“I suppose I’ll have to face the music in the end,” he thought, with a long sigh. “Oh, what a downright fool I was, to be taken in so easily! If the other fellows hear of it how they will laugh at me!”
When Professor Strong arrived in the evening he saw at once that something out of the ordinary had occurred. Hockley sat in his room, his head tied up in a towel.
“What is the matter, Hockley?” he asked.
“I’ve had bad luck, sir,” whined the youth. “Awfully bad luck.”
“Why, how is that?”
“I fell in with that Dan Markel, sir—after I had left those friends I mentioned in the note. Markel is a villain. He induced me to go off with him last night, and then he drugged and robbed me.”
“Is it possible! I did not like the looks of the man when first we met on the steamer. But I thought we left him behind at Curaçao.”
“He came on after us. He was a sly one, I can tell you, sir. You know I said I wanted to see the lumber yards, so that I could write to my father and tell him how business was carried on here. Well, he said he knew all about them and would show me around. So I went with him after my friends sailed and instead of showing me around he took me to some kind of a hotel. I had some cocoa and it was drugged and after that I didn’t know a thing until I woke up at the Hotel Ziroda and found my watch and money gone. And what was worse the villain had sent for my valise and robbed that too.”
This mixture of truth and falsehood was told very adroitly, and Professor Strong could not but believe the tale. He hurried to the other hotel and interviewed the proprietor, and then notified the police of what had occurred. An alarm was sent out and a hunt made for Dan Markel, but the man from Baltimore could not be found.
Professor Strong wished to know something about the friends Hockley had met, but the youth pretended to be too sick to talk. He had been clever enough to look over the sailings in the newspaper and said they had gone on the Desdemona to Rio Janeiro, and were going from that port to Philadelphia.