At one corner of the glowing open grate was another chair, and Dick sat down in this.
“A cool night, sir,” he observed, by way of being sociable.
The man did not stir. Evidently he was quite sound asleep.
Dick took from his pocket a tourist’s map and began examining it. The old professor had stated that in a few days they would leave England for warmer countries to the south, but their exact route had not yet been decided on.
For ten minutes or more Dick studied the map closely, becoming quite absorbed in it. At last, although he had not heard a sound or observed a movement on the part of his companion, he was led to glance up quickly, feeling himself attracted by something.
The man in the easy-chair had permitted the newspaper to slip down just enough for him to peer over the upper edge of it.
Merriwell found himself looking straight into a pair of dark, magnetic eyes, which were fixed on him with a steady, intent gaze. As those eyes met Dick’s they did not waver or blink in the least, and thus the two sat perfectly still, Dick holding the map and having his head partly lifted, gazing at each other unwaveringly and in stony silence.
Almost instantly Dick knew he had seen those eyes before. There was something familiar about them. They gave the boy at first a queer, uncanny sensation, and something like a chill, followed by a tingling flush of heat, passed over him.
A sense of danger came to Dick Merriwell. He seemed to feel the influence of a strange, subtle power. Directly he realized that this unknown power emanated from those piercing dark eyes, and it seemed that in his ear his guardian genius whispered an anxious warning.
Immediately the boy roused himself and brought his own firm will to the task of combating the influence whose touch he had so distinctly felt. Summoning his spirit of resistance to the contest, he continued to watch the eyes revealed above the edge of the newspaper.