“At least in my father’s bank they will be secure——” began Rob, when he broke off short, and turned swiftly. His keen ear had detected a slight rustling in a clump of bushes behind him. As he communicated his suspicion that some one might have been concealed there, they all sprang forward, surrounding the clump, but there was no sign of a concealed listener, and, satisfied that everything was well, they followed the young officer toward the house. Their conductor narrated, as they went, such details of the experimental work as he thought might interest the lads.
Hardly had they vanished within the gloomy, deserted mansion, however, before two faces appeared above the surface of the ground, peering up from the mouth of one of the concealed passages which Mr. Blake had mentioned as existing on the old place.
Could the boys have seen those two countenances, they would have been greatly interested, for one of them was Freeman Hunt’s and the other was Jack Curtiss’s. To explain how they came to be there, it is necessary to revert for a moment to an occurrence which took place some weeks before on a fishing expedition. Driven by bad weather to shelter in the little cove not far from the De Regny place, the party, consisting of Freeman Hunt, Dale Harding and Lem Lonsdale, had hastily sought a shelter from the pelting rain, as their boat was an open one. In a low, rocky cliff, a half-obscured opening showed.
“Looks like there might be a cave in behind there,” Hunt said, and, on his suggestion, they set to work moving away several big rocks that encumbered the opening. The place proved to be a cave, and an ample one, running back to a great depth, seemingly.
An exploration party had been formed at once, and, after traversing a narrow passage, running back underground for some distance, the lads emerged, to their astonishment, in the clump of bushes in which Rob had just heard the rustling sound.
On this particular day, Hunt and Jack Curtiss had visited the cave alone to explore it more thoroughly. The branch passages they expected to find were not there, however, but, threading the original one, they had emerged into the clump which thickly screened its opening, in time to overhear most of the conversation of the Boy Scouts and the army officer.
As the door of the old house slammed, its echoes reverberating through the tangled, overgrown grounds, Jack Curtiss turned to his companion with a grin of satisfaction.
“Here’s the chance we’ve been looking for,” he exclaimed, wiping the sweat and dirt from his forehead,—for burrowing in long disused passages is dirty work.
“You mean a chance to get even?” asked Hunt in a puzzled tone.
“Yes. We can fix that Rob Blake up so that he’ll be in disgrace from this afternoon on.”
“I don’t understand,” rejoined Freeman, who, while he had chosen Jack Curtiss for a companion, had not a tenth part of the other’s evil ingenuity.
“Well, I do,” was the confident rejoinder. “It’s up to us to find this Jap and this Dugan, or whatever his name is. If we can do so, we’ve got Rob Blake where we want him.”
“I see now!” exclaimed Hunt, a light of comprehension showing in his eyes, “but do you dare——”
“Dare!” repeated Jack Curtiss scornfully, “I’d dare do anything to get even with Rob Blake, and,” he added prudently, “the best of it is, that there’s not a chance of it ever being traced to us. If we are only lucky enough to find those fellows they mentioned, they can do the dirty work, and we have the satisfaction of being even with those cubs.”
“But how are you going to find them?” asked Hunt, still hesitating.
“There’s only one road from that hut to this place. We’ll sneak through the grounds while they are all in the house, and nail this chap Dugan in time to put our plan into execution.”
An instant later, two grimy, dust-covered forms emerged from the bowels of the earth, as it seemed, and shoving their way through the dense clump of bushes, glanced cautiously about them.
“Coast’s clear,” announced Jack presently.
Together, Rob’s old enemy and Freeman Hunt, now his equally bitter foe, sped across the De Regny grounds and toward the road.
CHAPTER VIII.
AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER.
“You younkers are certain you are telling me the truth?”
Dugan, the treacherous private, paused, and, from his immense height, looked down into the faces of Jack Curtiss and Freeman Hunt.
“As sure as we stand here,” Jack assured him, “I’ve told you how we came to overhear what was said. If you want those plans, now is your chance to get them.”
“And don’t forget to beat Rob Blake up good and proper,” chimed in Hunt, who had lost all prudence in his eagerness to have his grudge avenged.
“You bet I won’t,” Dugan grunted. “I guess if he’s the sort of boy you describe him to be, he won’t give them up without a struggle.”
