A momentary gleam of fear appeared in the man’s eyes, but he made haste to answer:
“’Course not; ain’t no womenkind of any sort around here. This is Mr. Green’s house.”
Both Garry and Phil could see the man was lying, and knew that their guess was correct. Either Ruth was in the house, or this tramp knew something about her.
“Come on now, come through. You know the girl I mean. Where is she? Phil, keep your rifle on this fellow, and if he makes a move while I go through the house, blow him up,” ordered Garry.
“Say, listen. What do I get if I put you fellows wise to all this?” demanded the tramp. “And how do you chaps know anything about me? Not that I’m admittin’ anything you said about me.”
“We know you all right. We helped catch you in our cottage down Portland way early this summer,” said Garry.
The tramp peered at Garry closely. Then he spat out an oath.
“I thought I knew you when I saw you the other day. Guess you’ve got me right. Well, you haven’t told me what I get if I tell you about the girl.”
“You’ll get nothing in the way of being let loose, if that’s what you’re driving at,” answered Garry. “And if you don’t tell us what you know you will come in for a few years extra on a charge of abduction. I’ll do this though. You tell us what you know and we’ll put it in on our report and that will get you out of this scrape.”
The tramp thought this over for a moment, and then appeared to decide that the jig was up and he might as well save himself at the expense of his pals.