BREAKING AWAY
Dave Dashaway was almost speechless. His tyrant master had struck him in
a tender spot, indeed. Not that Dave had ever been foolish enough to
build extravagant hopes on his model. It had been all guess work and an
experiment. However, his soul had been wrapped up in his labor, he had
been proud and pleased with his progress as an inventor, and that mean,
vengeful act of the old man roused him up terribly.
“What busted that wagon?” demanded Mr. Warner, grasping Dave’s arm till
the pain was unbearable.
Dave jerked loose, and panting and angry-faced confronted his guardian
with a look that made the old man hesitate. His lip trembled, but he
held his speech as steady as he could, as he replied:
“Dobbin got scared and ran into the ditch.”
“With your star-gazing after those airships I’ll warrant.”
This was so near the truth that Dave did not reply.
“What do you suppose will pay for all that damage to that wagon?”
demanded Warner.
“I suppose my hard work will,” bluntly replied Dave.
“Your hard work—bah! It looks as if you was worked hard, fritting half
of the afternoon away, spending hours and hours on that worthless piece
of trumpery up in the barn loft. I’ve settled for good and all. Now you
put up that horse, get your supper, and go to your room. You dare to
leave it till I say so, and I’ll just call the sheriff up here again,
and see what he says about affairs.”
This was an old-time threat of his guardian. It was worn so threadbare
that Dave did not pay much attention to it. He proceeded silently about
his task, unhitched Dobbin, led him to his stall, and made him
comfortable for the night with feed and bedding.
As Dave came out into the yard again he made a speedy run for the wagon.
His guardian had been poking about the vehicle, and had discovered the
sweater roll. This he now held, turning it over and over in his hand and
viewing it curiously.
“Here!” shouted Dave, “that’s mine.”
“Oh, is it?” snapped the old man, holding the bundle out of Dave’s
reach. “What is it? I’m going to see.”
“I don’t mean that it belongs to me,” Dave corrected himself, “but I
found it.”
“What is it?”
“It fell out of an airship. It lighted on Dobbin’s back. That’s what
made him run away.”
“Fell from an airship?” repeated old Warner with a sniff of disbelief.
“Romancing, hey?”
“No, I am not, I am telling you the truth,” persisted Dave.
“Hello! hello! Here, what’s this?”
Mr. Warner had opened the sweater. His miserly old eyes fairly gloated
over the pocket book and its contents. His thin cruel lips moved as if
he was smacking them over a meal.
“You found this, you say?” he inquired.
“Yes, I did,” responded Dave brusquely, none too well pleased with the
way things had turned out.
“Well, finders keepers!” chuckled the old man with a cunning laugh.
“Nobody is going to have that pocket book but the owner,” said Dave
staunchly.
“I’ll arrange about that, you young insolent!” retorted Mr. Warner.
“You’ll have to, in the right way, too,” asserted Dave, who was quite
nettled.
“Eh—what’s that?” shouted the old man.
“Just what I said. If you will look at that medal in that pocket book,
you will find that the owner’s name is on it. It is ‘Robert King’. All
you’ve got to do is to send his property back to him. I happen to know
that he is at Fairfield now, and a letter directed there would reach
him.”
“Say,” blurted out old Warner, “I know what to do, I guess, about my own
business.”
“This is my business, too,” insisted Dave. “I found that property, and
I’m honest enough to want to get it right back to the man who lost it.”
“You get into that house quick as you can, and mind your own business
and keep your mouth shut, or I’ll make it pretty interesting for you,”
bawled the old man.
Dave closed his lips tightly. He had gone through a pretty trying
ordeal. It had made him almost desperate. It had come so thick and fast,
one indignity after another, that Dave had not found time to break down.
His just wrath over the destruction of the model was lessened by the
appropriation of the sweater bundle.
“There’s something I won’t stand,” declared Dave, as he made his way
into the house. “I know who that property belongs to, and if Mr. Warner
tries any tricks, I’ll expose him.”
