THE PROFESSOR IS ATTACKED
After three days of preparation the boys and the professor were ready to
leave for the west coast. They were to go to San Francisco and take a
steamer there down to the settlements in Lower California. It was a
bright Saturday morning when they waved out of the window to their
friends on the station platform.
“Well,” remarked Don, as the train moved out of the station. “We are off
for new scenes at last.”
The journey across the continent was uneventful. They enjoyed it
thoroughly, never growing tired of the endless views which unfolded as
the train sped westward. The professor, with his varied knowledge of
places and people, his understanding of scientific facts and his
historic incidents, proved to be a most delightful companion. In a few
days they left the train at the great city of the coast and the
professor hunted up a hotel.
Professor Scott had never been to California, although he had been in
many other cities in the United States, and his interest was as keen as
that of the boys. One of his first tasks, after they had been installed
in a good hotel, was to hasten to the water front and inquire concerning
a steamer to take them down the coast. When he returned he reported his
findings to the boys.
“There is a steamer named the _Black Star_ that will take us down the
day after tomorrow,” he said. “I went aboard and arranged for our
passage. It isn’t a passenger boat, but I didn’t have any trouble in
persuading the captain to take us as passengers. The boat is a fruit
steamer, but they have one or two extra cabins for our use.”
They turned in early that night and the next day took an extensive tour
of the great city. A great many of the foremost buildings and places of
interest were visited, and they obtained their longed-for view of the
piece of wreckage of the Spanish galleon of which Ned Scott had written
them. It was a huge piece, worn by the action of the waves, with studded
leather on the sides and pieces of rigging still clinging to it. It
occupied a prominent place in the city museum.
“If that thing could only talk,” the professor remarked, as they walked
around it. “What a story it could tell!”
“I guess it would be very helpful to us, in our search,” smiled Jim.
When evening came the boys were tired, but strange to relate, the
professor was not. His interest in places and men amounted to a passion
with him, and he loved to study them at every opportunity. The boys were
sitting around in the hotel room and the professor, after walking around
restlessly, suddenly faced them.
“Are you boys too tired to do some more walking?” he asked.
“Well, I’m pretty well played out,” admitted Don. “But if you’d like us
to go with you, anywhere, professor, we’ll gladly go.”
“Oh, no,” replied the professor, hastily. “I just wanted to ask you if
you’d care to take a stroll down near the water front. There are some
very quaint places down there, and I’d like to visit some of them. But I
don’t want you boys to go out if you are tired.” He reached for his hat
and went on: “I’m going down there for a stroll. I’ll be back shortly.”
“If you want us—” began Jim, but the professor cut him short.
“No, no, not at all. You boys stay here and I’ll wander a bit myself.
See you later.”
“Take care of yourself, professor,” called Don, as he went out.
“I will, thanks. Don’t worry; I’ll be right back.”
Once on the street the professor struck off for the water front at a
brisk pace. In the hotel room Jim looked inquiringly at Don.
“Do you suppose it is alright for him to go?” he asked.
“I guess so,” nodded Don. “He is pretty well able to take care of
himself.”
The city was wrapped in darkness when the professor began his wandering,
a darkness which was broken by the bright lights on the business streets
and the more feeble ones on the side streets. The professor headed for
the wharves, where the masts of the medley of crafts could be seen
rising above the low houses which fronted the bay. Down in this section
the savant found some queer crooked streets, lined with rows of box-like
houses and cheap eating places. Groups of men and women sat on the
doorsteps and fire escapes, children whooped and played in the streets,
and scraps of music, jarring one on the other, came from phonographs and
radios. Sailors and business men walked back and forth in the narrow
streets, and the professor found much to study.
He strode along the docks, examining with interest the multitude of
ships there, ranging from huge ocean steamers to small private boats.
Liners, tramp ships, battered steam boats, sailing vessels, schooners,
yachts, sloops, catboats, yawls and power cruisers lay side by side with
tugs and ferries. An army of stevedores worked under blazing arc lights
loading and unloading, and the air vibrated with the rattle of
machinery, the hoarse cries of the men, and the thump of boxes and
crates. So deeply engrossed was the professor in the scenes which he was
witnessing that he forgot the passage of time.
