CHAPTER XI.

THE SPANIARD AGAIN.

“I don’t think you’re really to blame, professor,” said Dick. “Indeed, I have often wondered in the past how you succeeded in warding off the attacks of the fair sex, who are continually besieging you. No one is to blame if he happens to be attractive and fascinating to women.”

The old fellow brightened up a little.

“That’s nonsense, Richard,” he said. “Of course, there was a time when the girls did chase after me more or less, but that’s gone by.”

“You know better, professor. In these days girls are learning to admire men of brains, and talent, and genius. You’ll have to be careful, professor. There’s something about you that fetches them every time.”

Zenas smiled.

“Do you think so?”

“I know it! I want to warn you for your own good. You’ll have to hold them off. If we go to Paris, you’ll have to be on your guard. They’re sure to throw themselves at you. Paris is full of pretty girls, they say, and they’ll keep you ducking. If you were inclined to be frisky, you could have a score of handsome women chasing you.”

“He! he!” laughed Gunn. “That would be embarrassing, but it would be rather exciting.”

He rose to his feet and threw out his chest.

“I don’t know but you are right,” he nodded. “Since crossing the pond I’ve noticed the ladies glancing my way and smiling on me. In London they smiled at me, and in Scotland the Scottish girls were inclined to give me the eye. I used to be quite a chap with ’em, but since getting married I’ve lived retired and kept away from ’em. I’ll have to look out or some of them will be trying to steal me.”

Buckhart turned a laugh into a severe fit of coughing.

“I’m afraid I’ve taken cold,” he barked.

By this time Dick had Professor Gunn thinking himself really a very captivating old chap with the ladies, and he began to tell how he had found it necessary to dodge them all his life.

“Stop it, pard!” whispered the boy from Texas. “If you don’t let up I’ll sure give myself away to him.”

Thus adjured, Merriwell finally quit egging Zenas on, but he improved an opportunity to slip out of the room and leave the professor relating some of his experiences to Buckhart.

Dick descended to the lower rooms of the inn, entering the one to which they had first been ushered by the landlord.

A man in black clothes was half sitting, half reclining in a big easy-chair that was drawn up before before the fire. Evidently he had been perusing a newspaper, over which, made drowsy by the warmth, he had fallen asleep. The paper was spread over his face.

At one corner of the glowing open grate was another chair, and Dick sat down in this.

“A cool night, sir,” he observed, by way of being sociable.

The man did not stir. Evidently he was quite sound asleep.

Dick took from his pocket a tourist’s map and began examining it. The old professor had stated that in a few days they would leave England for warmer countries to the south, but their exact route had not yet been decided on.

For ten minutes or more Dick studied the map closely, becoming quite absorbed in it. At last, although he had not heard a sound or observed a movement on the part of his companion, he was led to glance up quickly, feeling himself attracted by something.

The man in the easy-chair had permitted the newspaper to slip down just enough for him to peer over the upper edge of it.

Merriwell found himself looking straight into a pair of dark, magnetic eyes, which were fixed on him with a steady, intent gaze. As those eyes met Dick’s they did not waver or blink in the least, and thus the two sat perfectly still, Dick holding the map and having his head partly lifted, gazing at each other unwaveringly and in stony silence.

Almost instantly Dick knew he had seen those eyes before. There was something familiar about them. They gave the boy at first a queer, uncanny sensation, and something like a chill, followed by a tingling flush of heat, passed over him.

A sense of danger came to Dick Merriwell. He seemed to feel the influence of a strange, subtle power. Directly he realized that this unknown power emanated from those piercing dark eyes, and it seemed that in his ear his guardian genius whispered an anxious warning.

Immediately the boy roused himself and brought his own firm will to the task of combating the influence whose touch he had so distinctly felt. Summoning his spirit of resistance to the contest, he continued to watch the eyes revealed above the edge of the newspaper.

Neither man nor boy moved a muscle. In dead silence they remained thus, watching each other like panthers about to spring.

The fire glowed warmly on the hearth and a great clock that stood in one corner of the room ticked solemnly and regularly. Outside the wind rose in a great gust and swept with rushing sound through the branches of the trees. Ghostly hands, like those of restless spirits seeking admission from the darkness and the cold, rapped at the casement of a window.

Still the unknown man and the American lad sat motionless, gazing into each other’s eyes.

The unvaried ticking of the great clock began to sound loud as hammer strokes.

Gradually Dick realized that he was obtaining the mastery. He had met and resisted the unknown influence the other was bringing to bear upon him, and his determination was conquering the subtle power of those magnetic eyes.

