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CHAPTER VII
THE HAND IN THE DARK
The three other boys were not a little alarmed by the constable’s word and manner; but Dan did not show any fear.
“Just pack the earth and stones well around the post, Billy,” he said to his brother, cheerfully, “while I go back to town with Mr. Somes, and get this matter straightened out.”
Dan knew a little something himself about the town ordinances; he was aware that a permit was necessary for the opening of an excavation in a public road. But it was a rule often ignored in such small matters as this. Chance Avery had set the officious constable at this work, and Somes was just mean enough to delight in making the Speedwells trouble.
And on the way to the house of ’Squire English they would pass the office of the council clerk. Dan knew this gentlemen very well, and as Somes pulled up his horse to speak to a friend, the boy hopped out upon the sidewalk.
“Hey! where you going?” demanded the constable.
“I’ll be right back,” said Dan, dodging into the building and leaving the constable fussing in the carriage.
The boy found Mr. Parker at his desk and explained quickly what he and Billy were doing down there beside the river road.
“Digging a hole to set a post? Well, go ahead! I reckon nobody will object,” said the clerk. “You’ll fill it in all right, Dan?”
“But somebody has objected,” explained the boy. And he told Mr. Parker of the difficulty.
“Pshaw! Josiah ought to be in better business,” declared the clerk, and he hastily filled out a permit, headed “Highway Department” and gave it to the youth. “Show that to Justice English,” he advised.
He nodded and smiled and Dan knew that the gentleman appreciated the joke on the constable. The latter was sputtering loudly when Dan returned to the sidewalk. He had got out of the carriage and hitched his horse.
“Here! you come along with me, Dan Speedwell!” cried the constable. “You’re trying to run away.”
Dan saw Chance Avery grinning widely on the other side of the square. It was plain that the captain of the Riverdale Club congratulated himself that he had got the Speedwells into trouble.
They went into ’Squire English’s office. The old gentleman was a crotchety man, stern and brusk of speech, and a terror to the evil-doers who came before him. He did not like boys, having forgotten that he was ever one himself.
“What now? What now, Josiah?” he snapped, looking up from his papers, and glaring under bristling brows at Dan Speedwell.
“This here boy – and some others that I didn’t bring in – are digging holes in the turf along the river road, just beyond Mr. Abram Sudds’ place. You know that piece of turf there, ’Squire, that the town spent so much to grade and make handsome. Well this here Dan Speedwell was digging a hole in it.”
“You’re old enough to know better than to do that, young man,” said the ’Squire, to Dan. “What did you do it for?”
Dan silently tendered the paper Mr. Parker had given him. The justice put on his glasses, looked at it, and turned on the constable wrathfully.
“What do you mean by bringing him here, when he’s got a permit to set his post? Think I’ve got nothing more to do, Josiah, than to monkey with foolish cases?”
“Why – why – he never told me he had a permit!” cried the chagrined constable.
“You never gave me a chance to tell you,” declared Dan.
“Get out of here – the whole of you!” snarled Justice English, as the crowd that had followed Dan and Somes in began to giggle and whisper, just as delighted over the constable’s taking down as they would have been had Dan been punished.
The boys, on Dan’s return from the ’Squire’s office, rigged a clumsy, but efficient, swing-arm for the derrick before they were obliged to go home. But it grew too dark for anything more to be done that night. So they piled into the wagon and started for the other side of town.
As they halted at a certain corner to let Jim and Wiley get out of the wagon, a party of girls came along and hailed them.
“Oh, boys!” cried Lettie Parker, who was a jolly girl with more than a suspicion of red in her hair, and the quick temper which is supposed to go with it. “Oh, boys! you are just whom we wished to see. I don’t believe any of you have heard about the candy-pulling out at Stella Mayberry’s.”
“Stel Mayberry’s?” cried Jim. “I knew she was going to have one; but I didn’t hear when.”
“It’s to-night. She wasn’t at school to-day, so the word didn’t get around. I got a note from her, and so did Mildred,” Lettie said. “And we’ve been around inviting folks.”
“Never heard a thing about it,” declared Billy.
“But she means for you boys to come,” Mildred Kent, the doctor’s daughter, said, more quietly. She spoke to Dan. “I hope you can come. We’ll go over on our wheels as soon after supper as we can.”