He had wandered far down the shore line when he came at last to a street
more narrow and crooked than the rest. It was in fact nothing more than
an alley, flanked by tall seamen’s houses, with restaurants and pool
parlors on the ground floors. The professor looked at a sign post and
saw that it was named Mullys Slip.
“Mullys Slip, eh?” thought the teacher. “This is the quaintest of them
all. I think I’ll stroll up it.”
Accordingly, he walked up the narrow sidewalk, looking with interest
into the stores and eating houses as he passed by, listening to snatches
of conversation as he passed groups who sat out taking advantage of the
cool air. When he had walked to the end of the Slip he walked back, and
seeing a well-lighted eating place near the dock, entered it and sat
down at a round table. While he ordered a sandwich and coffee he looked
around him.
It was a long, low room, the air of which was nearly obscured by tobacco
smoke, half filled at the time with men who evidently came from the
ships. Most of them were eating, the rest were smoking and talking, and
a few slept, hanging over the tables. The professor ate his sandwich and
sipped his coffee, content and easy in his mind, until, looking across
from him into a narrow corner, he found the eyes of two men fixed upon
him.
One of the men was a powerful individual with a heavy, unhealthy looking
face, whose eyes, set close together, looked slightly crossed. The other
was tall and thin, with long and dangling arms. Both of them were
dressed in rough black clothing, which gave no real hint as to what
business they were engaged in. They might have been sailors or
stevedores, and both showed unmistakable signs of hardy, adventurous
lives. They had evidently been talking about the professor, for their
eyes were bent on him with earnest scrutiny, and when they observed that
he had seen them they hastily resumed their conversation.
The professor paid no attention to them at first, but went on eating,
looking around with keen eyes and mentally cataloguing the men in the
place. But when he once more looked across at his neighbors they were
bending the same intent look upon him. Vague doubt began to stir the
mind of professor Scott.
“I don’t altogether like the looks of those fellows,” decided the
professor, as he called a waiter and paid his small bill. “By the way
they look at me I’d say they were talking about me. All in all, I’m in a
pretty rough neighborhood, and perhaps the sooner I get out of it, the
better.”
He went out of the place at once, casting a single look back of him as
he did so, and he was not made to feel any easier as he noted that they
were following him with the same steady look. He was not greatly
alarmed, for he did not carry much money with him, but feeling that he
would be better off on a well-lighted thoroughfare, he made his way back
along the dark street. It was now growing late and the lights were being
extinguished. He found his road darker than it had been when he had
followed it earlier in the evening, and so he hurried on, bent on
reaching the business section.
He had covered two blocks when he began to think that he was being
followed. It was as much of a feeling as an actual fact, for each time
he looked around he was unable to see anyone who looked as though he
might be trailing him. He fancied once that he saw a shadow dart quickly
into a doorway, but though he looked keenly in that direction he was
unable to make sure.
“Humph, I had better get back to the hotel,” mused the teacher. “I think
I’m beginning to imagine things.”
On the block beyond a number of dark alleys opened from the houses, and
the professor was compelled to pass them. Either the houses were
deserted or there was no one up at the time, for he saw no one as he
crossed the corner. Only far ahead of him, on the opposite side of the
street, a battered old car was pulled up to the edge of an empty dock,
and a man sat looking out over the water at a group of three-masted coal
carriers.
Just as the professor was passing a wide alley he thought he heard a
step beside him. He turned his head quickly, and then gasped. Two
shadows seemed to detach themselves from the passageway and bore down on
him. Before he could utter any cry a powerful pair of arms was thrown
around him and he was strained close to the body of a big man. At the
same time, without loss of a moment, the second man dipped his hands
into the professor’s trousers pockets and into his inside coat pocket.
