts, do you—wa’al, what yer got ter say fer yerself?”
“Just this, sir,” and Jack related a plain, straightforward story, while in that odd, flame-lit courtroom the rugged-faced farm men and women pressed eagerly about.
The judge appeared impressed.
“Got ther numbers of them thar notes?” he asked sharply, referring to Jack’s declaration that they were in Duke’s pocket.
“Yes, sir.”
Jack produced a memorandum and read off the numbers of the stolen notes. The old squire checked them off as Jack read them, in a battered old sealskin wallet with silver trimmings worn with age.
“Orf’cer Hake.”
The order came as Jack finished reading, repeating each number to make sure that the squire jotted them down right.
“Go look in that feller’s pockets an’ see if you kin find them banknotes.”
While Duke, pale as ashes, struggled and swore, he was rigidly searched. The notes were found in his inside pocket just as Jack had said they would be.
“Wa’al, by gum, young feller,” said the squire as the rural constable handed the bundle to him for inspection, “that part of yer story’s right. Now for the next.”
He adjusted his spectacles and glanced rapidly at each note, checking them off as he went along. As he concluded, he turned to Jack.
“Gimme your hand, young feller,” he said warmly, “thet’s a right smart, slick bit o’ work you done.”
“Thanks,” said Jack, “but there’s more to be said yet, your honor. That man lying yonder from whom the notes were recovered, is Adam Duke, a fugitive from justice.”
“It’s a lie!” howled Duke, beside himself with fright.
“You told me so yourself,” went on Jack calmly. “Besides, I recognized your voice.”
“What, that thar feller’s Adam Duke!” exclaimed the constable incredulously. “Why, I got ther circular hyar what describes him. Duke had a moustache, this fellow has a beard.”
“I half suspect it’s false,” declared Jack.
There was still a ruddy light from the fire and the squire decided to test this part of Jack’s story, even though he had already determined to hold the man on suspicion. Besides, in any event, there was the highway robbery charge against him.
“It’s a lie! All a lie, I tell you!” roared Duke as they examined his glossy, luxuriant beard. It did indeed seem too close to the real article for an assumed imitation.
“By heck, young feller, that beard’s as gen-u-ine an article as my goatee,” declared the constable.
Several others echoed this opinion. Even the village barber, for the burned barn was close to a small hamlet named Hexham, declared that he would stake his professional reputation on the veracity of the bound man’s whiskers.
But alas for all these wiseacres! The heavy rain accompanying the storm had done what nothing else could have accomplished, without design on Duke’s part.
It had loosened the foundation which stuck the hairy growth to his face. Jack, determined in his own mind from Duke’s frightened look that he had hit the right nail on the head, gave the whiskers a good tug.
They peeled off like a porous plaster, while the crowd yelled and Duke swore. Stripped of his disguise, Duke’s face was instantly recognized from the portrait which adorned the police circular. Two hours later he and his cronies were in the Hexham lock-up, waiting to be taken to the county seat for trial.
It may as well be set down here that at the subsequent proceedings, inasmuch as the chief complainants did not appear, all three got light sentences, the judge remarking that they were extraordinarily lucky.
But while that trial was going on our young friends were facing dangers and difficulties in tropic waters to which all that had gone before appeared tame. Their return with their supplies to Mr. Dancer’s workshop and their stories of the night’s events, had resulted only in the White Shark’s not clearing on her adventurous cruise till early dawn. Otherwise their start for Cuba was made as previously planned.
Nobody saw the dull white form of the diving boat slip seaward and then head due south. Had any persons witnessed the departure, they would not have had long in which to watch it, nor could they have explained the phenomenon of the queer form slipping through the quiet sea and then suddenly vanishing from view.
Had they attempted it, another “sea-serpent story” might have enlivened the columns of the newspapers, for, as the White Shark got beyond shallow water, she dived like one of her vicious namesakes—the tigers of the deep—and the waters closed over her.