THE HAND IN THE DARK
The three other boys were not a little alarmed by the constable’s word
and manner; but Dan did not show any fear.
“Just pack the earth and stones well around the post, Billy,” he said to
his brother, cheerfully, “while I go back to town with Mr. Somes, and
get this matter straightened out.”
Dan knew a little something himself about the town ordinances; he was
aware that a permit was necessary for the opening of an excavation in a
public road. But it was a rule often ignored in such small matters as
this. Chance Avery had set the officious constable at this work, and
Somes was just mean enough to delight in making the Speedwells trouble.
And on the way to the house of ’Squire English they would pass the
office of the council clerk. Dan knew this gentlemen very well, and as
Somes pulled up his horse to speak to a friend, the boy hopped out upon
the sidewalk.
“Hey! where you going?” demanded the constable.
“I’ll be right back,” said Dan, dodging into the building and leaving
the constable fussing in the carriage.
The boy found Mr. Parker at his desk and explained quickly what he and
Billy were doing down there beside the river road.
“Digging a hole to set a post? Well, go ahead! I reckon nobody will
object,” said the clerk. “You’ll fill it in all right, Dan?”
“But somebody _has_ objected,” explained the boy. And he told Mr. Parker
of the difficulty.
“Pshaw! Josiah ought to be in better business,” declared the clerk, and
he hastily filled out a permit, headed “Highway Department” and gave it
to the youth. “Show that to Justice English,” he advised.
He nodded and smiled and Dan knew that the gentleman appreciated the
joke on the constable. The latter was sputtering loudly when Dan
returned to the sidewalk. He had got out of the carriage and hitched his
horse.
“Here! you come along with me, Dan Speedwell!” cried the constable.
“You’re trying to run away.”
Dan saw Chance Avery grinning widely on the other side of the square. It
was plain that the captain of the Riverdale Club congratulated himself
that he had got the Speedwells into trouble.
They went into ’Squire English’s office. The old gentleman was a
crotchety man, stern and brusk of speech, and a terror to the evil-doers
who came before him. He did not like boys, having forgotten that he was
ever one himself.
“What now? What now, Josiah?” he snapped, looking up from his papers,
and glaring under bristling brows at Dan Speedwell.
“This here boy—and some others that I didn’t bring in—are digging holes
in the turf along the river road, just beyond Mr. Abram Sudds’ place.
You know that piece of turf there, ’Squire, that the town spent so much
to grade and make handsome. Well this here Dan Speedwell was digging a
hole in it.”
“You’re old enough to know better than to do that, young man,” said the
’Squire, to Dan. “What did you do it for?”
Dan silently tendered the paper Mr. Parker had given him. The justice
put on his glasses, looked at it, and turned on the constable
wrathfully.
“What do you mean by bringing him here, when he’s got a permit to set
his post? Think I’ve got nothing more to do, Josiah, than to monkey with
foolish cases?”
“Why—why—he never told me he had a permit!” cried the chagrined
constable.
“You never gave me a chance to tell you,” declared Dan.
“Get out of here—the whole of you!” snarled Justice English, as the
crowd that had followed Dan and Somes in began to giggle and whisper,
just as delighted over the constable’s taking down as they would have
been had Dan been punished.
The boys, on Dan’s return from the ’Squire’s office, rigged a clumsy,
but efficient, swing-arm for the derrick before they were obliged to go
home. But it grew too dark for anything more to be done that night. So
they piled into the wagon and started for the other side of town.
As they halted at a certain corner to let Jim and Wiley get out of the
wagon, a party of girls came along and hailed them.
“Oh, boys!” cried Lettie Parker, who was a jolly girl with more than a
suspicion of red in her hair, and the quick temper which is supposed to
go with it. “Oh, boys! you are just whom we wished to see. I don’t
believe any of you have heard about the candy-pulling out at Stella
Mayberry’s.”
“Stel Mayberry’s?” cried Jim. “I knew she was going to have one; but I
didn’t hear when.”
“It’s to-night. She wasn’t at school to-day, so the word didn’t get
around. I got a note from her, and so did Mildred,” Lettie said. “And
we’ve been around inviting folks.”
“Never heard a thing about it,” declared Billy.
“But she means for you boys to come,” Mildred Kent, the doctor’s
daughter, said, more quietly. She spoke to Dan. “I hope you can come.
