CHAPTER VIII
THE DASHING STERN CHASE
NOT a single objection did the man of nerves offer. Ordinarily he might have jumped with fear at the proposal to go at fast speed through the fog. Though the mist was already lifting a good deal, as it had done on the day before, there was still enough of a curtain ahead to make it more than just risky to go rushing along.
In the white bank ahead the racing boat was already lost to sight. Captain Tom raised his hand to pull the cord of the auto whistle.
“If I show ’em where I am, though,” he thought, at once, “the man handling that other craft will know enough to swing off onto another course. He can leave me behind easily enough.”
The auto whistle, therefore, did not sound. Captain Tom understood fully the risk he was taking in “going it blind”—and fast, too—right on this pathway of Long Island navigation. But he made up his mind that he would very soon begin to sound his whistle, whether he sighted the other craft or not.
“If they haven’t changed their course I’ll soon be in sight of them,” the young skipper reflected, anxiously. “Oh, that this fog lifts soon!”
Having guessed the other boat’s course, Tom could follow it only by compass, as any other method would be sure to lead him astray.
Both boats’ engines were equipped with the silent exhaust. While not absolutely noiseless, these exhausts run so quietly that a boat’s presence at any considerable distance cannot be detected through them.
One thing was certain. At present the fog was lifting rapidly. All would soon be well if another deep bank of mist did not roll in off the sea.
Jed, watching the gradual going of the fog, was straining his eyes for all he was worth for the first glimpse of that racing craft. Engineer Joe had not further increased the “Rocket’s” speed, for Tom, if he was getting somewhat off the course of the other boat, did not want to be too far away when the lifting of the white curtain should show him the enemy.
“Hist!” The sharp summons caused Tom Halstead quickly to raise his glance from the compass. Jed Prentiss, standing amidships, for he had run back, was pointing over the port bow. Tom could have yelled with delight, for off there, in the edge of the bank, now some eight hundred feet distant, was a low, indistinct line that could hardly be other than the racing boat.
“Ask Joe to kick out just a trifle more speed, not much,” muttered Captain Halstead, as Jed, his eyes shining, moved nearer.
Under the new impulse the “Rocket” stole up on that vague line, which now soon resolved itself into the hull of the racing craft.
By this time the chase was discovered from the other motor boat. There was a splurge ahead; the hull dimmed down to the former indistinct line. After a few moments the racing craft was out of sight again.
“Crowd on every foot of speed you can, Joe,” was the word Jed passed from the young captain. Dawson, crouching beside his motor, was watching every revolution of the engine that he was now spurring.
And now the fog began to lift rapidly. A thousand feet ahead, driving northeast, the racing craft could be made out. She was running a few miles away from the coast and nearly parallel with it.
During the last few minutes Eben Moddridge had been strangely silent, for him. Even now, as he stepped up beside the wheel, he was far less nervous than might have been expected.
“Can you overtake that other boat?” he inquired.
“I’ve got to,” came Captain Tom’s dogged reply, as he kept his gaze sharply ahead.
“She seems like a very fast craft.”
“She’s faster than this boat,” replied Halstead, briefly.
“Good heavens! Then she will show us a clean pair of heels,” quivered Mr. Moddridge.
“That’s not so certain, sir.”
Tom was so sparing of his words, at this crisis in the sea race, that Mr. Delavan’s friend felt himself entitled to further explanation.
“You say she’s faster, but intimate we may catch her,” muttered Mr. Moddridge. “How can that be?”
“Motor engines sometimes go back on a fellow at the worst moment,” Captain Tom explained. “That may happen to the other fellow. He may have to slow down, or even shut off speed altogether.”
“But that might happen to us, too,” objected Mr. Moddridge.
“It might, but there are few engineers on motor boats that I’d back against Joe Dawson,” Halstead continued. “Then again, Mr. Moddridge, the fellow who is steering the boat ahead doesn’t handle his wheel as slickly as he might. By the most careful steering I hope to gain some on him.”
So rapidly was the fog lifting that the skippers of the two boats could now see the ocean for a half mile on either side, ahead or astern. The racing craft, after a few minutes, put on still another burst of speed.
“Ask Joe if he has every bit crowded on?” called Captain Tom. Jed called down into the engine room, then reported back:
“Joe says he may get a little more speed out of the engine, but not much. We’re pretty near up to the mark.”
So Tom Halstead, whitening a bit at the report, setting his teeth harder, devoted his whole energies to trying to steer a straighter course than did the boat ahead.
“There’s some kind of a rumpus on the stranger,” called Jed. “Look at that fellow rushing for the hood forward.”
Plainly there was some excitement out of the usual on board the stranger. Jed, snatching up a pair of marine glasses, swiftly reported:
“Someone is trying to fight his way out of the hood, and the others are trying to force him back. Whee! It looks as though someone had just hurled something out overboard from the hood.”
“Did you see anything strike the water?” demanded Captain Tom.
“It looked so, but it’s a big distance to see a small object, even through the glass.”
“Keep your eye on where you saw that something go overboard,” directed Captain Tom Halstead. “Try to pilot me to that spot. It may be a message—from Mr. Delavan.”
It was a difficult task to scan the water so closely. But Jed did his best, and, after a few moments, called back excitedly:
“Better slow down your speed, captain. I think I see something dancing on the water. It’s bobbing up and down—something.”
Jed Prentiss seemed almost to have his eyes glued to the marine glasses, so intently did he watch.
“Half a point to port, captain,” he shouted, presently. “Headway, only. Joe, can you leave the engine to bring me a hand-net while I keep my eye on that thing bobbing on the water?”
Dawson leaped up from the engine room, going swiftly in search of the desired net.
“Half a point more to port, captain,” called Jed. “Steady—so! Thank you, old fellow”—as Joe handed him the net. Eben Moddridge had now hurried to the port rail as the boat drifted up alongside the thing that Prentiss was watching. It proved to be a leather wallet, floating on the waves. So neatly did Jed pilot that, soon, he was able to lean over the rail, make a deft swoop with the net, and——
“I’ve got it!” he shouted.
Captain Tom Halstead instantly gave speed ahead through the bridge controls, trying to gain as swiftly as he could the very considerable distance that had been lost. “It’s Frank’s wallet—his own. There’s his monogram on it,” cried Eben Moddridge, his voice quaking.
“See if there is any message inside,” shouted Tom, still keeping his gaze on that hull ahead, while Joe bounded below to nurse his motor on to better performances.
Mr. Moddridge’s fingers trembled so in trying to open the soaked wallet that Jed took it from him.
