INZA TO THE RESCUE.
Spat—whiz—plunk! The game was still on at New London, and Frank
Merriwell drove and caged a ball.
The referee’s whistle blew, denoting the close of the last period of the
game; and he followed this with the announcement of the scores:
“Goals made by Yale, fifteen; by New London, four.”
Dade Morgan was gnawing his smiling lips, in his seat in the balcony.
“Curse the fellows, they have failed me!” he was thinking.
Then he saw Bascom jostle heavily against Dick Starbright! saw a sudden
altercation, and beheld Bascom’s polo-stick flash through the air. When
it fell, Dick Starbright fell with it.
The crowd was rising and streaming out of the building. Bascom dived to
the nearest netting, which he cut away with furious slashes of a knife,
leaped through the opening thus made, pushed aside the men who were
there, and sprang for a small door, the position of which he had
previously ascertained. Before the extent of Starbright’s injury could
be known or a pursuit organized Bascom was gone.
Frank Merriwell was the first to reach Starbright. He lifted Dick and
saw that the polo-stick had struck his head. There was a small gash and
some blood. But Frank saw almost immediately that, though the blow had
knocked Starbright senseless, its effects were not likely to be of a
serious character.
A doctor came out of the crowd, and an excited group soon gathered in
the “surface.”
Bart Hodge and others were trying to discover what had become of Bascom.
The other members of the New London polo-team pushed into the crowd and
expressed their sympathy, and were free in their declarations that
Bascom must have acted in a fit of anger on the impulse of the moment
and without any malice.
Dick Starbright did not long remain unconscious. The blow had been aimed
well enough, but Dick’s upthrust arm had deflected it and it had fallen
glancingly, producing only temporary concussion.
“Oh, he’s all right!”
The doctor said it, and the doctor laughed encouragingly. A boy pushed
toward Frank with a telegram. Frank tore open the envelope and read:
“Man here with your father. I think D. S. Come quick. Will meet
you at wreck with automobile.
“INZA.”
Inza Burrage had sent it from New Haven.
Frank, after a cheering word to Dick Starbright, jumped out of the room,
hurrying toward the street without changing his clothing. As a short
cut, he took the little door through which Bascom had fled. He was about
to emerge into the light from a small and unused side entrance, when he
heard a rustling and became aware that a man who had been about to leave
the place ahead of him had drawn back and was now apparently in hiding.
“Bascom!” was Frank’s thought.
Before the man knew that his presence had been observed, Frank was on
him, pouncing down like an eagle.
It was indeed Bascom, who had succeeded in hiding in the building, and
who, fancying that the coast was now somewhat clear, had decided to
venture forth and try to get out of the town before a more thorough
search might reveal his place of hiding.
Frank clutched him by the throat, bore him backward to the floor,
calling for assistance. Before it came, however, he had found a rope and
tied Bascom up ready to turn him over to the authorities.
Then he relinquished him to Hodge, who had come with others in answer to
his call. After a few words with this most faithful friend, Frank
hurried away for the railway-station and telegraph-office.
There he learned that a freight had been wrecked on its way from New
Haven, and that the track would not be open for some time.
Then he fully understood Inza’s message. It would be impossible for him
to get through to New Haven by rail, because of this wreck; and she
would be at the place where the wreck occurred, with the automobile,
ready to take him on into New Haven at the highest speed of the auto, as
soon as he reached her.
“Brave and quick-witted as ever!” was his thought. “I wonder what she
has learned of Dion Santenel now? I thought the rascal would abandon his
attempts and be afraid to return to New Haven. But I will get there, and
I will thwart him in his scheme, whatever it is.”
Frank might not have been so confident if he had known just what
Santenel was doing, and how he was succeeding.
“When will there be a train through to New Haven?” he asked of the
agent.
“All trains abandoned,” was the answer.
“What about a wrecking-train?”
“It won’t take passengers, and it will go no farther than the wreck.”
Frank did not ask anything more, except the distance the wreck had
occurred from New Haven. He heard two men talking, and from their
conversation learned that the wrecking-train would be along in ten or
fifteen minutes, from some city down the road, and that the chances were
it would go through New London without making a stop.
Frank’s mind was at once made up. He would try to get on that
wrecking-train, even if he had to make a flying leap for it at great
risk from the New London platform. Then he sent a message to Inza.
“Ten minutes to spare, anyway!” he reflected. “I’ll make a change in my
clothes.”
Hurrying back to the polo-rink for this purpose, he thought over the
message from Inza. There was a possibility that she might have been
deceived as to the identity of the man who was with his father, but
Frank knew that her eyes were keen. The chances were that she was not
deceived. In that case, there could be no doubt that the elder Merriwell
was in serious peril.
The thought that he might be too late made Frank wish for a special
train for the scene of the wreck; but that could not be had in New
London. Nor was anything to be gained by trying to hire a special
engine. He decided that if he missed the wrecking-train he would try to
get a special engine by wire.
When he returned to the station, having been stopped on the way by
crowds of enthusiastic men who insisted on shaking hands with him over
the great fight he and his men had made in the polo-game, he sent a
telegram to Selton Dirk, the little New Haven detective whom he had more
than once employed, asking Dirk to call on his father at the New Haven
House and do what in his judgment he thought proper.
“Dirk is quick and he’ll catch on,” was Frank’s thought, as he gave this
message to the operator and asked him to hurry it through. The message
went through; but Frank did not know until later that Dirk was out of
the city and that it could not reach him.
