“The time was short for Kull to act if he was to take advantage of favoring circumstances,—that is apparent now and it was before. It required no great mental power to see that at a glance. Where Kull would be found was thus easily determined. And, fortunately, we arrived in time. On my first survey of the Peek place I found nothing but the Torpedo, partially concealed behind some trees by the roadside and every light extinguished. Kull could not be far away but I hesitated lest it should prove that, having not yet entered the house, he should discover that he was watched. The facts were, he was in the house when we reached the place. He was waiting to be sure his victim slept. I flashed a light upon him as he was in the act of striking his first blow and possibly that was why he struck to one side of the temple and only a flesh wound resulted. I seized his arms but he escaped me. I fear I might have been obliged to shoot to frighten him, if nothing more, but for Phil’s very able and timely help.”
“But what is your idea as to the reason this fellow Coster left one car in the road and hid another in the icehouse in place of it?” Mr. Wagg inquired.
“One of two things—Coster left the car to look about the Peek place, either knowing or suspecting Kull’s ultimate plan of making away with the old gentleman, and in his absence the machine was in some manner started forward. Or, and I think more probably, Coster was drunk and fell from the Torpedo as he saw another car approaching on that unfrequented road where he did not expect to see, and had no wish to see, any other traveler. And now, perhaps, we would better bid one another goodnight,” Mr. Rack concluded.
“Might as well make it good-morning,” grinned Paul Jones, stepping to a window, “it’s nearly daylight.”
The following day Coster made a complete confession to Mr. Rack. The latter’s idea of the entire plans of Kull were substantially correct. About the abandonment of the Torpedo, Coster said he had been drinking a great deal and, contrary to his usual experience, the more he drank the more he feared for his own safety in the car he knew police and detectives had made prolonged search to find. Seeing a large, six-cylinder machine come rapidly over a hill toward him, and on that lonely road where he had been assured he would see no one whomsoever, he suddenly lost his head. He leaped headlong from the Torpedo into the bushes at the roadside. Later he had crept forward and, from the hillside, watched all that the Auto Boys did until they went away in the empty car. Then he put their machine in the icehouse, guided no doubt by the drunken notion that he was very considerably the gainer. But instead of sobering up and meeting Kull at the American House, as had been agreed he should do, he spent the night in a barn and proceeded to get drunk again the moment he reached the town in the morning.
“It appears,” said Bob Rack, telling the boys, Chief Fobes (who was still in a perfect fever of wonder and excitement) and Willie Creek the substance of Coster’s confession, the day following Kull’s capture,—“It appears that our Harkville friend concealed his car several days before he pried the padlock off his garage and reported the machine to have been stolen. He had hidden the machine in an unused garage attached to a summer hotel a few miles from the town. Coster obtained it there. Knowing the case as I do now, I would venture to believe that it was the apparent success of his first crime, in defrauding the insurance people, that nerved Kull to carry out his plan further, and so led to the attempt on the life of old Mr. Peek. His plans were clever, after a crude fashion, but he made the mistake every criminal makes sooner or later, in the belief he apparently entertained that deception could be covered up. In the long run there is no such thing. Even Coster may be truthful when he declares he did not know Kull had defrauded the insurance company.”
CHAPTER X
EASTWARD HO!
After all this had come to pass, the Auto Boys found that if they so desired there was nothing to hinder carrying out in full all that they had purposed to do when the original plan of their eastern vacation tour had been so amply discussed by the snug fire in Dr. Way’s library.