THE FATE OF SANTENEL.
There was no light on the long wharf down which the sleigh was driven.
“We’ve got him now!” said the driver, twisting round on his seat and
speaking to Frank, who was again looking out of the cab door.
“Unless he goes into the water!” was Frank’s startled thought. “A
lunatic may be expected to do anything.”
He saw the sleigh reach the end of the wharf and come to a stop at the
side of the wharf building, then beheld the driver alight.
A scream came as the driver roughly pulled the muffled figure out after
him.
Frank leaned half out of the cab, ready to jump to the ground. The
cabman gave the horse an extra cut when he heard the scream, and the cab
tore along like mad.
But the man who had been in the sleigh was quick of movement. He dragged
the reeling figure toward the water.
Then for the first time Frank saw a large steam-launch tied up at the
wharf. Toward this the man hurried. The place was so dark that Frank
could not see the faces of those he was pursuing, and when the cab
reached the spot occupied by the sleigh the cabman drew in, fearing to
risk his horse farther.
Frank sprang out like a flash and pursued the man on foot, leaping
across the wharf with reckless bounds.
“Stop!” he called. “Stop, you villain!”
Again that scream came to urge him on; and, turning the corner of the
low building, he saw the man roughly bundle his half-inanimate burden
into the steam-launch. The man tumbled in also, and both instantly
disappeared.
It looked clear to Frank that Amos Belton had previously placed the
launch there to aid him in his crazy scheme. Without a moment’s
hesitation, he sprang from the wharf to the launch. The summer awning
had been removed, and the little deck was like that of a small yacht.
A door, seeming to lead into a companionway or cabin, was open before
him, and into this Frank pushed, sure that Inza and her abductor had
vanished through it.
He found himself in total darkness, except for the light that came in
through the door. Outside on the wharf he heard the trample of horses’
feet and the voice of the cabman shouting some question after him.
Not taking time to strike a match, Frank pushed straight ahead, feeling
out before him with his hands. In a moment he came against a wall, which
seemed to bar his farther progress in that direction.
“Inza!” he called. “Inza!”
There was no answer. He heard the voice of the cabman again, then felt a
footfall jar the launch. Apparently the cabman had leaped to the deck.
The next instant Frank found himself in total darkness.
To his astonishment, he also heard the exhaust of a steam-pipe, and felt
the launch tremble as it began to get under way.
He stood stock-still, with wildly beating heart. Apparently the crazy
student had made him a prisoner and was putting the launch in motion,
with the intention of running it out of the harbor.
“Well, he can’t hold me in here!” was Frank’s fierce declaration. “And I
can’t risk any delay in getting out.”
He again shouted Inza’s name, and heard only the exhaust of the pipe.
“That was not the cabman who leaped on deck,” was his conclusion. “It
was Belton, who came round there to shut me in. I hope the cabman will
lose no time in giving the alarm!”
Realizing that he was quivering with excitement, and that he needed a
cool mind now if ever, Frank stood still in the darkness, gathering
together the tangled thread of conjecture and evidence.
Then he coolly took a match from his pocket, struck it, and looked about
the room. It was very small, with a door leading toward the stern of the
launch.
“Perhaps Inza is beyond that door!” was his thought as the match flamed
up and then burned out.
He stepped to the door, rapped heavily on it, and called Inza’s name. As
before, there was no answer. The launch seemed to be tearing through the
water at a rapid rate, presumably moving down the harbor.
Frank struck another match, took a good look at the door, and kicked on
it heavily. It sprung inward with quivering timbers, but withstood the
assault. Again and again he kicked on the door, throwing himself also
against it with his shoulders. He was becoming desperate now, for his
prison walls were stronger than he had at first supposed.
No better results came from an attack on the other door; and, returning
to the one he had first tried to force, he flung himself at it with so
mighty a leap and so irresistible an impetus that it yielded.
The door flew from its hinges, and he was flung out into another dark
little room—flung with such heavy force that he was almost stunned.
Before he could get up, he was set upon in the darkness by a man, who
seemed to rise up beside him. Presumably he had been waiting to attack
him if the door yielded.