“You could break him in two with one hand tied behind your back,” struck in Jack, gazing at the immense frame and loosely hung, ape-like arms of Dugan.
“Leave that to me, kid,” Dugan assured him, with an ominous grin, “and—hullo, here comes Hashashi now. That’s lucky. I may need him if there are three of them.”
Turning in the direction in which the soldier had spied the newcomer, the lads saw a small, slightly-built figure approaching them. It was the Japanese with whom Dugan had been seen conversing in the hut when the unsuspected listeners had overheard.
“Guess we’ll be going,” said Jack Curtiss uneasily.
“Hold on!” exclaimed Dugan, clutching him with a grip of iron, as he spoke. “You’ve got to promise me that you don’t tell nothing of this.”
“Of course,” Jack assured him; “we’ve promised you once.”
“And I guess you’ll keep your word,” said the man, grimly compressing his lips till they formed a narrow line. “If I ever suspect you of telling a thing about it, I’ve got you two ways. In the first place, I’ll reveal your part in the plot, and, in the second, I’m a bad man to have for an enemy.”
Dugan drew his low forehead into a dozen horizontal puckers, as he spoke. With his lowering brow and ape-like face, he looked indeed, as he had said, “a bad man to have for an enemy.”
“D’ye understand?” he grated harshly, glaring at Jack grimly.
Curtiss, who was as big a coward as he was a bully and reprobate, felt his knees knock together under that ferocious gaze.
“Y-y-yes, sir,” he said.
“You, too!” hissed Dugan, switching suddenly on Freeman Hunt, who was looking nervous and ill at ease. He began to think that perhaps they had let themselves in for something more serious than they had bargained for.
“I won’t breathe a word of it,” Hunt hastened to assure him.
“You’d better not,” snarled Dugan, more savagely than ever, “now, git!”
Without further loss of time, Jack Curtiss and Freeman Hunt “got.” To their surprise, as they turned to hasten off, no sign of the Jap was to be seen, yet an instant before he had been in the road, not more than ten yards from them. There were no hedges at this point, and salt meadows stretched out to the sea on one side, and stubble-fields, flat and level, on the other.
“Where on earth did that Jap go to?” asked Jack in a mystified tone, as they hurried away.
“Don’t know,” rejoined Freeman, with a trembly feeling. “There was something uncanny about it.
“I—I begin to wish we hadn’t met those fellows or had anything to do with them,” he burst out, in a complaining tone.
“There you go, sniveling like a baby,” sneered Jack Curtiss. “Why, a short time ago, you were only too pleased to have found such an easy way of getting even on Rob Blake and those other young whelps.”
“I know,” rejoined Hunt timidly, “but—but I don’t like the look of that fellow Dugan. He scared me. If he ever suspects us of betraying him, he’ll take a terrible revenge. I wish we hadn’t meddled in the thing at all, I wish——”
“Say, you make me tired,” broke in his companion angrily, “we’re not going to tell about it, are we? We won’t be foolish enough to let on that we had anything to do with the beating Rob Blake is bound to get.”
“No, but——” quavered Hunt.
“Oh, tell it to your grandmother,” scoffed Jack. “Come on. Hurry up; we want to get away from here before the fun begins.”
Hastening on, they soon were out of sight and earshot of the spot in which their momentous colloquy had taken place.
In the meantime, from behind a large rock, not far from where Dugan was standing, the lithe form of the Jap suddenly upreared itself.
“Wow! You gave me a scare that time!” exclaimed Dugan, as his ally came into view. “How did you vanish like that, a few minutes ago?”
“Simple, my dear friend. I simply took advantage of a large rock by the roadside, and dodged behind it. There was nothing of Oriental mystery in it, I assure you.”
“Huh!” rejoined Dugan, as if only half convinced. “You’re a queer fellow, Hashashi. What did you come after me for, anyhow? Not but what I’m mighty glad to see you right now.”
“I hastened after you to give you some final instructions I had forgotten,” was the reply. “But what were you talking to those boys about?”
“Something mighty interesting to us both. Listen.”
Dugan rapidly related all that Jack had told him.
“Of course,” he concluded, “there is a chance that they may not come down this road, but, in any event, we know now where the plans are, and if the worst comes to the worst——”
“The vaults of country banks are not proof against Shimose,” grinned the Jap.