Dave felt sure that his tyrant master would not do the square thing. He
might not dare to keep the pocket book and its contents and say nothing
about it. Dave felt sure, however, that in any event Mr. Warner would
not give it up without a big reward. This humiliated Dave, somehow, on
account of his father and his own liking for aeronautics. Dave felt more
than kindly to one of that profession, and would have been glad to
return the lost pocket book for nothing.
Dave glanced into the kitchen as he passed its open door. The scraps of
food on the uncovered deal table did not at all appeal to his appetite.
Besides that, he was too stirred up to care to eat. He went up to his
little room in the attic and sat down at the open window to think.
Dave felt that a crisis in his affairs had been reached. His mind ran
back rapidly over his past life. He could find nothing cheering in it
since the time he was removed from a pleasant boarding school upon the
death of his father. The latter had been traveling in foreign parts at
the time giving lectures on aeronautics, of which science he was an
ardent student.
Since then old Silas Warner had led his young ward a very wretched life.
Several letters had come addressed to Mr. Dashaway. These Mr. Warner had
not shown to Dave, but had told him that they amounted to nothing of
importance. Dave had noticed that these, with some other papers, his
guardian kept in a strong manilla envelope in his desk.
Dave had known nothing but neglect and hardship with Silas Warner in the
past. He saw no prospects now of any betterment of his condition. After
what had happened during the day the man would be more unbearable than
ever.
“I’ve got to do it,” murmured Dave, after a long period of painful
thought. “My life will be spoiled if I stay here. I’ll never learn
anything, I’ll never amount to anything. There is only one way out.”
Dave got up and paced the floor of the darkened room in greatly
disturbed spirit.
“I’ll do it,” he added a moment later, with firmness and decision. “I’ll
be true to my name—it’s a ‘dash away’ for freedom. Yes, I’ve made up my
mind. I’m going to run away from home—if this can be called home.”
Old Warner had told Dave to go to his room and remain there until
further orders. In his present state of mind, however, Dave cared little
for that. He was so excited that the air of the close low-ceilinged roof
room seemed stifling to him. The lad got out through the window and
clambered down the remains of an old vine trellis without trouble. Too
many times at night when he could not sleep had he stolen out thus
secretly to work on his pet model in the barn loft, to miss his footing
now. Dave reached the ground, went over to the pasture lot and threw
himself down upon the grass. His hands under his head, staring up at the
stars, he rested and reflected.
The more he thought the more was he resolved to leave Brookville. He
would leave it that night, too, he decided. He knew that when his
guardian discovered his absence he would raise a great hue and cry and
try to find him, just as he had done before.
“I’ll move as soon as he goes to bed,” planned Dave. “That will give me
a safe start away from Brookville.”
Dave decided to regain his room by the route he had left it. As he again
neared the house, however, he noticed a light in the sitting room which
his guardian usually occupied evenings. As Dave made out Silas Warner
and observed what he was about, he glided to a thick bush near the open
window and peered curiously through its branches.
Dave saw Mr. Warner seated at the big cumbrous desk. He had thrown the
sweater on the floor at his side. The pocket book lay open on the desk,
and its contents were spread out before their engrossed possessor.
The old man was viewing the collection with gloating eyes. He took up
the badge and weighted it in his hands as if thinking of it only as to
its value as gold. For nearly ten minutes Dave watched his miserly
guardian finger over the various articles. He knew that it was in his
mind to keep them if he could.
Finally old Warner restored all the articles to the pocket book. He took
a small box from a drawer in the desk. Dave had seen it before. As
Warner opened it, Dave again caught sight of the manilla envelope which
he knew held papers referring to his dead father.
The old man locked up the desk and carried the box to a corner of the
room. Here he leaned over, and Dave saw him lift up a small section of
the floor. When it was set back in place the box had disappeared.
A new train of thought came into Dave’s mind as he noticed all this. He
now knew the secret hiding place of his miserly old guardian. He watched
the latter take up the lighted candle and go over to the wing room of
the house where he slept. Mr. Warner reached out of its window and
pulled in a rope, resting its end on the floor directly beside his bed.