Believing that he had come in contact with Belton, Frank struck heavily
at the man in the gloom, thinking the best way to fight the supposed
maniac was to knock him out at once and render him incapable of further
mischief. The man dodged the blow and struck back with an enraged snarl,
exclaiming:
“If you go out of this boat it will be to drown!”
For a moment Frank felt weak and dazed. The blow had not reached him,
yet he fairly reeled against the wall.
He was not fighting Amos Belton, but Dion Santenel!
Could the man who looked so much like Amos Belton be Santenel, the
hypnotist? The thing seemed impossible, yet Merriwell believed it true.
Another conviction came to him. Santenel had not abducted Inza for the
purpose of carrying her away or harming her, but to draw him into this
trap, knowing that he would follow Inza to whatever point she might be
taken.
“You again, Santenel!” Frank hissed, lunging at the dimly seen form of
his enemy.
“So you know me?” screamed Santenel. “You triumphed the other day; it is
my turn now!”
The struggle that followed was fierce in the extreme. Santenel’s catlike
eyes seemed able to penetrate the gloom. Raging like a madman, he
bounded to and fro, striking with the quickness of a rattlesnake. Twice
his fist found Frank’s face, each time Santenel dodging back and ducking
in the darkness in time to escape a counter-blow.
The launch was speeding through the water.
“Where is Inza?” Frank demanded, as he leaped in between these blows.
“Tell me, you scoundrel, or I’ll choke the life out of you!”
Santenel’s laugh was almost maniacal.
“Food for fishes!” he cried. “What you will be mighty soon!”
Then the hypnotist, again ducking and dodging, renewed the fight with a
vindictiveness which Merriwell had never seen equaled.
Notwithstanding that the gloom seemed to favor Santenel, Frank at length
succeeded in landing a blow that knocked the hypnotist against the wall.
He went against it with a thud, dropped downward as if falling in a limp
heap, then straightened half up and pitched toward a door which opened
to the little deck.
Before Frank could take advantage of his successful blow Santenel had
drawn his thin body through this door and was scrambling out of the
place.
Frank lunged and caught the man by the coat as he gained the deck. But
the hypnotist slipped out of the garment, leaving it in Frank’s hands.
Merriwell sprang after him, intending to catch him and force him to tell
what had become of Inza. He did not believe that Inza had fallen or been
thrown overboard, in spite of Santenel’s horrible declaration that she
had become “food for fishes.”
Santenel tried to dive into and through the other door, the one Frank
had first entered, but it stuck fast or was locked. Before the hypnotist
could get it open Frank was again on him. and the struggle that had
raged below deck was again renewed.
“Tell me what you have done with her!” Frank hissed, getting Santenel by
the throat and pushing his head backward. The fiend tried to wriggle
away. Failing in this, he struggled to trip his assailant, in which
effort he threw himself from his feet, and, falling with his head
against the deck, was knocked into temporary insensibility.
Seeing that he was unconscious, Frank glanced about for a rope with
which to tie him. Finding none, he retraced his way across the little
deck toward the stern of the launch.
A hasty glance at the lights of the city showed that the launch, no
doubt with wheel tied, was steaming straight out toward the channel.
Already it was far from the wharf it had so recently left.
“Inza!” Frank began to call, as he kicked about with his feet for a
rope. “Inza! Inza!”
There was no answer. A horrible fear weighted him down. He wanted to
begin an immediate search for her, but he dared not until Santenel was
safely secured; for the desperate hypnotist was capable of doing
anything as soon as he recovered.
When no answer came to his cries, Frank was about to strike a match and
descend into the interior of the launch and make a search, regardless of
Santenel. But at this moment the man recovered consciousness and began
an effort to get on his feet.
Frank rushed toward him.
“Stop!” he shouted, for he fancied he saw Santenel drawing a weapon.
For reply, the villain hurled a heavy iron bolt at him. Seeing this had
missed, for Frank rushed straight on, the hypnotist, with his mind
apparently muddled by his fall, gave a shriek, climbed to his feet and
leaped over the rail into the water.
Frank stood still.
“Retribution!” he muttered. “Food for fishes! It is the hand of outraged
justice, and it has fallen at last!”
For one brief moment he saw the dark face tossed to the top of a wave;
then it disappeared. The launch plowed on through the water.
