“No, we will take you back in the morning to Boston and have the best surgeons there do it.”
So the matter was arranged. However, knowing the peculiarity of the Hermit, as they still thought of him, Garry and Phil alternated in keeping watch that night. They figured that his talk with Mr. Boone might have been during a particularly lucid moment, and that the old trouble would come back on him, and he would disappear as he had done on so many other occasions.
However, nothing happened, and the next morning Mr. Boone took him to Chester to board the train that would eventually take them to Boston. It was agreed that Dick should not be told of the visit of the hermit, and that the matter should be kept a secret to be sprung on him after the operation.
“And believe me, Nate and Phil,” declared Garry, “Dick will be the happiest boy in the world, when he learns he has found his father.”
CHAPTER XV
CONCLUSION
LeBlanc stood there facing the astonished Dick, and a cruel leer spread over his face. He reached for a knife that stuck in his belt, and said softly in a whisper, as sibilant and venomous as the hissing of a snake:
“Ah, mon ami, we meet again. The last time.”
Long after that, Dick used to ask himself how it was that he managed to capture the halfbreed. The only solution that he could find was that he had acted solely on pure instinct.
As we know, Dick had been rummaging through the cupboard when he heard the singer approach. In his hand he still held a large can of tomatoes which he had contemplated opening.
He saw LeBlanc’s leering grin, then quick as a flash and straight as a die, he cast the heavy can straight at the halfbreed’s face.