It was Martin Murdock.
He was apparently about forty years of age and wore a black mustache, had dark hair and black eyes, an aquiline nose, and upon his left cheek a V-shaped, livid scar.
A cry of astonishment escaped his lips when he saw the boy.
“Free!” he gasped. “How did you get away, you whelp?”
“That is my business,” the boy replied, angrily. “You must explain why you had me imprisoned in that vile den.”
“Oh, I must, eh?” sneered the man, with a nasty leer.
“I have thought it over,” said Joe, sharply. “You was a poor man when you married my mother. When she died I know that she left me a large fortune, for I heard the lawyer read her will. You was made my guardian until I come of age, in five years. Now there was one point in the will that would make you wish to see me dead. That was the clause which said you would inherit all my money if I were to die before I am twenty-one. Are you trying to put me out of the way so you can get that money, Martin Murdock?”
He looked the man squarely in the eyes as he asked this question.
Murdock quailed before his victim’s reproachful burning glance for Joe had correctly surmised the dark plot he had in view.
His nervousness only lasted a moment for he quickly recovered.