CHAPTER XIV.

MR. HUNT DELIVERS A TELEGRAM.

The morning after Rob’s narrow escape, Stonington Hunt entered the Western Union office in Hampton in some excitement and filed a telegram. It was addressed to a former business friend of his, and related to what progress he had made in acquiring the right to manufacture Paul Perkins’s queer machine. Had it told the truth, it would have said, “Little hope.” But that was not the elder Hunt’s way. His dispatch read:

“Progress favorable. Think I can land it.”

As Hunt handed the message over to Blinky Dibbs, the operator, messenger boy and manager of the office, he smile grimly.

“Afraid there’s more poetry than truth in that message,” he said to himself, “but I’m not going to give up hope. The more I think of it, the more I’m convinced there is money in that motor ice sleigh. Why, one could sell them like hot cakes at winter resorts, and there’s that government contract for the Polar expedition. Stonington, my boy, you’ve got to get your hands on that machine.”

At this point of his meditations, his eyes fell on an undelivered message lying on the key table before the operator. The former financier’s sharp eyes scanned it greedily. As he comprehended what the dispatch was, his brow clouded angrily. The message was for Paul Perkins, and read as follows:

“Things here satisfactory, but Washington moves slowly. On no account consider other offer. Confident I can put deal with government through. Merrill.”

“Phew!” whistled Hunt, in a low key. “So that’s the way the wind blows.” He wrinkled his brow for a minute in deep thought, and, as Mr. Hunt’s thoughts usually materialized speedily into action, he did not remain long in meditation. He pulled a “receiving blank” toward him and rapidly wrote on it. Then he slipped it in an envelope and, having written an address on it, pocketed it.

“Get my message off yet, Dibbs?” he inquired, although his sharp eyes had seen that the operator had not yet succeeded in raising the New York office.

“Nope,” responded Blinky, pounding away at “N. Y.”

“Well, I guess I’m off,” volunteered Mr. Hunt, with his most amiable smile. “Got any messages you wish delivered in the direction in which I’m going?”

“Which way is that?” asked Blinky, keeping up his clickety-click.

“Down Beach Street. I have some business at Paul Perkins’s house.”

“Say, that’s so!” exclaimed Blinky, galvanizing into remembrance. “I’ve got a message here for young Perkins. Would you mind taking it?”

“With pleasure,” declared Mr. Hunt, emphasizing his willingness with a smile of triumph. Dibbs had fallen into the trap almost too easily. A few minutes later Mr. Hunt strode out of the office and set off at a brisk pace for Paul Perkins’s home. In his pocket he carried the message from Washington, and he intended it should not leave that receptacle till he was ready to destroy it. Mr. Hunt whistled cheerily as he walked down the street. His chest swelled with exultation till the buttons of his overcoat were seriously strained. He felt that he had accomplished a stroke of real business.

A sound of hammering from the wagon house as he reached the inventive scout’s home apprised the astute plotter that the boy he was in search of was at work on the machine he desired so ardently to acquire. Without making his visit known to Mrs. Perkins, the father of Freeman Hunt softly walked over the withered turf to the wagon shed door, and the first thing Paul knew of his presence was when his dark shadow fell across the sheet of metal on which the lad was working.

Paul gave a little start as he looked up and saw who it was that had dropped in upon him so unexpectedly. The look of his face must have told Hunt that he was not a welcome visitor, but this did not worry such a veteran of diplomacy as now faced the lad. Paul, however, had presence of mind enough to drop his hammer and come toward the door before the observant Mr. Hunt had done more than take in the outlines of the machine he was constructing.

“Ah, good morning, Paul,” Hunt had said, as the boy looked up. “Have you time for a little chat.”

“I guess so, Mr. Hunt,” was the rejoinder. “Let us go in the house.”

“I’d rather have it here. It is too early in the day to make a call, and your mother is probably busy.”

