“All right,” mumbled the chauffeur; “he’s out of the way for the night, anyhow. But he left the cage somewhere. What the blazes could he have had in it?”
He ate a few more oranges for his supper, smoked his pipe, snoozed again and awoke to find it was nearly midnight.
“Good!” said he; “now’s my time. I don’t mind a bit of a wait if I get the goods in the end; and here’s where I get ’em. It takes a pretty good man to outwit Tot Tyler. They’ll agree to that, by’m’by.”
He crept down the lane and kept on the south side of the hedge until he came opposite the hangar, thus avoiding the house and grounds. The canvas top of the shed showed white in the moonlight, not twenty feet from where he stood, and the chauffeur was pressing aside the thick hedge to find an opening when a deep bay, followed by a growl, smote his ears. He paused, his head thrust half through the foliage, his blood chilled with terror as there bounded from the hangar a huge bloodhound, its eyes glaring red in the dim light, its teeth bared menacingly.
Tot thought he was “done for,” as he afterward told Mr. Burthon, when with a jerk the great beast stopped—a yard from the hedge—and the clank of a chain showed it could come no farther.
Tyler caught his breath, broke from the hedge and sprinted down the lane at his best gait, followed by a succession of angry bays from the hound.
“Confound Cumberford!” he muttered. “The brute was in that cage, and he went to town to get it, so’s to keep me out of the hangar. That’s two I owe this guy, an’ I’ll get even with him in time, sure’s fate.”
There was no car at this hour, so the discomfited chauffeur had to trudge seven miles to the city, where he arrived at early dawn.
The man was not in an amiable frame of mind when he brought Mr. Burthon’s automobile to the club, where his master lived, at nine o’clock. As he drove the broker to the office he related his news.
“Cumberford!” cried Mr. Burthon. “Are you sure it was Cumberford?”