“Hark!” exclaimed Dugan suddenly. “I hear voices—boys, too,” he went on, after a minute’s listening; “get behind that rock yonder. I’ll stop them and ask the time of day or something, and you make your appearance when you think you are needed.”
“All right, my honorable comrade,” chuckled the Jap, sliding like a gray-suited shadow toward the rock, and vanishing from view behind it.
On came the three unsuspecting boys, chatting and laughing, and little dreaming of what lay in store for them round the turn of the road. Dugan, an evil expression on his countenance, drew back a little, and then, as they drew closer, started forward.
“Got the time, young fellow?” he asked in a natural, easy tone, as the three lads came up to him.
“It’s the man we saw in the hut!” exclaimed Tubby, in a rather affrighted tone, but so low that Dugan did not hear him.
“Well, he can’t possibly know what we have been doing,” rejoined Rob, in an equally cautious voice. Thinking it best not to give the man even a slight excuse for suspicion, he drew out his watch.
“It’s just three-thirty,” he said.
“Thanks,” said Dugan, who all this time had been carefully sizing up the three lads. Rob he recognized by description as being the one who was likely to carry the plans of the equalizer.
“Phew!” he remarked to himself. “They’re three husky youngsters for fair. Glad I’ve got a revolver, or I might get the worst of it.”
The boys were starting on again when Dugan stepped back a pace or two and spread his immense bulk across their path.
“Hold on a minute, boys,” he said. “I’ve got something to say to you. You’ve been calling on Lieutenant Duvall.”
“We’ve been for a walk,” rejoined Rob boldly. “I don’t know who this Lieutenant Duvall is you’re talking about.”
“You don’t, eh, you young mucker?” Dugan had decided that his best chance lay in scaring the three lads. “Well, I do. Don’t try to lie to me.”
He contorted his face in hideous fashion. This was a trick he had found very successful in intimidating other persons he wished to bully or oppress. But in the three boys before him, as we know, Dugan was up against boys out of the ordinary run. Instead of being impressed, Rob simply took a step forward, turning to his chums and saying in a natural, unshaken voice.
“Come on, fellows.”
“Yes, come on, fellows,” sneered the other. “Not so fast, my young buckos. I want a word with you. You’ve got some plans in your pockets. Are you going to give them up peaceably, or do you want a taste of Bill Dugan’s fists?”
Rob could not repress a start, not of fear, but of astonishment, as the fellow spoke.
How could he know anything about the plans he was carrying to the safe deposit vaults?
Dugan misinterpreted his hesitation.
“Come on now,” he grated, coming closer, with an ugly leer on his face; “fork over!”
As he spoke his hand crept back toward his hip. He might have to use his revolver. These boys were proving more obstinate than he had imagined. To his amazement, no trace of fear or alarm appeared on their faces for all his blustering.
“See here,” exclaimed Rob boldly, “I don’t know who you are and I don’t think I want to better the acquaintance. I do know this, however, that you wear the uniform of a United States soldier. Let us pass at once, and stop this nonsense, or——”
With a bellow of rage, Bill Dugan leaped forward. At the same instant he aimed a powerful blow at Rob’s head. The lad could hear the ponderous fist whistle as it cut through the air. But somehow, when the blow landed—or reached the point where it should have landed—Rob wasn’t there. The boy had nimbly sidestepped.
With a bellow of rage Bill Dugan leaped forward.
“That won’t do you no good,” bellowed Dugan, assuming furious rage, both to impress the boys and to conceal his astonishment. “I’ve got you where I want you. Are you going to give up them plans?”
“I am not!”
The reply came swift as a bullet. Rob realized that in some way the rascal before him knew that the precious designs were in his possession. He determined that they would not leave his person without a struggle. Somehow he felt that the three of them, all clean-lived, healthy, muscular boys, should prove a match for the hulking, bloated, blustering brute before him. He was totally unprepared for the fellow’s next move, however. With a gliding motion of one hand, so swift as to be almost imperceptible, Dugan suddenly produced a gun. At the same instant he gave a shrill whistle, and from behind his rock the serpentine form of the Jap appeared. His almond shaped eyes glittered balefully as he took in the scene before him.
Dugan took quick advantage of the temporary distraction of the lad’s attention.
