“Get out!” cried the farmer angrily, advancing toward them, with a threatening gesture.
“Don’t move, boys,” came the advice from Jerry. “We’ll have this thing out. Go call the professor, Bob,” for Mr. Snodgrass had been catching bugs in a field near where our heroes were working when Jerry decided to investigate the mystery of the barn.
“Look here! What does this mean?” blustered Mr. Rossmore, as Bob slipped out of the small door.
“It means just this,” went on Jerry, while another of the strange cries, though not so loud as the previous ones, echoed through the structure, “it means that you are concealing here two men who robbed the Harmolet National Bank of two hundred and ten thousand dollars, and carried it away in an airship! It means that Brown and Black—to give them the names they go under—are in that harness room, and it means that we have discovered them. It also means that we are going to cause their arrest, and that if you interfere with the course of justice you lay yourself liable to a charge of aiding criminals. That’s what it means!”
Jerry spoke with great firmness, and the attitude of himself and Ned was such that the farmer was cowed.
“Rob—robbers!” he stammered. “Two hundred and ten thousand dollars! Why that’s nonsense! Those men are not thieves.”
“What are they then?” asked Ned.
“One of them has been wrongly confined in a lunatic asylum,” went on the farmer. “He is Mr. Hendrix, and the other man is Mr. Clark, a friend of his. Mr. Clark managed to get his friend out of the asylum, and was taking him away in an airship. They got over my place and had an accident. They both fell from the airship into a tree, and were badly hurt. They appealed to me for help, and offered me a large sum if I would conceal them, so that they would not be captured by the asylum authorities. The asylum people want to keep Mr. Hendrix in their possession so they can get his valuable property, but his friend is trying to prevent this. That is why I am concealing them, and why I did not want you to go near the barn. I deceived you, I admit, but I cannot believe that they are robbers. If I had known that they were——”
“Suppose you come in that room with us, and let us ask them a few questions, about the box of strange tools they carried on their airship,” suggested Jerry. “I think that will convince you.”