CHAPTER VIII
A FUTILE CHASE
Hal Dent stood for a moment in the room with Ruth, Agnes and Nalbro, looking toward the door through which Luke and Neale had started in pursuit.
“What’s this all about?” demanded Hal. “Is this part of the daily morning exercise, or——”
“Don’t stop to ask questions, Hal, but run!” advised Nally.
“Run? Why should I run? I don’t need the training, and——”
“But don’t you understand?” persisted the Back Bay girl. “Ruth knows something about those men—they’re burglars or something—and she wants them caught. Go help Luke and Neale!”
“I don’t know anything about the men—that’s the trouble,” voiced Ruth. “But I would like to have them caught to find out about them. This is the third time they have been sneaking around where I was. Once they were in our cellar!”
“Say no more! A detective shall have nothing on me!” cried Hal, and he, too, dashed from the house while the three girls followed more slowly, though none the less eagerly.
Dot and Tess, who had been given their breakfast earlier, in charge of Mrs. MacCall, came out in time to see the start of the pursuit.
“Oh, it’s a game they’re playing!” cried Dot, hugging her Alice-doll, who always shared breakfast with her. “May we play, Ruth?” she begged.
“We want to have some fun!” added Tess.
“It isn’t a game,” said Agnes. “Don’t ask questions, my dears. There may be trouble.”
“Is it some of the men from Plam Island?” Dot inquired.
“No,” Ruth replied. “You had better take them back into the house,” she added, in a low voice to Mrs. MacCall, and then she raised her voice to say to Hal, who was running toward the rear of the house:
“They didn’t go that way!”
“I know it, Ruth,” he answered. “But I was going to get out the car. Those men had a good start, from what little I saw, and we can get after them better in the car.”
“That’s a good idea!” complimented Nalbro, and she felt not a little proud of her Boston cavalier.
“I think it will be best—if he can get the car to run,” remarked Ruth, a bit dryly.
“Isn’t it like other cars?” Nally wanted to know, somewhat suspicious.
“Not always. Sometimes it takes a notion to start easily, and again Neale will have to ‘monkey with it,’ as he calls it, five or ten minutes before it consents to behave.”
“Oh, I do hope it runs!” murmured the Boston girl.
Alas! It was a vain hope. Hal did everything called for in the book of directions, from retarding the spark, turning on the gas and ignition to stepping on the self-starter button, but all that resulted was a humming of the starting motor. There were no welcome explosions in the cylinders.
“What’s the matter with this boat?” demanded Hal wrathfully, after he had done several things on his own account in trying to get the machine in motion. He had even tried to turn it over by hand.
“I fancy it hasn’t had its bath this morning,” dryly remarked Agnes. “Or perhaps it wants a dusting with violet talcum powder.”
“Never mind,” consoled Ruth. “You aren’t the only one it acts that way with, Hal. Sometimes I’m so provoked at it that I could just cry. Then I go off without it and it must feel ashamed of itself. For the next time I step on the button it goes with a hum and a purr like a contented kitten lapping up cream.”
“We need a new car—that’s what we need!” declared Agnes. “But Guardy is so queer. He——”
“He isn’t exactly queer,” broke in Ruth, coming to the defense of the absent Mr. Howbridge. “But he insists that we must run on a strict budget system, and we have not yet gotten out of this car the maximum of what it is supposed to deliver before it is ready to be turned in. When that time comes we shall have a new car.”
“I wish you’d take this one out and wreck it then, Hal!” said Agnes, a bit vindictively.
“Willingly, my lady, if I could get it out at all,” replied the youth, rubbing one hand where he had skinned his knuckles trying to crank the motor.
“Never mind. Perhaps Luke and Neale will catch the men, and then we shall find out all about the secret,” suggested Nalbro.
“I hope they do get them!” cried Agnes.
“I’m wondering what it was Luke meant when he said he remembered them,” murmured Ruth. “There was something queer in that.”
“Come on—let’s go out in the street and see if we can find out anything,” suggested Agnes, for when Hal had his inspiration about the car they had followed him to the garage, only to lose time.
The street, down which the two strange men had run, followed by Luke and Neale, was apparently deserted. The girls and Hal strained their eyes for a sight of either the pursuers or their quarry, and then from an upper window of the Corner House came a shrill voice asking:
“Are the engines coming?”
“What engines?” asked Ruth, as she caught sight of Tess and Dot leaning from the casement at a dangerous angle. “Get right back in there!” she instantly ordered.
“The fire engines! Are they coming?” went on Tess.
“Fire engines? There isn’t any fire!” laughed Agnes. “Though from the way we’re running around I haven’t a doubt but what the neighbors think so,” she added, noting that several curious looks were cast in the direction of the Corner House from residents on either side and across the street.
Then along came Robbie Foote, with a basket of things from Mrs. Kranz, the “delicatessen lady,” as Tess always called her.
“Anything the matter?” asked Robbie.
“No, nothing much,” answered Ruth, with a warning look at the others, telling them not to go into particulars. “And you’d better hurry around to the kitchen with those eggs,” she added. “Mrs. MacCall is waiting for them.”
“And don’t smash them as you did the others,” added Agnes, thinking to so occupy Robbie’s mind with this remark as to exclude from it any desire to ask embarrassing questions. In this Agnes succeeded, for the delivery boy cried:
“I didn’t bust the eggs! It was the goat, and he wouldn’t ’a’ done it if the alligator hadn’t nipped his tail!”
