THE MYSTERY DEEPENS
They stood together for a moment, puzzled and silent, trying to figure out what it could mean. The two women were quiet. So far they had had nothing to do with the attack on Jack. In the distance, perhaps a hundred feet or so away, they could hear the men, whose clothes Jack and Pete had taken, cursing and demanding that their property be returned.
"Keep quiet, you!" Dick Crawford called to them. "You'll get your things when you've given some account of yourselves and we're ready to give them to you. If you make any more disturbance around here, you won't get them at all. Remember that!"
A deep silence followed, and Pete laughed.
"Guess that scared them some, Dick," he said. "I don't think they'd fancy the idea of going back to the city that way. In funny papers, if a man loses his clothes, he always fetches up with a barrel. But I always did wonder where he found the barrel!"
Dick looked doubtfully at the little heap of clothing.
"I don't suppose we ought to leave them out there without any clothes at all," said he. "But I do think, after the way they've acted, that we've got a right to look and see if there are any weapons. They would be useless, in any case, after the wetting they've had, but—"
He picked up the coats of the two men and shook out the pockets. Sure enough, a pistol fell from each, and from one there also dropped a black mask.
"That doesn't look very well for them," he said. "I think, Tom, you'd better go to a telephone and see if you can get Captain Haskin to meet us here. He or some of his railroad detectives may know something about these people."
Tom hurried off at once to obey the order, for such it was, though Dick, as he almost always did, had put the order in the form of a simple request. Then Dick looked more carefully at the things that had fallen from the pockets.