JIM DUGAN AGAIN.
As you can readily imagine, it was some time before the fame of the
lads’ exploit in going to the rescue of the crew of the stranded Vesper
died out. All the praise that came their way, however, the lads accepted
without undue self-satisfaction. In fact, everybody else seemed to
consider what they had done as being much more remarkable than they
themselves did.
“If it hadn’t been for Captain Baker’s Lone Hill fellows, we wouldn’t
have got anybody off,” was the way Rob put it.
One person there was in town who heard the news with an added interest,
apart from the thrilling details of the actual work of getting the men
through the surf. This man was Stonington Hunt. After hearing of the
performance of the motor-scooter, he was more convinced than ever that
the machine was a practicable invention, in which it would pay him
handsomely to secure a controlling interest. As he himself often said,
he was not a man to be easily beaten, and presently, after much casting
about and quiet investigation, he lighted on a plan which he considered
would place Paul’s interests in his hands and compel the boy to sell him
the rights to the manufacture of other Motor-Scooters. What this plan
was we shall see ere long.
In the meantime, nothing more had been heard of the former beach-comber
who had so mysteriously reappeared and then vanished again. Although
they made inquiries, none of the boys could find out what had become of
him, and all their investigations along this line came to nothing. The
Vesper still lay on the sand bar on which she had grounded. She had been
fully insured, so Captain Pratt did not suffer great loss, and the
insurance company, after a survey of the spot in which she lay, decided
that it would be impracticable to remove her. She was a stout Nova
Scotian built vessel, of good oak and pine, and, despite the buffeting
she had been through, held together almost as intact as when she first
grounded. The boys often planned to take an excursion to her some fine
day in the spring, when the sea was more moderate than it was in the
winter.
Toward the middle of April, the Boy Scouts decided that their
organization was flourishing to such a degree that they needed more
spacious quarters than those above the bank of which Rob’s father was
president, and a large barn-like building on the main street—formerly a
seine-net factory—being vacant, was fitted up as an armory, not all at
once, of course, but by degrees. A minstrel show and other
entertainments helped pay the expenses of fitting up the new quarters,
and when they were completed no patrol in the state could boast more
commodious or comfortable headquarters.
With the coming of spring, Lieutenant Duvall returned and took up his
residence in the old De Regny mansion, and several other officers of the
signal corps came with him. The arrival of half a dozen or more
mysterious boxes and crates at the house gave rise to rumors that the
government was going to carry out some extensive aeronautical
experiments as soon as the weather grew favorable, and, naturally, among
the most curious persons concerning these doings were our lads.
They got little satisfaction from the young officer, however. Although
they were always welcome guests at the De Regny place, they understood
that the experiments about to be carried out were in the nature of
secret tests, and, after their first questions had been politely but
firmly unanswered, they asked no more. This did not detract a bit,
though, from the enjoyment they found in visiting the place on Saturday
afternoons, and watching the private soldiers of the Signal Corps
equipping the aeroplanes for the spring and summer work. “Spring styles
in aeroplanes,” Tubby called it.
From time to time, however, the officer in charge of the station let
drop a hint here and there which convinced the boys that the experiments
were to be in the main devoted to testing the deadliness of dropped
explosives and bombs.
One of the officer’s expansive moments came one afternoon when they were
on the brick terrace watching the trying out of a new engine on a large
biplane.
“I’d like to see how near I could come to putting that old hulk out of
the way,” he remarked, waving his hand seaward to where the black hull
of the wrecked Vesper lay, her two masts stretched up like appealing
hands.
“Drop a bomb on her, you mean?” asked Tubby, with round eyes.
“Yes. She’d make a fine mark. A good thing to have her out of the way,
too. I think I’ll try to see if the department can’t have it arranged.”
“It would be a great sight!” agreed Rob. “I’d like to see it. I suppose
one of your projectiles would blow her to bits, if you hit her fair and
square.”
“Well, there wouldn’t be much left to bother over,” admitted the
lieutenant.
