Tom’s fall was not a long one. But he was bruised and shaken by it. Had
it not been for the fact that he had tumbled into what had been an old
mushroom cellar that was floored with soft mold, he might have been
injured seriously. As it was, however, his tumble through the open
trapdoor, which he had not noticed in his haste to escape from the
phantom that he thought was pursuing him, resulted in no injury to the
lad.
Suddenly he heard himself hailed from above.
“Say, you, what’s the trouble?”
“I’ve fallen into a hole of some kind,” rejoined the boy, much
astonished at hearing the voice, which was not an unfriendly one.
“Yes, and I came mighty near following you. Wait till I get a light and
I’ll see what I can do to get you out of your trouble.”
“Now I wonder who on earth that can be?” thought Tom, as he heard the
one who had addressed him retreating down the hallway. “Could it have
been he who screeched like that and scared me so?”
Before long the man was back with the overturned lantern, which he had
picked up and lighted. As he held it over the edge of the trapdoor
through which Tom had tumbled the boy gave a start. The man’s face was
painted white, and he had on a suit of loose white material with funny
looking black mules stenciled all over it. The man peering over the edge
of the hole saw the look of astonishment on Tom’s face, and broke into a
laugh.
“Guess you’re wondering what under the sun sort of a chap I am,” he
said. “Well, I’m a clown. I was with that show of Sawdon’s, but the
rascal quit us cold down yonder, and dug out with everything. He even
took our clothes and I had to make shift in this rig. It’s all I had.”
“Oh,” said Tom greatly relieved, “then it was you that ran after me?”
“Sure. But, look, there’s a sort of ladder over there. Climb out, and
I’ll tell you how I came to be here, and you can tell me something about
yourself.”
Tom lost no time in clambering up the rough contrivance for getting in
and out of the mushroom cellar. Then he followed his newly found friend
to the small room in which the men who had captured him had first
questioned him.
“Reckon I got you out of quite a scrape, didn’t I?” asked the clown,
regarding Tom with a quizzical sort of look.
“I should say so,” rejoined the boy gratefully. “If it hadn’t been for
you I don’t know what would have happened to me. But you almost scared
the life out of me, too,” he added truthfully. “What gave you the idea?”
“Well, you see, it was this way. After Sawdon ducked out I had no place
to go to, so I was wandering along the road, thinking that maybe I could
give a show some place and pass the hat to get some other clothes, when
I saw this old house. It was getting late, so, thinks I, there’s my
Walled-off-Castoria. I walked in and went into one of the upper rooms,
where I lay down for a snooze. I must have slept a long time, I reckon,
for when I woke up I heard voices below.
“I listened with my ears wide open, and what I heard showed me mighty
quick that two fellers were carrying out some bit of rascality. So all
at once I hit on the idea of being a ghost. I reckon what one of them
fellers said about the place being haunted gave me the idea—and so I
gave those yells that you heard, and it certainly worked.”
“It certainly did; and I thank you for it,” laughed Tom, “but it scared
me as badly as it did the bad men, almost.”
“Well, it’s hard to please everybody, as the feller said when they
kicked at his carrying Limburger cheese on the street car. But now tell
us what you are doing here, sonny.”
Tom told him as much of his adventures as he thought advisable. When he
had finished the clown exclaimed:
“So you’re one of the kids that rescued that boy from the balloon?”
“Ralph Ingersoll, you mean?” inquired Tom.
“Ralph Ingersoll nothing! His name is Melville, and if he had his rights
he’d be riding in a benzine buggy, and wearing diamonds and—and eating
turkey every day of his life.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tom, with a curious sense that the name of
Melville was familiar to him, somehow.
“Just this, and now that Sawdon’s gone back on me I don’t mind telling
about it, that Ralph Melville, for that’s his right name, was put in
Sawdon’s charge by his uncle, Stephen Melville, a rich manufacturer of
guns and artillery and such like things in New York.”
“Why, he’s the man who’s trying to steal Mr. Peregrine’s invention!”
exclaimed Tom.
“I don’t know about any very green invention,” said the clown, “but this
I do know, that I’m going to tell what I can about that poor kid. He’s
been cheated out of his rights—that’s what he has—and I don’t care who
knows it.”
“How did you find all this out?” asked Tom eagerly.
“Why, I was in the dressing tent on the night that the Melville kid was
brought to Sawdon, who was an old friend of this Stephen Melville.
Melville gave Sawdon a big sum of money every month to keep the kid
where no one would know where he was. It seems that when Ralph was a
little baby his father was killed in a railroad accident, and the news
of his death proved the death of his mother, too. There was a will
leaving all the wealth of John Melville (that was Ralph’s father) to his
boy. But his uncle was to be his gardeen till he come of age. Well, what
does his uncle do but get a fake will made up and spirit the boy away.”
“But hadn’t the boy any friends?” asked Tom. “Well, I heard them talking
about a Doctor Longman, or some such name——”
“Wasn’t the name Tallman?” asked Tom, recollecting the mysterious hint
about Ralph which the doctor had thrown out.
“Yes, that was the name, sure enough. It seems that this Dr. Tallman had
another will or something, but Melville said that he had satisfied him
that the boy was dead.”
Tom wondered greatly how it was that Dr. Tallman could have had the
suspicion—which he evidently had—that the boy he knew only as Ralph
Ingersoll was, in reality, the long missing Ralph Melville. But he was
not to find this out till later. After some more discussion of Ralph’s
strange history, Tom suggested that they should go out and try to find
the Flying Road Racer and drive at once to Dr. Tallman’s residence. But
his new-found friend, whose name was Dick Dangler, pointed out that in
the dark they would have a hard job to find the machine, and might get
lost into the bargain.
“My idea would be to wait till daylight, as the fellow said when they
wanted to hang him at sunset,” he said in his odd manner. “In the
meantime, I’ll skirmish around and try to find something to eat, for by
the looks of that table those fellows have food stored away some place.
Then we can take a nap till it gets light.”
Tom agreed to this and went to a cupboard in the corner of the room,
which they thought might have served the men as a larder. Sure enough,
they found some canned chicken, some tinned beef and a box of crackers
in the place. But Tom lost all interest in these as his eye caught
something which was tucked away in the extreme corner of the cupboard.
As he saw what it was he gave a cry of joy. The next instant he was down
on his hands and knees, eagerly investigating his discovery.
It was the long missing model. As Tom clasped it and then fell to
gathering up the plans, which had also been placed in the cupboard, he
was fairly burning with joy.
“Hurray! I’ve got Mr. Peregrine’s model back,” he kept gleefully
repeating. “Now he can go ahead and finish up his vanishing guns!”
Dick Dangler seemed almost as joyous as the boy over the discovery.
“That ghost trick of mine certainly brought good luck all around,” he
said.
As he spoke a noise behind them made them look around. Tom almost
uttered a cry as he found himself looking straight into the muzzle of a
revolver held by Jake Rook. Radcliff had Dick Dangler similarly covered.
“You began crowing too soon, my young rooster,” sneered Rook, with a
contemptuous smile. “Now just hand over that model, and hurry up about
it, too.”
What was poor Tom to do? It was a bitter thing to have to acknowledge,
but once more the rascals had triumphed. Silently, and with brimming
eyes, Tom did as he was ordered. Then, still aiming their revolvers at
Tom and his friend, the two men backed slowly out of the broken window,
through which they had entered, and vanished in the darkness.
It would have been quite useless to pursue them, for even had Tom found
them, he would still have been at their mercy. No, he had to admit that
he was beaten, badly beaten, too. The fact that it was no fault of his
own did not make the disappointment any easier to bear.