“How too late, Ben?” inquired Tom.
“Harry was gone.”
“Then he had been there?”
“We found that out all right. Twelve hours earlier, and we would have reached him. There were two kidnappers, all right, and one of them answered the description of the fellow you noticed spying on Harry the day he was in swimming with the boys.”
“Were they holding Harry a prisoner?”
“A safe and sound one. The men had been circus peddlers once. They took Harry to an open, roofless canvas where a lot of truck was stored. It seems that an old friend of theirs had charge of it. From all your father could get this man to say, Brady and Casey—those are the names of Tom’s kidnappers—made him believe he was a bad runaway boy they were authorized and paid for to return to his friends. I don’t believe that myself. I think the three men were in cahoots, and that the circus tender was in on the scheme, whatever it is. Anyhow, in the roofless tent was a lion’s cage. Its occupant had died a few days before Harry’s arrival. It was a safe place to shut the lad in, and they did it. They sort of partitioned the cage off by itself, and kept close watch on Harry, so he wouldn’t raise a rumpus. Brady was away for two days, I found out, so their plot was working.”
“And what about the toy balloons?” inquired Tom.
“Why, the way I got it was that one of the circus peddlers who had a lot of them for sale, kept his surplus stock in the storage tent. In some way Harry must have been struck with the idea of using them as messengers to tell of his captivity. Anyhow, he managed to reach them with a stick or string, or in some ingenious way, and had all night to equip them with the cards. Brady and Casey let Harry out of the cage, and took him away in an automobile night before last.”
“You couldn’t find out their destination?”
“The circus keeper declared that he didn’t know. Your father inquired around of others, though, and from what he heard he thinks they were headed for Springville. We weren’t sure. We decided that Harry would be kept in closer hiding than ever, and we sort of got discouraged and gave it up.”