"No, that he might go out of his mind. Oh, Dick, wouldn't that be awful!" and Sam's voice showed his distress.
"You mean that he might go—go insane, or something like that?"
"Yes,—not for always, you understand, but temporarily."
"Well, all they can do is to watch him, Sam. And you keep close by, in case anything more happens," added Dick, and then told his brother of what had been done in the metropolis towards straightening out the business tangle.
Mr. Powell was to see some people in Brooklyn regarding the land deal in which Anderson Rover held an interest, and he had asked Dick to meet him in that borough at four o'clock. At three o'clock Dick left the Outlook Hotel to keep the engagement.
"You had better stay here until I get back, in case any word comes in about Tom," said he to his father.
"Very well, Dick; I shall be glad of the rest," replied Anderson Rover.
He had already given the particulars of how he had been kidnapped while on his way to meet Japson. The broker had come up accompanied by the disguised Crabtree, and he had been forced into a taxicab and a sponge saturated with chloroform had been held to his nose. He had become unconscious, and while in that condition had been taken to some house up in Harlem. From there he had been transferred to the Ellen Rodney on the evening before the boys had discovered his whereabouts.
"They treated me very harshly," Mr. Rover had said. "Mr. Crabtree was particularly mean."
"Well, he is suffering for it," Dick had answered. "Sam telephoned that his leg was in very bad shape and the doctors thought he would be a cripple for life."