IN THE PULSIFERS' HANDS.
Sinewy and well-muscled as he was, Ned realized a moment later that he
was in for such a battle against odds as he had never fought before.
Hardly had he made his unexpected appearance and bowled the astonished
younger Pulsifer over with a well-directed blow of his fist, before
one of the quartet that had downed Mr. Varian sprang upon the lad and
gripped him in a strong-armed embrace.
As they swayed back and forth, Ned saw the fellow's features as the two
emerged into a patch of moonlight. His astonishment almost caused him
to lose his advantageous grip.
"Hank Harkins!" he gasped.
"Yes, Hank Harkins; and this is the time I even up old scores," grated
the other, through his close-set teeth.
"Not while I've got two arms," grunted Ned, striving to overset the
other. But, as he felt Hank's body bend back and his sinews crack, two
of the other men flung themselves on the Dreadnought Boy from behind. A
few brief seconds later, Ned, borne down by overwhelming numbers, was a
prisoner.
Even as he fell he recognized the two who had come to Hank's aid as
Carl Schultz and Ralph Kennell.
"This is the kind of work I should have expected to find you taking
part in," sneered Ned, as he lay on his back, his arms and legs
pinioned by Hank and Carl Schultz and Kennell's evil face glaring down
into his.
"It's the kind of work you'll have no reason to like," grinned Hank
meaningly. "I fancy that we'll be able to even up things now."
Ned disdained to answer the fellow, and returned his threats with a
stare of cold contempt. The next instant he set up a shout, which was
instantly choked back by a rough hand on his throat. Kennell it was who
had compressed the Dreadnought Boy's windpipe till breathing became
painful.
"Your handkerchief--quick!" Kennell ordered Schultz.
The graceful Schultz brought out a scented piece of linen.
"Now, younker, open your mouth again," ordered Kennell, taking his hand
from Ned's throat.
Ned set his teeth firmly, however. Kennell, beside himself with fury,
struck him a cowardly blow across the face with his clenched fist.
Still Ned's mouth was locked.
The blue-jacket, seeing that it would take too long to force Ned's
lips open in that way, then seized hold of the lad's nose, compressing
the nostrils. In a short time Ned was compelled to open his mouth to
breathe and the handkerchief was then thrust in between his teeth,
making an effectual gag.
The Dreadnought Boy was then rudely yanked to his feet. As he stood
upright, he noticed a faint, sickly smell in the air.
Chloroform!
The inventor's figure, white-faced and outstretched as though in a deep
sleep, lay a few paces away. His stupor showed to what purpose the drug
had been put.
"He'll give us no more bother," grinned Pulsifer, nodding in the
direction of the recumbent inventor, over whom the scowling Silas stood
guard.
"Got any left for the kid, if he gets mussy?" inquired Kennell.
"No, confound it," muttered the younger Pulsifer; "the stuff upset and
spilled on the grass."
"I should say it did. The place smells like a medical college,"
commented Kennell. "Now, guv'nor, where's the gasoline gig?"
"Two of you fellows pick up Varian," ordered Pulsifer, "and follow
me. Kennell, you take care of the boy--wherever he came from. Tie his
hands. The rig is right outside the rear gate of the grounds."
Ned, helpless as he was, had no recourse but to obey Kennell's rough
order to "Look alive." In the meantime the traitorous Silas roped the
lad's hands. In a few minutes they reached the back gate. Outside it
stood a powerful touring car.
There was a lamp on the rear gate, and Pulsifer, as he went by, reached
up to turn it out.
"The less light we have, the better. No knowing who is skulking
around," he remarked. As he straightened up to reach the lamp,
however, his eyes fell on Ned, whose face was illumined momentarily by
the light.
Pulsifer gave an exclamation of delight.
"Look who's here, Dave," he cried exultingly; "little Johnny Fixit.
Don't you remember him?"
"Why," exclaimed the elder Pulsifer, "that's one of the rowdy kids who
tried to get us out of our seats on the subway."
"Tried to," thought Ned; "I guess we came pretty near doing it."
"Oh, this is luck," grinned the younger Pulsifer; "talk about killing
two birds with one stone. We'll attend to you, my young friend--you
dirty young spy. We'll put you where what you overheard to-night will
do you no more good than--this."
He stepped lightly forward and deliberately struck the Dreadnought Boy
an open-handed slap on the cheek.
Ned's hands struggled with the rope that Kennell had twisted about his
wrists. He palpitated, ached, and longed with a superhuman intensity,
to get at the younger Pulsifer, and beat his sneering face into an
unrecognizable mass. It was a lucky thing for that young man that
Kennell had tied his knots with sailor-like thoroughness. In a few
minutes--by the time they had been bundled into the tonneau of the
machine, in fact--Ned was once more calm. He recognized the stern
necessity for keeping absolutely cool.