“Your friend’s money,” reported Prentiss, taking out a compact mass of banknotes and passing them to Mr. Moddridge. “Here are some cards, too, and that’s all.”
“See if anything is written on any of the cards,” Tom directed.
“Nothing on any of them,” Jed quickly reported.
“It’s Frank Delavan’s wallet, though,” cried Eben Moddridge.
“And Mr. Delavan is aboard that boat, a prisoner,” returned Tom Halstead. “The best he could do was to throw the wallet overboard in the hope that we’d see it and know where to look for him. There was only a small chance of our seeing it, but Jed did, and we won. Confound ’em! They seem to be gaining on us!”
As it became more evident that the stranger was gradually pulling further ahead of the “Rocket,” Eben Moddridge’s face began to twitch, his breath coming shorter and faster.
“M-m-must we lose?” he faltered.
“No race is lost until it is finished,” Captain Tom replied, tersely.
“But you can’t overtake that boat?”
“It’s a speedier craft than ours, but I’ll follow ’em, even if they get hull down on the horizon,” Halstead retorted. “I’ll keep to the course if they beat us out of sight. I won’t give up while we’ve any gasoline left.”
The stranger was now a mile ahead. Tom figured that, in an hour, the other boat’s lead would be very likely increased by four or five miles more. Surely enough, two or three miles more were gained in the next thirty minutes. Then—
“Hurrah!” shouted Tom Halstead. “Oh, if it’s only as good as it looks!”
“What is it?” queried Eben Moddridge, brokenly, not even rising from his chair.
“See how the other craft is slowing her speed. It looks as though her engine had given out at just the right time for us.”
Indeed, the stranger seemed rapidly coming down to bare headway. Then she barely drifted. The “Rocket,” eating up the miles, swiftly gained on the other motor boat.
“It looks like a real enough break in their engine,” reported Jed, his eyes once more at the glasses. “They’re rushing about under the hood. I can see that much. They seem dreadfully bothered about the engine.”
Tom had steered the “Rocket,” by this time, within a half mile of the stranger’s pointed stern.
“Now, we’ll run down upon them!” glowed the young skipper.
“What will you do when you do get alongside?” asked Eben Moddridge, tremulously.
CHAPTER IX
PLAYING A SAILOR’S TRICK
“FIGHT, if we have to,” was Tom’s laconic reply.
“Oh, dear, I do hope that won’t be necessary,” cried Moddridge, in deeper agitation. “All quarrelsome noises and thoughts get upon my nerves to a dreadful extent.”
“We won’t fight unless they put us to it,” answered Halstead. “And, of course,” he added, with a slight smile, “we may get the worst of it. We may get ourselves fearfully whacked about.”
“Oh, dear!” groaned Moddridge again.
Nor was the nervous man one whit reassured by seeing Joe, after slowing up the engine somewhat, step up on deck bearing a couple of wrenches. As for Jed Prentiss, that youth had laid down the marine glasses to pick up a formidable looking boat-hook.
Even with her lessened speed the “Rocket” was now within less than a quarter of a mile of the racing craft.
“Confound it! Now, what does that mean?” vented Tom, disappointedly, as he beheld one of the men aboard the other craft leap to his post at the wheel. In another moment the answer came. The racing boat was moving through the water again. Every instant her propeller churned up the water a little faster.
“They’ve fixed their engine,” quavered Captain Tom. “What we’ve now got to find out is whether their motor is strong enough to get them away from us.”
For some three or four minutes the two craft remained about the same distance apart, despite the fact that Joe Dawson, who had dropped down once more into the engine room, was coaxing his motor along as skilfully as he could. Then, at last, the stranger began to draw ahead.
“The lucky scoundrels!” gritted Tom. “They’re able to go at least pretty close to their full speed. See ’em eat up the miles again!”
“At least, then, there’ll be no fight,” declared Mr. Moddridge, in a tone of relief.
“Nor will your friend and our employer have any chance to get back to his own boat at present,” retorted Tom Halstead. Ordinarily he could stand this nervous man’s agitated spells, though just now they wore upon the young skipper’s patience.
For a few miles the chase continued, the stranger gaining all the while. The two boats had been running, lately, about five miles off the Long Island coast. Now, the stranger could be seen heading much more to the northward, as though intent on making the coast.
“Jed,” directed the young skipper, “see whether you can pick up the mouth of Cookson’s Inlet ahead of the stranger.”
“There’s a break in the beach over yonder,” reported Prentiss, soon. “It doesn’t appear to be more than fifty feet wide.”
“It’s sixty-two feet,” responded Tom Halstead, who had made a hard study of all this part of the Long Island coast “And confound them if they try to go in there.”
“Why?” inquired Eben Moddridge.
“It’s mighty shallow water, the other side of the inlet,” Captain Halstead explained. “That other boat probably doesn’t draw more than two and a half feet of water. Our draught, on account of our very heavy engine, is nearer nine feet. I don’t know just how far we can follow them in that little bay. In some places the water isn’t over four feet deep.”
“Then they are not playing fairly,” muttered Moddridge, in a tone of deep disgust.
“Rascals rarely do play a fairer game than they’re obliged to do,” answered Tom, with a queer little smile. “However, all we can do is to stick to them as long as we are able.”
With two boats going at such high speed it was not long before the mouth of the inlet was made. The stranger, however, passed through about four minutes ahead of the “Rocket.”
Once in the bay the motor boat boys found themselves not far from a low, sandy island, on which were a few trees and three small cottages.
“There they are, passing the other side of the island,” hailed Jed, pointing to the top of the stranger’s single mast, visible for an instant before it disappeared behind a rise in the sandy surface of the island.
“It looks as though they’re just running around the island,” muttered Tom Halstead. “We won’t follow; we’ll meet ’em.”
Putting the “Rocket” about, the young skipper steered for the other end of the island. In a few minutes he passed around it, to discover that the strange craft had put about, and was going back the way it had come.
“I think, sir,” explained the young skipper, turning to Mr. Moddridge, “that the shortest way out of this hide-and-seek game will be to keep right after that pirate’s stern.”
“All right,” nodded Moddridge, hesitatingly. “Yet why do you call that other boat a pirate?”
“Any boat deserves the name that sails on queer business, and is even afraid to show her name-plate at her stern,” Halstead rejoined.
The stranger still led, in that race in the narrow way between the island and the main shore.
“Good enough, too,” growled Halstead, as his keen eyes noted a slight change in the color Of the water ahead. “They are leading us into the shallows. Jed, get the lead, run up to the bow and cast it in a hurry!”
Even as he gave the order, the young skipper, his hands trembling slightly from vexation, turned the speed control to lessen the “Rocket’s” headway.