With an agility which would hardly have been expected from his huge proportions, he suddenly sprang forward. Rob, totally unprepared as he was for such a move, could not defend himself. Down he toppled into the dust, before the savage onslaught of the giant Dugan’s great form falling on top of him and pinning the lad securely to the ground.
CHAPTER IX.
WHEREIN CAPTAIN HUDGINS’ BEES SWARM.
As Rob and the soldier sprawled in the road “hugger-mugger,” Merritt darted forward. He succeeded in seizing Dugan’s gnarled fist just as it was about to come crashing down in the boy’s face, but as his fingers closed upon Dugan’s arm a convulsive pain shot through the corporal of the Eagles. Switching round he saw, bending over him, the grinning face of the Jap. The Oriental had merely pressed upon some nervous center of Merritt’s being, and had for a second paralyzed all effort. It was the lad’s first introduction to jiu-jitsu.
“Ouch!” yelled Merritt, in spite of himself.
The next instant his exclamation was echoed by the Jap. Tubby’s rotund form had come hurtling upon the Oriental like a thunderbolt, bearing him to the ground. Temporarily his jiu-jitsu tricks were at a discount.
But all this did not materially aid Rob, who felt his strength fast ebbing under ineffectual attempts to throw off the mighty grip of the massive Dugan. The giant encircled the lad’s windpipe with his rough fingers and squeezed till Rob grew purple in the face. In the meantime, the other lads had their hands full with the Jap, who had again exercised his cunning, and by a simple pressure upon a spot near Tubby’s heart had rendered that youth inactive for some moments.
Dugan’s great paws were sliding under Rob’s jacket to search his inside pockets, when a voice, suddenly hailing them, caused both attacked and attackers to look up. So engrossed had they been in defense and aggression that not one of them had noticed the approach of a stout, thick-set man, in clothes that somehow suggested a sailor. The newcomer’s hair was iron gray and a tuft of the same colored growth adorned his square chin. Under his arm he carried a large box of some kind, carefully covered with newspapers.
For a second he stood petrified with astonishment at the scene upon which he had so unexpectedly come. The next instant his blue eyes snapped steelily, and with a roar he dashed toward the combatants.
“Avast there!” he bawled. “Lay aft, you lubbers! Boy Scouts, ahoy!”
“Captain Hudgins!” shouted Merritt.
“Aye, it’s the captain!” bawled the valiant ex-tar, leaping forward and dealing Dugan a terrific blow with his free arm. With the other he kept tight hold of his big box.
“You interfering old lummox!” bawled Dugan, springing erect, with a roar of fury. “Keep out of this!”
“Not much I won’t,” bellowed the captain, just as loudly. “Lay aft, you military pirate, or the navy’s goin’ to wipe up the ground with the army.”
As the captain spoke, brandishing aloft his free arm, Dugan sprang for him, aiming one of his terrific swings. The captain, who was nimble for his years, sidestepped swiftly, but not quick enough to altogether avoid the blow. Dugan’s fist fell upon the box he was carrying with a crunching, crackling sound.
“Now you’ve done it!” bawled the captain, dancing about as if executing a hornpipe. “’Vast afore they board yer!”
“Don’t try to bluff us,” roared Dugan; “we——”
But before he could complete the sentence there was an angry buzzing sound in the air, like the drone of a sawmill cutting through a tough, knotty log. Simultaneously, from the broken box, there poured a dark stream of flying things.
“Bees!” shouted Merritt.
“Honey makers!” exclaimed the experienced Tubby, as the dark swarm surged down upon Dugan.
“Ho! ho! ho! Here’s where you get stung!” shouted the captain. “Come close to me, boys, and they won’t hurt yer. Hey there, after ’em, sting the scoundrels. Get your hooks inter that yaller-faced lime juicer. Hooroh! That’s the time he got you! I guess them bees is thar with ther business ends!”
In these, and a dozen similar exclamations of satisfaction, did the captain indulge, as the bees angrily settled in swarms upon Dugan and his Oriental companion. Rob, who had scrambled to his feet, stood with the others close to Captain Hudgins, and not a bee bothered them. The intelligent insects knew their owner too well to attack him. With Dugan and the Jap, however, the case was different.
In vain did the two rascals wave their arms about and beat the air in a desperate effort to free themselves of their tormentors. It was of not the slightest avail. The bees settled upon them in angry masses in every exposed part. Some even dropped down the Jap’s back, and commenced an attack there.