This rope ran out to an old swing frame which held a bell of pretty good
size. It had once belonged to a school house, but had got cracked, and
Warner had got it for nothing. He had never had occasion to ring it. He
had told his neighbors that he had put it up for protection. He was a
lonely old man, he had said. Some one might try to rob him. If so, he
could alarm his neighbors and call them to the rescue. This had given
rise to the rumor that the old man must have some hidden wealth about
the place. To a stranger, however, the dilapidated old place would not
indicate this.
Dave waited till his guardian had retired, then he got back to his room,
moving about cautiously. Dave owned only the rather shabby suit he wore,
but he had some handkerchiefs and the like, and these he gathered
together and made up into a small parcel. Then he sat down to wait. It
was in order for Dave to depart by the window route if he so chose, and
no one the wiser. Dave, however, had something further to do before he
left the inhospitable roof of his guardian.
It was not until two hours later that Dave ventured to leave his room.
He stowed the parcel containing his few small personal effects under his
coat and took a piece of unlighted candle in his hand. Then he groped
his way cautiously down the rickety stairs.
In a few minutes Dave was in the sitting room. He had listened at the
entrance to the wing room in which his guardian slept. He had heard
Silas Warner breathing regularly, and was sure that he was asleep. Dave
carefully closed the door of the sitting room opening out into the
hallway. He went to the corner of the room where he had seen his
guardian stow away the little box.
A chair stood over the spot, and this Dave moved out of place. He lit
the candle, and by poking with his hand soon located a loose section of
the flooring about two feet square.
“I’ve found it,” breathed Dave softly, and he lifted the square from its
place.
Below showed the usual space found between beams. Lying across the lower
boards was the box he was after. Dave lifted it out. He found that it
was secured with a small padlock.
“I don’t like to do it,” mused Dave, “but there is no other way.”
He found little difficulty in wrenching the padlock, hasp and all, out
of place, for the fastening was of tin, and flimsy. Then Dave opened the
cover of the box.
He took out the pocket book belonging to the aeronaut. Then he lifted
out the manilla envelope.
“I don’t suppose there’s anything but old worthless papers in this
envelope,” he decided, “but it belongs to me, if anybody. The mischief!”
Dave sprang to his feet in dismay. He had tilted the square of flooring
against the chair near by. Some way accidentally his hand had struck it,
and it tipped over flat with quite a clang. Trying to stop it, Dave fell
against the chair. This went over with an echoing crash.
Dave knew that the windows were double locked. If he had disturbed old
Warner, his only route of escape was through the single doorway of the
room and down the hallway. So quickly did he run for the door that he
had not time to blow out the candle.
Dave opened the door with a violent push. Once out in the hall he
glanced anxiously across it.
“Too bad—too late,” he murmured, as his eye fell upon his guardian just
coming out of his room. Against the candle light, Silas Warner must have
recognized Dave. The latter was just stowing the manilla envelope in his
pocket, and the old man must have seen that, too.
“Hi, there! Stop! What are you up to?” bellowed old Warner.
Dave ran down the hall at the top bent of his speed. He knew the kitchen
door was bolted, and risked no chance of being stopped by halting to
open it. Indeed, he dodged down a step into a store room, the window of
which was always open. He was through its sash space with a bolt and a
squirm in a jiffy.
Making sure that he had lost nothing in his flight, Dave put across the
yard. The last he saw of his alarmed and excited guardian was his
frowsled grey head stuck through the buttery window, bawling
frantically:
“Stop him! stop thief! stop thief!”
Dave crossed the yard and the meadow in swift bounds. He was sorry that
his intended flight had been discovered, and was satisfied that old
Warner would proceed to make a great noise about it very promptly.
However, now started on his runaway career, Dave resolved that he would
not turn back.
“A good swift run, and I’ll get safe and sound out of the neighborhood,”
he told himself. “Of course Mr. Warner will start a chase after me, but
I’ll get a lead they can’t beat. Hello!”
Dave Dashaway prepared for a new spurt of speed as a wild alarm rang out
on the still night air.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
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