Jed, poising the lead, made the neat cast of a practiced sailor, letting the flannel-tagged line pay out rapidly between his fingers. At the instant the line slackened Prentiss, half-turned toward the helm, sang drawlingly back:
“And a qua-arter, two!”
That signified two and a quarter fathoms, or thirteen and a half feet of water under the bottom of the cruiser, which drew about nine feet.
Rapidly hauling in, while the “Rocket” now hardly more than crawled along in these shallows, Prentiss heaved the lead once more.
“And a scant—two!” he reported. Joe Dawson, leaping to the deck, ranged up alongside of Jed. The water had a shallower look ahead.
“A-a-and three-qua-arters—one!” came the hail from the leadsman.
Ten and a half feet meant a foot and a half to spare under the deepest point of the cruiser’s keel.
Once more Jed poised the lead for the heave, but Joe, taking a more knowing look, shouted back:
“Reverse her, captain, or you’ll poke her nose in the mud!”
Instantly Captain Halstead’s hand flew to the reversing lever. Slowly the motor boat stole backward. The stranger had passed around to the seaward side of the little island, and was making for the inlet.
“They’re playing with us!” grumbled Skipper Tom. “The fun’s all theirs, for they’ve got the faster craft.”
Just as soon as the “Rocket” had once more five feet of water to spare under her hull Halstead decided to head about, the way he had come, and put on all speed for the inlet. Yet, so expensive of time was this proceeding that, when the Delavan boat once more glided through the inlet, the stranger was three miles out to sea, heading south.
“That fellow must be laughing at us,” faltered Eben Moddridge.
“Of course he is,” flared Tom Halstead. “And I could grind my teeth, if that sort of work would do any good.”
“W-w-what can we do?” stammered the nervous one.
“Only keep up the chase until one or the other breaks down, or runs out of gasoline,” replied the young skipper, doggedly.
For almost an hour more the boats continued to head south. All but the high parts of Long Island were below the horizon. Yet Halstead, calling Jed to the wheel, though still directing the course, believed that he was gaining on the other boat, even if very slowly.
“We’ve gasoline enough aboard,” the young skipper explained to the nervous man, “to keep running for twenty-four hours yet. I hope that other fellow hasn’t.”
“B-b-b-but see here,” quavered Moddridge, a new alarm dawning upon his mind, “if that other crowd should let us get alongside, and th-then s-s-s-shoot at us—it would be awful!”
“That’s a chance we’ve simply got to take,” replied Tom Halstead, coolly, “if we’re to try to reach Mr. Delavan and get him back aboard his own boat.”
“I—I—I couldn’t s-s-stand anything of that sort!” almost screamed the nervous one.
“Then will you get off the boat, sir, and walk?” inquired the young skipper, with perhaps pardonable irritation. This exhibition of weak-kneed manhood made him indignant.
Erelong the stranger was a good twenty miles south of the nearest point on the Long Island coast. Both boats had traveled fast over the gently-rolling sea. The conditions would have been ideal for a race, had the stakes been less important.
“Maybe their gasoline is running so low that those fellows are ready to be reasonable,” grinned Joe Dawson, turning from the stand he had taken near the bow. It could be seen, now, that the stranger was slowing down her speed. Presently she was lying to.
“That must be a confession of a tank low with gasoline,” cried Captain Tom, jubilantly, hastening forward with the glasses. “Steer straight for her, to come up on the port side, Jed.”
Seeing Joe again disappear below, to reappear with a pair of ugly-looking wrenches, Eben Moddridge turned very pale, and next hastened, shakily, to the steps leading down to the after deck. Thence he vanished into the cabin.
“Say,” uttered Joe, disdainfully, “I wish I had his fighting blood!”
Still the stranger lay to, only two men showing in her cockpit. As the “Rocket” came much closer to her possible prey Tom Halstead again took the wheel, while Jed stood close to where his prized boat-hook lay. Tom shut off most of the speed as he ran in closer to port of the stranger. The two men visible aboard the other boat were now standing by the rail, looking curiously enough at the motor boat boys.
“‘Rocket’ ahoy!” hailed one of them, as Tom manœuvred his craft within easy talking-distance of the other. “Have you been following us?”
“Some!” admitted Halstead, dryly.
“Why!”
“To see whom you have aboard.”
“Only us two boat-handlers on board,” replied one of the pair.
“Tell that to the mermaids,” retorted Captain Tom, grimly.
“Don’t you believe us?” demanded the same speaker, the larger of the rough-looking seafaring pair.
“I’m not very good at believing,” was the younger skipper’s reply.
“Then wait until we get slowly under way, and you can come up alongside. I guess you can board us, on this gentle sea, without scraping either hull,” proposed the speaker aboard the racer.
That offer, made in seeming good faith, almost staggered Tom Halstead for the moment. Why the stranger should run away for hours, then suddenly agree to be boarded, was not at once apparent.
“Unless they want to get one of us aboard, or want to try the mighty risky trick of capturing us on the high seas,” reflected the young skipper. “However, all we’re here for is to find and rescue Mr. Delavan. We’ve simply got to try to do that.”
So he nodded, allowed his boat to fall away, then come up alongside the racing boat, now under slow headway.
As the two hulls bumped slightly, Jed Prentiss made fast to the other craft’s rail with his boat-hook. Tom Halstead, with a wrench dropped into a hip pocket out of sight, leaped over the other boat’s rail down into the cockpit.
“You spoke about someone being aboard here?” quizzed the larger of the two strangers. “You can go ahead and find out your mistake. Open anything you want; look anywhere you please.”
Halstead’s first swift look in under the hood showed him only the motor housed there. While Joe Dawson and Jed Prentiss watched keenly, suspiciously, from the “Rocket’s” rail, the young skipper searched minutely under that hood deck. There was not a human being there, nor any trace of late occupancy by any. There were lockers. Tom raised the lid of every one. He might, in his dismayed wonder, have explored the gasoline tank, had he not known that the opening was too small to permit the entrance of a man’s body.
“Through in there? Satisfied?” called the larger of the two men, half-mockingly. “There are two lockers out here, and an after compartment out here in the cockpit.”
As soon as he was satisfied that there was no other possible place under the hood, Halstead accepted the invitation to make a search of the cockpit lockers and storage spaces. Yet it was all quite in vain.
Suddenly, however, the young skipper straightened himself, glaring down at a straight, not very distinct line that ran the length of the cockpit, even extending under the hood. As he looked swiftly up, he encountered the mocking gazes of the two boat handlers.
