CHAPTER XV

A NEW CLEW

“Well, I wonder what I’m going to do next?” said Larry aloud as he walked over the fields beside Mr. Meldron. The other farmers were straggled out, talking excitedly over what had happened.

“I know one thing you’re goin’ t’ do fust!” said the man who was responsible for the whole affair.

“What?” asked Larry curiously.

“Come home t’ dinner with me. It’s th’ least I kin do for you, after all th’ trouble I put you to, an’ if your stomach is anything like mine it’s playin’ tag with your backbone, it’s that lonesome and empty.”

“That about describes my condition,” admitted the young reporter, with a laugh. “But I don’t want to trouble your wife. I can find some restaurant around here, I guess.”

“Nary a one. But shucks, that ain’t no trouble. My wife allers cooks enough for a whole fambily, when there’s only me and her. Come right along, or I’ll be more disappointed than I was when I found them fellers was actors instid of tramps with a kidnapped boy, though I’m glad he wasn’t after all.”

“So am I,” agreed Larry, with a laugh. He looked back, and saw the troupe of moving-picture players going through the scene where the boy makes another attempt to escape from the house of the tramps. The moving-picture camera was in full operation, and it was this machine which Mr. Meldron had mistaken for a cannon.

Later on Larry had the pleasure of seeing reproduced the moving pictures of the drama in which he played such a strange part. It gave him a queer sensation to see thrown on the screen the views of the pretended tramps, and the little boy running away from them.

“It isn’t everybody who tries to break up a photo-play drama,” mused the young reporter.

He had a good meal at the house of the farmer, and then, seeking the nearest telephone, he sent in to the _Leader_ a humorous account of what had happened. Even though, in a way, it was a disappointment, Larry got a good story out of it, and, what is more, a “beat.” The account was copied in several papers.

“Say, there’s no use trying to get ahead of Larry Dexter,” lamented Peter Manton, when he saw the story in the _Leader_. “Even when he has a slip-up he manages to ‘scoop’ all the rest of us by it. I’ve a good notion to quit the game.”

“If you don’t turn in a good story pretty soon, you’ll quit whether you want to or not,” said the city editor of the _Scorcher_ significantly.

Peter went out with a fierce determination to unearth new clews to the stolen boy and beat Larry, but his efforts amounted to nothing.

“Well, Larry,” said Mr. Emberg one day, some little time after the raid on the moving-picture players, “what are you going to do next to locate the stolen boy?”

“I don’t know,” the young reporter admitted frankly. “I am about ready to give up. Don’t you want to put someone else on the case? I don’t seem to be making good. Maybe if a new fellow took hold he could see some things I can’t.”

“Larry, you’re going to stick right on this case until you find that boy, or until--well, until it’s been proven that he can’t be found,” said the city editor. “Don’t imagine for a moment that the _Leader_ isn’t satisfied with your work. You’re doing fine. Even when there’s a balk, you get a good yarn out of it. Don’t be discouraged. I merely asked to see if you had any ideas of a new line to work on.”

“Well, I don’t mind admitting that I haven’t,” said Larry. “I don’t know which way to turn next.”

“You’re no worse off than the police,” was the comment of Mr. Emberg. “They can’t get any clews, either.”

“But we want to do better than the police,” said Larry.

“You did in the bank case, and you did the time you found Mr. Potter,” went on Mr. Emberg. “You’ll win out yet, Larry. Don’t get discouraged.”

The young reporter tried not to be, but it was hard work. For, with all his efforts, he could not seem to get a single new clew to work on. And the old ones had been run into the earth.

“If only something would happen!” complained Larry. “I don’t see why the kidnappers (or the kidnapper if there’s only one) haven’t made a demand for ransom money. They didn’t take that boy away merely for the sake of his company. They want to make something out of him.

“But they’re as silent as the grave. Not a word or a sign from them. They may be hidden here in New York, or they may be on the other side of the earth. There’s no telling.”

Indeed, it was not strange that Larry should be baffled. Even the detectives were all at sea. New York had been gone over as if with a fine tooth comb. Every quarter of the city had been searched, clew after clew had been followed up, suspicious characters by the score had been arrested, but still there was no trace of Lorenzo Androletti. He had disappeared as completely as if he had sunk below the surface of the earth, or as if he had gone up in a balloon.

Nor was there any trace of Parloti. The pieces of the torn note he had left behind after his flight furnished the only clew to him, and this clew was not sufficient to locate him. Nor were his tools--those two mysterious men--found, though a diligent search was made for them.

“Everything is up in the air,” complained Larry, as he thought over the various ends of the case. “I can’t get hold of anything to work on.”

Meanwhile Madame Androletti’s grief grew more keen each day that went by without tidings of her son. She lived in retirement, seeing only a few persons, of whom Larry was one.

He called often, not that he had good news to impart, but, somehow, hoping against hope, that perhaps, after all, the mother might be the first to hear good news. But there was no word from Lorenzo.

A number of private detectives had been engaged on the case, as well as the members of the regular police force, but they had not been as successful as had Larry. They spent large sums in traveling about, and Madame Androletti paid them gladly, but it amounted to nothing.

Occasionally they stumbled on what they thought was a clew, and there would be great hopes, but everything fizzled out, and they were forced to admit that they were mistaken.

Of all the New York papers, the _Leader_ alone gave much space to the kidnapping case. And for this the sheet was laughed at, and made the butt of editorials by rivals.

“That’s all right, Larry,” said Mr. Emberg, when a particularly sarcastic editorial had appeared in the _Scorcher_. “They are only jealous because you’ve beaten them so much. Keep at it.”

“If I only could, Mr. Emberg! If only I could get hold of a new clew!”

And then, most unexpectedly, it came.

Larry was in the city room of the _Leader_ one afternoon, finishing up a Sunday supplement story that he had worked on during his spare time, when the telephone rang.

“Some one for you, Mr. Dexter,” announced a copy boy.

Larry took the instrument, and, no sooner had he listened to the first few words than a change came over his face.

“Yes! Yes!” he said eagerly. “I’ll be right up!”

He ran over to Mr. Emberg, and whispered:

“It’s a new clew! Madame Androletti has just received a letter from her son!”