Mr. Fenton finished the sentence for him. "Would have caused Dick to vanish?" he said. "I don't know, Harry. Your guess is as good as mine. Probably it's some very simple circumstance which we're not bright enough to see. But I confess I'm puzzled. I shall go down to the village directly after breakfast, and see what I can discover there. But I've no doubt everything's all right. McDonald and Dick must be together, wherever they are."
Allen paused, with his hand on the knob of the door. "Shall I tell the fellows, sir?" he asked.
Mr. Fenton deliberated. "I think not," he said at last. "We don't wish a tempest in a teapot. You know what the newspapers are, these days. No, I think you'd better say nothing, for the present. Perhaps Dick will turn up at Hopevale, if he doesn't come back here before then. No, I think, on the whole, I wouldn't alarm the boys," and Allen, nodding, left the room.
At the selfsame hour that this conversation was taking place at the school, Dick Randall sat moodily in a chair, in what had been the harness-room of Jim Smith's big barn, now long disused, and falling to decay. The gag had been taken from his mouth, but his arms and legs were still bound. Opposite him sat his captor, the brawny thick-set man whom Joe had seen in the woods on the previous night. He had coaxed a fire into an unwilling start in the old, rusty stove, and was laboring hard to produce a dish of coffee in an old tin dipper. A couple of sandwiches lay on the floor beside him. Finally, with the fire going to his satisfaction, he turned to Dick. "Well, now," he observed, "I call this doing pretty well. Real nice and sociable like. Two regular old pals, we're getting to be. You've promised not to holler, which is sensible, because no one would hear you if you did, so you've got your jaws free to eat; and if you'd only promise not to try to get away, I'd untie them arms of yours, and you'd be as fine as a fiddle. Come now, give me your word, and I'll cut that rope in a minute. That shows what a trust I've got in you."
Dick made no answer. His face was drawn and anxious, there were dark circles under his eyes; he was thinking desperately, as he had thought all through the long summer night. Some means of escape he must find--and yet--how was it possible? And then, even as he recklessly considered the giving and breaking of his word, and the chance of a struggle with his jailer, the man pulled his watch from his pocket, and yawned.
"Ten minutes past eight," he said. "Just a little longer, and them games will be going on, over at Hopevale. Too bad you can't see 'em; I guess they'll be a fine sight. They tell me this Dave Ellis is a likely man at all such things as that. I suppose most likely he'll beat."
Dick did not deign a reply. In their long, solitary sojourn together, he had become accustomed to his captor's ideas of humor. So that now, he did not even permit his eyes to meet those of his tormentor, but gazed steadily past him, toward the door of the carriage house. "Ten minutes past eight," he reflected; "it is too late--nothing could help me now."
And then, like lightning from a clear sky, came the climax to all this startling series of events. For even as he looked, slowly and cautiously he beheld the door of the harness-room slide back, and the next instant there appeared in the doorway the figure of Duncan McDonald, a revolver in his outstretched hand.
The look of amazement in Dick's eyes must have warned his jailer, for he wheeled sharply, to find himself looking into the muzzle of McDonald's pistol. Then came the quick command, "Hands up, lively," and as he reluctantly obeyed, McDonald called sharply, "All right, Joe. Come on. Go through his pockets, now."
