The taunt told, for the stranger’s eyes gleamed with malice.
“Ah, in good Honduras!” he hissed. “Yes, if I had you there, and——”
He stopped as suddenly as he had begun.
“That’s just what I wanted to know,” mocked Halstead. “Honduras is your country, and now I know to a dot why you’re interested in having Ted Dunstan vanish and stay vanished for a while. Come along, now. We’ll keep right on until we find that constable!”
Tom seized the stranger’s right arm in earnest now. The other held back, as though he would resist, but suddenly changed his mind.
“You are somewhat the stronger—with hands,” he said in an ugly tone. “So I shall go with you. But perhaps you will much regret what you are doing to-night.”
“Oh, I hope not,” Tom jeered cheerily. “At all events I’m doing the best I know how. And I’m glad you’re not going to make any fuss. I hate to be cranky with anyone.”
The place to which the pier belonged looked, from what Tom had been able to see of it, like a run-down coast farm. Away up on a hill to the left were a dilapidated old farm house and other buildings. Halstead feared, though, that the stranger might have friends up at that house and so decided to keep on through the woods at the right.
Before long they struck a fairly well defined road through the forest, a road that looked as though it might lead to somewhere in particular.
“We’ll keep right on along this road, if you don’t mind,” said the boy. He kept now only a fair hold of the other’s wrist. As the swarthy one offered no opposition, they made passably good speed over the road. But Tom, though he looked unconcerned, was wholly on the alert for any sudden move on the part of his captive.