CHAPTER XVII.

A VISIT TO THE HOSPITAL.

At the hospital, Ralph and young Simmons were informed that the lad they had brought in that morning was better, and that it was almost certain that he would recover in course of time. Naturally, both boys were anxious to see him, as they felt that the lad they had found in the ruins of the dynamited hut could throw a great deal of light on that mysterious occurrence.

For some reason, which he himself could not have defined, Ralph was beginning to link the different strange happenings of the previous night into a continuous chain. Irrational as the idea appeared that there was any connection between the blowing up of the hut and the latest voyage of the gray motor boat, he could not help feeling that somewhere the two occurrences dove-tailed into each other. But he said nothing of this to his chums, as, actually, he had nothing upon which to base his belief.

Permission to see the lad whom they had saved from almost certain death under the smoldering timbers was denied to them, after they had waited some time to obtain it. Percy was bitterly disappointed. Ralph was also rather put out that they could not see and talk to the little lad, who, they felt certain, held the key to the mystery. But he was not astonished. He knew better than Percy Simmons how serious the boy’s condition had been that morning.

“Come back in two days,” the house surgeon said. “I could not think of permitting you to talk to your young friend until then. He must on no account be excited.”

“He is resting easily?” asked Ralph.

“Yes; but—he is terribly fragile and emaciated.”

“Any-anything else?” asked Percy, recollecting certain bruises and marks he had spied on the lad’s body.

“Why, yes. Since you ask, I should say that he has been the recent victim of cruel and inhuman treatment. Do you know anything concerning this?”

“No, we know nothing about him except that we brought him here,” said Ralph; “but we take an interest in the case.”

“Oh, it’s not very interesting,” rejoined the man of medicine, mistaking his meaning; “a simple case of slight concussion of the brain and exhaustion and shock. We have many such cases. It is quite ordinary, I assure you.”

“I guess you and I look at cases from different angles,” smiled Ralph.

“Ah; quite so! quite so!” exclaimed the Canadian surgeon, and hurried off to make his nightly inspection of the wards.

But, before he went, he had a question to ask:

“I say,—Yankees, aren’t you?”

“We are Americans,” rejoined Ralph gravely. “That is, we’re Americans all we know how to be, twenty-six hours out of the twenty-four, and three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and more on Leap Year.”

“My word! You Yankees are——”

“There’s no such word as Yankee,” struck in Percy, not knowing whether to laugh or be angry.

“Oh, well, Americans, then. Same thing! Same thing! Jolly smart people, just the same. Good-night!”

And off the little bald-headed man bounced, leaving the two lads alone.

“No use waiting here, Percy,” said Ralph, as the surgeon vanished.

Percy looked around the bare office. A desk, a telephone, and a long row of dismal, precise-looking chairs were its sole ornaments. A smell of disinfectants hung heavily in the air. Behind the desk a small man with a closely cropped head, and very neat, well-brushed clothes, was writing in a big book, a supply of spare pens held behind his ears on either side of his shiny skull.

Suddenly the telephone jangled harshly. The man jumped up and went to it. The boys, half unconsciously, paused.

“Hello,” they heard the little man say in snappish, peeved tones, “hel-lo. Yes-yes-yes. This is the Mercy Hospital. Yes, I said. Yes-yes-yes. A boy? A boy wounded in the forehead? Concussion case? Yes, we have such a case here.”

The boys exchanged glances. There appeared to be hardly a doubt but that some one at the other end of the wire was calling up about “their boy.”

The conversation to which they were auditors at one end only continued.

“Who is this?—Who?—Say it again.—Malvern?—No?—Speak louder, can’t you? Oh, Malvin. Yes——”

“Great Scott!”

The exclamation fairly leaped from Ralph’s lips.

The busy little man looked around angrily.

“Can’t you keep still while I’m ’phoning?” he demanded. “Boys are a nuisance.”

He applied himself again to the ’phone.

“No, sir, I did not say _you_ were a nuisance. I said, ‘Boys are a nuisance.’ Yes.”

He turned and glanced malevolently at the boys, as much as to say, “Now see what you’ve done.”

Then the conversation went on.

“See the boy?—No, that is impossible.—Two boys were here to-night to—Hey! What confounded impudence!”

Ralph had dashed forward and was clutching his arm. He had jerked the receiver from the fussy little old man and slapped his other hand over the transmitter.

“Don’t say anything about us being here, sir, I beg of you. You may foil the ends of justice. You may——”

“Hoity-toity! What’s all this? What are boys coming to? Be quiet, sir. Let me talk at once. Hullo, Mr. Malvern! Hello, sir! Are you there?”

But apparently “Mr. Malvern,” to use Canadian telephone terms, was “not there.”

At any rate, the little man hung up the receiver with a thump and a snort.

“That man has left the ’phone. See what you did!” he exclaimed angrily to Ralph. “It might have been something of the highest importance.”

“I assure you, sir,” declared Ralph eagerly, “that the man at the other end of that wire was one whom we have every reason to believe a suspicious character. I had a strong reason for not wanting him to know we had been here to-night, and that was why I interfered, as I’m afraid you think, without just cause.”

“What, hey? Suspicious character, eh? Well, allow me to say, young man, that your own actions are not above suspicion. No, sir!”

The fussy little man took a huge pinch of snuff. While he was sneezing, the boys slipped out.

“Where to now?” asked Percy Simmons.

“To the telegraph office. Then to the police station. We’ve found out something important to-night. Malvin knows that boy! I’m equally certain that he knows the crew of the phantom motor boat, and the fellow who tried to drive us off Windmill Island.”

“Do you really believe it?”

“Just as surely as I do that we are standing here. But don’t let’s waste time. That boy in the hospital knows something, and the ‘other side’ knows that he knows something. It’s up to us to beat them to it!”