There was a lamp on the rear gate, and Pulsifer, as he went by, reached up to turn it out.
"The less light we have, the better. No knowing who is skulking around," he remarked. As he straightened up to reach the lamp, however, his eyes fell on Ned, whose face was illumined momentarily by the light.
Pulsifer gave an exclamation of delight.
"Look who's here, Dave," he cried exultingly; "little Johnny Fixit. Don't you remember him?"
"Why," exclaimed the elder Pulsifer, "that's one of the rowdy kids who tried to get us out of our seats on the subway."
"Tried to," thought Ned; "I guess we came pretty near doing it."
"Oh, this is luck," grinned the younger Pulsifer; "talk about killing two birds with one stone. We'll attend to you, my young friend—you dirty young spy. We'll put you where what you overheard to-night will do you no more good than—this."
He stepped lightly forward and deliberately struck the Dreadnought Boy an open-handed slap on the cheek.
Ned's hands struggled with the rope that Kennell had twisted about his wrists. He palpitated, ached, and longed with a superhuman intensity, to get at the younger Pulsifer, and beat his sneering face into an unrecognizable mass. It was a lucky thing for that young man that Kennell had tied his knots with sailor-like thoroughness. In a few minutes—by the time they had been bundled into the tonneau of the machine, in fact—Ned was once more calm. He recognized the stern necessity for keeping absolutely cool.
On the seat beside him in the tonneau lay the senseless form of the inventor. As a guard, Kennell, Schultz and Hank were seated also in that part of the car. Dave Pulsifer took the wheel and his brother sat at his side. Silas, the heavy-browed, occupied the small extension-seat at the elder Pulsifer's side.