“That was a slick trick,” Captain Tom admitted, speaking dryly, though with an effort. “That line was made by the dirty keel of a small boat. In Cookson’s Bay, while hidden from us by that little island, you put the small boat over the side, and some of your passengers went ashore. Then you decoyed us all this distance out to sea to have the joy of laughing at us.”
“Blessed if I can guess what the lad means, friend,” said one of the rough pair to the other.
But Captain Tom Halstead, as he leaped back aboard the “Rocket,” and turned to them with flashing eyes, retorted gamely:
“I’m planning to have the pleasure, mighty soon, of showing you the value of the last laugh!”
CHAPTER X
THE MONEY STORM BREAKS LOOSE
AS soon as the “Rocket” had fallen away from the mocking strangers and was heading back at nearly full speed for the Long Island coast, Eben Moddridge came almost totteringly on deck.
“Poor Frank Delavan wasn’t aboard that other boat,” he groaned.
“No,” answered Halstead, trying hard to keep his disapproval of the other’s cowardice from sounding in his voice.
“Then, good heavens! We must get back to East Hampton without loss of a moment,” cried the owner’s friend.
“Don’t you think we’ll do a lot better to hustle back to Cookson’s Bay?” demanded the young skipper. “We all of us know, as well as we need to, that Mr. Delavan was aboard that racing boat this morning, so we must agree that Mr. Delavan was carried ashore while that other craft had the island between us and them. We’re out to find Mr. Delavan, aren’t we? If we are, sir, the trail starts from Cookson’s Bay.”
“But there are other matters you don’t understand,” replied Moddridge, nervously. “Both Delavan and I have interests at work in Wall Street. Those interests involve many millions of dollars. While I was hoping every minute to come up with Frank Delavan, the chase seemed to me to be the main thing. But I should have been in East Hampton hours ago, to answer frantic appeals for instructions that must have been coming in over the long distance telephone.”
“Then do you instruct me, sir, to head for East Hampton, and leave Mr. Delavan to take his chances in the hands of rascals?”
“Don’t—don’t put it in that way,” begged Mr. Moddridge, shivering.
“Unfortunately, sir, I don’t see any other way to put the question,” young Halstead answered.
Eben Moddridge wavered, thinking it all over in an evident frenzy. While he was thus pondering Captain Tom was heading straight in for where he knew Cookson’s Inlet to be.
“It’s—it’s—bad either way,” Moddridge finally confessed. “If I delay in reaching the telephone Frank and I may lose millions through some unfortunate turn in Wall Street. And, on the other hand, if poor Frank has vanished, perhaps never to turn up again, he and I may both be ruined in the money world.”
“As between losing some millions, and all,” spoke Tom, as judicially as he could, “I should say it would be better to risk some of the money and keep on after Mr. Delavan himself.”
“If that’s the way it appears to you, then do so,” replied Eben Moddridge, slowly, hesitatingly. “Oh, dear, I simply can’t think when I am so nervous.”
“This is a funny sort of an associate to take into a big money deal,” thought Halstead, wonderingly. The young skipper discovered, later, that Moddridge was a power in Wall Street simply because he had inherited more millions than he was capable of handling. He was valuable when men wanted more money for financial operations than they themselves controlled. Moddridge was in the present big Delavan deals simply because Moddridge had discovered that he could always trust Mr. Delavan.
So Tom headed for Cookson’s Bay, making that shallow little body of water in less than an hour. Another hour was spent in lowering the port boat and in rowing Moddridge both to the little island and to the main shore. It was a sparsely settled region. Only one of the cottages on the little island was occupied, and that only by a bachelor who admitted that he had been asleep at the time when the two motor boats had dodged about the island. He aided, however, in searching the other two cottages, but no sign was found of Mr. Delavan or of his probable captors. The search was continued on the main shore, with no better results.
“Now, we simply must get back to East Hampton,” urged Moddridge, and Halstead was reluctantly of the same opinion.
“If Frank can’t be found soon,” chattered the nervous one, as the “Rocket” headed toward her pier at East Hampton, “and if the news becomes public, then every stock he is heavily interested in will go away down on the Stock Exchange.”
“Why?” asked Tom Halstead.
“Why, people will think there’s something queer about the disappearance,” Moddridge explained. “Take the P. & Y. Railroad, for instance. Its capital is eighty million dollars. Delavan owns fifteen million of that himself. He’s the president, biggest stockholder, and the virtual czar of that railroad. If Frank can’t be found, what will folks be apt to think? Why, simply that he has been guilty of criminally mismanaging the railroad, for his own profit, and that now he has fled to some foreign country to hide away from the American law. P. & Y. stock will take a fearful drop.”
“That won’t happen, all in a day, will it?” questioned Captain Tom.
“It might. It will be sure to happen within a very few days, if Frank doesn’t show up again. Wall Street is the most sensitive place in the world. Let a breath of suspicion blow against a certain stock, and that stock drops and drops, until perhaps it goes down out of sight. Everyone who has his whole fortune invested in that stock may be ruined by the smash. If the P. & Y. stock goes down, it will knock Frank’s deals and mine into a cocked hat.”
“Why?” asked Tom, wonderingly.
“Why?” repeated Eben Moddridge, shiveringly. “Why, I’ve told you that Frank holds fifteen millions of P. & Y. stock. I hold five millions myself. Frank told you, yesterday, that we were plunging in Steel and other allied stocks that Mr. Gordon influences heavily. Steel and those other stocks are going to work up and down, like a see-saw, for the next few days. To raise the funds for our operations Frank and I have been pledging our P. & Y. stock, which stands at 102. But suppose Delavan can’t be found, and P. & Y. drops to forty—or even thirty?” gasped Eben Moddridge. “What would happen then?”
“Well, what would happen?” questioned Tom Halstead, to whom the whole vast Wall Street game was a great puzzle.
“Why, if P. & Y. tumbles like that,” continued Eben Moddridge, “the great banking houses that have been advancing us money on P. & Y. stock to play with Steel and allied stocks will be forced to call in their loans in order to protect themselves. Frank Delavan and I are pledged as heavily as we possibly can be. We couldn’t raise five million dollars more between us. So, if the bottom drops out of the P. & Y. stock Delavan and myself stand to be wiped off the board in all our deals—ruined!”
The last word came from Moddridge in a sobbing gasp. He was clutching at the rail as the “Rocket” moved in nearer to her pier.
“Halstead,” he continued soon, “as quickly as we land, I want you to get a carriage and rush to the telephone office with me. I’m so excited I feel as though I’d fall over in a faint. You must go with me—remain with me until this fearful ordeal is over.”