Taken completely by surprise the old teacher for a second did not offer
any kind of resistance and when he did it was rather feeble, for his
arms were pinned close to his sides, and he was fairly standing on his
toes. But his feet were free, and he managed to kick the man who held
him a smart blow in the shin. A low, growling curse was his reward, and
a blow of considerable force followed, landing on his shoulder. By a
sudden twist the professor squirmed from the arms of the man who was
holding him, and strengthened by his indignation, which was kindling
into hot wrath, the savant punched the second man full on the mouth.
The first man, who was none other than the narrow-eyed individual of the
restaurant growled in his throat. “I’ll bust your head, you old
windjammer!” he roared, and swung his fist at the professor. The blow,
which landed on the teacher’s neck, felled him instantly to the
sidewalk.
“Grab him up,” ordered the second man, stooping over the professor, who
was somewhat dazed. “We’ll dump him in the bay.”
Both men leaned down to pick up the form of the professor when there was
an interruption. The young man who had been sitting in the nondescript
automobile had had his attention attracted by the beginning of the
struggle, and unnoticed by any of the principals he had jumped out of
the car and was now upon them. Although he did not know one from the
other he could see that two were against one, and noting, under the
faint light from a nearby lamp-post that the lone fighter was an elderly
man, threw himself without hesitation upon the two wharf-men. His active
fist jarred against the jaw of the heavyset man.
“Take that, with the compliments of the lone star ranger!” he muttered.
“Don’t know what it’s all about, but that’s my share.”
His blow infuriated the man, who drove at him with an angry roar, but
the professor was scrambling to his feet, and the second man grasped his
leader by the arm. He spoke to him in a low tone, and the two, with a
slight hesitation, turned and fled up the alley. Convinced that pursuit
would be useless, the young man turned to the professor.
“Are you hurt, sir?” he asked, quickly.
In the faint light the professor saw that he was a boy of twenty or
thereabouts, tall and somewhat lanky, with red hair and a lean face, on
which freckles had taken up a permanent home. The professor shook his
head.
“No, thanks to you. Those fellows were going to throw me into the water.
Were you in that car?”
“Yes,” grinned the boy. “That is my private chariot, called ‘Jumpiter,’
because of its habit of doing something very much like jumping! Have you
been robbed?”
The professor felt through his pockets and nodded. “Yes, a few dollars
and a letter has been taken from me. I don’t care much about the money,
but the letter was from my son Ned, and I valued that somewhat. I would
like to thank you sincerely for your timely arrival.”
“Don’t mention it,” begged the young man. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll
drive you to wherever you want to go.”
When they entered the battered car the professor told the boy the name
of the hotel at which he was staying and they rolled away. Then the
teacher asked the name of his rescuer.
“Mackson is my name,” replied the boy. “Terry Mackson, from Beverley,
Maine.”
“Why,” exclaimed the professor. “I come from Maine, too. I am a history
teacher in Bridgewater!”
“In Bridgewater!” cried Terry as they entered the business section.
“Then you must know the Mercer brothers.”
“Know them!” laughed the professor. “I have them here with me!”
“Here, with you? Well, I’ll be jiggered! They are my very best chums!”
said Terry. “Last summer I was in Bridgewater, sailing with them, and we
go to Woodcrest together, in fact, we room together. What are they doing
here?”
“We are going down to Lower California to visit my son Ned, on his
ranch, and make some scientific studies, and perhaps look up a treasure
that Ned feels sure that he can find nearby. How did you come to be out
here?”
“I didn’t have a thing to do this summer,” explained Terry. “My mother
and sister went to visit friends in New Hampshire, and so I decided to
tour the country in my car. I’ve been out here for the last two days,
and I was going to head for Mexico tomorrow.”
“How very strange that we should meet,” commented the professor. “You
must step up and see the boys. They will be glad to see you.”
“I won’t be a bit sorry to see them,” returned Terry, heartily. “They
certainly will be surprised.”
They drove on until they were almost at the hotel, and then Terry, who
had been thinking deeply, suddenly began to chuckle. Then, as the
professor looked inquiringly at him, the red-headed boy spoke.
“Professor,” he said, “how would you like to help me in a little joke?”