He had to fight to get out the words. It was his last chance! To his joy, the driver nodded, swung open the rear door of the big car.
“Hop in!” came a man’s jovial voice from the back seat. Rufe was still coming, but he was no runner, and the fence-climbing had winded him. There was still time—— Jerry Utway almost fell into the back of the car, sprawling across a pair of outstretched legs. The driver slammed the door; the car, whose engine had not stopped, responded to the clutch and slipped forward with a roar. Jerry pulled himself together and fell backward into a seat, panting out his thanks. He looked up into the round, jolly face of the man on his left who had told him to hop in. He was wedged between this man and another, in the rear of the car. He turned his head back; through the window he could see the baffled figure of Rufe, shaking his fist at the rapidly-moving automobile. Jerry grinned.
He suddenly realized that he had left his mackinaw somewhere—probably back in the grocery store, when he had walked out so hastily. Well, he could get it back some time, later—— Just now he had a headache, and things looked a little blurred.
A voice rumbled at his side—his right side. It was the man whose face he had not yet seen. “You were in quite a bit of a hurry back there, weren’t you?” it drawled. “Well, you needn’t worry. You can rest now—rest a long, long time. I thought you’d turn up again, twin, but I didn’t expect it so soon!”
Jerry knew that voice. He knew the man, too, even before he looked into his face. With a cry, Jerry sank back into the seat of the speeding car. It was Diker! Diker, the prison guard! The man in blue, whom he had last seen at the campfire on Pebble Beach! And Diker’s arm was locked about his own, in a firm, threatening grip!
CHAPTER XVIII
THE GYPSY VAN
Jake jumped ashore; Burk followed, and pushed the canoe far out, so that it floated empty on the face of Lake Wallis.
Never had Jake Utway taken a paddle in such a wild canoe race! It was impossible that the two fugitives should still be at liberty. The boy had given up hope long before they had reached the lake and taken the canoe; their furious progress across the half-mile of water had seemed the despairing effort of a dream; but here they were, miraculously ashore again, and for the moment still free. Yet the dream feeling still persisted; Jake moved his body as if he were wrapped in the twining coils of a nightmare, when horrors beset the sleeper and all efforts to escape the menacing shapes in pursuit are of no avail.
“Tired, partner?” asked Burk. The man seemed to be made of whipcord; he had taken the stern paddle in their mad dash, yet his set face showed no trace of anything but determination.
“I can keep going,” Jake managed to say.