Yelling like Comanches and whirling their arms frenziedly about their heads, the two ruffians fairly leaped the fence at one bound in their pain and astonishment, and dashed off across the fields toward the sea. About them, as they ran, hovered a dark, angrily buzzing cloud.
“Hey, come back thar! You’ve took my prize Eye-talian queen!” the captain bawled at the top of his voice, but, somewhat naturally, the fugitives paid no attention to his words. Straight for the sea they dashed, and, plunging into the surf, rolled over and over in frantic attempts to rid themselves of the clinging, stinging pests.
“Ho! ho! ho!” roared the captain. “That’s as good as a fair breeze arter a c’am. But avast thar, lads, how come you ter be in such a pickle?”
Rob, whose throat still showed the red marks where Dugan’s fingers had clutched, hastily explained, being frequently interrupted by the captain with exclamations of:
“Belay thar! The deck-swabbing, land-lubbers! Heave ahead!” and “Douse my glimmering sidelights!”
“Wall,” opined the captain, when Rob had concluded, “I reckon them fellers is off on a long cruise. They shore did heave their anchors sudden. The worst of it is my bees has gone with ’em, and I’m generally mighty partic-lar who my bees associates with.”
But it was now the captain’s turn to explain how he came to be on the road between Hampton and the isolated De Regny place at such an opportune moment. It appeared that the lone recluse of Topsail Island had been to the distant farm of a friend of his to aid him in wintering some bees. He had taken a hive of his own honey makers with him to obviate the chance of being stung by the strangers.
“Bees won’t attack any one they knows, or who they has an introduction to,” he explained. “Now you see them bees wouldn’t touch any of you boys. Now then, that’s——”
“Ouch!” exclaimed Tubby suddenly, clapping one hand to the back of his neck.
“Belay thar, lad, what’s in yer rigging?” demanded the captain anxiously, rising from the broken box which he had set down in the road and had been using as a seat.
“I—I think it’s a bee,” rejoined the stout youth. “I—I’m sure it is, in fact. Wow! there’s another!”
The lad began dancing about as if he were on springs.
“Thought you said they wouldn’t sting any one they were introduced to,” said Rob, with a half smile.
“Wall, I guess in the hurry I must hev overlooked them two,” responded the captain, without the quiver of an eyelid. Stepping up to the capering Tubby, he deftly removed two bees from the back of his neck.
“Consarn ye!” he said angrily, as if he were addressing human beings. “What’s the matter with you, you mutinous dogs.”
The boys burst into a roar of laughter at such talk addressed to bees, but the captain solemnly assured them that the little winged creatures understood every word.
“Will those that flew away come back to you?” inquired Rob, with interest.
“No, lad. They’ve deserted ther ship,” was the rejoinder. “But they done it in a good cause, so I ain’t got a word to say. But now let’s trim our sails, up anchor, and lay a course for home. My boat’s at the Inlet, and I’ve got ter make ther island by dark.”
“How is Skipper?” asked Rob, as they accordingly strode forward at a brisk pace.
“Just as good a shipmate as ever,” was the response. “That thar dog gits more sensible every day. I thought that time when he found them uniforms thet Jack Curtiss and that rascal Bender stole that he was just about the limit in dog sense, but he does smarter things than that right along. Speakin’ uv that, what’s come of Jack Curtiss and his piratical shipmates?”
The boys soon told him what they knew of those two worthies. The captain shook his head as he heard.
“Bad craft them two,” he observed, shaking his head with renewed energy. “But, to my thinkin’, they ain’t much worse than that yaller-skinned feller and his mate wot attacked you on the road.”
“No,” Rob agreed; “if it hadn’t been for you, we should have been in bad straits.”
“If it hadn’t a bin fer them bees, lad, you mean,” amended the captain earnestly.
Soon after, they reached the Inlet and the captain set out for the wharf, having exacted a promise from the boys to visit him at an early date.
“Ther island’s seemed kind er lonesome since the Boy Scout camp weighed anchor,” he said.
“We’ll be back again this summer,” Rob assured him.