Paul quite saw through this, and acted more decisively than he would have believed it possible for him to do. Coming forward, he laid his hand on the door, stepped through the opening, and an instant later he had closed the portal on the outside and slipped a big padlock into its hasp. If Hunt was annoyed, he did not show it.

“I don’t blame you for not wishing me to see the machine,” he purred. “It is quite understandable; quite natural, after what occurred the other day. I deeply regret I lost my temper. It was the interest I felt in your welfare, though, that angered me when you refused my proposal.”

“Hum,” said Paul bluntly. “I thought you were mad with Rob Blake for butting in.”

“I may have seemed so; I may have seemed so,” said Mr. Hunt, with such regret in his tones that the soft-hearted Paul began to feel sorry for him. “I have a terrible temper, and when I saw that my good offer was likely to be rejected by you because of your willingness to listen to bad advice, I confess that my fury arose and mastered me. But, Paul, I am of a forgiving nature. I don’t cherish any more anger against you. I came here this morning to repeat my offer, and——”

Mr. Hunt broke off and dived into his overcoat pocket. Apparently, he had just recollected the yellow envelope he now drew out.

“Why, Paul, my boy, I almost forgot! I’ve a message here for you. Dibbs asked me to deliver it.”

“Thank you,” exclaimed the boy, taking the message. “Will you excuse me if I open it? It may be news from Washington.”

“News you little expect,” snarled Mr. Hunt to himself, his wolfish smile growing more pronounced. The envelope he had slipped to the lad contained the message he himself had scribbled after he had seen the real dispatch. Paul’s face blanched as he read the brief, short message, which appeared to be genuine enough. At least, he, of course, had no grounds for doubting its authenticity.

“Can do nothing more in regard to ice motor,” he read, with a sense of bitter shock. “Government declines to use it. Sorry, but negotiations are definitely closed. Merrill.”

“Not bad news I hope?” inquired Mr. Hunt solicitously. Paul raised a troubled face. He was a lad utterly unused to guile or deception, and he therefore blurted out his trouble. He even read off the contents of the message, which was hardly necessary, as Hunt himself had written it.

“Too bad; too bad,” said Mr. Hunt, wagging his head slowly and assuming a sympathetic leer. “But, Paul, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. If the government doesn’t know a good thing when it sees it, I do. My offer is still open. I’ll go five hundred dollars higher, in fact. What do you say to fifteen hundred dollars for the rights to the machine?”

“I—I hardly know what to say,” stuttered the confused lad. The sudden dashing of his hopes at Washington led him to be willing to accept almost anything. To people in the circumstances of the widow Perkins and her son, fifteen hundred dollars looked an immense sum.

Hunt noted the boy’s hesitation, and he hastened to strike while the iron was hot. He produced a fountain pen and a check book, with a wizard-like flourish.

“Come,” he said, persuasively, “say the word and I’ll write you a check now. You give me a receipt saying that you accept the money in consideration of all rights in the machine, and the thing is done.”

“I suppose I’d better,” hesitated Paul, miserably, “come inside, Mr. Hunt, and I’ll fix up the paper you want.”

“Good for you, Stonington, my boy!” chuckled the rascal to himself, as he turned to follow the boy into the house, “I guess this is where I get even on those brats who interfered the other day, and make a nice little sum besides.”

But as they had their feet on the lower step leading to the side door there came a hail from the street.

“Paul—oh, Paul!”

It was Rob Blake’s voice.

Hunt paled as he heard it, but recovered himself the next instant.

“Pshaw, he could never find it out,” he muttered. “I wish he had kept away till I put the business through, though.”

“Hul-lo, Rob, I’m glad to see you,” cried Paul, “come on in. I want to ask your advice in something.”

“Oh, I must protest against that,” sputtered Mr. Hunt, “this is a confidential matter, my boy. You have pledged yourself to sell——”

“I beg your pardon, I don’t think I have,” rejoined Paul, “and what’s more, I’m not going to sell till I ask Rob’s advice. He knows a lot more about business than I do.”

