While Ned and Herc were casting desperately but ineffectively about for
some means of frustrating what they now believed was a deliberate plot
to get the inventor into some kind of a trap, old Tom came on deck.
“Ahoy, shipmates,” he began; “you’ve shipped funeral faces. What’s in
the wind?”
“Trouble enough and then some,” replied Herc gloomily.
In response to Tom’s questions, Ned rapidly rehearsed what had happened
and their apprehensions regarding it.
“Phew!” whistled old Tom, when he had heard him out. “Things look like
squalls and no mistake, and here we are, as helpless as so many babies.
If only we had a boat. A good fast one, too. One like that fellow has,
for instance.”
He indicated a motor launch which was scooting across the water, her
red and green side lights shining through the dusk like bright jewels.
“Yes, if we only had her,” began Ned, and then: “Hullo, she’s coming
this way. Wonder if it’s news?”
Rapidly, and watched with what interest you may suppose, the strange
launch approached the submarine, finally chugging up alongside and
coming to a stop.
“Bother it all, it’s only one of those reporters,” grunted Herc, in an
audible aside.
The young fellow in the boat, which he was running himself, heard,
being possessed of sharp ears. But, instead of being offended, he burst
into a merry laugh.
“Yes, only one of those reporters,” he chuckled. “That’s right. But
in this case I have come to give information, not to ask it. Is Mr.
Lockyer on board?”
“No, we are sorry to say, he isn’t,” replied Ned gloomily.
“Or any of the naval officers?”
“Nor they, either. Is it anything important?”
“Why, yes, in a way. It concerns Mr. Lockyer particularly. Do you know
where he’s gone?”
“No, and I wish we did. He left in a boat for the shore some few
minutes ago.”
“Then that must have been the row boat in which he was riding--that one
I passed on my way out here.”
“I guess so. A bearded man was rowing it?”
“Couldn’t see that. It was getting pretty dark. Bother it all, I wish I
could have seen Mr. Lockyer before he left.”
A sudden intuition came to Ned. Perhaps this young reporter knew
something of the mysterious business that had taken Mr. Lockyer ashore.
At any rate, there was no harm in asking him.
“To be frank with you,” he said, “we are pretty anxious about Mr.
Lockyer. We learned before he left that he had an appointment at a
lonely place along the beach. I recollected that his boatman was a bad
character with whom we formerly came in contact.”
“Then why didn’t you tell Mr. Lockyer?” was the reporter’s natural
inquiry.
“Because my memory refused to come to time. The chap was in disguise.
It was only his eyes and his voice, which he had altered, that seemed
familiar. Putting two and two together, it looks as if some mischief
was afoot.”
“You’re right,” rejoined the reporter earnestly. “That’s what I came
off to see Mr. Lockyer about. After supper at the hotel this evening
I was walking about the patch of a garden they have there when I
overheard some voices in a summer house. I did not mean to listen, but
before I could get away I heard Mr. Lockyer’s name mentioned and then a
muttered curse growled out. That interested me and I soon heard enough
to convince me that the men in there were discussing a plot to lure
Mr. Lockyer to a deserted hotel and then kidnap him in a motor boat
and make him a prisoner on one of the islands in the upper part of the
inlet till he either gave them the rights to manufacture his type of
boat for a foreign government, or else till it was too late for the
United States government to bother any more with the Lockyer boat.”
“Jumping sand toads!” yelled Herc; “you were right, then, Ned. Did you
recognize any of the fellows, sir?”
“I heard one addressed as Gradbarr. The other one, creeping closer
and peering through the bushes, I perceived to be a man who had been
passing himself off as a reporter. He made a disturbance on the boat
this morning. Armstrong, he said his name was.”
“Then there is no doubt that Mr. Lockyer is in desperate need of help,”
gasped Ned, “but what are we going to do?”
“Go to his aid,” said the practical-minded reporter.
“But a boat. We haven’t one. Say, old man, I wonder if you’d send one
off from shore, and----”
“I’ll do better than that.”
“You will?”
“Yes. We can take this one. I scent a good story here. Luckily I can
run a craft of this kind to the queen’s taste. Lockyer was in a row
boat. If we get a wiggle on, we may be able to overtake them before
they land. You know where they are going?”
“Yes; to the old Banta House,” responded Ned. “Here, Herc, dive below
and get some pistols; we may need them. Tell the foreman what we are
about to do. Tom, we’ll need you along, for we may have a desperate
fight on our hands.”
“I’ve got a gun of my own,” volunteered the reporter.
“I don’t know how to thank you for helping us out,” exclaimed Ned. “You
happened along in the nick of time.”
“Don’t thank me,” laughed the reporter. “This thing will make a
cracking good story and beat for my paper.”
Herc was soon back on deck. With him came Andy Bowler. The latter was
full of questions, but Ned only spared time to give him the merest
outline of their mission.
“I guess this is against rules and regulations,” he said, as they
tumbled into the boat, “but it’s in line of duty, and we’ve got to see
it through.”
Five minutes later they were swishing through the water in the
newspaper man’s hired motor boat--a handy little craft, capable of
doing her twelve miles without heating up a bearing.