When Rob reached home he found a telephone message awaiting him. It was from Lieutenant Duvall. The boy soon obtained connection with his friend, one of the improvements at the mansion having been the installation of a ’phone. The lieutenant actually gasped as he listened. He had trusted Dugan implicitly up to that afternoon, and the revelation of his brutal attack following the lad’s disclosures of what they had overheard in the hut had shaken his faith in human nature tremendously.
“I don’t know who to trust,” he exclaimed over the wire. “No,” in answer to Rob’s question, “Dugan has not come back. When he does I shall see that he is sent to Washington under guard.”
But Dugan did not return to his duty with the aero squad that night, nor on any succeeding night. He and the Jap disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed them. A visit to the hut revealed a cot-bed and the rough furniture the lads had noticed, but there were no other traces of human occupancy.
“Good-by, Dugan,” chorused the lads, as it became certain that the ruffianly wearer of the army uniform had vanished from their midst, but could they have looked into the future they would, perhaps, have changed their form of farewell to “Au revoir.”
CHAPTER X.
MR. STONINGTON HUNT—SCHEMER.
One afternoon, not long after the events related in the last chapter, Paul Perkins had a visitor. The caller was Freeman Hunt’s father, a man of past middle age, but flashily dressed notwithstanding the plentiful sprinkling of gray in his hair and carefully trimmed mustache. A diamond ring sparkled on Mr. Hunt’s left hand and a similar stone blazed in his tie. He regarded the wearing of the jewels as advertisements of prosperity, and wore them with the same satisfaction with which he looked upon his new, gaudily furnished house on the hill above the village, and his automobile—also very new—and his numerous other possessions, all of which, like himself, seemed somehow to savor of veneer and to nowhere have the true ring of solid wood.
There was, perhaps, a reason for this. Stonington Hunt had not always enjoyed “ease and a competency.” His earlier years, in fact, had been a hard struggle. He had been a messenger boy for a firm of Wall Street brokers, but, by natural sharpness and shrewdness, had worked himself up till he obtained an interest in the business. Then he branched out. His fortune grew by leaps and bounds, till Stonington Hunt was recognized as a wealthy man. The newspapers had shown up several of his financial transactions as being distinctly shady, but somehow he had always been “smart enough,” as he would have expressed it, to keep to windward of the law. “Smartness,” in fact, was his gospel. He preached it morning, noon, and night to his son. Had Freeman had a different sort of father, he might have been a different sort of boy. But his mother having died when he was but a small lad, he had fallen exclusively to his father’s care. Stonington Hunt had brought his son up to believe it was disgraceful to be poor, and doubly disgraceful to fail in anything one set out to do. Principle, the elder Hunt had none, and he had taught his son that a sense of honor was a useless encumbrance. Such was the man who rang Mrs. Perkins’s front door bell and greeted her with overdone effusiveness.
“Is Paul in?” he asked, after he had introduced himself and expressed his intense gratification at meeting such a charming lady.
Poor Mrs. Perkins, all in a flutter, invited her glittering guest into the front parlor, drew up the shades, which were rarely raised, and rejoined that Paul was still at school, but would be home shortly.
“Perhaps it is just as well,” smiled Mr. Hunt, displaying a row of white, gleaming teeth. “He is but a lad, and I have come to talk over something which, perhaps, a woman of the world, an intelligent woman like yourself, is more competent to discuss than a mere boy.”
“Paul is a mighty bright boy,” remarked Mrs. Perkins, bridling somewhat in defense of Paul, but coloring and simpering with pleasure at the compliment paid to her.
“Exactly,” agreed Mr. Hunt amiably; “a very bright boy. A credit to the town, madam. But Paul has been hiding his light under a bushel, so to speak. He has not been radiating the effulgence of inventive genius as he should; he has been—in short,” concluded Mr. Hunt, “Paul needs bringing out.”
“Bringing out?” gasped Mrs. Perkins, to whom much of this had been so much Greek.
“Just so, my dear Mrs. Perkins, and I—Stonington Hunt—am the man to do it. Why, I understand that at this very moment he has in your stables a remarkable—I may say, a wonderful invention.”
Mrs. Perkins had never heard the wagon house referred to as “stables” before, and, quite carried away by this glittering gentleman’s kindly interest and his magnificent manner, she rejoined that Paul had got “something of some sort” out there.
