The dog was rebuffed, but not discouraged. Carl had gained a few valuable seconds, and he grabbed at a vine that covered the wall and climbed frantically upward. He heard a growl below him as he ascended, and felt a shock as the savage teeth closed in his trousers. The dog was heavy, his jaws were as strong as a steel trap, and as Carl hung wildly to the vine he knew that something would have to give way or else that he would be captured. It was with a feeling of joy, therefore, that he heard a tearing sound and experienced a sudden relief from his enforced burden. The next moment he was over the wall and floundering about in a thorny rosebush covered with beautiful blossoms. But the beautiful blossoms did not make so deep an impression on Carl as did the thorns.
As he rolled out of the bushes his language was intense and earnest; and when he got up in a cleared stretch of ground he felt a sudden coolness below the waist line that informed him fully of his predicament. He had left an important part of his apparel in the next yard.
“Vat luck!” he muttered. “Vat a laff Bob und Dick vill gif me! Vell, I can’t go pack py der hotel like dis! Vat shall I do?”
He paused to shake his fist in the direction of the yard he had just left. All was silent on the other side, and the man and the dog, Carl reasoned, must have gone back where they belonged.
A survey of the situation in the moonlight showed Carl another bungalow. It was not so pretentious as the house in the next inclosure, but its walls were as brightly whitewashed and the building stood out clearly against its background of shrubbery. The windows of the house were dark. But this was to be expected, as the hour was past midnight. The noise which Carl had made had not seemed to disturb the inmates.
“If I had der nerf,” thought Carl, “I vould go dere und ask der beople for somet’ing to fix my pants. But meppy I vouldt get soaked mit some more vater, und meppy dere is anodder tog. No, I vill go pack py der hodel und led Bob und Dick laff as mooch as dey vill.”
But luck was still against Carl; or, perhaps, in the inscrutable way whereby fate occasionally works in order to secure the greatest good for the greatest number, he was merely encountering obstacles in order to gain knowledge of a plot that had been leveled against Bob Steele.
Carl found a tall iron gate, set into the high front wall as snugly as a door in its casing. But the gate was locked. More than that, the wall could not be scaled, for there were no vines or near-by trees to offer a lift upward.
Carefully he made his way around all four sides of the inclosure, only to be balked at every point. Then he hunted for a ladder, a box, or some other movable thing on which he could stand while getting over the wall, but his search was fruitless.
“Vell,” he muttered, again moving toward the house, “I vill haf to shpeak mit somepody in der place und dry und ged oudt. I don’d vant to shday here undil morning.”