We’ll go over on our wheels as soon after supper as we can.”
“We’ll be late getting there, Mildred,” said Dan Speedwell.
“But we can all come back together. You know where she lives?”
“Oh, yes. Down the river road.”
“We’ll hurry along,” said Billy, “so as to get over to Mayberry’s as
early as possible.”
The Speedwells drove away. They went around to several other farmers to
pick up the evening’s milk before going home. Then, when their chores
were all done and they had supper, Dan and Billy mounted their
motorcycles and dashed away through the town and out the river road
toward the farmhouse which was the scene of the evening party.
While within the immediate confines of Riverdale they had to run
moderately; but it was already after half-past eight, they wanted to
reach Mayberry’s before the fun was all over, and therefore “let out”
the motors when they got upon the river road.
The white highway before them was deserted clear down to the bend at
which Dan Speedwell had first seen the maroon car of the bank robbers on
Saturday afternoon. That trio of criminals had gotten away: all pursuit
had been futile.
But as the two boys shot around the bend they sighted an automobile
chugging slowly toward them. It was not far beyond where the shadowy
outline of their rudely constructed derrick was visible.
An automobile on this road was no uncommon sight; but the attention of
Dan and Billy was called particularly to it because it showed no lights!
The boys flashed past the slowly moving machine at racing pace; yet
Billy gained some particular knowledge of the car and its single
occupant.
“Hey, Dannie!” he shouted. “Did you see him?”
“The fellow at the wheel?”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t help seeing him; but I’m not sure who it was. The car I
know,” responded Dan.
“Poole’s?” asked Billy, eagerly.
“That’s what it was—Burton Poole’s car,” said the older brother.
“Then I’m sure I made no mistake. My eyes didn’t fool me. That’s Chance
Avery in the car alone, running without a light. It would be a good joke
to report _him_ for breaking a town ordinance and have him up before
Judge English,” cried Billy.
The candy-pull broke up at an early hour, for all hands had to face
lessons on the morrow. The girls had come out on motorcycles, too, and
they were a gay party that started for Riverdale after bidding the
Mayberrys, and those guests who lived near the farm, good-night.
Dan and Mildred Kent got off a little in advance of the rest of the
riders, and led the company by several hundred yards. They were very
good friends, Dan having dragged Mildred to school on his sled when they
were both in the primary grade, and the fact that Doctor Kent was
wealthy and the Speedwells were comparatively poor never made the least
difference in their friendship.
“I heard the boys saying something about you and Billy buying an auto,
Dan,” said Mildred Kent. “Is it a joke?”
“We can’t tell about that yet, Milly,” responded Dan, chuckling. “Just
at present it _looks_ like a joke, for, as Billy says, the machine is up
in the air.”
“Do tell me what you have done,” urged Mildred.
“Wait until we get along the river road a bit and I’ll show you the
car.”
“You don’t mean it’s Maxey Solomons’?”
“It _was_ his,” admitted Dan, cheerfully. “And if we can get it out of
the tree where it lodged last Saturday, we’ll show some of the folks
around here that it is a real flying machine, although we hope to keep
it out of the air for the future.”
They were wheeling along the road at a fast clip, but easily. Just as
Dan spoke there sounded ahead an echoing crash—the fall of some object
which made quite a startling noise on this quiet evening.
“What can that be?” demanded Mildred.
“I declare I don’t know,” said Dan, and quite involuntarily increased
his speed.
There followed the sudden noise of a rapidly driven automobile—a car
that was just starting ahead of them. In half a minute Dan knew that the
car was hurrying toward Riverdale. Before he and Mildred had traveled
three hundred yards the motor car was almost out of their hearing.
“What do you suppose has happened?” cried the girl.
Dan did not reply. It was a moonless night, but the heavens were
brilliant with stars and their light made pretty plain objects along the
road.
Their swift motorcycles had brought Dan and Mildred almost to the spot
where the Speedwells had set their derrick in the afternoon. The
contrivance had disappeared!
“Stop!” shouted Dan, and shut off his power and leaped from his saddle.
He ran to the side of the road. There was the stump of the post he and
Billy had set. It had not broken off, but had been chopped down with an
axe!
And the whole apparatus had been allowed to fall over the precipice. In
the darkness below the wall Dan could not see whether or not the falling
derrick had crashed upon the automobile in the tree-top.