“Something, my dear madam,” glowed Mr. Hunt; “it is more than a something. It is an achievement. My boy Freeman—a dear friend of your son’s—told me about it—there’s no objection to my seeing it, I hope. I called on purpose.”
“Why, I—really, sir, I don’t know if Paul would like it,” palpitated Mrs. Perkins. “You see, he—he is very particular about letting anybody see the invention. He’s trying for a patent on it at Washington now.”
“Ah, then it is not yet patented?” There was an eager catch in Mr. Hunt’s voice. For an instant his composed manner seemed to lose its icy calm. But in a moment he was himself again. “He should certainly get it patented at once, madam,” he went on, in his usual oily tones—“which brings us at once to the point. I am here to offer him a price for his invention if it seems at all practicable.”
“Oh, sir!” gasped Mrs. Perkins, quite overcome. “You would buy it?”
“Yes, madam, I, Stonington Hunt, will buy it. I am prepared to offer,” he paused as if in doubt whether to mention the sum in one breath, “one hundred dollars for the exclusive right to manufacture it.”
“A hundred dollars!” exclaimed Mrs. Perkins, who had seen few lump sums of money since her husband had died. “Why, sir, it is only a plaything of the boy’s.”
“If you will let me see it, I will judge of that,” put in Mr. Hunt softly. “Can we not go out to your stable and view it now?”
“Why, I—Paul has the key,” stammered Mrs. Perkins.
“Confound the brat!” muttered Mr. Hunt, and then aloud he purred: “But you have another one, my dear madam, I don’t doubt.”
“Yes,” confessed Mrs. Perkins; “there is one on my dead husband’s key ring. But I don’t know if Paul would like it. You see——”
“My dear madam,” put in Mr. Hunt, in his most impressive manner, “I am a man of the world, you are a woman of the world. Do we not know better than children what is best for them? I ask you, madam, as a woman of experience, do we not?”
“I—I—yes, I suppose so,” trembled Mrs. Perkins, quite carried away by all this. “If you’ll wait a second, sir, I’ll get the key.”
“Oh, dear, I do hope Paul won’t be mad,” she thought, as she hastened upstairs on her errand.
“Easier than I thought,” muttered Mr. Hunt, gazing intently at the pink-eyed china dog with blue spots that stood upon the mantel. “If the machine is what Freeman described it to be, there should be money in it, and where there is money, there you’ll find Stonington Hunt.”
Mrs. Perkins, with a shawl thrown over her head, was soon downstairs again.
“Now, sir,” she said, preparing to lead the way, but as they emerged from the door and started to take the brick path leading to the wagon house, a sudden sound of approaching boyish voices was heard.
“Why, here comes Paul now, with three of his friends,” exclaimed Mrs. Perkins, gazing across the white picket fence and up the street.
“Confound the luck,” ground out Mr. Hunt, with a very unangelic expression on his face, “it will need all my tact to carry this through if the cub proves obstinate.”
“Well, madam,” he said inquiringly, the next minute, as Mrs. Perkins still lingered by the fence.
“Oh, sir, I’ll leave it all to Paul now,” gasped Mrs. Perkins, secretly glad to be relieved of the responsibility. “Let him show his what-you-may-call-um off. He can do it better than I could. He understands it.”
With a shrug, Mr. Hunt bowed, and Mrs. Perkins turned to re-enter the house. At that moment Paul, with Rob, Merritt, and Tubby about him, came through the gate. He seemed excited. His checks were flushed. In his hand he held a yellow piece of paper.
“Hooray, mother!” he cried. “News from Washington. They gave me this telegram as we passed the office. It just came.”
“Is it good news, my boy?” asked Mrs. Perkins solicitously.
“The very best!” cried the boy, in a delighted, happy tone. “Mr. Merrill tells me that he has interested the government in my invention in connection with its being used on the South Polar expedition.”
“That is good news, indeed, my boy!” cried his mother joyously. “But, Paul, all this time we have been forgetting that there is a gentleman waiting to see you. Mr. Hunt, this is my boy, and these are his friends, Rob Blake, Merritt Crawford, and Tub—I mean Robert Hopkins.”
“I have heard of Rob Blake,” said Mr. Hunt, coming forward with a scowl. “I have heard of his friends, too. My business is with your lad, Mrs. Perkins.”
