“Yes, that was the name, sure enough. It seems that this Dr. Tallman had another will or something, but Melville said that he had satisfied him that the boy was dead.”
Tom wondered greatly how it was that Dr. Tallman could have had the suspicion—which he evidently had—that the boy he knew only as Ralph Ingersoll was, in reality, the long missing Ralph Melville. But he was not to find this out till later. After some more discussion of Ralph’s strange history, Tom suggested that they should go out and try to find the Flying Road Racer and drive at once to Dr. Tallman’s residence. But his new-found friend, whose name was Dick Dangler, pointed out that in the dark they would have a hard job to find the machine, and might get lost into the bargain.
“My idea would be to wait till daylight, as the fellow said when they wanted to hang him at sunset,” he said in his odd manner. “In the meantime, I’ll skirmish around and try to find something to eat, for by the looks of that table those fellows have food stored away some place. Then we can take a nap till it gets light.”
Tom agreed to this and went to a cupboard in the corner of the room, which they thought might have served the men as a larder. Sure enough, they found some canned chicken, some tinned beef and a box of crackers in the place. But Tom lost all interest in these as his eye caught something which was tucked away in the extreme corner of the cupboard.
As he saw what it was he gave a cry of joy. The next instant he was down on his hands and knees, eagerly investigating his discovery.
It was the long missing model. As Tom clasped it and then fell to gathering up the plans, which had also been placed in the cupboard, he was fairly burning with joy.
“Hurray! I’ve got Mr. Peregrine’s model back,” he kept gleefully repeating. “Now he can go ahead and finish up his vanishing guns!”
Dick Dangler seemed almost as joyous as the boy over the discovery.
“That ghost trick of mine certainly brought good luck all around,” he said.
As he spoke a noise behind them made them look around. Tom almost uttered a cry as he found himself looking straight into the muzzle of a revolver held by Jake Rook. Radcliff had Dick Dangler similarly covered.