His eyes glittered strangely as he watched the Yale man with an eager, furtive look. Something more than mere curiosity seemed to be beneath the question.
“You wouldn’t leave without the coin,” Archie answered. “There’s no way out of here but by the path through the woods, and I was sure you couldn’t make it before I got back from the village. Besides, I asked Merriwell to get you out shooting with them this morning so as to prevent your doing anything while I was gone. I didn’t tell the boys about it because I wanted to clear Jim myself. I didn’t want anybody else to have a hand in it, and they haven’t. No one else knows yet, Jellison; but they will mighty quick.”
“I think not!” snarled the older man ferociously.
With a lightninglike motion of his arm, his right hand slid into a hip pocket and flashed out again, gripping a very serviceable-looking revolver.
“I think not!” he repeated triumphantly.
McCormick’s face paled a little as he gazed straight into the steady barrel of the weapon. But, though his face remained unmoved, his heart sank within him. What an idiot he had been not to prepare for this! Somehow, the idea that Jellison would be armed had never entered his head. He was so much superior, physically, to the older man that his ability to capture him had seemed a thing beyond question.
“You fool!” sneered Jellison. “Did you think I’d let myself be pinched by a kid like you?”
Archie smiled rather wryly.
“I was careless, I admit,” he acknowledged. “But I don’t see that you’re out of the woods yet. What are you going to do about it, now that you have got the drop on me?”
Jellison did not answer at once. As he stood thinking, a little of the triumph died out of his face and his forehead crinkled with a network of worried wrinkles.