He called into action all the force of will he could command, knowing that he was defeating the object of the silent man before the fire.

Finally the man uttered a low exclamation of disappointment and anger, and the newspaper fell rustlingly from his face.

Dick sat face to face with Miguel Bunol!

“Curses on you!” hissed the Spanish youth. “Had you not looked up so soon I would have succeeded.”

“Never!” retorted Dick. “It is not in you, Bunol, to conquer a Merriwell.”

“We shall see.”

“I should think you would know it by this time. What are you doing here?”

“That is my business.”

“In which I am somewhat interested. How dare you show your face again?”

“Dare?” laughed the young Spaniard, harshly. “Did you think you could frighten me? Fool not yourself by such a fancy. I have a right to go where I choose, have I not?”

“You might find it unpleasant if you were to appear in the vicinity of Kinross, Scotland, about now. Of course you have a right to go there, if you choose, but you would be arrested if you did so.”

“We are not in Scotland, Merriwell. This is England and the heart of Sherwood Forest.”

“But the law is just as strong here as in Kinross. If Dunbar Budthorne were here he would——”

Bunol snapped his fingers contemptuously.

“He would do nothing at all. Had he sat before me, were he sitting thus now, I’d have him powerless to disobey my command—I’d have him subject to my every wish. I am his master, and he knows it.”

“Still at Lochleven you did not succeed in forcing him into your dastardly scheme—you did not compel him to aid you in your plot to marry his sister.”

“But for you, Merriwell, I should have succeeded. You ruined my plot. That very night, as I fled in a boat across the bleak bosom of the lake, I swore to turn my attention to you, and put you beyond the possibility of baffling me again. Now you know why I am here. What will you do about it?”

The Spaniard asked the question mockingly. He was flinging defiance in the teeth of the young American.

“You have selected a big task, Mig Bunol.”

“But I have sworn to succeed.”

“You will fail utterly and miserably.”

Bunol lifted one hand to caress the thin, black mustache upon his lip.

“That is what you believe,” he said; “but I know I shall not fail. At Fardale I hated you, but I forgot you after I left the school. Never again would I have given you a thought had you not crossed my path in London. You crossed it at a most unfortunate time for me, as then I was on the very verge of accomplishing my great object.”

“And that object was to ruin Dunbar Budthorne and to make his beautiful sister your wife.”

“I love her!”

“You love her! Never! You love nothing but your own selfish, villainous self, Bunol. You were interested in her, and fascinated by her, because of her beauty; but had she been a poor girl you would not have dreamed for a moment of marrying her.”

“How wise you are!” sneered Miguel, shrugging his shoulders. “Even if that is so, what does it prove?”

“It proves that you are a fortune hunter of the lowest and most contemptible sort.”

“Is it such a crime to be a fortune hunter, as you call it? What are the ruined and penniless noblemen of Europe who seek marriage with American heiresses?”

“You are not even in the class of those men, for, though they may be cads, and snobs, and weaklings, and utterly lacking in manly qualities, few of them are downright scoundrels and desperadoes. At least, they have titles to give in return for the wealth their rich wives will bring them; but you have nothing to give.”

“Yah!” snarled the Spaniard, showing his white, gleaming teeth. “You say things that sting, but some day your tongue will be silent with death!”

“Your threats do not disturb me in the least, Bunol, for I am confident that I shall live to see you hanged, as you justly deserve to be. Bunol, your power is broken and your great scheme has come to naught. You may as well seek other victims, for never again will your fingers handle a dollar of Budthorne’s money.”

With a sneer on his dark face, the Spanish youth had listened to Merriwell’s words.

“It is a great wonder you think yourself!” he cried. “You think you have defeated me. How little you know me, boy! Did you imagine you had thrown me off the track and would see me no more while abroad? I am here. From Edinburgh you I followed to Glasgow, from Glasgow to Dublin, from Dublin to Manchester, Sheffield and here. I chose this spot to appear to you again and to let you know I am on your track. All this time you have known nothing of it, and you have thought me frightened by what happened in Scotland. While you remained in Scotland I did not care to appear, as I knew you would try to have me arrested.

“In Dublin there was no reason why I should make myself known, nor yet in Manchester or Sheffield. Here we are far from any town and in the heart of a forest. True, your friends are within call of your voice if you lift it; but I, too, have friends ready to spring in on us at a signal. My friends are all armed, and it is short work they would make of two boys and a cowardly, withered old man. Ha! ha! Call, if you like! I am willing; I am ready. Utter a shout, and by the time your friends get down to this room you will be lying on this hearth in your blood.”

