Yet it was a huge pity that the young motor boat captain could not have possessed sharp enough vision to see into the heart of a dense clump of lilac bushes that bordered the driveway. Had his vision been that keen he would have seen his very Spaniard crouched low in the clump.
That worthy saw the boy and watched him with baleful, gleaming eyes. It was a look that boded no good to the young skipper.
“You are too wise, young gringo, and, besides, you have struck me down,” growled Alvarez. “But we shall take care of you. You shall do no more harm!”
CHAPTER VII—“THE QUICKEST WAY OF WALKING THE PLANK”
It was Tuesday when Ted Dunstan disappeared. Now, Saturday had arrived.
On Monday the heir must appear, with his father, in the probate court, or the great fortune would be forever lost to the young man.
The days from Tuesday to Saturday had been full of suspense and torment to those most interested. Horace Dunstan had lost his easy-going air. He started at the slightest sound; he hurried up whenever he heard others talking. Every new sound gave him hope that his son was about to appear in the flesh.
Far from slow had the search been. Mr. Dunstan’s messages had brought a score of detectives to the scene. Some of these, aided by the local constables, had scoured the island of Nantucket unavailingly. The greater number of the detectives, however, had operated on the mainland, their operations extending even to Boston and New York.
Yet not a sign of the missing boy had been found. There was not a single clew to his fate, beyond the little that Tom Halstead and Joe Dawson had been able to tell concerning Alvarez and the florid-faced American.
Halstead’s notion about Farmer Sanderson’s “machinery” had crystallized into the belief that the cases of “machinery” received by the farmer were in reality cases of arms and ammunition, intended to be shipped to aid some new revolution in Honduras. Alvarez and the florid-faced man, the latter undoubtedly a seafaring man, might justly be suspected of being employed in some scheme to smuggle military supplies to Honduras. Tom had read in the newspapers, more than once, that filibusters sending military supplies to Central American republics label their cases of goods “machinery” in order to get past vigilant eyes unsuspected. Gregory Dunstan was known to be interested in revolutionary movements, and Farmer Sanderson might be suspected of helping Alvarez and other filibusters by having arms and ammunition shipped to him as machinery, and afterwards slipped out of the country from the end of the farmer’s pier on some dark, stormy night. Moreover, Gregory Dunstan and his friends were the sole ones who could be interested in having Master Ted vanish at such a time. All parts of the theory fitted nicely together, Tom thought, and Horace Dunstan agreed with him.