Chapter 19

SAM REBELS

In the meantime on a small island in the Upper Inlet a strange conference was taking place. Three youths whom our readers will recognize as Jack Curtiss, Bill Bender and Sam Redding; were in earnest consultation with the unkempt and unsavory individual whom we know as Hank Handcraft, the beach-comber.

"Well, the job's put through, all right," Hank was saying, as the three sat outside a small tent in front of which was a smoldering fire, about which the remnants of a meal were scattered.

"Yes, but now we've got to tackle the hardest part of it," said Jack, knitting his brows. "I've got the letter written and here it is." As he spoke he drew from his pocket a sheet of paper. "The question is who to send for the money when the time comes."

"Oh, Hank is the man," said Ben, without an instant's hesitation. "We must not appear in this at all."

"Oh, I am the man, am?" put in Hank, with no very gratified inflexion in his voice; "and what if I am caught? I'm to go to prison, I suppose, while you fellows get off scot-free."

"As for me," said Sam Redding, who was pale and looked scared, and whose eyes, too, were red-rimmed and heavy as if from lack of sleep, "you can count me out. I want nothing to do with it. You've gone too far, Jack, in your schemes against the boys. I'm through with the whole thing."

"Well, if you're that chicken-hearted, we don't want you in it at all," sneered Jack, although he looked somewhat troubled at his follower's defection. "All we want you to promise is not to split on us."

"Oh, I won't peach," promised Sam readily.

"It will be better for you not to," warned Bill Bender; "and now let's figure this thing out, and quickly, too. We haven't got any too much time. They'll have discovered the kid has gone by this time and the alarm will be spread broadcast."

"I thought, when he yelled like that last night, we were goners sure," remarked Jack, scowling at the recollection. "It's a good thing those kids sleep as hard as they do, or we'd have been in a tight fix."

"Oh, well, no good going back to that now," dissented Bill. "How was the young cub when you left him, Hank?" he asked abruptly.

"Oh, he'd got through crying, and was lying nice and quiet on his bunk," remarked Hank, with an amiable chuckle, as though he had just performed some praiseworthy act, instead of having left little Joe Digby locked in a deserted bungalow on an island some little distance from the one on which the conversation related above was taking place.

"Well, that's good," said Bill; "although crying, or yelling, either, won't do him much good on that island. He could yell for a week and no one would hear him."

"No; the water's too shallow for any motor boats to get up there," agreed Hank. "I had a hard job getting through the channel in the rowboat, even at high water."

"Is the house good and tight?" was Jack's next question.

"Tight--tight as the Tombs," was Hank's answer, the simile being an apt one for him to use. "The door has that big bolt on the outside that I put on, besides the lock, of which I carried away the key, and the shutters are all nailed up. No danger of his getting away till we want him to!"

"Couldn't be better," grinned Jack approvingly. "Now, here's the letter. Tell me what you think of it?"

Opening the sheet of paper, the bully read aloud as follows:

"MR. AND MRS. DIGBY:

"Your son is safe and in good hands. I alone know where the men who stole him have taken him. But I am a poor man, and think that the information should be worth something to you. Suppose you place two hundred dollars under the signpost at the Montauk crossroads to-night. I will call and get it if you will mark the spot at which you place it with a rock. Look under the same rock in the morning and you will find directions how to get your boy back.

CAPTAIN NEMO."

"What do you think of that?" inquired Jack complacently, as he concluded the reading of his epistle.

"A bee-yoo-tiful piece of composition," said Hank approvingly, with one of his throaty chuckles; "the only thing is--who is Captain Nemo?"

"Why, so far as delivering the letter and getting the money is concerned, you are," said Jack decisively. "Eh, Bill?"

"Oh, by all means," assented Bill.

Sam was not included in the conversation, and gazed sullenly straight in front of him as he lay where he had thrown himself on the fine white sand.

"Oh, by no means," echoed Hank derisively. "Say, what do you fellows take me for, the late lamented Mr. Easy Mark? If you do you have another think coming."

"Now look here, Hank," argued Jack, "what's the objection? All you've got to do is to take this note ashore, give it to some boy to deliver, and then go to the crossroads at whatever time to-night you see fit and get the money."

"Of course," Bill hastened to put in, "you've got to bring it to us for proper division."

"Oh, I have, have I?" chuckled Hank. "Well, what do you think of that? I'm to do all the work and you fellows are to get the bacon! That's a fine idea--not! Four into two hundred doesn't go very many times, you know."

"Not four," corrected Jack, "three. Sam is out of this. He's too much of a coward to have anything to do with it," he added, mimicking Sam's tone.

The boat-builder's son reddened, but said nothing in reply to the bully's taunt.

"Well, three, then," went on Hank; "that's not percentage enough for me. If I'm to have anything to do with this here job, I want half the money. You fellows can split the rest between you!"

Jack and Bill exchanged blank looks.

"Now, look here, Hank, be reasonable," began Jack in a tone meant to be conciliatory.

"Now, look here, Jack, be sensible," echoed Hank mockingly. "You seem to forget that you owe me something for the job we did on those uniforms the other night, and that other little errand you performed on the island. You've got a very convenient memory, you have. Why, I daresay those kids would have given me a nice little wad of tobacco money to have told just who took their Sunday-go-to-meetin' suits, but did I peach? No, you know I didn't; but," he added, with rising emphasis, "if I don't get what's coming to me pretty soon, I will."

"Well, you idiot," began Jack truculently; "haven't you got your chance now?"

"If I choose to take it--yes," was the rejoinder; "but I don't know as I will. It seems to me I hold all the trumps and you are at my mercy."

"Why, you insolent dog!" bellowed Jack, rising to his feet from the position in which he had been squatting. "For two cents I'd knock your bewhiskered head off!"

