He walked on, wholly oblivious to the fact that Mr. Martin Mudd, with rubbers on his feet, was stealing after him, staring forward with gleaming eyes.
What prompted Dick to turn suddenly and look behind him just before he reached the next corner?
Surely there must have been some good angel watching over the boy, for there was the man close behind him with the very knife the “lusher” had dropped clutched in his hand.
“Now I’ve got you, Dick Darrell!” he hissed, and he made a desperate lunge at the boy, who dodged the stroke just in time.
Martin Mudd did not attempt to repeat it. With a sharp cry he turned and ran like a deer.
Dick shouted after him and followed back along the block, but the man turned the corner first and when Dick got around he had disappeared.
And that was the end of the adventure.
Deeply puzzled over the mysterious affair which he could only attribute to insanity on the part of the man with the muddy name, Dick went home and was soon in bed, where he lay tossing wide awake until morning.
It was the tone in which Martin Mudd had spoken his name and the start he had given when Dick first introduced himself that bothered the boy.
“He certainly seemed to know me,” Dick said to himself a hundred times. “What can it all mean?”