Half a dozen well-dressed, alert-looking young men who stood on the pier seemed to be greatly interested in the “Rocket” as that boat was berthed. Jed was at the wheel as Captain Tom stood by the rail, ready to leap ashore.
“Mr. Francis Delavan aboard?” hailed one of the young men, just as the young skipper’s feet touched the pier.
“Why do you want to know?” Halstead cross-questioned.
“I’m from the New York ‘Herald’,” replied the young man. “I am here to interview Mr. Delavan.”
“I’m from the ‘World’,” added another young man. Halstead at once understood that this group was made up of reporters.
“Mr. Delavan didn’t go out with us this morning,” replied Captain Tom, while Eben Moddridge surveyed the reporters, uneasily. Seeing a cab up the road, Halstead signaled it vigorously.
“Where is Mr. Delavan?” demanded the “World” representative.
“That’s Mr. Delavan’s business. I can’t tell you,” replied Tom, a bit stiffly.
“Is his friend, Mr. Moddridge, aboard? Is that Mr. Moddridge?” asked another of the reporters. The nervous man, under the concentrated gaze of six reporters, became more nervous than ever.
“Gentlemen,” went on Halstead, hurriedly, drawing out his watch just as the vehicle rolled down to the pier and stopped, “it’s twenty-five minutes of three, and the Stock Exchange in New York closes at three o’clock. That is Mr. Moddridge on board, but he is in a rush to reach the telephone office, and he can’t lose even a second until he has talked with New York.”
Halstead almost led the nervous one from the boat to the cab, helping him inside, and getting in with him.
“Wait here, gentlemen, if you wish to talk with Mr. Moddridge,” coaxed Tom. As the cab started one of the reporters bounded up onto the step, from which he was adroitly yanked by Jed Prentiss. Then the driver whipped his horses forward, and the reporters were distanced for the time being.
Yet one of the press scribes, as he ran along in the vain effort to overtake the cab, shouted:
“There’s a mysterious report in New York that everything is wrong with the P. & Y., and that Delavan has absconded to some other country. Can you say anything to that, Mr. Moddridge?”
If Moddridge could, he didn’t. Instead, his jaw dropped. He reeled to one side as though about to fall from the seat. Tom hastily changed to the same seat, supporting the worried man.
“So the news has already reached New York and Wall Street?” he asked, faintly.
“If it has,” whispered Halstead, watching to see whether the driver was trying to listen, “then it’s because the crowd back of the trouble took pains to send word in early this morning. Mr. Moddridge, the news must have been known hours ago, since reporters have had time to get away out here from the city.”
“If——”
“Don’t try to say any more, Mr. Moddridge,” urged Halstead, again in a whisper. “The driver may be trying to overhear.”
As they reached the telephone office, and got out, Tom hurriedly paid the driver, then escorted Mr. Moddridge inside. The manager of the office looked up to say, briskly:
“The wire in booth number two is waiting for you, Mr. Moddridge.”
“Come in the booth with me, Halstead,” begged Moddridge, shaking. “I may need you, if my voice is too unsteady.”
So the young skipper followed his employer’s friend into the booth, making sure that the door was tightly closed. Hardly had this been done when three of the reporters, who had followed in another carriage, entered the office. The manager, however, would not allow them near the booth.
The telephone instrument was already directly connected with a broker’s office in Wall Street, New York City. Immediately after he had rung Moddridge asked:
“Is that you, Coggswell? How is everything going?”
Tom Halstead, standing close to the receiver, could hear the reply:
“Oh, is that you, Mr. Moddridge? Where on earth is Mr. Delavan?”
“He is not here just now.”
“Mr. Moddridge,” came the earnest voice from the other end of the wire, “I hope you will be able to get hold of Mr. Delavan at the earliest possible moment. P. & Y. has gone down, to-day, from 102 to 91. There’ll be a further drop unless you can bring Delavan to the fore.”
Eben Moddridge groaned. Tom could see perspiration oozing out on the nervous one’s face and neck.
“There are persistent rumors,” continued Broker Coggswell, “that Delavan has secretly and systematically wrecked the P. & Y. Railroad, and that the road’s finances are in a bad condition. The newspapers have taken up the yarn, and there’s a bad flurry in all Delavan stocks.”
“The reporters are out here, trying to interview me,” admitted Mr. Moddridge.
“Then,” begged the New York broker, “produce Delavan at the earliest possible moment, and let the reporters interview him. It will do a lot to steady your interests in Wall Street. Where is Mr. Delavan, anyway?”
“I can’t tell you that over the wire, Mr. Coggswell. I’ll write you this afternoon.”
“Is it true that Delavan has fled, and is in hiding on account of financial irregularities with the P. & Y. Railroad?”
“It’s wholly false, Coggswell,” cried Moddridge, hoarsely.
“Then hurry up and produce him, or the banks will call your loans, and you’ll both go under in the crash, besides dragging a good many scores of innocent people down with you.”
“Oh, I hope it won’t be as bad as that,” shivered Moddridge.
“If you and Delavan go under during the next few days,” warned Broker Coggswell, “Wall Street is so shaky and suspicious that a good many failures will result.”
“I’ll put Delavan in touch with you at the earliest possible moment,” promised Eben Moddridge. “And now, as my watch tells me it’s ten minutes to closing time on the Stock Exchange, I’ll wait right here for the day’s final news.”
As soon as he had turned away from the instrument Moddridge looked out through the glass door of the booth at the reporters hovering by the street door.
“There’s a side door out of this place, Halstead,” whispered the nervous one. “I don’t want to have to meet all those reporters again. Slip into another booth and ’phone the Eagle House to have Delavan’s car rushed down to the side door.”
Tom Halstead accomplished this, returning to the booth before Broker Coggswell called up Mr. Moddridge.
It was a few minutes after three when that call came.
“You, Moddridge?” demanded the New York broker’s voice.
“Yes, Coggswell.”
“P. & Y. has broken down to 86. If it goes to 85 in the morning, either you’ll have to put up extra collateral for your loans and Delavan’s, or the bankers will call in your loans.”
“Good heavens!” shuddered Mr. Moddridge.
“But Delavan’s reappearance will stop all the wild rumors, and P. & Y. ought to climb back up where it belongs. Be swift and active, Mr. Moddridge, for you know how many millions are at stake. I shall be here at my office for two hours yet for the situation looks black at this end.”
“Brace up, sir, please do,” begged Tom, anxiously, as Eben Moddridge turned away from the instrument and rose, his face haggard and ashen gray, his knees tottering under him. “The reporters will see you. Think what they may imagine if you look scared to death. A frightened face may cost you millions at this time! Throw your head up and back. Laugh, then keep smiling. That’s right; now come!”
