This was the question which Tom had been dreading. But he assumed a bold front.
“I don’t know,” he said, “and if I did I wouldn’t tell you.”
A black look passed over Rook’s face. His lips, clean shaven now that the red beard had gone, compressed in a thin line. Tom knew from young Ralph’s story that the ruffian had discarded his disguise, and he thought that, villainous as Rook had looked before, he looked ten times worse now.
“Oh, you won’t tell, eh? Well, maybe we can find a way to make you.”
“What do you want to know for?” demanded Tom with a boldness he was very far from feeling.
“Because he’s in a certain party’s way, and we are going to get some money for putting him back where he belongs—with that circus.”
“That would settle the matter,” declared Tom, with seeming irrelevance. “If my life depended on putting him back with those ruffians, I don’t think I’d say. But I don’t know.”
Inwardly Tom was wondering over the mystery that seemed to have injected itself into the case of young Ralph. First the doctor had hinted at some secret, then there was the letter with its vague allusion, and now the rascally Rook seemed to have some knowledge of the lad.
Rook thought a moment, drumming the table with his fingers as if meditating.
“Do you mean to say that you and some other meddling jackanapes didn’t pick the kid out of the creek where we’d left him?” he asked presently.