“Confound him, I think he does,” grunted Hunt, but he added aloud as Rob came through the gate, “Quite right, Paul, quite right. But independence in business is the keynote of success. Ahem, Mr. Blake, you are looking well.”

“I’m all right,” rejoined Rob, bluntly, taking no pains to hide his dislike of Mr. Hunt; then, without paying further attention to the leering plotter, he turned to Paul.

“Get your telegram, Paul? I dropped in at the telegraph office on my way down and Blinky told me he had sent a message to you by Mr. Hunt.”

“Yes, I got it,” said Paul, bitterly, “and—and——”

“Not bad news, is it?”

“The worst. Washington won’t touch the ice motor with a pair of tongs.”

“Let’s look,” said Rob, extending his hand for the message which Paul had drawn from his pocket as he spoke. But before the inventive lad could pass the paper to his chum, Freeman Hunt’s hand darted out and intercepted it.

“Let me look at it one moment,” he said. “There’s something that wasn’t quite clear when I saw it before.”

“But you didn’t see it before,” protested Paul. “You gave it to me and I told you what was in it. Then you made me your offer.”

“I guess you had better give me that dispatch, Mr. Hunt,” said Rob, quietly, but with an ominous glitter in his eyes.

“When I get ready, my young whipper-snapper,” was the rejoinder, “and now if you will clear out for a minute, Paul and I have some business together.”

“He wants to buy the rights to the machine for $1,500,” volunteered Paul.

“Oh, he does, does he?” snorted Rob. “Why, I’d give you more than that myself. This fellow is after you to make money out of you, Paul, and——”

“How dare you, you cub,” roared Stonington Hunt, once more losing his temper and springing forward, but something in Rob’s steady gaze made him lower his uplifted arm.

“Are you going to let me see that message?” demanded Rob, in whose mind a suspicion had now grown into a definite certainty. “Are you?”

Hunt’s answer was to tear the sheet of paper in two, but before he could reduce it to smaller bits and scatter them broadcast, Rob was upon him, and with one powerful wrench of the man’s wrists had gained possession of it.

“I’ll have you arrested for assault!” stormed Hunt. “I’ll see the constable, I’ll have you put in jail! I’ll appear against you as a dangerous character, I’ll——”

“Hold on a minute, there,” warned Rob, who had fitted the two torn bits of crumpled paper together. “If you go to doing anything like that I may have to turn the tables by appearing against you on a more serious charge.”

Hunt paled, and his eyes glittered strangely, but he tried to bluff it out.

“What charge, boy?” he demanded, his words seeming to choke him.

“That of forgery,” shot out Rob. “This message is a bit of rank deceit. It hasn’t even got a time stamp or an office number on it. You’d better get out of here, Mr. Hunt, and—quick, too!”

Hunt made a step forward, and then appeared to change his mind. He turned so white with rage that his face seemed like a bit of carved marble.

“You young cur,” he hissed. “This is the second time. You came near getting your deserts in the wood yesterday. Look out for the third time!”

Rob laughed as the fellow slunk off, but as Hunt strode up the street with as much bravado as he could assume the boy’s face grew grave.

“Like father, like son, dad says sometimes,” he murmured. “I heard in the village that Freeman Hunt had been after rabbits yesterday. Now I know who owns the pointer. What a pair of rascals!”

Paul looked blank. He had scarcely understood the scene that had just transpired. Unacquainted with the routine of a telegraph office he had failed to detect that the required marks were lacking on Hunt’s forged dispatch. He looked at Rob in a mystified way.

“What’s it mean, Rob?” he asked, wonderingly. “Was Hunt trying to _bunco_ me?”

“I guess that’s the word, old fellow,” said Rob, throwing his arm affectionately around the younger boy’s neck, “but we checkmated him just in time.”