Reconnoitering from the corner, Bob watched the departing back of his companion, enviously at first. Just his luck, he thought somewhat bitterly, to be left out of the fun. He recalled his words earlier uttered to Frank and Jack to the effect that no adventures ever were going to happen to him again. Well, wasn’t this proving the truth of his prophecy, he argued? Here he was, led up to a possible adventure, and then left standing safely, out of all possibility of becoming involved in it himself.
Then he grinned to himself as he noticed Captain Cornell swinging farther along the silent, deserted street. Probably, after all, nothing was going to happen to him, either. It certainly looked as if that house of mystery, with the midnight blue car at the door, was incapable of producing adventure. Captain Cornell would have his walk for nothing. He’d just swing around the block and come back to where Bob was standing, and have his pains for nothing.
Bob grinned as he shifted weight on the other foot, and sought a new resting place for his shoulder against the ’dobe wall of the little house against which he was leaning. It was a sour grin. After coming this far, after running off with somebody else’s car, Bob wanted something to happen. Nevertheless, nothing was going to happen. Of that now he became convinced. It took Captain Cornell an interminably long time to reach the house of mystery. But now at last he was abreast of it. Bob peering forth contracted his brows in a frown of disappointment. He didn’t want any harm to come to his companion, of course. Just the same, he did have the feeling of having been cheated by fate. There was Captain Cornell sauntering leisurely by the house into which Ramirez had disappeared, glancing casually at the car of midnight blue and pausing a moment to examine it.
Bob paid due tribute to that bit of acting. “Just what a fellow strolling by might be expected to do,” he told himself. “Naturally, when he sees a handsome car like that, all by itself, out here in the ‘Sticks,’ he’ll give it a glance.”
Then two men came out of the house. The figure of one was unfamiliar. The other, however, Bob made sure, despite the distance intervening, was Ramirez. Captain Cornell straightened up at the sound of footsteps behind him.
Bob held his breath. No, they were merely going to climb into the car, it appeared. And the doughty flyer was saying something to them. Doubtless, a word of apology for examining the car. All three stood in a little group. Ramirez and Captain Cornell seemed to be engaged in conversation.
Suddenly, so swiftly that for the moment Bob was left stunned and breathless, the other of the precious pair who was slightly in the rear of the American flyer hit him on the head with some small object. Captain Cornell did not even scream. Instead, he fell forward stricken into the waiting arms of Ramirez, and the latter and his companion started dragging him up the steps.
At that Bob’s wits returned in a measure and, darting away from the corner as if hurled from a bow, he shot forward at arrow-like speed. He uttered no sound, his feet made no noise on the dirt sidewalk that could be heard far down the block. And Ramirez and his companion did not look toward him.
But before he had gone a hundred feet, the two men dragging the insensible form of the American flyer disappeared within the house.
Bob groaned and pulled up short. To dash on and beat at the doors of that sinister house, unarmed and alone, would be nothing less than madness. It was the thing which he felt like doing, but good sense warned against it.