CHAPTER XIII

STEALING A SWIFT MARCH

“GR-R-R!” snarled the bull-dog, still holding lightly onto Halstead’s neck, ready to sink his fangs in at the first sign of resistance.

At Ellis’s startling information Mr. Bolton leaped from his car, crossing the road and bounding over among the bushes.

“So we’ve got _you_, have we—the young man who refused to aid us for a good price?” cried the dog’s owner, exultantly. “Ellis, this isn’t bad news. It’s about the best thing that could have happened. We’ll stuff this young man’s mouth up, tie him and take him to keep his employer company. It reduces the danger of any successful pursuit by the ‘Rocket.’”

Tom Halstead wasn’t a coward, as everyone familiar with his career well knows. But the dog had the upper hand at this moment, and any attempt to show fight would have been sheer folly.

“I guess you’ll agree to offer no nonsense, won’t you, Halstead?” chuckled Mr. Bolton, roughly. “If you do, I’ll call my dog off, though the beast will be at hand if needed.”

Captain Halstead’s blood was boiling over the hopelessness of this defeat in what he had hoped would be the very hour of his success. Before he could reply, however, the dog made the next move.

Behind the whole group was a quick, light step. The dog was the first to hear it. Springing back from the young skipper with a new growl of warning, the brute turned, making a fresh spring.

Hank Butts had just crossed the stone wall that bordered the road. In his two hands Hank held a rock slightly larger than his head. Nor did the freckle-faced youth seem greatly alarmed. As the bull dog sprang Hank calmly bent forward and dropped the heavy rock on the animal’s head just in the nick of time.

Without uttering a sound the savage brute dropped to the ground, dead. Ellis leaped forward at the newcomer, but Hank Butts, with a speed that seemed strange in him, snatched up the dog and hurled it full in the face of the sham reporter.

“Here, you young rascal!” roared Justin Bolton, as Ellis toppled over backward. He rushed at Hank, but Mr. Bolton was a stout, middle-aged man—no match in agility for a country boy.

“Get back before I have to do something impolite,” mocked Hank, sidestepping and throwing himself on guard. But Tom Halstead, leaping to his feet at the first sign of rescue, now tripped Justin Bolton neatly. That astounded person fell backward, striking the ground heavily.

“This way, Hank, on the hustle!” called Tom, making a plunge for the road. Halstead was in the automobile, at the steering wheel, like a flash. Hank, trembling slightly, but all a-grin, followed.

Ellis was the first to regain his feet, though Bolton was close behind him as he gained the road. They were just a second or so too late. With the machine cranked up, the engine running, Halstead had only to give the steering wheel a turn and push on the speed. The car rolled ahead, then began to travel fast just as the angry pair dashed up. In another instant Halstead had distanced them, speeding the car eastward down the country road.

Bang! There was a single shot. A bullet sped by their heads, but both boys were crouching low. There was a second shot, but this time no bullet was heard. The swift car had borne them out of revolver range.

“Hank,” exploded Tom, gleefully, “I want to say that I’ve known some real fellows, but you’re one of the best ever. But how did you manage it? I thought you were on your way back to East Hampton.”

“I ought to have been,” admitted Hank Butts, soberly. “But—well, I suppose I’ve a notion for minding other people’s business. I was just aching to see how you came out, so—well, I follered.”

“And the luckiest thing for me that you did,” asserted young Halstead, shutting off much of the speed, now, and running along more slowly. “But see here, Hank, can you run this car for a moment or two?”

“I can steer it,” Hank agreed.

Tom surrendered the wheel to this new friend, and climbed over backward into the tonneau. He promptly examined the cushions under the rear seat. As he had hoped, he found a large locker space under the seat, and some tools.

“See here, Hank, listen,” admonished Halstead, leaning over the back of the front seat. “I think our people will run after us a little way in the hope that we’ll leave the auto and take to our heels. I’m going to stay here and hide under the back seat. There’s a wrench or two there that I can fight with if I’m cornered. If Bolton will only overtake his machine and go where I think he’ll go, I’ll be on the track of the biggest kind of news. But this time I want you to really run back to East Hampton. Don’t even think of waiting to see what happens to me. Get aboard the ‘Rocket’ and tell Joe Dawson, from me, to get the engine all ready for an instant start. Then he wants to be near the cigar store, close to the pier, so I can call him over the telephone there if I want to send him any message. Tell him to have the tank full of gasoline, ready for a long chase. Here, I’ll give you a note that’ll make Joe Dawson pay a whole lot of attention to you. Shut off the engine.”