“We’ll be late getting there, Mildred,” said Dan Speedwell.
“But we can all come back together. You know where she lives?”
“Oh, yes. Down the river road.”
“We’ll hurry along,” said Billy, “so as to get over to Mayberry’s as early as possible.”
The Speedwells drove away. They went around to several other farmers to pick up the evening’s milk before going home. Then, when their chores were all done and they had supper, Dan and Billy mounted their motorcycles and dashed away through the town and out the river road toward the farmhouse which was the scene of the evening party.
While within the immediate confines of Riverdale they had to run moderately; but it was already after half-past eight, they wanted to reach Mayberry’s before the fun was all over, and therefore “let out” the motors when they got upon the river road.
The white highway before them was deserted clear down to the bend at which Dan Speedwell had first seen the maroon car of the bank robbers on Saturday afternoon. That trio of criminals had gotten away: all pursuit had been futile.
But as the two boys shot around the bend they sighted an automobile chugging slowly toward them. It was not far beyond where the shadowy outline of their rudely constructed derrick was visible.
An automobile on this road was no uncommon sight; but the attention of Dan and Billy was called particularly to it because it showed no lights!
The boys flashed past the slowly moving machine at racing pace; yet Billy gained some particular knowledge of the car and its single occupant.
“Hey, Dannie!” he shouted. “Did you see him?”
“The fellow at the wheel?”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t help seeing him; but I’m not sure who it was. The car I know,” responded Dan.
“Poole’s?” asked Billy, eagerly.
“That’s what it was – Burton Poole’s car,” said the older brother.
“Then I’m sure I made no mistake. My eyes didn’t fool me. That’s Chance Avery in the car alone, running without a light. It would be a good joke to report him for breaking a town ordinance and have him up before Judge English,” cried Billy.
The candy-pull broke up at an early hour, for all hands had to face lessons on the morrow. The girls had come out on motorcycles, too, and they were a gay party that started for Riverdale after bidding the Mayberrys, and those guests who lived near the farm, good-night.
Dan and Mildred Kent got off a little in advance of the rest of the riders, and led the company by several hundred yards. They were very good friends, Dan having dragged Mildred to school on his sled when they were both in the primary grade, and the fact that Doctor Kent was wealthy and the Speedwells were comparatively poor never made the least difference in their friendship.
“I heard the boys saying something about you and Billy buying an auto, Dan,” said Mildred Kent. “Is it a joke?”
“We can’t tell about that yet, Milly,” responded Dan, chuckling. “Just at present it looks like a joke, for, as Billy says, the machine is up in the air.”
“Do tell me what you have done,” urged Mildred.
“Wait until we get along the river road a bit and I’ll show you the car.”
“You don’t mean it’s Maxey Solomons’?”
“It was his,” admitted Dan, cheerfully. “And if we can get it out of the tree where it lodged last Saturday, we’ll show some of the folks around here that it is a real flying machine, although we hope to keep it out of the air for the future.”
They were wheeling along the road at a fast clip, but easily. Just as Dan spoke there sounded ahead an echoing crash – the fall of some object which made quite a startling noise on this quiet evening.
“What can that be?” demanded Mildred.
“I declare I don’t know,” said Dan, and quite involuntarily increased his speed.
There followed the sudden noise of a rapidly driven automobile – a car that was just starting ahead of them. In half a minute Dan knew that the car was hurrying toward Riverdale. Before he and Mildred had traveled three hundred yards the motor car was almost out of their hearing.
“What do you suppose has happened?” cried the girl.
Dan did not reply. It was a moonless night, but the heavens were brilliant with stars and their light made pretty plain objects along the road.
Their swift motorcycles had brought Dan and Mildred almost to the spot where the Speedwells had set their derrick in the afternoon. The contrivance had disappeared!
“Stop!” shouted Dan, and shut off his power and leaped from his saddle. He ran to the side of the road. There was the stump of the post he and Billy had set. It had not broken off, but had been chopped down with an axe!
And the whole apparatus had been allowed to fall over the precipice. In the darkness below the wall Dan could not see whether or not the falling derrick had crashed upon the automobile in the tree-top.
CHAPTER VIII
ON WATCH
“Oh, Dan! what is it?” cried Mildred, dismounting from her own motorcycle, and running to the gap in the wall through which the lad was leaning, seeking to peer into the gulf. “What has happened?”