On the seat beside him in the tonneau lay the senseless form of the
inventor. As a guard, Kennell, Schultz and Hank were seated also in
that part of the car. Dave Pulsifer took the wheel and his brother sat
at his side. Silas, the heavy-browed, occupied the small extension-seat
at the elder Pulsifer's side.
With the engine muffled down, till it made scarcely any noise, the car
glided off into the night, leaving behind it what Ned could not help
feeling was the last hope of rescue.
As the wheels began to revolve, Dave Pulsifer leaned back, and, with
one hand, extended to Kennell a revolver.
"If our guests should object to our little surprise party and moonlight
ride, just give them a leaden pill," he suggested pleasantly.
"Say, guv'nor, it would be pretty dangerous firing off a gun at this
time of night, wouldn't it? It might bring the alligator-zills, or
whatever they call these Cuban cops, about our ears, mightn't it?"
The younger Pulsifer laughed lightly.
"No danger of that," he said. "In ten minutes now we'll be out in a
desolate part of the country, inhabited only by a few cattle-grazers,
and they've got too much horse-sense to inquire into a casual shot. So
don't hesitate to pepper away if our guests get obstreperous."
A few minutes later the car began to bound forward, the elder Pulsifer
"opening her up," as they drew out of the few scattered huts on the
outskirts of the town. They emerged into an arid, stony region,
fringed with low, barren hills, clothed with scanty vegetation. Huge
cacti stood up weirdly, like tombstones in the moonlight, and a few
half-starved cattle plunged off to both sides of the track as the car
sped along.
So far as _one_ of the prisoners becoming obstreperous was concerned,
there was no danger, or immediate danger, at any rate. Henry Varian
lay like one dead, with his face of a marble whiteness, in the cold
moonlight.
"Say, the guv'nor must have given him a pretty heavy dose," muttered
Kennell, bending over the inventor and feeling his heart. "I hope he
hasn't overdone it."
"What's the difference?" inquired the soft-voiced Carl, in a casual
way. "We find plendy of places alretty vere ve get rid off him if he
dond come back."
"I don't know. I don't care much about taking such chances," muttered
Kennell; "killing a man is bad business. I should think you and Silas
would realize that, after your escape----"
"Hush! der boy hear!" warned Schultz, holding up a thin, white hand.
Kennell subsided with a growl of "what's the difference," but said no
more, to Ned's intense disappointment.
It was no trick of their eyesight, then, when the two Dreadnought
Boys had recognized in the two pictured convicts, at the biograph
exhibition, their two dastardly shipmates. Moreover, it seemed, from
what Kennell had let drop, that both men were jail-breakers. Revolving
this in his mind, Ned saw the cunningness of the two men's movements,
if they had actually escaped from Joliet. What less likely place to
find an escaped prisoner than in the United States navy? They must have
forged papers of recommendation and character, and thus tricked the
careful authorities. In fact, Ned learned later that this was the case.
On and on droned the car, speeding through the same monotonous moonlit
wastes of hills and scrub-grass--with here and there the gaunt form
of a tall royal palm--as it had encountered on leaving the scattered
outskirts of the town. All the time Ned had been working feverishly,
but quietly, at his bonds, and now he began to feel what at first he
scarcely dared believe--the ropes were becoming slightly loosened. In
ten minutes more he had stretched the new rope, of which the thongs
were made, till he could slip them off by dint of rubbing them against
the cushion at his back.
His mind was made up as to what he would do the instant he found
himself at liberty to make his escape. He would drop from the car and
trust to luck to get away. The surface of the hills was rough and
creased with numerous deep gullies. If he could get into one of these,
it would be impossible for the auto to follow, and on foot--well, Ned
had a few records for sprinting behind him, and he was confident he
could outdistance any one of the occupants of the car.
He looked about him. The car was at this moment passing quite near to
one of the arroyos--as they are called in our West--that Ned had noted.
Kennell, his eyes half-closed, was hunched in a doze, the pistol in his
lap. Carl Schultz and Hank Harkins were talking in low tones. Not a
single one of them was watching the Dreadnought Boy.
The moment to carry out his plan, if he was to put it into execution at
all, had arrived.
With a quick move, Ned slipped off his thongs, and sprang to his feet.
Before any one of the occupants of the tonneau knew what was happening
he was out of the auto and sprinting, as he had never sprinted before
for the friendly darkness of the gully.
Angry shouts instantly broke out. The gully seemed farther than Ned had
judged.
He had gained its edge, and, with a grateful prayer, was about to slide
over into security, when he felt a sharp twinge in his right calf. At
the same moment he heard the sharp crack of a revolver behind him.
Nobody had ever accused Kennell of being a bad shot, and he had aimed
true this time.
Ned doubled up.
He was halted by unbearable pain. In another instant his pursuers had
seized him with exulting cries.