“Are you trying to frighten me with such talk, Mig Bunol? You should know by this time that I am not easily frightened. You say you have followed me. That is good. While you were doing so Dunbar Budthorne and his sister were getting far beyond your reach. You have followed me in order to be near when they joined us again. That is it!”

Dick laughed triumphantly, for he had stated the reason why Bunol had so persistently dogged him about, and he felt that the fellow had been completely baffled.

Dick’s laughter caused Bunol to turn pale with rage. He saw that the young American regarded him with positive contempt. In Dick he had not aroused an atom of fear—nothing but aversion, scorn and contempt.

“You cannot fool me!” he snarled. “The Budthornes are not very far away. If you live, you will meet them soon. I shall be there.”

“Will you?”

“Yes! I know your cowboy friend has become deeply interested in Nadia, but—bah!—what is he? I can dispose of him so.” Bunol gave a careless flirt of his hand.

“It’s plain enough you do not know the kind of stuff that Brad Buckhart is made of.”

“He is nothing but a blustering braggart.”

“He’s a fighter, every inch of him; fearless as a lion. It was his bullet that pierced the shoulder of Rob MacLane, the outlaw, on the wall of Lochleven Castle, and sent him tumbling to the ground, where his career ended with a broken neck, greatly to the relief of all honest people.”

“Still he is nothing but a blustering braggart, and any man of real courage can become his master. I mind him not. It is you I have set my heart to conquer and crush, and then Buckhart will be disposed of with ease.”

“How do you propose to carry out your little project with me?”

“Don’t think I’ll not find a way. If I chose, you’d never leave this inn alive. You’d never rise from that chair, unless it were to drop dead on this hearth!”

“If all this is true, why don’t you go about it?” cried Dick, his eyes flashing. “I’m watching you! I am waiting for you to begin!”

“I came here to force you to tell me where Nadia is.”

Once more Dick laughed.

“And you fancied you could succeed? You fancied you could force a Merriwell to do your bidding? Bunol, you are a greater fool than I thought!”

“Oh, laugh, conceited idiot!” snarled the Spaniard. “You may be laughing in the face of death!”

“In some ways you are amusing, as well as disgusting. Now I know why you sat so still on that chair and pretended to sleep with the paper hiding your face. Now I know why you permitted the paper to slip down until you could peer over it. You have discovered that with your eyes and your mind you can govern weaklings. Your success with Dunbar Budthorne caused you to think you might hypnotize me, and force me to tell you where you could find Nadia. You have failed. What will be your next move?”

“I have failed, and my next move may be to put you forever out of the way of causing me more trouble.”

“Begin!” was Dick’s challenge. “I am waiting! Do you fancy you can do it alone? or will you call your paid ruffians to your assistance? Call Durbin! Call Marsh! Durbin has none too much courage, and Marsh is a miserable coward. I am here in this room alone. Call them to your aid and let’s have it out!”

“How bold you are!” sneered Bunol, again. “But it is not on such as Durbin and Marsh I depend alone. A closed carriage passed you on the road shortly before you arrived here. I was in that carriage, and with me were men ready to cut your throat at a word of command from me. Should I give the signal they would come with a rush. Better be careful with that tongue of yours. If you do not arouse me too far, I may permit you to live yet a while longer; but in the end you shall die—and by my hand!”

Dick was becoming tired of the talk. He had fancied some one might enter the room, either the landlord or the friends he had left upstairs. Now, of a sudden, he heard a sound of heavy knocking coming from the upper part of the inn, as if some one were pounding furiously on a door.

“Your friends are growing impatient,” said Bunol. “They wish to get out, it seems.”

“Wish to get out?”

“Yes; they are locked in their rooms. One of my men attended to that after you left them, I presume. I gave orders to keep Buckhart and the old man away in case I found an opportunity to meet you face to face. But the place will be disturbed by the racket they are making. I hope you enjoy your supper here and your night’s rest. I’m sorry to say I have decided to leave you. It might be disagreeable if your party and mine were to remain beneath the same roof.”

Bunol started to rise from his chair, as if to depart.

Instantly, without warning and with a great bound, Dick reached the Spaniard and clutched him.

“Wait a minute!” he exclaimed. “Don’t be in such a hurry to go.”

With a furious exclamation, Bunol flashed out a knife and struck at the boy’s throat a blow that was much like a streak of lightning as the steel glinted in the gleaming firelight—a blow impelled by deadly hatred and murderous impulse.