Delavan’s automobile was waiting up the street a little way. As soon as the clever chauffeur saw the pair appear at the side door, the machine glided up to that side door, the nearer tonneau door open. Into it stepped Moddridge and the young skipper, the latter closing the door. The machine turned and was rolling away just as the reporters, suddenly alert, hurried to the spot.
Arrived at the hotel, Eben Moddridge got to his room as quickly as possible. There, all disguise dropping, he began to shake so that he was forced to drop into a chair.
“Tell the clerk I want no cards; that I’m too busy to see any callers,” directed the nervous one. “Tell him, on no account, to let anyone get up here. Yet, Halstead, someone must see the reporters. Why can’t you do it? Your nerve is all right. See them! Talk to them. But don’t let them know we can’t find Delavan. Go! To the clerk, first, then the reporters.”
Slipping downstairs, Captain Tom Halstead was able to fill both orders at the same time, for the reporters were all at the clerk’s desk, offering their cards. At sight of Halstead the six scribes bore down upon him.
“You can’t see Mr. Moddridge for two or three hours, anyway,” Tom assured the gentlemen of the press. “Every instant of his time is taken up. If there’s anything I can properly tell you, I’ll do so.”
“Where’s Delavan?” the six chorused together.
“Why do you want to know that?” inquired Halstead, innocently.
“Why?” replied one of the reporters. “Because it is reported and believed that Francis Delavan has wrecked the P. & Y. Railroad, that he has sent the proceeds of his work out of the country, and that he has followed the money. There’s another story to the effect that Delavan, overcome with horror, has committed suicide by drowning himself in nearby waters. There’s a big tumble in Wall Street, already, and the money storm is breaking loose!”
CHAPTER XI
TOM HALSTEAD’S QUICK WIT AT WORK
“NOW, where is Francis Delavan?”
Six gentlemen of the press launched that question at Captain Tom Halstead’s head. Their voices and their eyes put the question together.
But the young man, smiling serenely, was ready for them.
“Mr. Delavan left, early this morning, for a pleasure trip on the water, and he hasn’t returned yet,” replied the “Rocket’s” skipper.
That was wholly the truth.
“Where did Mr. Delavan go?”
“He didn’t tell me where he was going.”
“How soon will he be back?”
“He didn’t tell me that, either.”
“Did he go on the ‘Rocket’?”
“No.”
“Captain,” demanded one of the reporters, eyeing the lad keenly, “pardon me for asking you if you answered that last question truthfully.”
“On my honor I did,” Halstead replied, promptly. “Yesterday Mr. Delavan went out on the ‘Rocket.’ To-day only his friend, Mr. Moddridge, went out with us.”
“See here, captain,” demanded another reporter, bruskly and somewhat roughly, “don’t you know, quite well, that Delavan has skipped away, probably out of the country, for good?”
“I give you my word, gentlemen, that I don’t know it, or even believe it. Indeed, while I do not presume to feel myself in Mr. Delavan’s confidence, I am very sure that he cannot be many miles from here at this moment.”
“Then where is he?”
“Not being in Mr. Delavan’s confidence, I can’t tell you.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Not—not exactly.”
That reply conveyed the impression the young skipper hoped it would, namely, that he simply didn’t want to tell where the Wall Street man was supposed to be.
“All I can tell you,” Tom Halstead added, “is that Mr. Delavan is probably not many miles away from here at this moment, that he will undoubtedly turn up very soon, and that he will be pretty angry over the stories that his brief absence have caused.”
Not being easily daunted or turned aside, these New York reporters continued their siege of the young skipper for at least another quarter of an hour. Tom, however, could not be trapped into saying more than he had already said. Yet he spoke so simply, and with such candor, that he imagined the reporters themselves were beginning to believe that too much ado had been made over Mr. Delavan’s brief absence, and that Wall Street had gone astray on another crazy story. However, still intent on seeing Eben Moddridge, and perhaps hoping to find Mr. Delavan himself before the day was over, the reporters lounged about the lobby or at the hotel entrance.
As soon as he could do so without attracting the attention of any of the others, Halstead strolled over to the “Sun” reporter, a fair-haired, alert, athletic-looking young man.
“Do you know that brown-haired, tall young man, in the blue suit?” asked Halstead, rather carelessly.
“I do not,” answered the “Sun” man.
“Yet he belongs to your party, doesn’t he?” pursued the young skipper.
“Why, he was with us, yes.”
“Do you know the other reporters?”
“All of them.”
“But you don’t know the brown-haired young man?”
“No,” answered the “Sun” man. “I don’t believe he’s from a New York paper. He may belong to one of the Brooklyn dailies. Shall I ask him who he is and what paper he serves?”
“Oh, no, thank you,” Tom answered, carelessly. “It’s just the slightest curiosity on my part. He makes me think, a little, of a fellow I knew in my own town.”
But as the motor boat boy presently strolled away his mind was moving fast. He had already suspected that the brown-haired young man, with the well-tanned face, did not belong to the party of reporters, though he pretended to.
For Halstead, rarely mistaken in a voice, had heard the fellow speak twice. Though the tone was low, it had brought back a memory of the night before.
“If it’s the same fellow,” flashed through the boy’s mind, “then his hair, last night, was lighter, and his cheeks fairer. Since then he must have dyed his hair and stained his face. He wore a gray suit, then, and a yachting cap, but I’d wager a lot the fellow yonder is the one who directed the fellow calling himself Rexford, and one of the pair that chased me up a tree. The voice is the same, I’m sure, though now he’s talking lower and trying to disguise his voice.”
The more Halstead covertly studied the suspected one the more he became convinced of the whole truth of his guess.
“Then, if he’s one of the fellows who tried to tempt me last night, he’s working for or with the very crowd that have caused Mr. Delavan to vanish,” breathed the young captain. Feeling that his excitement must be showing in his eyes, Halstead forced himself to cool down a good deal.
“That fellow you asked about claims his name is Ellis, and that he’s on a Brooklyn newspaper,” murmured the “Sun” man, drifting by the young motor boat captain.
“Thank you,” acknowledged Tom Halstead, courteously, yet almost indifferently. To himself, however, as the real reporter strolled away, the boy muttered:
“Ellis, eh? And a Brooklyn newspaper? What a cool liar the fellow is!”
Though they had now waited but a few minutes after giving up young Halstead as a bad interviewing job, the reporters were now once more besieging the desk clerk to send their cards up to Eben Moddridge.