Hank Butts ran the car in at the side of the lonely road and stopped. Halstead hastily scribbled on an envelope:

Joe, trust Hank Butts to the limit. He’s all right. Tom.

“Take this,” ordered the young skipper. “Now, after I get in under the seat, pile the cushions over it again as they should go.”

Captain Tom quickly stowed himself away, finding the space rather cramped after all. Under the edge of the seat he slipped the end of his jackknife, to keep the lid raised barely enough for a supply of air. This done, Hank placed the cushions.

“Now take to the woods and make a real travel back to East Hampton,” muttered Tom. “Be quick about it, before Bolton and Ellis get in sight.”

“Good-bye, Cap. Best of luck!” breathed Hank Butts, fervently. Then the confined young skipper heard his new friend leap down into the road and scamper away.

There followed some weary moments, full of suspense and anxiety. The young motor boat boy hoped that the rascally pair would pursue their car thus far, but he knew, too, that they might be suspicious enough to explore that locker space under the big rear seat. Though Tom gripped a wrench tightly, this pair might both be armed and ready to proceed to any lengths to prevent the defeat of their plot to wrest millions from an excited stock market.

At last Halstead heard running steps, followed by a shout:

“There’s the car! Just as I had hoped!”

The running steps slowed down to a walk. Then, as the new arrivals drew near, Justin Bolton’s voice proclaimed, triumphantly:

“I thought it might be so. Those boys didn’t dare take the risk of stealing a valuable car, so, as soon as they got away safely, they deserted the machine.”

“I hope they haven’t done anything to disable the car,” hinted Ellis, concernedly. “I don’t know who that hulking Simple Simon chap is, but young Halstead undoubtedly knows enough about gasoline motors to know how to leave one in mighty bad shape.”

“We’ll soon know,” declared Bolton, as he reached the car. “Why, the engine seems to be running all right. Jump in, and we’ll try the car a little way.”

After the pair had gotten in at the front the car rolled ahead. Whoever was at the wheel let the speed out a few notches, then slowed down and stopped the car.

“It’s all right, Ellis, and a tremendously fortunate thing for us. Now, you can get out and go back to East Hampton. Sorry I can’t take you back, but it wouldn’t do for me to take the slightest risk of being seen and recognized with you.”

“That’s all right,” nodded Ellis, leaping down to the ground.

“You know just what to do, young man, and you won’t fail me?”

“Not with the big reward that’s in sight,” laughed Ellis.

“Good-bye, for a little while. Be alert!”

The car started ahead again, though not at great speed. Plainly Bolton was in no immediate hurry about what he had to do. As he guided the car along he hummed, merrily, in a low voice.

“Just as though he were an honest man,” muttered Halstead, indignantly.

Often, indeed, was the young motor boat skipper tempted to try the lifting of the lid of the seat enough to look at the country through which they were now passing. But the risk that Justin Bolton might be taking a backward glance at the same moment seemed too great.

Twice, as sounds told, they passed other automobiles headed in the opposite direction. Peeping through the narrow crevice that he had made with his knife-end—an opening that was concealed by the overlapping cushions—Halstead saw that daylight was now rapidly waning.

Twenty minutes later it was fully dark. The car now turned off the soft road over which it had been running, to a more gravelly road. Then the car stopped altogether.

“All well, sir?” hailed a voice that made Halstead start. The tones were those of that red-haired young man, Rexford.

“Not quite all well,” replied the voice of Bolton, though the speaker seemed hardly worried. “We ran into that young captain of the ‘Rocket,’ Halstead, and into another young fellow, a human cyclone. They know something of our game, but they were glad enough to get away from us.”

Calvin Rexford gave vent to a low, prolonged whistle of amazement.

“However,” Bolton continued, “they don’t know enough of what we’re doing to spoil our enterprise. As I said, we got rid of them.”

