“Well, there is nerve for you!” muttered Lib Benson. “Open the door and let the fellow out. It’s no use to fool longer with him.”
“Wait,” directed Frank. “It’s mighty queer he is singing. Bring a light.”
Somebody placed a lighted lamp in Frank’s hand. He started to open the door. As he did so, a sudden burst of laughter came from within the room, stopping him with his hand uplifted, and causing a chill to run along his spine.
The students looked from one to another. Their faces were a study just then. It is certain that the most of them appeared rather frightened.
Frank dreaded to open the door, but he did so after a moment, and stepped into the room with the light, while several of the others crowded after him.
The sight that met their gaze was startling and terrible in the extreme. At the farther end of the small room stood the skeleton, and just before the fleshless thing crouched Jack Ready. But the person crouching there did not much resemble the gay and careless freshman Frank Merriwell had kidnaped from his boarding-house that very evening. His coat and vest had been ripped off and flung aside. The collar of his shirt was torn open, and his hair seemed to bristle. His eyes protruded from their sockets, while his features were contorted in a frightful manner, and there was a froth upon his lips. This frightful apparition flung up one hand and pointed at the horrified students in the doorway, literally shrieking:
“There they are! The fiends have come for me! Ha! ha! ha! They have come to drag me down, down, down!”
“Boys,” said Frank Merriwell, his voice far from steady, “we have driven the poor fellow mad!”