“So much the better,” he muttered. “They won’t stop me, and if only some one has seen them there they’ll get the blame.”
Stealing around to the second window distant from where the light came, the man took a short piece of iron from a coat pocket and proceeded to pry the window open. Its flimsy lock broke easily under the pressure, and he sprang inside. He may have known where he should find himself, for in the darkness he appeared at home. It was the hotel’s storeroom, and was crowded with a litter of boxes and barrels; loose straw lay in profusion, and a barrel or two of oil stood in one corner.
It was scarce a moment from the time the man had entered till he sprang out again. But now his manner was altered. No longer proceeding with caution, he started on a run for the fields whence he had come, holding his arms hard to his sides as he ran.
Up the long slope of the hill he dashed, breathing hard, rather, it would seem, from some deep excitement than from the exertion. So he went on without interruption for nearly a mile. Had he seemed less beset by some fear that drove him recklessly on, and been more mindful of his road, he might have avoided the third person who was abroad this night, and who now suddenly loomed large in it.
Plunging desperately along through the rough pasture, following an uncertain path as it wound in and among clumps of cedars and alders, the man all at once ran full tilt into another man, or, rather, a large, heavy-set youth, and, clutching at each other, they both fell sprawling upon the ground.
“Hulloa!” exclaimed Jack Harvey, for he it was, “you seem in a confounded hurry, my friend, and that’s something new on this island, I’ll be bound. Why don’t you—” but, as they scrambled up together, Jack Harvey grumbling, but inclined to treat the incident as a rough joke, the man lunged out heavily at him with his fist and struck him full in the face.
Jack Harvey was no coward. He clinched with the man, and they reeled for a moment in a fierce embrace. But the man had muscles of iron, and, nerved to desperation, more than matched Harvey. Presently he threw the youth to the ground, and as Harvey struggled to his feet again he dealt him a blow between the eyes that stretched him flat, and for a moment stunned him.
Before Harvey had regained his feet and collected his senses, the man was off, running harder now than ever.
When Harvey finally stood upright, his first impulse was to set out in pursuit of his mysterious adversary. On second thought he paused a moment to consider the matter.
Who could the stranger be, and where could he be going? There was one thing Jack Harvey did know. He knew every living soul on all the island, man and boy, and this man was not of them. There was not a fisherman along this part of the coast with whom Harvey had not cast a line or raced with his yacht, the Surprise. He had looked the man fair in the face twice in their struggle, and thought for the moment that he had never seen him before.