AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Jack saved the day.
With muscles of steel, tensed like tightly coiled springs, he leaped on
the back of the fellow whose revolver was pressing against Raynor’s
side, and threw his arms about his neck. Choked and dazed, the man
toppled over backward and fell with a crash to the concrete walk.
“Quick, old fellow, get his revolver before he can get up,” choked out
Jack.
Raynor, recovering from his struggle, bent over and picked up the weapon
and stood with it ready for action. Just as he did so, the third man,
who up to now had been deprived of action from surprise at the quickness
of the whole thing, came to himself and made a rush for Jack.
Before Jack could turn, the fellow had seized him and knocked him over.
At the same instant, in the distance, they heard the shrill screaming of
whistles.
“_Les gendarmes!_” shouted the man who had knocked Jack over.
The two recumbent men, aroused from their stupor by their fright at the
approach of the police, gathered themselves up, and the three sped away,
running at top speed across the little park where all was dark and
shadowy.
In the meantime, the cowardly chauffeur, who had been watching from
behind a tree, saw that the day was saved, and began to consider what he
should do to save himself and his reputation. He had plainly deserted
his employer’s wife and daughter, frightened out of his wits when the
three ruffians demanded the women’s diamonds as they were on their way
home from the opera. But now he leaped the wall again and shouted to the
women that he had merely gone to summon the police, seeing that the boys
had the case well in hand. Then he jumped to the seat, and, not wishing
to face a police examination himself or involve his employer in one, he
turned on full power and sped away.
Hardly was he out of sight, than there appeared a detachment of Antwerp
policemen, led by an officer running at full speed toward the boys. Some
timid householder had heard the screams and shouts, but, too timorous to
venture out himself, had telephoned the nearest station; and the sudden
appearance of the officers was the result.
“Bother it all,” exclaimed Jack, “here come the police. Although they’d
have been welcome a while back, we don’t want them now.”
“Why not?” asked Raynor, not unnaturally.
“Well, we have a very important letter to the captain with us. If the
police get hold of us, they’ll want to do a whole lot of questioning,
and goodness knows what time we’ll get back.”
“What shall we do?”
“Take to our heels, I guess. It doesn’t look very honest, but we must
get that letter to the captain to-night.”
“That’s so; he said he’d sit up and wait for us,” responded Raynor.
“That is why I’m so anxious not to be detained. Come on.”
The two boys set off, running at top speed.
“Keep in the shadow of the wall,” said Jack; “we don’t want them to see
us.”
But that is just what the police did do. Their leader happened to be
keen of eye and almost instantly he detected the two fleeing forms. He
shouted something in French.
The boys kept right on. They ran like greyhounds. But the police were
fleet of foot, too.
Then the boys heard behind them a series of sharp, yapping barks.
“What in the world are those dogs for?” asked Raynor pantingly.
They had passed the park now and were running through a street bordered
with dark houses. Jack’s reply was startling.
“They’re police dogs!”
“Police dogs?”
“That’s right. They have them in New York, too, and I remember reading
in the paper that they were imported from Belgium.”
Shouts came from behind them.
They were in French, but the boys readily guessed their import. As if to
emphasize their cries, the police, who believed not unnaturally that
they were in pursuit of the miscreants who had disturbed the midnight
peace, drew their revolvers.
Bullets spattered at the heels of the boys.
“We’ve got to stop,” panted Raynor.
“If we do, we may get shot,” gasped Jack. “Quick, in here.”
He seized Raynor’s arm and pulled him inside an iron gate in a high wall
that surrounded a garden, in which stood a pretty, old-fashioned house.
It appeared to be unoccupied.
“We’re in a fine pickle now,” muttered Raynor.
“Yes, I’m sorry we ran. If they catch us now, we’ll have an awful time
explaining.”
Raynor shuddered.
“You don’t mean they’ll send us to jail?”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot about these foreign police. They’re
likely to do anything.”
“And we can’t speak their language,” added Raynor. “That makes it
worse.”
“I’m afraid that it does,” agreed Jack. “But hush! here they come.”
Headed by the nosing, sniffing, rough-coated police dogs, held in
leashes, the police came running down the street. The boys had outrun
them and hoped that by crouching in the shelter of the wall within the
iron gate, they could throw them off the track.
But in this, they had calculated without the dogs!
As the dogs came level with the gate, they stopped and sniffed
suspiciously. The police behind them began to talk excitedly, waving
their arms and talking with their hands as well as their tongues.
“It’s all off now,” whispered Jack.
“Couldn’t we run up that gravel walk and get back of the house?”
breathed Raynor.
Jack shook his head. He didn’t dare to talk.
Suddenly the leader of the police squad pointed to the iron gate.
“Open it and search the house and grounds thoroughly,” he said in
French. “These are desperate criminals, it is clear. Great credit will
come to us, _mon braves_, can we catch them.”
The iron gate was pushed open.
The next moment the two American boys with beating hearts stepped
forward and faced this body of men, who, it was plain, believed Jack and
his chum to be miscreants of the blackest sort.
------------------------------------------------------------------------