CHAPTER XV—TOM MAKES A DISCOVERY
“This is the most puzzling thing yet.”
Tom uttered the words as Mr. Bowler, who had alighted from the Flying Road Racer, joined him at the side of the yellow car.
“It certainly is,” he rejoined; “it’s piling mystery on mystery. Where can the car have come from?”
“Not very far, that is, by itself,” rejoined Tom instantly; “you see this automatic steerer would only keep it on the road on a straight course. It couldn’t help it to negotiate any turns.”
“That’s so. When did you first sight it?”
“As it came over the top of that hill yonder. I propose that we drive along the road and see if we can’t pick up some clue to the mystery.”
“An excellent idea. If, as you say, the car can’t have come far, we ought soon to encounter something that will put us in possession of some knowledge of what has happened. Suppose you drive your Flying Road Racer, as you call it. I’ll follow in this yellow machine.”
“Very well,” agreed Tom, who knew that the lawyer could drive and had a car of his own, for Mr. Bowler, in chatting with Tom, had informed the boy of this fact.
Tom walked back to the Flying Road Racer, while the lawyer got into the yellow car and turned it around with a dexterity that showed he was no greenhorn at driving an auto. Tom in the lead drove slowly, keeping his eyes wide open.
“You watch the right-hand side of the road. I’ll watch the left,” he shouted back to Mr. Bowler.
“Very well,” was the lawyer’s reply, and in this way the two autos rolled slowly along the road and over the brow of the hill, over which the yellow car of mystery had appeared. Beyond the rise the road took a dip, but was quite straight.
At the bottom of the dip was a bridge spanning a small creek. The road at each side of the bridge was sandy and soft, and the autos puffed rather heavily through it. All at once Tom checked the Flying Road Racer; he then raised his hand above his head to signal Mr. Bowler to stop the yellow car also.
“Have you found something?” asked the lawyer eagerly, as he applied the brakes and cut off power.
“Yes. Look here in the sand at the side of the road. There are footmarks and—yes, by ginger!—there’s been a struggle of some kind here, Mr. Bowler.”
“Let us get out and examine the footprints more carefully,” suggested the lawyer.
Accordingly both the man of law and the boy got out of their machines and the next minute were bending intently above the maze of footmarks that Tom had noticed. It seemed plain enough that, as the boy had surmised, there had been a struggle there. No other explanation would fit the case. The grass was trampled down and twigs broken from the bushes in the vicinity of the tangle of footmarks.
“Well, I guess you are in the right about there having been a struggle here,” said the lawyer, “but we are not any nearer to knowing who engaged in it, what it was about, or anything else that might do us some good. I’m inclined to think——Bless my soul, boy, what’s the matter?”
Tom had flung himself forward with a joyous shout. His leap landed him on the edge of the thicket right alongside some object he had descried. He stooped swiftly and lifted it with a cry of triumph.
It was a square wooden box that the boy held up, and the keen-witted lawyer instantly guessed what it was.
“The model box!” he exclaimed.
“Yes! Hooray! We must be close on their tracks now.”
But oddly enough, as Tom with a flushed face set down the box and prepared to open it, the lawyer by no means seemed to share his satisfaction. It was incomprehensible to him that the men who had stolen the model would have thrown it away like that.
He was not surprised, therefore, when Tom, having opened the lid and peeped into the box, gave vent to a cry of chagrin.
It was perfectly empty.
“Just as I thought,” said the lawyer, rather grimly; “however, the finding of that box establishes one thing clearly enough.”
“And that is?”
“That those two rascals have been here. May be close to us now.”
Tom glanced about somewhat apprehensively. He recollected that, not so very long before—when they had left the machine on the wood road—the two rascals had been closer to them than they thought for. This might be the case now.
“I wish we had some sort of a posse at hand to make a thorough search of the woods,” he said.
“So do I,” was the rejoinder, “but you can depend upon it that those fellows are not lingering here since we arrived on the scene.”
It was at this moment that Tom made another discovery—a cap that lay in some bushes almost at his feet! He picked it up with a cry, having recognized it as the one that Mr. Peregrine had given to poor Ralph.
“They—they’ve had Ralph here with them, Mr. Bowler,” he exclaimed excitedly; “just look here. This is his cap—or rather one that was given him till he could get an outfit to replace his circus clothes. I wonder if it is possible that he——
“Hello! What’s that?”
“Sounds like a groan,” decided the lawyer, as, from the bushes that clustered against the bridge supports, the moaning sound came once more.
“That’s somebody in pain,” exclaimed Tom, shoving his way through the undergrowth that clothed the steep bank thickly.
“Be careful, my boy. You don’t know that this isn’t a trap,” cautioned the lawyer; “those men may be——”
He didn’t finish the sentence. A joyous cry from Tom cut it short. The boy had reached the edge of the creek, and in a clump of alders there he found something that made him utter a shrill cry of delight.
“What is it? What have you found?” demanded the lawyer, peering down.
“Why, I’ve found Ralph, Mr. Bowler. Poor lad, I’m afraid he’s hurt, though. Can you help me to get him up the bank?”
“Can I? Of course I can,” and the dignified lawyer plunged down to where Tom was standing. He found the boy stationed above the recumbent form of a small, frail boy, who was bleeding from a cut on the head. The lawyer made a swift examination of the wound and then told Tom to dip his handkerchief in the water of the creek, and when this had been done he bathed the wound carefully.
As the cold water touched him, Ralph, who had been moaning feebly, opened his eyes and seemed to be trying to speak.
“Not now, my lad,” ordered the lawyer, and then to Tom: “He is not badly hurt. I have examined him and no bones are broken.”
“But the cut on his head?”
“Nothing very serious. Now give me a hand and we’ll get him up the bank and into one of the machines. Then we’ll make as fast a run as possible for a doctor.”
Tom lost no time in carrying out the lawyer’s instructions, and by dint of scrambling and clambering, the two managed to get the wounded lad up the bank. This done, he was placed in the tonneau of the Flying Road Racer, and the two machines sped on once more.
Not more than half a mile further on they reached a village called Boonton. On inquiring, they were soon directed to a doctor’s house, and Ralph, who, after a brief period of consciousness, had again lapsed into insensibility, was placed in the physician’s hands for treatment. Tom was almost dying with anxiety to ask the lad some questions which might put him on the track of Jack, but the physician forbade his patient being bothered for the present.
“But I will allow you to talk to him this evening,” he said, and with this Tom and Mr. Bowler had to be satisfied. The physician, whose name was Tallman, had a sort of small private hospital in one wing of his house, and in a room in this Ralph was put to bed and made as comfortable as possible.
“The boy appears to have been half starved,” said the doctor, “and that has weakened his system so much that he cannot resist pain like a healthy person.”
Whereupon Tom related all he knew of Ralph’s story, not omitting to tell of the rough hands into which the boy had fallen the day before.
“What is his name?” asked the doctor.
“Ralph,” rejoined Tom, and was not slow to notice an odd look pass over the physician’s face. It seemed almost as if the name called up a familiar recollection to him.
“Do you know any one of that name?” asked Mr. Bowler, who, like Tom, had seen the interested expression of the medical man.
“I did once, many years ago,” was the reply, “but I have no idea that this lad can be any relative of his. After all, Ralph’s a common enough name.”