“Don Mercer, sir. I’m a fourth class man, and we’ve been greatly concerned about your absence at the school. Have you been right here all along, Colonel Morrell?”
“Every bit of the time,” nodded the stout colonel. “Clever piece of business, wasn’t it, that of hiding me where no one would have thought of looking for me?”
“It certainly was,” Don agreed. “Shall we try and make a dash for it, Colonel Morrell?”
But the colonel shook his head, running his hand through his thick gray hair. “I’m afraid it is no use, my boy. That old man’s never left alone, and we would waste time by trying it. Let’s think up a better plan. Have you had anything to eat?”
“No,” said Don.
The colonel hurried to the center table and opened a drawer, from which he took a sandwich wrapped in paper. “Here is a sandwich that was left over from my supper,” he said, handing it to Don. “Sit down here and eat it while I talk to you.”
Don sat down in the arm chair and gratefully ate the sandwich. The colonel seated himself on the arm of the chair.
“Of course all you boys wondered what had become of me,” he began. “I’ll tell you the whole story. Some years ago I was in business with Major Tireson and a man named Morton Dennings. I never cared for Dennings, who was a close friend of the major’s, but we got along fairly well and things went smoothly. We all bought shares in some mines in the west in those early days, but they turned out to be worthless and I filed my papers away. I didn’t think anything more about them until this summer, when Major Tireson called on me and asked me to sell him my share in the mine.
“As I had thought the mine absolutely worthless I naturally wanted to know why he was so anxious to buy, and he told me that he and his partner wanted to hold the land for future speculation. I knew that there was some flaw in the story somewhere and refused to sell to him, although he did get pretty warm about it. I determined to have the place looked up and reported upon, but I let the summer slip by without attending to it, and so I lost a valuable opportunity.
“I had wired Tireson the date of my arrival here and he put his plans together well, the scoundrel! I was just about to board a train at my home town when a messenger boy ran up to me and gave me a brief note. It was from Tireson, asking me to stop off at Spotville Point and see this man Dennings, who lives there. So I dropped off the train at that town and went up to the home of Morton Dennings. He entertained me all evening, and just before I was ready to go to bed late in the night I heard an automobile drive alongside the house. Dennings and two men promptly seized me and told me that I would be kept a prisoner until I turned over my share in the mine to Tireson and himself. I told him that I would be a prisoner forever before I would do that. They took me out of the house and to my surprise brought me here, where I found these quarters fitted up for me.”