CHAPTER XI

LARRY MEETS A FARMER

“Say, that doesn’t make any sense!” exclaimed Detective Nyler, as he stared at the few words, and parts of words on the torn note. “I don’t see what good that’s going to do, after all our success in finding it.”

“No, it doesn’t make sense,” agreed Larry. “But I think I can make something of it.”

“What?”

“Well, in the first place I believe the stolen boy is referred to. Of course it might be some other stolen boy, but, knowing that Parloti had an interest in forcing Madame Androletti to come to terms about the property in Italy, it is evidently her boy who is referred to.”

“Probably,” agreed the detective, “and yet that word we take for ‘boy,’ might be some other one. You can see that the two other words are only partly here. Maybe ‘boy’ is part of a word.”

“Yes,” assented Larry, “but there are very few words in ordinary use that end in boy, except, of course, such as bell-boy or copy-boy or errand boy, or some of those. There is carboy, to be sure, one of those big bottles they put acids in, and hautboy, but----”

“What in the world is a ho-boy?” asked the detective, pronouncing the word as Larry had done, but which is not the way it is spelled. “I never heard of one.”

“A hautboy,” explained the young reporter, “is a sort of musical instrument, like a clarionet. I don’t believe Parloti’s correspondent meant that, though, of course, he might. I think he referred to the stolen boy.”

“So do I,” agreed the detective. “But what do you make of the rest? ‘Ocated’ isn’t a word, and neither is ‘ot.’”

“No, but the first undoubtedly means located, and the last, unless I’m mistaken is the signature.”

“But who would sign himself just ‘Ot,’ like some African cannibal?”

“Ferrot, the man who probably helped Parloti get the boy,” exclaimed Larry quickly.

“That’s it!” cried Nyler. “Larry, you’re on the right track! This note, torn as it is, makes a good clew. Ferrot wrote it, and sent it to Parloti, telling him he had the boy located, and to come at once. Now I see my way clear. The first place we want to head for is the district messenger office nearest this hotel.”

“Why?”

“To ask which of the boys brought a note here last night for Parloti. And then, from the clerk in charge, we can find out if anyone answering the description of Ferrot left it to be delivered. We’re on the right track at last.”

“Just wait a minute,” suggested Larry, who had gathered up the fragments of the note. “If Parloti had a hand in stealing the boy, or his men did, why should one of them send him word that the boy was located? Wouldn’t they know where he was themselves?”

For a moment the detective was silent. Then he burst out with:

“No! By Jove, Larry, I’m beginning to see things now. The boy got away after they had him, and they’ve only just now located him. That explains it. That shows why Parloti hung around New York after poor little Lorenzo was spirited away.

“Some of their plans went wrong, and the boy gave them the slip. He couldn’t get back to his mother, or communicate with her, or he’d have done so. Maybe they had him drugged, or something like that. Anyhow, he was out of their possession, and Ferrot, or some of the kidnapping gang, happened to locate him. Then they sent word to the chief conspirator, Parloti, to come at once, and he did. He didn’t dare go openly, for he knew we’d be after him, so he took the fire-escape route.”

“It begins to look that way,” admitted the young reporter. “But what’s to be done next?”

“I don’t know. Still, it isn’t as bad as it was. If they only got possession of the boy for the second time last night, they haven’t much the start of us. Come on!”

Carefully saving the pieces of the note, Larry followed his detective friend from the hotel to police headquarters. There the intricate machinery of the “Scotland Yard” department (so called after the English detective bureau) was put into operation.

Every available man was instructed to be on the lookout for the stolen boy, since it was possible he might yet be in New York. Officers, whose posts took in the Italian, and other foreign sections, of the city were told to be on the lookout, and outgoing steamers and trains were watched.

Larry got a fine story, and a beat, about the finding of the torn note, and the flight of Parloti. All the other papers had to copy the account, and Peter Manton received another severe “call down” from his city editor for being “scooped.”

“Say, there’s no use trying to get ahead of Larry Dexter on this game,” declared Peter, and his city editor was beginning to believe him.

As for Madame Androletti, her hopes revived when the news was brought to her, but after several days had passed, and nothing further developed, she became gloomy again. It began to look as if the clew of the torn note would prove unavailing.

Larry was working hard, but, try as he did, he seemed to be up against a stone wall. The stolen boy was as well hidden as ever. As for Parloti, there was no trace of him. He had disappeared as completely as had little Lorenzo Androletti.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know what to do!” exclaimed Larry one day; “I’m at the end of my rope.”

Then, as he had often done before, when puzzled or worried, he decided to take a walk, and he picked out the Bronx, the upper section of New York, as his destination.

Riding in the subway and the elevated trains to Bronx Park, Larry strolled through that, looking at the animals, but not thinking about them. Then he branched off into what was as near the country as any place so near a large city could be. It was in the West Farms section of the old city of Manhattan, a place of historical interest, but Larry thought little of this now. His mind was too busy with thoughts of the stolen boy.

Leaving behind the big apartment houses, which were springing up on every side, the young reporter soon found himself in a comparatively quiet spot, and he walked along what was once a country road.

“It’s nicer here than in the city,” reflected Larry. “It’s like where we used to live. I almost wish I was back on the farm again. This being a reporter, and solving mysteries, isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. But I’m not going to quit now,” and he shut his teeth with dogged determination.

Larry walked on for some distance, getting farther and farther away from the turmoil of the city. But if he had hoped that the quiet would help him to think better, or aid him to hit on some plan for finding the stolen boy, he was doomed to disappointment. The more he puzzled over the mystery the more tangled up he became.

“Where is he?” he murmured to himself. “Where is Lorenzo? Why can’t I get some trace of him?”

Looking down the road Larry saw a cloud of dust approaching. At first he took it to be some one on a motorcycle.

“Guess I’ll get on the other side,” he mused, “so I won’t get so much of the dust.”

He was about to cross over, when he saw that the cloud was caused by an elderly man, driving a rather dilapidated wagon, attached to a somewhat bony horse. The man was urging the animal to top speed, which was not saying much.

“In something of a hurry,” said Larry to himself. “The truck farmers around here aren’t usually that way.”

For the outfit looked like one belonging to a small gardener, and Larry, looking about him, saw several cultivated patches of land that, one day, would be sites for big apartment houses.

As the farmer came opposite Larry the horse was pulled in with a jerk, and the man, whose chin whiskers vibrated up and down with a queer motion as he talked, hailed our hero.

“Say, be I on the right road for police headquarters?” the man asked.

“Well, you can get there this way, if you keep going far enough,” replied Larry. “But the Bronx station is nearer. Why, have you been robbed?”

“No, I hain’t, young feller. Burglars has got t’ git up pretty middlin’ early in th’ mornin’ t’ rob Hank Meldron. That’s my name. But I want a detective, or some one like that, and I reckoned police headquarters was th’ place t’ find ’em.”

“It is, but there are some attached to the Bronx station. What is the trouble?” asked Larry, scenting a story at once.

“Matter? Matter enough, I reckon. I want t’ give information about a boy bein’ held in captivity near my place, that’s what I want t’ do! It’s suthin’ scandalous th’ way he’s being treated. I’m goin’ t’ notify th’ police at once!”

A boy in captivity! Larry was all excitement at once. He saw big possibilities here.