“Somebody has knocked down our derrick. I hope the auto has escaped,” muttered Dan.
He ran back to his machine, lifted off the storage battery lamp, and came with it to the verge of the precipice again. Its bright ray flashed into the depths revealed one thing at least – the auto was still wedged in the tree limbs. The heavy timbers had missed it in their fall.
“Oh, Dan! the car is there,” cried Mildred, “And can you ever get it up to the roadway – do you believe you can?”
“We won’t be able to get it up here if many such tricks as this are played on us,” grunted Dan. “Ah! here’s Billy.”
The remainder of the party came up swiftly and stopped their cycles.
“What’s happened?” cried Billy, first to reach his brother’s side.
Dan pointed to the post, chopped off at the ground. All could see it.
“The car – is it hurt?” questioned Billy.
“I don’t think so,” replied his brother.
“The rascal! I’d like to pitch him over that wall myself,” declared the younger Speedwell, in a passion.
“Who is it? Who did it, Billy? Do you know?” were the questions fired at the impulsive lad.
Dan touched his brother’s arm, and Billy accepted the warning.
“I won’t say anything more – now,” Billy said, mysteriously. “But you can see what a mean trick it is – just as we got the derrick in place, too.”
“I believe you!” cried Jim Stetson. “I skinned a knuckle and pretty near broke my back helping you. I’d give something to get hold of the fellow who did it, myself.”
“Couldn’t be old Somes, could it?” asked Wiley Moyle. “He was almost mad enough to bite you fellows, to-night.”
“Nonsense! Josiah wouldn’t do such a thing. He has too much respect for the law,” said Monroe Stevens.
“I think it is very fortunate,” put in Mildred Kent, earnestly, “that the person – whoever he was – did not manage to utterly ruin the automobile. Suppose he comes here before you can get the derrick erected again, and throws these boulders down upon the car?”
“He’ll not do that!” declared Dan, firmly.
“How do you know?”
“Because either Billy or I will be on this spot until we get the car out of the place. We have too much money invested in the machine to have it wrecked.”
“Right, Dannie!” declared his brother. “And I’ll stay here now. You go on home, ask father to help you with the milk in the morning, and then come down with the team and another post as early as you can. If there’s any way of getting the car up, we’ll get at it without further delay.”
It was so arranged, and Billy sat down beside the break in the wall while the others motored away. His own machine he carefully hid in a clump of bushes, and proposed to keep awake until morning so that the mean-spirited person whom he suspected of cutting down the pole, should not return and do any damage to the motor car.
Billy heard dogs barking in the distance – they seemed to start far down the road toward the Mayberry farm at which he and his young friends had spent such a pleasant evening. First one dog, and then another, joined the chorus, the sound of which drew nearer.
“Somebody coming along the road,” thought the lad. “They’re coming fast and stirring up a racket as they come. Somebody is traveling fast, for the houses are a good way apart, and the dogs join each other in hailing the passer-by in one, two, three order.”
“Ha! an auto, I bet,” pursued Billy. “Coming at a stiff pace. There’s the hum of her! No other sound. Gee! she’s spinning the miles behind her. Hear her purr!”
Billy rose to his knees and peered down the road. He was still in the shadow and could not be seen. There was a flash of light at the far bend – but it was no lamp. Billy knew a car had turned the corner, but it had not a single headlight lit.
Then, to his amazement, he saw that there were figures in the car – one at the wheel, the other in the tonneau. And it was a somewhat larger car than Billy had expected.
A car without a light had no business on the road in the first place; that fact was suspicious. And when the car halted directly before the crouching boy, Billy was indeed amazed.
“Is this the spot?” asked the man on the front seat, turning to speak over his shoulder.
“I – don’t – know,” returned the other, in a low voice. “It looks so different by night.”
“Hang it! you and I were past here on Saturday.”
“Well! we went so fast that I couldn’t tell what the place looked like. I know that Sudds lives here somewhere. Ha!”
“What’s the matter?” asked the man at the wheel, whom Billy noticed was rather small.
“I believe this is the spot where that auto went over the bank; eh?”
The chauffeur stood up, evidently trying to peer into the darkness beside the road. Billy’s heart beat loudly. He was so near that he could have almost reached out his hand and touched the rear wheel of the car.
