But as the launch grated against the wharf he pulled himself together by a great effort and looked with wild eyes at the crowd.
The blood which had seemed to be congealed round his heart rushed back in a hot wave.
Inza Burrage stood in the forefront of the crowd, alive, well, unharmed!
The last plot of Dion Santenel had been extremely desperate—such a plot as the brains of a madman alone could devise.
Bert Dashleigh had come near revealing it when he blundered into that house on Whitney Avenue and beheld the youth disguised as a girl and made up to look like Inza.
Santenel had carried Inza in the sleigh from Lake Whitney into the city; but, having choked her into insensibility, he dropped her out in an alley, at which point the youth dressed to resemble her took her place in the sleigh. It had been Santenel, disguised as Amos Belton, and this youth whom Merriwell chased through the city streets.
Without doubt the disguised youth concealed himself somewhere in the darkness of the old buildings on the wharf.
Santenel’s plot was no doubt murderous, inspired by feelings of baffled hate and a desire for revenge.
Three days afterward a body identified as his floated to the wharf where the launch had laid, and was found there by a boatman.