“The last of Santenel!” was Frank’s hoarse exclamation.
In spite of his fears concerning Inza, he stood staring at the spot
where the man’s head had vanished, though the darkness hid everything in
that direction now.
Then the memory of Inza dragged at his heart-strings and pulled him away
from the launch’s side.
“Inza! Inza!” he called again and again.
There was no response. The sweat came out on his face and his limbs
trembled.
“Heavens! Can it be possible the man spoke true?”
He groped his way into the vessel in search of a lamp. Then, remembering
that the launch was steaming out toward the bay, he stopped this hunt,
made his way to the tiny engine, slowed it down and turned the boat
about with a whirl of the wheel.
Having done this, with a lantern he had discovered he resumed his search
for Inza. But she was not to be found. What he had thought two cabins
proved to be a tiny cabin and a bunk-room. These seemed to be the only
rooms or semblance of rooms in the vessel.
Sick at heart, with that awful fear stunning his brain, Frank now took
charge of the launch and sent it back toward the wharf, but guiding it
so that it would pass over or near the spot where Santenel had thrown
himself into the water.
The gloom on the water was so great that he could see nothing but the
waves, which were black and oily. There was no sign of Santenel.
Then, with his fears for Inza driving him almost frantic, Frank began to
zigzag the launch so as to cover a greater area of surface. There seemed
a bare possibility, if Inza had fallen overboard or been thrown
overboard, that she might have caught hold of something and sustained
herself in the water.
“She couldn’t hold on long, though!” he groaned. “The villain told the
truth! She is dead!”
He grew cold at the thought, his heart seeming to turn to ice. But a
little while before, Inza, handsome, spirited, joyous, had been
applauding the playing of the hockey-teams on the lake. Now, as he
believed, she had passed suddenly from the land of the living.
“And her murderer has gone with her. Yes; he was her murderer, even if
he did not throw her overboard.”
Frank sat as if frozen, his eyes staring almost blankly at the lights on
the wharf toward which the launch was now moving. He heard nothing of
the voices rising on the wharf.
As he drew nearer he became conscious that Bink and Danny were dancing
about in the glow of a lantern, howling and exclaiming. Usually the
little fellows amused him. Now he felt that he did not want to see them
or hear them. Their seeming levity jarred on him.
As in a dream, Frank guided the launch up to the wharf. He scarcely
observed the group of friends who had gathered there, nor the cab and
cabman in the background. Nor did he notice the questions and
exclamations that were being shouted at him.
But as the launch grated against the wharf he pulled himself together by
a great effort and looked with wild eyes at the crowd.
The blood which had seemed to be congealed round his heart rushed back
in a hot wave.
Inza Burrage stood in the forefront of the crowd, alive, well, unharmed!
The last plot of Dion Santenel had been extremely desperate—such a plot
as the brains of a madman alone could devise.
Bert Dashleigh had come near revealing it when he blundered into that
house on Whitney Avenue and beheld the youth disguised as a girl and
made up to look like Inza.
Santenel had carried Inza in the sleigh from Lake Whitney into the city;
but, having choked her into insensibility, he dropped her out in an
alley, at which point the youth dressed to resemble her took her place
in the sleigh. It had been Santenel, disguised as Amos Belton, and this
youth whom Merriwell chased through the city streets.
Without doubt the disguised youth concealed himself somewhere in the
darkness of the old buildings on the wharf.
Santenel’s plot was no doubt murderous, inspired by feelings of baffled
hate and a desire for revenge.
Three days afterward a body identified as his floated to the wharf where
the launch had laid, and was found there by a boatman.
* * * * *
“I have decided not to try to force Dade Morgan out of Yale,” said
Frank, talking over the situation afterward with Bart Hodge. “I have
been in a dilemma about it. The fellow is almost a genius in some lines.
He might go headlong to the bad if I should move against him, while a
little leniency and kindness may let him see where he stands and turn
him in the right direction. With Santenel dead, I see no reason why he
should attempt anything further against me.”
“I guess you are right,” Hodge admitted. “There seems to be no reason
why he should strike at you again. But it’s awfully hard for a
rattlesnake to forget that it is a rattlesnake.”
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