“It’s no use, gentlemen, I tell you,” insisted the clerk. “I’m not to let anyone near Mr. Moddridge until he informs me that he is at leisure.”
“That fellow who calls himself Ellis is the only one who doesn’t insist at all,” muttered the young skipper, covertly watching the game.
Bye and bye, however, “Ellis” drew two of the real reporters aside, engaging them in low, earnest conversation. The other reporters joined the party, all hands talking together for some fifteen minutes. Then once more the “Sun” reporter, as soon as he could do so without attracting attention from his comrades, sauntered up to Captain Tom, standing on the veranda just outside the entrance.
“That fellow Ellis claims to have a whole lot of inside track,” whispered the “Sun” man. “He tells us he knows that Francis Delavan, overcome with remorse at having looted the assets of the P. & Y. Railroad, drowned himself near the mouth of the inlet this morning. He claims that the body has been recovered, but that an effort is being made to keep it from the coroner.”
“Then the fellow lies,” retorted Tom bluntly, indignantly. “You’ve been good to me in telling me this, so I’m going to assure you again, on my honor, that Mr. Delavan isn’t dead; and I’m equally certain that he has done nothing wrong.”
The “Sun” man looked keenly at the boy, concluding that the blue-uniformed young skipper was telling the truth as he knew it.
“Thank you,” said the reporter, simply. “I’ll try to keep you posted on any other wild rumors I hear. But I wish you’d lead me, alone, to Delavan.”
“I will,” promised Tom, artlessly.
“When?”
“When the time comes that I have a right to.”
Just as the “Sun” reporter walked away the young skipper caught sight of Jed, standing under a tree in the grounds, making signs. Beside Jed stood a big, broad-shouldered hulking young fellow with a face as freckled as the map of the Thousand Islands.
Taking a last look inside, and seeing Ellis still chatting with two of the New York reporters, Halstead ran down the veranda steps, crossing the grounds to his Nantucket friend.
“Say, cap,” began Jed, affectionately, “I’m terribly sorry, but I guess I’ve got to quit this cruise. It’s mean, but there’s trouble at home. Mother’s ill. I’ve just had a wire from Dad. He doesn’t say it’s the worst, Tom, but he advises me to come home. So I’ve got to go by the next train, which leaves in twenty minutes. You won’t blame me, old fellow, will you!”
“Blame you?” repeated Halstead, quickly. “Of course not. I’d drop anything if I had the same kind of a telegram. We’ll miss you, of course, Jed, but it can’t be helped. Well get along somehow.”
“Oh, I’m not going to leave you thrown down,” retorted young Prentiss. “Cap, this is my friend, Hank Butts. Hank is right out of sea-faring stock for a hundred years back. And he can cook, too. Say, Tom, he was down at Nantucket, two years ago, on the Life Saving Service cutter. Even then he could cook, eh, Hank?”
“Some,” laconically responded the freckle-faced youth. “And I can handle boats—some—though I don’t know much about motors.”
“I just ran into him on the way up here, Tom,” confided Jed. “But say, I know all about him, from two years ago. Can you give him the job until I show up back again, anyway?”
“Yes,” agreed Halstead at once. “Of course, subject to Mr. Delavan’s approval.”
“Then good-bye, and good luck to you all,” cried Jed Prentiss, after hastily looking at his watch. “I’ve got to run. I’ve said good-bye to Joe already. Tom, I’ve left my uniforms on board—if you can squeeze Hank into ’em.”
With a hasty hand pressure for both youths Jed Prentiss scurried away, intent on reaching his Nantucket home at the earliest possible moment.
Captain Tom had stepped around so that the bush was between himself and the hotel entrance. Hank followed.
“Shall I go on board and look about at the new job?” queried Hank Butts.
“Yes,” nodded Tom, instantly adding: “By hokey—no!”
For at that very moment Ellis was coming out alone through the hotel entrance. The fellow glanced backward, to make sure he was not observed by any of the genuine reporters. Then he slipped rapidly through the grounds.
“See that fellow hurrying over there, in the blue suit?” questioned young Halstead.
“Yep,” nodded Hank Butts.
“Think you could follow him, no matter where he goes, so he wouldn’t suspect you were following him?”
“Sure,” nodded Hank. “Nothing easier.”
“Then do it,” blazed Tom Halstead, in a frenzied undertone. “And I will follow, keeping only you in sight. In that way, he won’t have any chance to know I’m after him, and he doesn’t know you.”
Hank, like a well disciplined follower of the sea, sauntered away without asking another question. Captain Tom watched him for a few moments, then, when Ellis had passed out of sight, the young skipper trailed after Hank Butts, at that moment about to vanish from his view.
“Ellis was hanging around, to spread stories against Mr. Delavan, and also to find out what is happening,” quivered the young motor boat captain. “Now, I’ll bet Ellis is going straight to his employer—and I’m going to follow him right up to that same rascally chief!”
CHAPTER XII
GOING STRAIGHT TO HEADQUARTERS
IT was an exhilarating thought that the fellow in the lead of the strange procession, who was unquestionably a sham reporter, was going straight to the headquarters of the whole conspiracy.
Had Ellis been suspicious and looked back, only to behold Tom Halstead in his wake, it would have been easy enough for the fellow to turn aside from wherever he was going. As it was, however, only unknown Hank Butts was visible, once in a while, in the chase, and Hank, in overalls and a farmer’s straw hat, didn’t look like anything clever. Moreover, Hank was doing his level best to appear more simple. He went through the streets greeting people he knew, or thought he knew, in a careless fashion. Once they got beyond the town, on a road going eastward, Hank fell back out of sight of Ellis, though still keeping on the trail. The first time it was necessary for this Long Island boy to let himself be seen as Ellis turned for a look backward, Hank yanked off his hat, nimbly chasing a butterfly, which he missed.
“This friend of Jed’s knows his business all right,” thought Tom Halstead, admiringly, as he followed, just managing to keep in touch with young Butts, yet wholly behind and out of sight of Ellis. “Hank looks like a Simple Simon, which, in itself, is almost a sure sign that he’s no fool.”
After tramping more than a mile down a dusty, lonely country road, Ellis hauled up under a tree, removing his hat and mopping his face. Hank, without shying, went straight on.
“Howdy,” greeted Butts, nonchalantly. Then, sighting another butterfly, he went off after it at full speed, catching this one and wrapping it carefully in a handkerchief.
“Interested in such things?” asked Ellis, following Hank down the road.
“Yep,” replied young Butts, unconcernedly, “when there’s a fool professor in town willing to pay me for such stuff.”
“Oh, you’re collecting ’em for someone else, are you?” Ellis wanted to know.