While this conversation was going on between the boys and the friendly
young officer, a vastly different scene was transpiring in a room at the
Southport Hospital, which was situated some miles from Hampton. In a
private room there, Jack Curtiss and Bill Bender were seated by the
bedside of a gaunt, pallid man, who had evidently just recovered from a
severe illness. The man was Hank Handcraft, but so emaciated was he that
any one would have had some difficulty in recognizing him. He had
collapsed from the strain of his life since escaping from the prison in
the west, and had become so ill that Jack and his cronies had found it
necessary to have him removed from the small cottage belonging to Jack’s
father, in which they had hoped to hide him till the time was ripe for
investigating the wreck.
A problem had then faced the lads which was not solved till Stonington
Hunt was taken into the secret. He possessed some influence at the
hospital and on his word that Hank Handcraft was a reputable man named
James Smiley, the former beach-comber had been admitted there.
Stonington Hunt was not influenced by philanthropy in this matter. His
main desire was to see Hank get well speedily so that he could guide
them to the location of the money on the wrecked Vesper.
On this spring afternoon Jack and Bill had visited the hospital and were
readily admitted to the sickroom.
“But I must warn you, gentlemen, that James Smiley is a very sick man,
and you must not bother him or excite him,” the house surgeon had said,
as they left the office in charge of a nurse.
“Has he been delirious lately, Miss Jones?”
“No, sir, not since daybreak,” was the reply; “but last night, so the
night nurse told me, he raved and talked for hour after hour about some
money hidden on a ship.”
“Strange, isn’t it, what delusions a sick man will get?” mused the
surgeon.
The boys were shocked, in spite of their hard, callous natures, at the
change for the worse in Hank’s appearance since they had seen him a week
before.
“Come, Hank, you must brace up,” said Jack, as the nurse left the room
and they were alone. “It will soon be time to take a trip to the Vesper
for that coin.”
“I shall never go,” rejoined Hank gloomily; “but I have drawn a rough
map here to show you where I hid the money in a crack behind some beams
in the forecastle. You must get it, and I must trust to you to divide it
fairly with me.”
“We’ll do that, Hank,” Bill assured him.
“Where’s the map?” asked Jack, a greedy light coming into his hard eyes.
Hank stretched an emaciated arm forth and drew from under his mattress a
crumpled bit of paper.
“It’s the third beam from the foot of the companionway steps,” he said.
“You can’t miss it with this map to guide you. See, it is all set down
here.”
He indicated some lines and marks on the paper, which Jack promptly took
and pocketed. After some more conversation, they left the sick man and
set out for their trip back to Hampton.
“Poor Hank, I think he was right. He has not long to live, I’m afraid,”
said Bill Bender, as they were strolling down the road leading to the
station.
“If he should die before we get the money,” said Jack, in a low voice,
“then we would not have to divide it. It would be all ours.”
“Yes, if he isn’t giving us a fairy tale,” said Bill Bender. “That story
of his about how he and another fellow—a tramp he met—broke into a post
office and robbed it of that money sounds rather fishy to me. What would
all that money be doing in a country post office?”
“He explained that,” said Jack; “it was in Montana and the money was
deposited in the post office safe to pay off the miners at a copper mine
not far off. It was the only safe place they could put it in that
lawless country.”
“They got wind of it from overhearing the postmaster telling a friend
about it, didn’t they?” asked Bill.
“That was the way Hank tells it. His tramp friend made a mixture of some
stuff Hank called ‘soup’ and squirted it into the cracks of the safe
door with an oil can. Then they blew off the door and escaped.”
“I’ll bet Hank is mad with himself for getting too scared to take it
with him when he left the wreck,” said Bill.
“I’ll bet he is,” agreed Jack carelessly; “but that is not our funeral.”
That evening there was a consultation at Stonington Hunt’s home. Jack
and Bill related what they had heard from Hank and exhibited the map.
Stonington Hunt seemed overjoyed. Rising from the table, he went to the
door and looked out into the night. It was still and calm, one of those
breathless, starry nights that come in early spring.
“Well, when will we take a trip out there?” he asked, coming back to his
seat. “It looks to-night as if we’d have a perfect day to-morrow. What
do you say if we make a try for it, then?”
“Suits me,” said Jack. “How about you fellows?”
“Same here,” said Freeman, falling in with the rest.