He advanced threateningly, but Bill, seeing the turn matters were taking, and realizing that more was to be gained by peaceful methods, intervened.

"Now, Jack, shut up. Stow that nonsense," he ordered sharply. "Look here, Hank, we'll accept your terms. Half to you if you carry it out successfully."

"And if I don't?"

"Then we'll all have to shift for ourselves. This part of the country will be too hot to hold us. I mean to go out West. I've got a cousin who has a ranch, and I think I could get along all right there if the worst comes to the worst."

"See here, I don't agree with your way of dividing the money," began Jack, an angry light in his eyes. "Look--"

"Look here, Jack," cut in Bill sharply, "if you don't like it, it doesn't do you any good. If you object to it, keep out. Hank and I form a majority. You chump" he added, quickly, under his breath, as Hank turned away and began to "skip" flat stones over the water, "don't you see he takes all the responsibility? It's a cinch for us to get away if anything goes wrong."

"Yes, it's a cinch we get cheated out of our share of the money," argued Jack, with an angry glare in the direction of the unconscious Hank.

"Beggars can't be choosers," argued Bill. "You know, as well as I do, that if we are implicated in this affair it means serious trouble. Our parents wouldn't stand for it, and we should be disgraced. By doing it this way we get some of the proceeds--I admit not our fair share but what's to be done?"

"Well, I guess you are right, Bill," assented Jack, with a shrug. "It's go ahead now; we've gone too far to draw back."

"That's the line of talk," grinned Bill, "and when we've each got fifty dollars in our pockets, silenced Hank with a golden gag and had our revenge on those kids, we'll be able to talk over future plans. I'm sick of school. I hate the idea of going back there. I've half a mind to strike out for the West anyway."

"Do you think I could get a job on your cousin's ranch?" asked Jack.

"I don't doubt it a bit," rejoined Bill. "You're a good, husky chap, and brawn and muscle is what they need in the West."

"Yes, I'm husky, all right," conceded Jack modestly. "Sometimes I think that I don't get full opportunities to expand here in this wretched country hole."

"No, the West is the place," agreed Bill, with an inward smile, "as the newspapers say--one can expand with the country out there."

Their conversation was broken in upon by Sam, who demanded in no very gentle tones:

"Well, who's going ashore? I'm off."

"No hurry, Sam," said Jack in a more amiable tone than he had yet used that morning. "Let's sit around here a while and enjoy the sun--we might take a swim after a while."

"If you don't come now you'll have to swim ashore," grunted Sam, arising and brushing the sand from himself. "I'm going back to Hampton. I'm tired of camping out here."

He walked toward the beach and prepared to shove off the dinghy, preparatory to sculling out to the hydroplane, which lay a few rods off shore in the channel.

"Hold on, Sam," cried Bill; "we're coming. Don't go away sore."

"I'm not sore," rejoined Sam, in a tone which belied his words, "but I don't think you fellows are doing the right thing when you maroon a kid like Joe Digby on a lone island, in a deserted bungalow in which you'd be scared to stop yourselves."

"Why, what's got into you, Sam?" protested Jack. "It's more a lark than anything else."

"Fine lark," grunted Sam, "scaring a kid half to death and then writing notes for money. It's dangerously near to kidnapping--that's what I call it, and I'm glad I'm not in it."

Both the others looked rather uncomfortable at this presentation of the matter, but Jack affected to laugh it off.

"Pshaw!" he exclaimed, "it's a little bit rough, I know, but such things do a kid good. Teach him to be self-reliant and--and all that."

"Sure," agreed Bill, "you don't look at these things in the right light, Sam--does he, Hank?"

Hank, who had shuffled toward the dinghy at the conclusion of these edifying remarks, agreed with a chuckle that Sam had no sense of humor, after which they all got into the dinghy and we sculled off to the unlucky hydroplane.

It didn't take long to get under way, and the little craft was soon scudding through the water at a good pace, towing the dinghy behind her.

"Better put us ashore before we get into Hampton," suggested Bill. "We don't want to be seen about there more than can be helped."

"That's where you are wrong," objected Jack. "We'll put Hank ashore up the coast, but the more we are seen about the place the better. It won't look as if we had anything to do with the Digby kid--in case things do go wrong."

So it was agreed that Hank was to be landed in a small cove a few miles farther down the coast, from which it was a short cut across country to the neighborhood of the Digby farm.

Then he was to waylay the first likely-looking messenger and entrust the note which Jack had read to him for delivery. After that he was to spend the time as best he could in suitable seclusion, and after dark conceal himself near the sign-post. He was not to make any attempt to secure the money if any one hovered about the place, but if the coast was clear he was to go boldly in and take it.

Hank was landed at the spot agreed upon, a short time later, and the other three then resumed their journey for the hydroplane's home port. As they turned seaward Jack pointed mockingly to Topsail Island, which lay a short distance on their port bow.

"I'll bet there's plenty going on there right now," he grinned.

"Right you are," assented Bill.

"Hullo," he added hastily the next moment; "what's that?"

He pointed toward the island, and the occupants of the homing hydroplane saw, slowly rising from it in the still air, four straight columns of blue smoke.

"Looks like a signal of some kind," suggested Jack after a scrutiny.

"It's coming from about the place where we grabbed the kid," added Bill, a note of apprehension in his voice.

"I wonder what it signifies?" demanded Jack, whose face began to bear a somewhat troubled look.

"I can tell you," said Sam shortly, turning round from the wheel.

"You can?"

"Yes."

"Well, hurry up, then--what does it mean?" Jack spoke sharply at Sam's deliberation.

"It means," said Sam slowly, as if he wanted every word to sink in, "that the Boy Scouts have picked up your trail."