“I’m afraid, sir, that it won’t be much good now,” said Mrs. Perkins, vanishing.
As soon as she had gone, Mr. Hunt “opened fire.” He had decided in his own mind that a quick, decisive manner would succeed best with the quiet, dreamy Paul, so he called him aside with an imperative gesture.
“Come here, boy, I wish to speak with you,” he said, smiling with inward satisfaction as he noted how quickly the inventive lad obeyed the summons. Rob, Tubby, and Merritt, their books under their arms, stood near the gate.
“I don’t like the look of the father any more than I do the son,” declared Tubby emphatically.
“Wonder what he wants with Paul?” mused Rob, as he watched the former Wall Street luminary link his arm familiarly in the boy’s and walk off with him, talking earnestly. They waited patiently, and presently Paul came hurrying toward them with a wondering face. His eyes were round.
“Say, fellows,” he exclaimed, “Mr. Hunt has offered me a thousand dollars for the exclusive rights to the motor-scooter—what do you think of it?”
“What can they think of it but that it is a splendid offer,” put in Mr. Hunt, coming up. “Why, I have made it without even seeing the machine.”
“But you overheard about the dispatch from Washington,” put in Rob quietly.
“Confound this boy. He’s too sharp,” thought Mr. Hunt, whose desire to obtain the rights to the machine had increased greatly since Paul had imprudently announced his news from the capital.
“I am willing to give this lad a royalty interest in the sales, supposing the machine is practicable,” he said, in as conciliatory a tone as he could adopt toward what were, in his lofty opinion, “a bunch of green kids.”
“What do you think, Rob?” asked Paul, his eyes glowing.
“You will excuse us a minute, Mr. Hunt?” said Rob, and then, drawing his excited young friend to one side, he began to talk to him earnestly. The gist of Rob’s advice was that Paul would be very silly to close any sort of a deal in a hurry. His father’s friend in Washington was evidently doing all that lay in his power to further his interests, and if such a shrewd citizen as Mr. Hunt was willing to make such an offer on snap judgment, the machine must, in reality, be worth much more.
“Well,” said Mr. Hunt, with a ghastly effort at a pleasant smile, “I trust that David has given good counsel to Jonathan?”
“Why, sir,” blurted out Paul. “I don’t believe I care to do anything in the matter to-day.”
“What!” exclaimed Mr. Hunt. “You refuse my magnificent offer?”
“You see, Paul is very young, sir,” put in Rob, “and he’s not quite sure that it is magnificent.”
“I do not recognize you in this matter, boy!” majestically declared Mr. Hunt, who was rapidly losing his temper. What he had thought would be a simple matter was turning out to be far more complex than he had imagined.
“At any rate,” he said, conquering his rage with an effort, and turning to Paul with a smile that was meant to be amiable, but which was positively wolfish; “at any rate, you will allow a poor, inquisitive mortal to see this marvelous craft?”
“Don’t you do it,” prompted Tubby, in a loud whisper.
Hunt overheard, and turned quick as a flash.
“I should think that a boy of your brains and ability, Paul, would not allow himself to be led by the nose by a lot of impudent puppies——”
“Or scheming promoters,” put in Rob quietly.
“How dare you, sir! Do you mean to insinuate——”
“I don’t insinuate anything. The insinuation is your own,” was the quiet reply.
“Are you going to show me this machine, boy?” shouted Mr. Hunt, his temper now fairly gone. Had Stonington Hunt possessed control of his rage, he might have been many times a millionaire, but his ungovernable temper had lost him many a good chance, as he termed them.
“Why—no, I don’t believe I care to,” quavered Paul, rather undecidedly. “You see, it isn’t patented yet, and——”
“Shut up!” hissed Tubby anxiously. He did not know that Mr. Hunt was already in possession of this important piece of knowledge.
“You brats make me tired,” snarled the former broker viciously. He turned with angry emphasis and flourished his stick, striding toward the gate.
Tubby politely held it open for him. The broad grin on his face was unmistakable. It infuriated Hunt to a still greater degree.
“Stonington Hunt was never beaten yet,” he snapped, “and when he is, it won’t be by a bunch of half-baked school kids. You, sir”—turning angrily on Tubby—“go to blazes!”
“After you,” exclaimed the fat boy, with a low bow, and holding the gate open to its fullest extent.