“Now, did I say quite that?” asked Hank, with a foolish grin. “Say, mister, I’m minding my business, ain’t I?”
“And you’re a regular boor about it, too,” retorted Ellis, sharply.
“I reckon that’s my business, too, ain’t it?” mocked Hank.
Disgusted with this country bumpkin, as he doubtless considered him, Ellis stalked on again. But Hank had accomplished his purpose. Thereafter Ellis, not suspecting him of anything clever, paid no heed to him.
“Hank is as near all right as, anyone I’ve seen,” chuckled Tom Halstead, who, having crept close for once, behind the shelter of a fringe of sumac bushes, had overheard the talk. “I can trust Jed’s friend.”
Thereafter Halstead did not take the risk of getting too close. He was satisfied with keeping track of Hank only.
After more than another mile had been covered, however, Hank came loping back over the course. Tom stepped aside into the bushes.
“Hsst!” he hailed.
“I knew you’d stop me,” whispered Hank, hauling up short. “And I thought you’d better know what’s going on ahead. Quite a bit down the road there’s an auto hauled up at the side, and a feller in it just signaled the chap you set me to watching. Your feller is hiking forward to meet the goggles in the auto. What do I do now?”
Captain Tom’s hesitation was brief. He would have liked to ask Hank to wait near by, but remembered the fact that young Butts was not in the Delavan confidence. It might be better, on the whole, to send Jed’s friend back to East Hampton.
“Skip back and aboard the boat,” the young captain directed, hurriedly. “Don’t tell a soul, except Joe Dawson, what you’ve been doing, and don’t go up into town away from the boat.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” nodded Hank, understandingly. “But don’t stay to watch me out of sight, or your man may skip off in that auto with his goggles friend.”
The advice was good. Keeping off the road, crouching low behind the bushes that fringed the highway, Halstead hastened forward as noiselessly as he could travel. After going a quarter of a mile he heard the quiet running of an automobile engine.
“Whoever has that car wants to be ready to start on the instant without even having to wait to crank up,” throbbed the young skipper, moving more stealthily than before. Instantly, too, he became more excited, for now he could hear the low hum of voices in conversation.
The noise of the automobile’s engine guided the young motor boat captain better than any other sound could have done. Crawling between the bushes, he came, at last, to a point directly opposite the auto at the roadside, and barely more than a score of feet away. Halstead crawled to this spot and lay there, securely hidden.
“You’ve done as well as you could, Ellis, no doubt,” a man’s voice was saying.
“I’m sure of that, Mr. Bolton,” replied the young man. “I’ve made those New York reporters suspicious. I’ve done the trick so strongly, in fact, that everyone of them will send his paper a story that will make Wall Street jump in the morning. Even if any of the reporters suspect that Delavan may be alive, they’ll give some space in their papers to the hint of remorse and suicide. P. & Y. ought to fall at twenty points when the Stock Exchange opens in the morning.”
“It will,” declared the man addressed as Bolton. “But I hope it will drop even more than that. The lower P. & Y. goes, Ellis, the better it will be for me. I want that railroad, and I’m going to get it!”
“Oh, you are, are you?” thought listening Tom Halstead, deeply interested.
“But I’m certain you’ll have to get Delavan to a safer place, Mr. Bolton,” continued Ellis, earnestly. “I’m afraid there’ll be a big search for him. You know Moddridge still has a goodish bit of money that’s not tied up in his new deals.”
“Moddridge!” sniffed Bolton, contemptuously. “Pooh! That’s the least of our worries. Moddridge simply won’t do anything—won’t have courage enough, with Delavan out of the way. Moddridge is a feeble-minded idiot of finance.”
“But there are other people who stand to lose heavily through a drop in P. & Y.,” urged Ellis. “Some of them have money enough to hire an army of detectives and spies. If Delavan is found before P. & Y. touches bottom price in the market your profits will be much smaller.”
“I know it,” nodded Bolton. “But Delavan simply isn’t going to be found, until I’ve got enough P. & Y. stock at my own figures. Then he can come back and boost the stock up again—meaning millions in profits for Justin Bolton!”
“If you’re absolutely sure he won’t be found before our plans go through successfully——” hesitated Ellis.
“Found?” echoed Bolton, with a rough laugh. “Not until I want it, Ellis. See here, this is what I am going to do with Delavan, to-night.”
Some whispered words followed.
“Get him out on the ocean?” cried Ellis, a note of delight in his voice. “And keep him out there for days, a close prisoner? Good! Nothing better can be done, if it isn’t traced back to you.”
“Oh, it won’t be,” declared Justin Bolton, with a grunt of conviction. “Ellis, I’m planning this all too deeply. I couldn’t get in on that Steel business. I don’t know what tips Delavan’s agent got from Gordon, and I don’t know what Delavan and Moddridge started to do in that direction. But when I heard that both had pledged their P. & Y. stock with the bankers I saw at once how to drive the bankers into selling the pledged P. & Y. stock to save themselves. And others will sell. There’ll be a panic in Wall Street to-morrow. We’ll pick up the P. & Y. for song-prices. Delavan’s final return will show the folly of the scare. P. & Y. will then go up again, and I’ll clear the millions I want. Ellis, you and Rexford won’t be poor men any more after that!”
Inch by inch Tom Halstead had continued to creep forward. He wanted to get a good look at Justin Bolton. He wanted, if possible, to find some way of “catching on behind” the touring car when it rolled away, for in that manner, he believed, he could find his way direct to imprisoned Francis Delavan.
Justin Bolton sat alone on the front seat of the machine, Ellis stood in the roadway, two feet off. Beside Bolton dozed an ugly-looking bull-dog.
One of Tom’s movements under the bushes made a slight sound. Neither of the men heard it, but the bull-dog awoke. The animal thrust up its ugly head, sniffing. Then, with a growl it sprang out of the car, dashing into the bushes. Tom had only time to hug the ground more closely, praying that he might escape detection. But the bull-dog rushed straight to the spot of hiding. Too late the young skipper rolled over, to leap to his feet. As he did so, the bull-dog sprang at him. In a moment Tom felt the brute’s teeth at his throat. The teeth did not sink through the skin, but Captain Tom knew that the least movement to shake off the animal would cause those strong jaws to fasten.
Ellis dashed into the bushes after the dog.
“What’s wrong?” shouted Justin Bolton, in a voice of alarm.
“Wrong?” echoed Ellis, glaring down at the hapless young motor boat skipper. “Everything on the list is wrong! Your dog has caught the captain of Delavan’s boat. And the infernal young meddler must have heard every word of our talk!”