“But won’t any one be suspicious if they see us leaving the harbor in a
boat?” asked Bill Bender cautiously.
“Why should they be?” demanded Stonington Hunt, his crafty eyes
glittering with greedy anticipation. “There are several launches in the
water already. We’ll hire one and say we are going outside on a fishing
trip. We’ll take squids and bait and lines as a blind. No one will
suspect, and the wreck lies away up the beach off that old house in the
hemlocks where those army idiots are experimenting.”
“I heard they are going to take up bomb-dropping practice,” said Jack,
in a careless voice.
“Hope they don’t drop one on us,” laughed Bill Bender.
* * * * * * * *
“Rob,” said his father that evening after supper, “I had a letter this
afternoon from Job Trevor, that garage man at Willitson. He incloses a
bill for one hundred and fifty dollars. I thought I had paid it, but
evidently I had not. Wonder if you’d go over there, provided you have
nothing better to do.”
“Of course, I’ll go, dad,” said Rob willingly. “We had a drill on for
to-night, but Merritt can take it for me. Anyway, I guess I can get over
there and back in time to be present at it.”
“Thank you, my boy,” said his father. “I don’t care to let bills run up,
and, as you say, you ought to get there and back in time for your drill
if you hurry.”
“Oh, I’ll hurry,” Rob assured him.
The leader of the Eagles ’phoned to Merritt that he might be delayed a
little on his errand and asked the corporal to take charge in his
absence. Merritt readily agreed to do this, and Rob, whistling a merry
tune, hastened off to the shed at the rear of the house in which Mr.
Blake’s auto was kept, to prepare for his trip. Soon afterward he
chugged out of the yard and was off. It was about ten miles to
Willitson, and Rob was not particularly observant of the speed laws as
he cut across the island. It was exhilarating sport, speeding along on
the deserted roads. Once he met another auto. It was going almost as
fast as he was, and the two vehicles whizzed by each other at tremendous
speed. They did not go so fast, however, that the occupants of the other
car did not turn and look back into the darkness.
“Look here, Dugan,” said one of them, a small, yellow-faced man—a Jap,
in fact, “wasn’t that face familiar to you in the flash we had of it?”
“Only got a glance at it,” rejoined the driver of the car, a heavy-set,
big-jowled man, with an immense pair of shoulders; “but it did seem to
me I’d seen it some place before.”
“That was one of the boys that attacked us on the road that day, Dugan,”
rejoined Hashashi, with a vindictive snarl.
“It was,” snorted Dugan angrily. “I wish I’d known that, I’d have run
him down.”
“You forget that to-night we want to make ourselves as inconspicuous as
possible,” was the rejoinder. “You had better keep a sharp lookout—we
are nearing the town now, I think.”
“That’s right. We’ll run the car off on this side lane and wait till
it’s late enough for us to start working.”
“Ha! ha!” chuckled the Jap. “We remind me of those funny pills. Work
while they sleep, eh, my friend?”
“Well, I hope they sleep,” grunted Dugan, turning off the main road into
a rough cart-track. “If they don’t, they are likely to get some pills
they don’t like—lead ones.”
“I hope you are too much of an expert not to be able to extract a paper
from a country bank without rousing the whole town,” said the Jap
uneasily.
“Don’t worry about me, Hashi, old boy. I’ll do the trick with neatness
and dispatch, and when I’m at the head of the Japanese Aero Squad we’ll
have many a good laugh over this night.”
As he spoke, the car came to a stop, and the two occupants got out and
stretched their legs. It appeared that they had ridden a long way and
were stiff and cramped.
“Better put out the lights,” said Dugan. As he spoke, he bent over the
headlights, and before he extinguished them drew out his watch.
“Eight o’clock,” he muttered. “It’s a long time we’ve got to wait.”
“In the contemplation of great achievements, the hours pass pleasantly,”
rejoined the Jap philosophically, clambering back into the car and
making himself a snug nest with the blankets and robes. Presently he
slept, but Dugan, leaning against the car, gazed with speculative eyes
from the hilltop down toward the spot where a faint glow marked the site
of the village of Hampton.
“It’s a risky game, Jim Dugan,” he growled to himself, “but you’re
playing for the biggest stake that you ever saw.”