There was something about this automobile that awoke in Billy Speedwell a feeling of suspicion. It was too dark for him to see the color of the automobile exactly; but he was apprehensive.
“Sudds’ place is farther along,” exclaimed the chauffeur, sitting down. “He ought to be on the lookout somewhere. We’ll run on slow, and then back again if we don’t pick him up.”
“All right,” growled the second man.
They were both looking forward and away from Billy. The boy, shaking with nervousness, but willing to risk much to prove to himself that his suspicion was right, crept out of the shadow behind the car. The machine started and Billy leaped lightly up behind, and clung to the back of the large, folded canopy top of the tonneau.
The car rolled on smoothly – almost silently; her engine throbbed steadily. They turned the bend and Billy knew that the dwelling of Abram Sudds, a granite mansion set high on the bank beside the road, was in sight, although he could not see it.
The car purred on. Billy clung desperately, afraid to drop off now, for he would be revealed the instant he came out of the shadow of the automobile’s folded-back top. Impulsively he had jumped into trouble, and without a thought for the wrecked auto he was watching, and in which his brother and himself had invested five hundred dollars!
But the mystery of this car, and the men in it, had taken hold of him strongly. As they ran slowly past the Sudds property Billy glanced about for the man whom the two in the car evidently expected.
There was no one in the road. They ran on to the next house and there the chauffeur turned slowly. There was a street light here and its dim radiance shone for an instant on the side panels of the car as it turned. Billy, craning his neck around the corner of the car to look, saw the light flash upon the shiny varnish.
The car was painted maroon! There had been two maroon cars in the neighborhood of Riverdale within the past few days. Billy was very sure indeed that this car did not belong to Mr. Briggs!
CHAPTER IX
THIEVES IN THE NIGHT
The maroon car turned slowly and ran back along the road. At the wrought-iron, ornate gate before the Sudds’ front steps it halted suddenly. Billy shot another glance around the car.
A man had stepped out of the shadow of the gate post. The two in the car evidently recognized their comrade.
“Come on!” the new-comer said, commandingly. “You run on around the corner, George, and wait for us. Keep your power on. We may be ten minutes – we may be half an hour; but you wait.”
“All right,” assented the man at the wheel, and the car moved on slowly while Billy saw the speaker, and the man who had ridden in the back of the car, walk in at the gate and mount the steps.
The Sudds mansion was high above the street, and the door was gained by mounting several terraces. The couple of strangers were up three sets of granite steps when the maroon car slipped around the bend and Billy lost sight again of the house.
Now, Billy Speedwell had not the first idea what he should do. He believed these three men were criminals. He was sure this was the maroon car Dan had chased on his motorcycle on Saturday – the car that had thrown Maxey Solomons and his auto over the embankment. And the men in it had robbed the Farmers’ Bank of Riverdale of fifteen thousand dollars!
They had dared come back into the neighborhood. Not only had they come back, but Billy believed they were here for quite as bad a purpose as that which had made them notorious in the neighborhood two days before.
An honest car does not usually run without lights. The river road chanced to be deserted at this late hour (it was now approaching midnight) and standing where the chauffeur stopped it, this maroon auto could scarce be seen until one was right upon it.
But Billy dared not climb down behind. The throb of the slowly running engine shook the car and made noise enough to drown any slight sound he might create. But the chauffeur, George, was standing up and looking all about him. He would spy a rat running across the road, let alone a boy.
But, if the other two came down to the automobile, would not they see Billy clinging behind the car? The thought gave young Speedwell courage to make a change of base, and make it quickly.
He lifted himself up carefully, sliding his legs into the bag of the collapsed tonneau top. There he lay stretched out, perfectly invisible in the half darkness, but able to see all that went on behind the car, at least.
What he intended to do, Billy had not thought. His jumping on the machine was one of those impulsive, thoughtless acts for which he was noted. He very well knew now that Dan would not have done this without having seen his way clear to escape!
He heard the chauffeur moving about for a few moments. He undoubtedly looked over his machine; but this scrutiny did not bring him near the hiding Billy. Then George got into the car and sat ready to speed up the moment his comrades joined him.
It seemed to the lad in the back of the car that much more than half an hour had passed. He grew very weary with waiting.
Then suddenly, shattering the silence of the night, came a sound that startled Billy like a pistol shot. A heavy window went up with a bang.
