"I'll learn you," growled the other, "not to keep on banging around me when I don't want you!"
"Do you happen to have any idea," Dick persisted coolly, "that your name is probably Page, and that you undoubtedly have a very rich father, who is trying to find you?"
"Where did you read that fairy tale?" sneered the prowler.
"Partly on your skin to-day," Dick rejoined, "when I came upon you as you were dressing near that pool."
"Stop kidding me!" commanded the other sternly. "And now back to you cosy little bed for you! Fade! Vanish! If you don't then you'll soon wish you had!"
But Dick held his ground, despite the very evident sincerity of the other's threat, and gazed unflinchingly back at the prowler.
"Let me tell you," Dick went on. "Of course I cannot be positive, but there is a missing heir who has, on his chest and one shoulderblade just such marks as I saw on you to-day when you were sitting by the pool putting on your shirt?"
"Oh, forget that thrilling stuff!" jeered the other. "Don't you suppose I know who my father is? Old Bill Mosher hasn't suddenly grown rich. How could Bill get rich when he is in jail for drunkenness?"
"So you think your name is Mosher?" pursued Prescott.
"I know it is," replied the prowler harshly. "And, around this neck of the woods a fellow couldn't have a harder, tougher name than Mosher."