"You'll find out what it means before we are done with you," cried Tom, hotly. "More than likely it means state's prison for you."
"State's prison!" The man shrank back. "Why—er—I haven't done anything wrong."
"Oh, of course not!" returned Dick, sarcastically. "Abducting two young ladies isn't wrong I suppose!"
"I didn't abduct anybody," growled the man. "Somebody hired my car, that's all I know. Now the job is done, and I'm going about my business."
"Not just yet," said Dick, quietly but firmly. "Tell me, what have they done with the two young ladies?"
"That ain't my business," commenced the chauffeur, savagely. "You let me go, or I'll—— Oh!"
He stopped short and let out a yell of pain and fright. He had tried to push Dick out of his path. The oldest Rover boy had dropped the lantern and struck out fairly and squarely with his fist, and the blow had landed on the man's jaw, nearly taking him from his feet.
"Now behave yourself and come along!" cried Dick, and caught the man by the arm. "Don't let him escape!" he cried, to his brothers. "Use your sticks, and your pistols, too, if it is necessary."
The boys closed in, and the sight of the sticks and the pistols frightened the chauffeur greatly. He saw that he was trapped, and that resistance might put him in a worse hole.
"I didn't do it!" he whined, as the boys hurried him back towards the automobile. "I was hired for a certain job, that's all. The men said they had a right to carry the young ladies off—that one of 'em was the old man's stepdaughter, and that both of 'em had run away from a girls' school and wouldn't learn their lessons."