“I knew you’d be waiting for me!” he said, starting the machine.
“And I knew that you would come, even though the men at the wreck told me you couldn’t. You always do the things that other men can’t do, or are too timid to do, and I knew it would be so this time.”
“It was very simple,” Frank answered. “There were some empty flat cars on the New London siding. I climbed upon these, took a good run along them as if I was going at a hurdle when the wrecking-train came along, and jumped from them to a flat car of the train. It was a lively jump, but I made it. The conductor didn’t want me there, and said I oughtn’t to be there, and some other things, but he was in too big a hurry to stop and put me off, as I knew he would be, and I came right through at a double quick, without further trouble.”
He gave the lever a touch and sent the automobile forward at its highest speed.
“Father?” he questioned simply.
“I’m sure that Santenel is with him! I shouldn’t have thought anything about it, if you hadn’t told me that awful story of the Hindu. I saw this man, and some way I was sure he was the Hindu, for you’ll recollect that I saw the Hindu at the charity fair. Well, I followed him along Chapel Street, saw him enter the New Haven House, and heard him ask to have his card taken up to Charles Conrad Merriwell! Perhaps I was a bit bold in following him into the New Haven House, but I thought it a thing I ought to do, and there was no time to get any one else to do it.
“Before venturing to send you the telegram I hired a boy on the street to go again to the New Haven House and ask the proprietor if Mr. Merriwell could be seen, and he came back and said that Mr. Merriwell was busily engaged and was to be seen by no one. Then I sent you the telegram, and as soon as I got your answer I started for this point with your automobile.”
For a time there was nothing heard but the br-r-r-r-r of the automobile, as it took the straight road before it like a racer under Frank’s manipulation. He had an inner feeling that Inza’s keen eyes had seen and perceived the truth, and that his father was in the greatest peril of his life.
The feeling that makes a cat love to toy with a mouse which is helpless in its power and half-unconscious filled the soul of Dion Santenel.