He then gave a rather truthful account of the meeting in the woods, of the seizure of the auto and of its abandonment, as Bolton supposed.

“I don’t like the sound of that story,” said Rexford, uneasily.

“Nor do I, either,” agreed Justin Bolton. “Still, the boys don’t know the most important part of what they’d like to find out—where Frank Delavan is. And, now, Rexford, how has Delavan been behaving?”

“Naturally, he hasn’t been giving us any trouble,” laughed Rexford. “We haven’t given him any chance.”

“I think I’ll take a look at him; though, mind you, he mustn’t have the slightest glimpse of me.”

“I think that can be easily arranged,” replied the red-haired one. “But did the boys, this afternoon, hear your name?”

“I don’t believe they did,” replied Bolton, stepping out of the car. “It might disarrange our plans some if they did happen to know my name.”

The next words, spoken by Rexford, were not distinguishable to Tom Halstead, crouching under that rear seat. He raised the lid somewhat as soon as he was satisfied that the two speakers were moving away.

The car had been run in under a shed, open at one end. Bolton and Rexford being out of sight, Tom softly raised the lid, cushions and all, then replaced the leather cushions and leaped hastily to the ground.

The shed had been built onto a barn that was now rather dilapidated. Two hundred feet beyond the barn was an old, spacious house of two stories. Toward this the two men were walking.

“So that’s Mr. Delavan’s prison, is it?” thought the young skipper, throbbing with the excitement of his discovery. “Whereabouts is this place? Probably near Cookson’s Inlet. I wonder if the water can be seen from any point around here?”

Then, gazing after the two men, Tom saw them disappear into the house. There seeming to be no one else about, the boy stole slowly toward the house. He had reached an old, tumble-down summer-house when the sound of voices made him hide there. Two other men, middle-aged and strangers, came from the direction of the house, going towards the barn. They had been talking in undertones, but ceased before they came near enough for the young motor boat captain to make out anything.

“Confound ’em,” grumbled Halstead, a few moments later. For the two men, having reached the barn, now lighted pipes and stood there, smoking and chatting in undertones.

Halstead could not move from where he crouched. If he did he ran the almost certain chance of being discovered. Thus some ten or twelve minutes passed. The young skipper of the “Rocket” studied the old house, trying to guess in what part of it Francis Delavan was confined against his will. Not a single light, however, showed from the outside.

Someone was coming away from the house. As he came nearer, Halstead made him out to be Rexford. That young man kept on past the barn to the shed. He soon returned slowly in the car, the two men with pipes swinging aboard as he passed them.

To Tom’s great alarm the car stopped close to the summer house. The two strangers now stepped out again, going toward the main house. Hardly had they vanished when Justin Bolton came out once more, going straight to the automobile, though he did not board it.

“You understand your orders fully now, Rexford?” inquired Bolton. “You know what to do to-night, and you are aware that, this house having served its brief purpose, we shall not use it again. The launch will remain where it is, in hiding, for a day or two, at least. Then, when all is ready, the launch will take you and your charge out to sea. You know the rest?”

“It’s all quite clear, thank you, Mr. Bolton,” Rexford replied.

“I shall rely upon you, then, Rexford. Don’t fail me.”

“No fear, Mr. Bolton. You are wagering millions on the game, but I have at least a fortune at stake. Trust me. I won’t fail you.”

“Good-night, then, Rexford. Caution and good luck!”

“Good-night, Mr. Bolton. We’ll both be richer when I see you again,” laughed the red-haired one, recklessly.

Justin Bolton walked rapidly away. Had Tom Halstead wished to follow, he could not have done so. Rexford, sitting in the nearby car, would have been sure to see the boy.

Ten minutes passed. Then another crunching was heard on the gravel. This time the young motor boat captain felt as though his heart must stop beating. The two strange men now appeared, carrying the helpless form of Francis Delavan between them.

“Stow him in carefully. Drop these blankets over him,” directed Rexford. Francis Delavan, bound and gagged for the journey, was placed in the bottom of the tonneau and covered over. One of the men got in beside him, the other sitting on the front seat with Calvin Rexford.

Honk! The toot from the automobile’s horn was unintentionally jeering, for Tom Halstead was left behind, helpless, at the very instant when he longed, as never before, to be of the utmost service.