Billy heard the chauffeur utter a sudden exclamation. Then a voice in the distance began to shout; but it was so far away that Billy could not distinguish the words uttered.
It was an alarm, however. He heard a policeman’s rattle, as the householder who had opened the window swung the loud-sounding contrivance with a vigorous arm. A woman shrieked, too; then followed the quick bark of a pistol – a sound that dwarfed the other noises.
Footsteps pounded on the road behind the car, and the two men for whom it was waiting appeared. One carried a bundle; the other held onto his arm and seemed to be in pain as he stumbled on.
“He winged me! he winged me!” cried the wounded man.
“Get in and stop your howling!” commanded the other, who seemed to be the leader.
He pushed his comrade into the tonneau, leaped in himself with the bundle, and said to the chauffeur:
“Go to it, George! This is getting to be too hot a neighborhood for us to linger in!”
As he spoke the car leaped ahead. Billy gasped, and then lay still. Wherever the criminals were aiming to go, it seemed that the boy was forced to accompany them!
The maroon car sped along the straight stretch of two miles to the next bend in the road. Billy, looking out behind, saw no pursuit. Around the curve the car whipped, and they were safe! Or, so it seemed, for there was no pursuit. Probably there was no suspicion that the thieves had gotten away in an automobile, for the purring of the car was scarcely audible, she ran so easily.
The boy could hear nothing that was said by the trio. Sometimes the sound of voices drifted back to him; but he could distinguish no words. The machine kept up a swift pace and ran boldly down to Upton Falls. Billy knew the locality well; but until the car stopped he could do nothing toward either his own escape, or raising an alarm.
Remembering how Dan had chased this car before on Saturday, and the fact that the men had cut across country toward the coast villages, Billy was surprised that they did not follow the same route again; but he soon discovered that the thieves were afraid of the machine running out of gas.
As they spun quietly down into the square, Billy peered ahead again, and saw the flaring electric sign in front of Rebo’s garage. Although they had not passed another car on the road, Upton Falls was one of the roads to Barnegat, and there was a good deal of night travel. Mr. Rebo advertised to cater to the trade twenty-four hours in the day, and Billy knew there would be at least one man on duty here.
The trio of robbers knew this, too, it was evident. One of them hopped out of the car the moment it stopped and rapped on the office window. A sleepy voice replied, and the door was quickly opened.
By this time the two men in the back of the automobile, as well as the chauffeur, were coated and masked. The dust masks and great goggles completely hid their features.
Billy had hoped that there would be more than one man at the garage, or that somebody would stroll along whose attention he might call. He feared to leap out of concealment and reveal himself to the trio of thieves.
He knew that one of the Upton Falls constables was supposed to patrol the streets of the town at night; but he did not show up at this juncture. The man on duty at the garage went about his work sleepily enough. It was plain by the muttered conversation Billy overheard from the gang, that they were impatient, but dared not show how hurried they were.
“We’d never ought to have had to run down here,” growled the leader, who was a big, aggressive man, and seemed to have the other two under his thumb.
“I tell you we burned a lot of gas running up and down, waiting for you,” was the chauffeur’s reply.
“Well! It’s the back track for ours, anyway. If they look for a car at all, it won’t be running toward Sudds’ house.”
“You’ll not take the river road!” exclaimed the third man, earnestly.
“The pike,” growled the other.
The man came out with the gasoline can, and there was no more discussion. But Billy had heard something of importance. He dared not show himself, for the glare of the garage lights would betray to the robbers just where he had been hiding.
Nevertheless, he made up his mind to make some good use of the information he had gleaned. He swiftly drew a letter from his pocket, tore a blank page from it, and with a bit of lead-pencil scribbled a line on the paper. The chauffeur was already cranking up the maroon car. The machine quickly began to throb.
Billy waited until the car had started. He saw that the chauffeur was making a turn in the square, preparatory to taking the back track as he had been instructed.
The garage man stood gaping on the walk, and staring after the maroon car. Billy thrust out his hand and waved the paper in the air. The man’s jaws came together with a snap. The boy was almost certain that he had observed the waving paper.
Therefore Billy let it float back into the road. He even had the satisfaction of seeing the man step into the roadway to pick it up before the motor car struck a very swift pace. The next moment the shadow of the trees and houses shut out Billy Speedwell’s view of the spot.