[Illustration: Five minutes later they were swishing through the water
in the newspaperman’s motor boat.]
“Might as well tell our real names,” laughed the reporter, as they sped
along. “Mine’s Hargraves--Van Hargraves, of the _Planet_.”
Ned introduced himself and his companions. But while he was doing this,
his eyes hardly left the waters ahead of them. Darkness had now shut
in, but on the water there is usually a faint illumination, even if it
is only from the reflected stars. But on all the expanse ahead of him
the Dreadnought Boy could see nothing to indicate the boat they were in
pursuit of.
“Do you know where this Bantam House, or whatever its name, is?” asked
young Hargraves, as they neared the shore.
“Ought to be able to pick it up by the big clump of evergreens about
it,” rejoined Ned. “They are the only trees along that part of the
beach. They ought to stand up against the sky like a church.”
“If only there was a moon,” wished Herc.
“Avast there!” cried old Tom suddenly, springing to his feet and
holding to the gunwale. “What’s that right on your port bow, lad? See,
off there?”
He pointed shoreward, or, rather, in the direction in which they knew
the shore must lie.
“Looks like a clump of trees. It’s something black and bulky, anyhow,”
decided Hargraves.
Ned, who had taken the precaution to bring a night glass along, placed
the instrument to his eyes.
“It is trees,” he announced; “a big grove of them. That must be the
Banta House.”
“Fine and dandy!” exclaimed Herc. “Now we----”
Bang!
The sharp report of a pistol split the night right ahead of them. Among
the dark shadows of the grove of trees they could see, for a breath, a
flash of red flame.
“Phew!” whistled Hargraves. “I guess we’ve hit the trail of trouble,
all right. That was a pistol shot, and a pistol shot means a story.”
“I hope it means nothing worse,” rejoined Ned anxiously. “What can have
happened?”
“No use expectrapating (speculating?) on that, lad,” struck in old
Tom. “Better get this peanut roaster speeded up a bit and be ready for
action when we hit the shore.”
“I’m ready for action right now,” said Herc grimly, clicking the lock
of his pistol ominously.
“Can’t you make this boat go faster?” urged Ned of the reporter.
The other replied in the negative.
“She’s got all the gasoline and all the spark I can give her now,” he
said. “We couldn’t do an inch more if a torpedo was chasing us.”
An instant later they ran in beside a rickety wharf, which, as it so
happened, was some little distance below the one at which Mr. Lockyer
had been landed, and had been intended for trade boats to land at,
while the other had been designed for the use of yachts and pleasure
craft. To make fast the painter and get ashore was the work of a jiffy.
Under Ned’s directions they scattered.
“Two shots in quick succession will be the signal that one of us has
struck the trail,” whispered Ned, as they separated. “Don’t forget now,
two shots close together mean trouble. It will be the duty of each of
us to get there as soon as possible when he hears them fired. So long!”
He slipped off into the darkness under the mournful spruce and
hemlocks. The others darted off with equal alacrity in the directions
to which he had assigned them.
But it was Ned who was to “strike the trail” first. Plunging as
silently as possible through the dark shadows of the overhanging trees,
he presently emerged on what had evidently once been a driveway.
He with difficulty choked back a gasp of amazement as he perceived
standing there, unlighted and silent--an automobile!
“Jove! here’s what they came in,” he muttered.
As he uttered his thought half aloud, voices at some little distance
struck into his hearing.
“Bring him along. The machine should be right here some place. Say,
that was a hard tap you gave him, Gradbarr.”
“The better to keep him quiet with,” grunted another voice, which Ned
instantly recognized as that of the rascally machinist.
There was need for quick thinking on Ned’s part. Lockyer’s captors were
near at hand. In a few brief seconds they would have the inventor’s
unconscious form in the car. That much was clear from the fragments
of their talk the boy had caught. In a flash Ned’s mind was made up.
Slipping back into the brush, he raised his revolver and fired two
shots in rapid succession.
As he had expected, there was instant uproar. The party with Lockyer in
custody paused, startled by the very suddenness of the thing. At the
same time shouts and cries arose from several points of the abandoned
hotel grounds.
While the confusion was at its height, Ned darted forward, and, leaping
nimbly into the tonneau of the machine, he ran his hand under the back
seat. As he had expected, there was quite a space under there, and,
making as little noise as possible, the boy crawled into it. Hardly
had he tucked in his toes before a heavy footstep came on the running
board, and a voice ordered gruffly:
“Chuck Lockyer in, boys, and look lively. In some way the police have
got wise to us.”
“Police nothing,” came another voice, which Ned, with a distinct
thrill, knew to be Gradbarr’s. “If them Dreadnought Boys ain’t got
something to do with this, call me a Dutchman.”
Then came the noise of something limp and heavy being stowed on the
seat of the tonneau, followed by a shuffling and stamping as the
members of the rascally party of abductors boarded the car. A minute
later, just as the amazed party from the submarine came dashing through
the bushes, the auto leaped forward.
On into the night it roared, a fusillade of bullets from Ned’s friends
spattering harmlessly about it as it thundered on.