“Now, Slade,” resumed Ned, and the laugh was gone from his face and also from his voice, “you may as well tell us the whole truth. Let’s begin at the beginning. Who sent you out here?”
“Latrobe,” admitted Slade. “I’ve got a job with him over across the lake in Canada.”
“And your job was to scare us away from this house?”
“Yeah, that was it,” acknowledged Slade.
“Why did Latrobe want to get rid of us?” persisted Ned.
Slade shrugged his heavy shoulders and moistened his lips. “Latrobe doesn’t give his reasons for what he wants,” he muttered.
“How did you manage to appear and disappear so quickly?” demanded Rogers. “Where were you hiding?”
“Oh, I was laying out in the brush,” replied Slade, who seemed more ready to answer when the questions concerned himself instead of his employer.
“No, you were not!” exclaimed Dick, hotly. “You’ve got some hole close to the house! Now where is it?”
“If you knew that you’d soon learn a whole lot more,” was the sneering reply.