At seven-thirty that evening the boat was there, and Mr. Lockyer
immediately got on board. Lieutenant Parry and Midshipman Stark had
already gone ashore to visit some friends of the officers, who lived
not far off. Andy Bowler and some of the engine-room crew alone
remained on board beside the boys.
“Take good care of the Lockyer, Strong,” laughed the inventor, as he
took his seat in the stern sheets of the little shore boat.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Ned assured him, “and you take good care of yourself,
sir, for the Lockyer wouldn’t be much good without you.”
As he said this, Ned could have sworn that a half smile, which he
immediately hastened to conceal, flitted across the visage of the
bearded man at the oars.
“Oh, I’ll take good care of myself, Ned,” Mr. Lockyer said lightly,
as the oars of the boatman began to dip and the little craft moved
off. Before long it was almost out of sight, but still Ned watched it
through the fast-gathering dusk.
As he gazed he mused on the strange errand that had called the inventor
ashore to the lonely Banta House. A more isolated place it would be
hard to think of.
“It’s queer,” mused the boy, “mighty queer. If it wasn’t that
Gradbarr----Wow!”
He jumped suddenly erect from the conning tower rail against which he
had been leaning, and, rushing up to Herc, who stood near by, he seized
him by the neck and shook him violently.
“Wake up, Herc, you red-headed dreamer!” he exclaimed excitedly. “Wake
up, and listen to something!”
“I will if you take that hand off the back of my neck,” retorted Herc.
“It interferes with my hearing seriously.”
“Oh, don’t try to be funny. Listen. I’ve just thought who that bearded
boatman reminded me of----”
“Adam’s off ox?” drawled Herc easily.
“No, you chump--Gradbarr.”
“Gradbarr! You’re crazy.”
“I’m certain it was he. That beard was a disguise. This looks as if it
might be one of his tricks. If it is, Mr. Lockyer’s in about as bad a
fix as he can be.”
Herc was fairly alive now. He literally crackled with animation.
“Let’s get after them and make sure,” he urged. “If it is Gradbarr, or
any one like him, we ought to warn Mr. Lockyer at once.”
“Of course,” said Ned impatiently; “but how----”
“How? Row after them, of course.”
“A fine idea, Herc, but submarines don’t carry boats.”
“Turbines and tamborines, that’s so. Then what in the name of the big
bow gun are we going to do?”
But Ned had no answer. If things were as he feared, they were as
powerless to aid Mr. Lockyer as if they had been on another planet.
“Are we nearing the hotel now?” asked Mr. Lockyer, as the bearded man,
after an hour’s rowing, still bent to his oars.
“She’s right off thar among them trees,” was the rejoinder. The boatman
jerked his thumb over his shoulder and indicated a dark grove of sombre
evergreens along the shore. They stood out blackly against the night
sky.
Some distance behind them twinkled the lights of Grayport, but between
the dark clump of trees and the village there were no cheerful lights
to mark human habitations. As Ned had said, it was an isolated place,
indeed.
“I half wish I had investigated this man Armstrong a little more before
I set off on this mission,” thought Mr. Lockyer, “or, at least, that I
had brought some one with me. What if this should be a trap to rob me
or to--oh, pshaw! I’m getting nervous. Of course, Gradbarr, if he is
in the neighborhood, would not be residing in the center of a village.
Then the police will be there, too.”
Before long the boatman ran the little craft alongside a mouldering
wharf, once intended as the pier of the abandoned hotel. Making fast
the painter, he gruffly directed the inventor to step ashore.
“Mr. Armstrong will be waiting at the end of the wharf,” he said.
Channing Lockyer’s steps rang out hollowly on the deserted wharf as he
stepped shoreward toward the sombre grove of melancholy trees, among
which he could now make out the outlines of the hotel, a huge barn-like
edifice pierced with many dark windows. The wind sighed in a weird way
through the grove as he approached. He had now reached the end of the
wharf and still no sign of Armstrong was apparent.
“I’ll ask the boatman where he was to be,” thought Mr. Lockyer.
He was turning with this intention when, from the shoreward end of the
pier, three dark figures stepped out of the shadows.
“Ah, Mr. Armstrong,” greeted the inventor, recognizing one of them;
“here you are, I see. I was getting quite nervous. A lonely place this.
Is the chief of police here with you? I--Jasper Ferriss!”
“Yes, Jasper Ferriss,” responded one of the figures, whose faces had
hitherto been too much in the shadow to be recognizable. “I want to
talk with you, Lockyer.”
“I have nothing to say to you, sir,” rejoined the inventor. “If this
whole thing was a trick to get me to meet you, we may as well end the
interview now.”
He turned on his heel and faced the boatman, who had been standing
behind him.
“Row me back to the Lockyer at once,” he ordered indignantly.
“Not till I gets my orders,” grinned the boatman insolently. “I’ve got
a few scores to settle with you, Channing Lockyer, on my own account.”
The voice was no longer disguised now, and Lockyer, after an instant’s
struggle with his recollection, recalled where he heard it before.
“Why you--you are Gradbarr!” he exclaimed.
“That’s me,” rejoined the other, “and now I might as well get this
hair mattress off my face. It’s half smothering me.”
With a sweep of his hand, he removed the heavy beard, revealing the
sinister features of the former employee of the Lockyer yard.
“You see, you are in our power absolutely, Lockyer,” said Ferriss,
suavely enough, but with a meaning inflection underlying his words.
“Now what do you say to having a little confab about the boat?”
“That I would not treat with you for her if I were starving and you the
only bidder,” was the indignant reply. “Let me pass please, Ferriss.
I’ll walk back to the village.”
“Not yet, Lockyer,” rejoined Ferriss. “We really can’t let you go yet.”
He held up a deprecating hand.
“What, you’d stop me? In that case, I’ll have to insist. I did not come
unarmed.”
As he spoke, Mr. Lockyer drew a pistol from his coat pocket, and
leveled it.
“Let me pass, Ferriss,” he said, in a determined voice.
But instead of replying, the other gave an imperceptible signal by
drawing out his handkerchief. As he did so, Gradbarr, who had been
standing behind the inventor, gave a quick step forward. His hand
was raised. As Channing Lockyer’s finger pressed the trigger in his
determination to force a path if necessary, Gradbarr’s arm descended.
There was a dull sound as the sand bag he wielded struck the inventor
between the shoulders.
With a little choking cry, Channing Lockyer pitched forward, but, as he
did so, the pistol exploded, its report echoing hollowly against the
dreary walls of the abandoned hotel.
“Confound it! Suppose some one heard that?” growled the man, whom
Channing Lockyer knew as Armstrong.
“No danger of that, Watson Camberly, my boy,” chuckled Ferriss, gazing
at the senseless form stretched at his feet. “Here, Anderson and you,
Gradbarr, bear a hand here and get this fellow aboard the Viper.”
“Well, Ferriss,” said Watson Camberly triumphantly, as the former
foreman of the Lockyer yard helped lift the unconscious inventor,
“well, Ferriss, did I do a good day’s work? It looks to me as if Atlas
stock will take a jump shortly.”