“Very well, come with me,” answered the manufacturer, and led the way to a little side-room, used by the salesmen for exhibiting wares to possible customers.
“I want to tell you all about something that happened early in the winter, while I was at Oak Hall,” said Dave. And then he told of how he had called on the fake doctor, Hooker Montgomery, and how he had been attacked from behind and made a prisoner, and carried off to a house in the woods, the particulars of which have already been set down in “Dave Porter and His Rivals.”
“The fellows who carried me off were the doctor and the driver, who was only a tool, and two fellows who have caused me a lot of trouble in the past, Nick Jasniff and Link Merwell,” went on our hero. “When I got away I tried to follow up Jasniff and Merwell, but they got away from me, and so did the driver get away. But one day I found Hooker Montgomery, and by threatening to have him arrested I made him confess to the truth, which was that Jasniff and Merwell had hired him to help get me in their power. At first they told Montgomery it was only a schoolboy trick, and he said he believed them, but, later on, it leaked out that Jasniff and Merwell had another motive in making me a prisoner.”
“And that motive——?” began Oliver Wadsworth, with deep interest.
“Doctor Montgomery said that Jasniff and Merwell had in mind to drug me and take me to some place a good distance from Oak Hall. He said he also heard them speak of robbing a jewelry works, and I was to be drugged and left in the factory,—to make it appear as if I had done the deed and as if the blowing up of a safe had stunned me.”
“Dave, is this possible!” exclaimed the manufacturer.
“It is true, Mr. Wadsworth,” said Phil. “I was along and so was Roger at the time. Montgomery couldn’t give many details, but he said he thought Jasniff and Merwell were cold-blooded villains and he wanted nothing more to do with them.”
“This looks as if those rascals, Jasniff and Merwell, had come here.”
“I believe they did come,” went on Dave. “And here is one clew we have already picked up against them.” And he held up the empty cigarette box.
“What is that? Only a cigarette box. How can that be a clew?”