AN INSUFFICIENT DISGUISE.
Jack turned quickly and found himself facing a tall, lanky,
sharp-featured man dressed in homespun clothes and cowhide boots. On
his chin was a fine specimen of the type of facial adornment popularly
known as a billy-goat. On his chest flashed a huge nickel star.
“Stand where ye are, by gosh!” he warned.
“Why,” began Jack, “I’ve——”
“No lip, young feller!”
The constable, for such he evidently was, drew out a huge old-fashioned
revolver and flourished it.
“Look out what you’re doing with that,” warned Tom, whose sense of
humor had come back again with his recovered good health, and who was
now an interested spectator of the scene.
The constable glared at him, as if undecided whether or no he was being
made fun of. The boys now saw what they had not noticed before, that
quite a crowd, made up of farming folks attracted by the glare of the
flames, had assembled. No effort was made to put out the fire. It had
gone too far for that. The barn’s heaviest timbers showed now like a
row of blackened, stumpy fangs against the red glare of the flames
within. The roof had fallen in long since.
“Wall, I swan to goodness!” demanded one old gaffer in the crowd,
“what’s all this, Officer Hake?”
“By hemlock, I don’ jes’ know, Squar’,” came the reply. “I seen ther
flames same as you did, an’ hitched up ole Bess yonder ter drive out
hyar.”
“Go on, officer,” said the old man who had been addressed as “Squar’,”
with judicial coolness.
“Wa’al, I found ther barn all on fire—it’s Gus Davis’s, Squar’,—an’
these two young fellers lookin’ about dazed-like, while them three
characters yonder lay bound on ther ground.”
The squire expectorated profusely.
“Great Doctors!” he exclaimed, “I’ll call court right hyar an’ inquire
inter this. Young feller, in ther name of ther great an’ sov’ran
commonwealth of Massachusetts, do you—wa’al, what yer got ter say fer
yerself?”
“Just this, sir,” and Jack related a plain, straightforward story,
while in that odd, flame-lit courtroom the rugged-faced farm men and
women pressed eagerly about.
The judge appeared impressed.
“Got ther numbers of them thar notes?” he asked sharply, referring to
Jack’s declaration that they were in Duke’s pocket.
“Yes, sir.”
Jack produced a memorandum and read off the numbers of the stolen
notes. The old squire checked them off as Jack read them, in a battered
old sealskin wallet with silver trimmings worn with age.
“Orf’cer Hake.”
The order came as Jack finished reading, repeating each number to make
sure that the squire jotted them down right.
“Go look in that feller’s pockets an’ see if you kin find them
banknotes.”
While Duke, pale as ashes, struggled and swore, he was rigidly
searched. The notes were found in his inside pocket just as Jack had
said they would be.
“Wa’al, by gum, young feller,” said the squire as the rural constable
handed the bundle to him for inspection, “that part of yer story’s
right. Now for the next.”
He adjusted his spectacles and glanced rapidly at each note, checking
them off as he went along. As he concluded, he turned to Jack.
“Gimme your hand, young feller,” he said warmly, “thet’s a right smart,
slick bit o’ work you done.”
“Thanks,” said Jack, “but there’s more to be said yet, your honor. That
man lying yonder from whom the notes were recovered, is Adam Duke, a
fugitive from justice.”
“It’s a lie!” howled Duke, beside himself with fright.
“You told me so yourself,” went on Jack calmly. “Besides, I recognized
your voice.”
“What, that thar feller’s Adam Duke!” exclaimed the constable
incredulously. “Why, I got ther circular hyar what describes him. Duke
had a moustache, this fellow has a beard.”
“I half suspect it’s false,” declared Jack.
There was still a ruddy light from the fire and the squire decided to
test this part of Jack’s story, even though he had already determined
to hold the man on suspicion. Besides, in any event, there was the
highway robbery charge against him.
“It’s a lie! All a lie, I tell you!” roared Duke as they examined his
glossy, luxuriant beard. It did indeed seem too close to the real
article for an assumed imitation.
“By heck, young feller, that beard’s as gen-u-ine an article as my
goatee,” declared the constable.
Several others echoed this opinion. Even the village barber, for the
burned barn was close to a small hamlet named Hexham, declared that he
would stake his professional reputation on the veracity of the bound
man’s whiskers.
But alas for all these wiseacres! The heavy rain accompanying the storm
had done what nothing else could have accomplished, without design on
Duke’s part.
It had loosened the foundation which stuck the hairy growth to his
face. Jack, determined in his own mind from Duke’s frightened look that
he had hit the right nail on the head, gave the whiskers a good tug.
They peeled off like a porous plaster, while the crowd yelled and Duke
swore. Stripped of his disguise, Duke’s face was instantly recognized
from the portrait which adorned the police circular. Two hours later he
and his cronies were in the Hexham lock-up, waiting to be taken to the
county seat for trial.
It may as well be set down here that at the subsequent proceedings,
inasmuch as the chief complainants did not appear, all three got light
sentences, the judge remarking that they were extraordinarily lucky.
But while that trial was going on our young friends were facing
dangers and difficulties in tropic waters to which all that had gone
before appeared tame. Their return with their supplies to Mr. Dancer’s
workshop and their stories of the night’s events, had resulted only in
the _White Shark’s_ not clearing on her adventurous cruise till early
dawn. Otherwise their start for Cuba was made as previously planned.
Nobody saw the dull white form of the diving boat slip seaward and then
head due south. Had any persons witnessed the departure, they would not
have had long in which to watch it, nor could they have explained the
phenomenon of the queer form slipping through the quiet sea and then
suddenly vanishing from view.
Had they attempted it, another “sea-serpent story” might have enlivened
the columns of the newspapers, for, as the _White Shark_ got beyond
shallow water, she dived like one of her vicious namesakes—the tigers
of the deep—and the waters closed over her.