The whistle of the engine of the special wrecking-train was heard at
this moment. Its character told him that the train was not to stop.
Frank remained close against the wall of the station until the engine
whirled in sight, then walked toward it.
* * * * *
Five miles out from New Haven, at the scene of the wreck, Inza Burrage
sat in Frank Merriwell’s automobile, with smiling confidence. She had
received his message, which said he would reach that point on the first
train through, and she believed he would do so, even though the men who
were plowing round the wreck with spades and picks told her that the big
wrecking-train, whose coming they anxiously awaited, would not stop at
New London, and that her friend could not possibly come through on that.
When the train came and stopped at the wreck Inza found her faith in
Merriwell justified. He was in the caboose of the wrecking-train; and,
leaping down the clay embankment, he extended his hands to her, climbing
at once into the automobile.
“I knew you’d be waiting for me!” he said, starting the machine.
“And I knew that you would come, even though the men at the wreck told
me you couldn’t. You always do the things that other men can’t do, or
are too timid to do, and I knew it would be so this time.”
“It was very simple,” Frank answered. “There were some empty flat cars
on the New London siding. I climbed upon these, took a good run along
them as if I was going at a hurdle when the wrecking-train came along,
and jumped from them to a flat car of the train. It was a lively jump,
but I made it. The conductor didn’t want me there, and said I oughtn’t
to be there, and some other things, but he was in too big a hurry to
stop and put me off, as I knew he would be, and I came right through at
a double quick, without further trouble.”
He gave the lever a touch and sent the automobile forward at its highest
speed.
“Father?” he questioned simply.
“I’m sure that Santenel is with him! I shouldn’t have thought anything
about it, if you hadn’t told me that awful story of the Hindu. I saw
this man, and some way I was sure he was the Hindu, for you’ll recollect
that I saw the Hindu at the charity fair. Well, I followed him along
Chapel Street, saw him enter the New Haven House, and heard him ask to
have his card taken up to Charles Conrad Merriwell! Perhaps I was a bit
bold in following him into the New Haven House, but I thought it a thing
I ought to do, and there was no time to get any one else to do it.
“Before venturing to send you the telegram I hired a boy on the street
to go again to the New Haven House and ask the proprietor if Mr.
Merriwell could be seen, and he came back and said that Mr. Merriwell
was busily engaged and was to be seen by no one. Then I sent you the
telegram, and as soon as I got your answer I started for this point with
your automobile.”
For a time there was nothing heard but the br-r-r-r-r of the automobile,
as it took the straight road before it like a racer under Frank’s
manipulation. He had an inner feeling that Inza’s keen eyes had seen and
perceived the truth, and that his father was in the greatest peril of
his life.
* * * * *
The feeling that makes a cat love to toy with a mouse which is helpless
in its power and half-unconscious filled the soul of Dion Santenel.
“If Frank Merriwell should learn that I am here he could not reach me,
unless he has the wings of a bird!” the villain chuckled, as he looked
at Charles Conrad Merriwell. “If he should telegraph Selton Dirk, Dirk
is in New York City, sent there on a mission by one of my trusted
agents. If any ordinary policeman should attempt to touch me, I should
simply laugh at him and make the fellow go away feeling worse than a
sneak for having suspected me. Everything has worked to my hand. Frank
is away, and can’t even dream of the plot that sent him away, and I am
free to work my will!”
Then he began again to talk to the elder Merriwell, speaking in the
droning way he sometimes delighted to affect, again playing with the
helpless man like the cat with the mouse. By and by he took up the
statement which Merriwell had prepared at his dictation, smilingly read
it, and placed it on the table in a conspicuous manner, with a
paper-weight to hold it down.
After that, he looked through the notes bearing the signature of Charles
Conrad Merriwell, ascertained that they were all right in every way on
their surface, and tucked them away in an inner pocket in a leather
wallet.
“Come! It’s time to go!” he said, speaking to Merriwell.
Merriwell aroused.
“Yes?”
“You will take the electric car at this corner for the boat landings.
There you will hire a boat or steal one, row out a half-mile from shore,
and throw yourself overboard and sink. This letter on the table will
explain to the world why. This is my command. You will do it. You obeyed
me in the mine and fired the blast that shut you in; you must obey me as
implicitly in this. I will it, and my will is now your law. Go!”
His face had assumed a wolfish look, and his eyes were again shooting
out their red gleams.
“Yes!”
Merriwell made the promise and rose to his feet to carry it out, as
completely subjected to the will of the man before him as if he were an
automaton.
“But I will go first,” said Santenel, speaking to Charles Merriwell.
“Ten minutes after I am gone you will leave this house and carry out my
instructions. Good-by!”
“Victory is mine!” chuckled Santenel, as he turned to leave the room.
At that moment there was a whirr of wheels and the br-r-r-r of an
automobile in the street, which stopped in front of the house. A second
later and a knock sounded on the door.
Santenel muttered a malediction, but walked to the door and opened it.
The colored boy stood there, and with him Frank Merriwell.
Before Santenel could recover from his surprise and mentally resume his
pretended character of “Fisher Stokes,” the broker, Frank crowded
through the doorway and stood before him.
“You scoundrel!” Frank hissed, and with a swoop of his hand he tore away
the false mustache and imperial.
With a cry of defeat and fear Santenel leaped at Frank, and was stricken
to the floor, where he lay in a senseless heap.
Frank Merriwell had come in time!
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