"Nor I. But hark! Somebody's shouting. It must be Mortlake. Yes, it is. Hull—o—a!"
"Hullo—a!" came back out of the night.
"Come, we will retrace our steps to the auto and meet him there," said the lieutenant.
"I wonder if he'll have the face to brazen it out?" thought Roy, by which it will be seen that his mind was pretty well made up as to the "power behind" the night's work.
"Couldn't come near the fellow," puffed Mortlake, as they came up. "He ran like a deer. But—great Christmas—you've had better luck, I see!"
For an instant, even in the semi-darkness, Roy saw the other's face grow white as ashes.
"He thinks that Lieut. Bradbury has caught my impersonator," was the thought that flashed through the boy's mind.
But the same sudden radiance that had betrayed Mortlake's agitation also showed him that it was the real Roy Prescott he was facing. Instantly he assumed a mask of the greatest apparent astonishment.
"Roy Prescott, I am really amazed that you should be implicated in such a——"
"Save your breath, Mr. Mortlake," snapped out the lieutenant, and his words came sharp as the crack of a whip; "this is the real Roy Prescott, and he has been the victim of as foul a plot to blacken an honest lad's name as ever came to my knowledge. The young ruffian who impersonated him to-night has escaped."