"I don't know, of course, but I'm afraid he's given Dick too much. I don't want him to have a cent."
"Well," growled Mings, "I'm hoping you'll make good your claim to the estate, Ralph. You've promised to remember us all around, you know."
"That promise goes!" averred Sercomb. "Once I get my hooks on Uncle Jack's money, you can bet I'll do the handsome thing by you fellows. Just now, though, what we've got to think about is this: Dick was started toward the cliffs in that car of King's, and King showed up in that confounded white runabout and chased after Dick and the touring-car. What I'd like to know, did King save Dick? Everything hangs on that. If Dick got smashed against the cliffs, he can't tell about that Lamy business, nor about Mings and Packard tying him in the car. You fellows," and here Sercomb turned to Mings and Packard, "ought to have hung around to see how it came out."
"Oh, yes," returned Mings sarcastically, "we ought to have hung around and given them a chance to nab us. I guess not! We got back here as quick as we could. But you take it from me—King never saved Ferral."
"You fellows went too far," continued Sercomb. "I told you to smash the car, but I didn't tell you to smash Ferral along with it."
"That's what you meant, Sercomb, whether you said it or not," spoke up Packard. "You wanted him taken away last night and dropped in the quicksands——"
"I wanted him put out of the car close to the quicksands," qualified Sercomb, "so that he'd have got into them himself."
"It's all the same thing," said Balt Finn. "Call a spade a spade and don't dodge."
"Who was that fellow with the queer head-gear we saw in the car?" asked Packard.
A look of dismay crossed Sercomb's face.