Helpless, the little quartette of schoolboys faced the grinning Tiger, who was clearly enjoying his victory to the full.
"Thought you were clever, eh?" asked Tiger, in a sneering voice. "You're a lot of fools, that's all, and you've put your foot in it this time, let me tell you." He turned to Billy. "Well, my young spark, is the chap that hid the Star among this lot?"
"He is," returned Jack quietly. "Look here, my good fellow, we're sick and tired of hanging on to the rotten old Star. You've got us beaten now, haven't you? If I promise to bring the Star right back with me, you won't harm me or my friends here?"
"No," said Tiger, shortly. "Provided you stick to your part of the bargain."
Jack was very much at his ease by now, but he was thinking with lightning rapidity, and trying to remember something that the old gentleman had told him on the night of the boxing in Windsor about this very Humbolt. Ah, he had it!
"Yes," he pursued, shivering, "this place gives me the creeps, and I wish we'd never had anything to do with the Star. Why, we nearly got bitten by a snake coming up here—"
"What!" said Humbolt, sharply.
"Yes, a great big black snake, and it ran into that crack you're standing on now. A whopper, it was—"
Jack had staked everything on that throw. He had remembered in time what he had been told about "Jim Camp's peculiar horror of snakes," and desperately he brought the subject into the conversation.
It was amazingly successful. At the first mention of snakes, Humbolt had looked distinctly uneasy. But when Jack added that the reptile had sought refuge in the ground at his feet, the outwitted man could not resist a long, searching glance at the fissure referred to.