“Yes, I guess that’s right,” admitted Agnes. “But, anyhow, Mrs. MacCall is waiting for you.”
“Oh, aw right,” mumbled Robbie, with an air of having been unjustly treated.
“There’s no use of our waiting out here,” remarked Ruth. “We’re only exciting remark.” If there was one thing more than another Ruth did not like it was to attract attention. “Let’s go in and wait for Luke and Neale to come back.”
Meanwhile the two boys were not having much success in their pursuit of the strange characters. They had a glimpse of the twain as Ruth had called out about them, and then lost it as they dashed for the street.
“There they go!” Neale had cried, after he and Luke had turned a corner.
For a time they had the two mysterious strangers in view and then the men darted into some side alley, or perhaps into some building, going out a rear entrance and over the back fence. For when Luke and his friend reached the place where they thought they could dart in and find their quarry, there was no trace of the men.
“Guess they’ve given us the slip,” remarked Neale, after they had searched about for some time.
“Looks like it,” agreed Luke.
“Anything wrong?” asked a man, who had been watching the two youths.
“Oh, no, not much,” answered Luke, in an indifferent manner. “Just a couple of fellows we wanted to speak to.”
“Oh, I thought maybe they had stolen something.”
“No,” answered Luke, and this was true enough, for nothing had been missed from the Corner House cellar.
“It was just as well not to tell that fellow too much,” Luke went on, as he and Neale started back to join the girls.
“That’s right.”
As they walked into the yard of the Corner House, on the porch of which Ruth, Agnes, Nalbro, and Hal were gathered, the last looked at a patch of red on Luke’s left hand.
“Hello,” Hal cried. “Did he bite you?” The hand was bleeding.
“What? Oh, that! I hit it against a brick wall and rubbed off some of the skin. It isn’t anything.”
“I can match you!” chuckled Hal, displaying his bruised knuckles. “Say, what kind of a car is that, anyhow?” and he nodded in the direction of the garage. “Must be a new model. She wouldn’t start for me.”
“Oh, so that’s how it happened!” chuckled Neale. “I guess you forgot to cross your fingers and say ‘eenie-meenie-miney-mo’ before you stepped on the starter, didn’t you?”
“I reckon I did,” admitted Hal, with a grin.
“Luke, let me see that cut,” demanded Ruth.
“Oh, it isn’t anything. I’m not going to have any iodine put on it.”
“Yes you are!” she insisted. “And you, too, Hal. Come up to the bathroom right away. There’s nothing like treating a cut in time. There’s no telling what germs may be in it, and iodine will kill them. Come on.”
“Not for me!” answered Hal. “If you have a bit of sticking plaster——”
“The worst thing in the world!” cried Ruth. “Come! I insist! And then, Luke, I want you to tell us what you meant when you said you remembered those men.”
“That’s so!” exclaimed Neale. “You didn’t let out a word about that when we were chasing them.”
“We needn’t ask if you got them,” commented Agnes.
“That’s right—they gave us the slip,” remarked Luke, ruefully.
He and Hal suffered their hands to be treated with the iodine, and Luke created laughter by pretending to cry when the fluid stung, as it certainly did, for he had rather a deep cut, caused when his hand came in contact with a brick wall as he and Neale swung around a corner in futile pursuit of the strange men.
“Thanks,” murmured Hal, when his hand had been dressed. “I shall recommend you to the Red Cross, Ruth.”
“Oh, Ruth is a dandy little nurse,” added Luke. “I can certify to that. You ought to have her hold your hand and rub your head when it aches, Hal.”
“Oh, such a pain!” cried Hal, clasping his brow with an assumed agonized look on his face.
“Silly!” murmured Ruth, blushing as she put away the iodine. “And now, if your fever isn’t too high,” she went on with gentle sarcasm to Luke, “you might tell us what you remembered.”
“It isn’t much,” he said, modestly enough. “However, I’ll tell you all about it. As soon as you cried out about those men a little while ago, and I had a glimpse of them—I remember your telling me about the cellar mystery—it at once flashed into my mind that I had seen the fellows before.”
“Not in our cellar!” exclaimed Agnes.
“No, for I wasn’t here at that time. But it was about two weeks ago, on the train. I’d been to Hamilton on an errand for Professor Keeps, and I happened to occupy a seat directly behind those men. I didn’t pay much attention to them until I heard them mention ten thousand dollars.”
“Whew!” whistled Hal. “They must be garage men! They’re the only fellows who ever have that much money nowadays.”
“But is that the only strange thing about them?” asked Ruth.
“No. The men kept on talking, and though I couldn’t hear all they said I caught something about dividing up this ten thousand dollars. Then one of the men—the taller—said: ‘If we let them know it’s there we’ll get nothing.’ The other agreed with this, and then I had to leave the train. But I got a good look at the men, and I’m sure they’re the same fellows Neale and I just chased.”
“Ten thousand dollars!” murmured Agnes.
“I wonder what it means?” murmured Nalbro.
And then, before they could begin a series of surmises, Uncle Rufus shuffled out on the porch where this talk was proceeding and announced:
“De tellyfoam’s been ringin’ its haid off, Miss Ruth, an’ it’s somebody what wants yo’!”