At length they came to the front hall, and here some more strategy was made use of. Henderson carefully unlocked the door and placed the key on the outside, and then cautiously led the way up the second stairs to the floor above. He stopped every once in a while to listen, but he heard nothing suspicious, and presently pushed open a door that gave entrance into the room in which the little boy was sleeping. With a motion of his hand, Henderson pointed him out, and then moved through the room to take a look at the tutor. He lay upon his back with his arms extended over his head, revealing muscles that made Henderson tremble. Something, I don’t know what it was, went through the tutor all of a sudden, and he started up in alarm to find a strange face in his door He gazed at it a moment, and then thrust his hand under his pillow. When it came out it had a revolver in its grasp. Henderson took one look at it and turned and took to his heels.
CHAPTER XII.
HE DOES NOT SUCCEED.
“Halt! Clifford Henderson, I know you!” shouted the tutor, in a stentorian voice, as he threw off the bedclothes and started on a furious race for the intruder. “I know you, and you had better halt.”
He supposed, of course, that the object of his visit was robbery—and had no intention of using one of the cartridges in his revolver—until he came to his bedroom door and there saw Scanlan, who had thrown a quilt over the boy’s head and started on a run after Henderson, and then he stopped as if somebody had aimed a blow at him. Then he saw that abduction was a part of Henderson’s scheme, and in an instant his revolver was covering Scanlan’s head.
“Put that boy back on the bed where he belongs,” said the tutor.
Scanlan took one look at the revolver, and at the man who held it, and readily obeyed.
“Now throw the quilt off his head, so that he can breathe,” said the tutor; and the readiness with which Scanlan complied disarmed the tutor, who lowered his revolver.
This was the move that Scanlan was waiting for. In an instant he dropped on all-fours, shot under the out-stretched hand that held the deadly weapon, caught the tutor around the legs and tumbled him over on his back. It was all done with the greatest ease, and when the tutor scrambled to his feet Scanlan had disappeared. He ran hastily to the head of the stairs, and he saw Scanlan’s coat-tails vanishing as he made his way to the basement. He had tried the front door, but Henderson had gone out there and had locked the door behind him. The tutor tried the front basement door also, and in the meantime Scanlan had already gone out at that very door, not forgetting to knock over the candle in his hurried flight. That was the last they saw of Scanlan. By the time the tutor had returned to his room he found Mr. Davenport there, sitting on the bed and talking to Bob.
“Why, this looks like a case of abduction,” said Mr. Davenport, when the tutor came in. “Did I hear you say that you recognized Clifford Henderson as one of the assailants?”