CHAPTER XVI
KIDNAPPED AGAIN
As Stone surmised, Iris was kidnapped again. When she leaned down to gather in her arms the little, yelping dog, a figure sprang from the shrubbery, and pressing a cloth into and over her mouth a man lifted her from the ground and carried her swiftly away.
Iris was a slender girl and the man had no difficulty in carrying her to a small motor car, which was waiting out in the main road. The dusk rendered them nearly invisible, and the detention of Stone by Lucille precluded what might have been a capture of the invader.
Placed in the car, Iris recognized at once that it was the same one in which she had been carried off before, and she well knew it was for the same purpose—to get possession of the pin.
But now that Stone had told her it was valuable, she had no mind to let it go easily. She sat quietly, as the car flew along, thinking hard what she would better do. She knew Stone would follow and rescue her if he had heard any signs of her departure. But the car made little noise, and the whole affair had been so quickly accomplished that Iris feared Stone knew nothing of it all. She assumed that he would naturally follow her out-of-doors, to learn what had happened to her pet dog, but he might not hasten on that errand, and a delay of a minute would make his advent of small use to her.
They had gone a mile or so, when the car turned into a little used path through the woods. Another man was driving the car, and her captor sat in the back with Iris. He still held her and kept the cloth, which smelled faintly of chloroform, over her mouth.
At last, when well into the woods, the car stopped, and the man got out, and ordered Iris to get out, too.
Her mind was made up now; she meant secretly to draw the pin from her belt, and drop it on the ground. It was running a risk of losing it, but it was a worse risk to have this man take it from her, and, too, after Fibsy's successful search of the coal bin, she felt pretty sure the boy could find the pin in the woods. She was carefully noting the trees and stones about, when the low voice of her tormentor said, "You will hand that pin over at once, if you please."
"I'll do no such thing," Iris retorted with spirit. "I am not afraid of you."