CHAPTER VII
DOCK GOES FROM BAD TO WORSE
Just at that instant, as luck would have it, a vagrant gust of wind, perhaps an advance courier of the prospective storm, swooped down across the road. Before the boy who was stooping over could touch the paper that had attracted his attention it was whisked suddenly away.
He made an ineffectual effort to seize upon it in the air, but missed it and had to stand there, while the paper floated far out over the river, to fall finally on the moving current.
Carl quivered with another feeling besides anxiety and suspense; keen disappointment was wringing his heart cruelly. Just when their clever little plot seemed on the point of working, a freak of fate had dashed his hopes to the ground.
He had the greatest difficulty in suppressing the cry that tried to bubble from between his lips. Even Tom must have felt bitterly chagrinned when he saw the paper go swirling off, without having had a chance to test its ability to deceive Dock Phillips, and perhaps lead him into confessing his guilt.
The grocer’s boy was now walking on again. Of course he knew nothing about the character of the elusive paper, save that it had played him a little trick. They could hear him whistling again in his loud way as though he had already forgotten the circumstance.
“Hang the luck!” complained Carl, when he felt that it was safe to let a little of the compressed steam escape through the safety valve of his voice.
“That was a rough deal, all right,” admitted Tom. “Who would have dreamed such a blast could sweep down and take that paper off? Too bad you had all your work for nothing, Carl.”