“Not a bit of it,” dissented Frank, “but other people have. You remember that fellow Slavin, who nearly put us out of business at Riverside Grove?”
“Hello!” exclaimed Pep. “Has he bobbed up again?”
“I should think he had,” replied Frank, and as they went upstairs, he recited briefly the eventful history of the missing satchel. Mr. Strapp looked pretty grim and his firm mouth set in a stern way. Pep’s fists worked as though he was ready and anxious for a fight.
“And you outwitted the miserable schemers after all; eh?” asked Mr. Strapp, as Frank told of his long distance message to New York.
“Yes, the satchel is here safe and sound,” replied Frank. “That hasn’t squelched Slavin, though. Come in,” he added, for they had reached the door of the room.
Professor Barrington lay on the couch with his eyes closed. He was apparently asleep. Frank ranged some chairs at the other end of the apartment and beckoned his friends to seats.
“Professor Barrington has just had a pretty bad shaking up,” Frank told them. “He must be weak and exhausted after the shock. I don’t think he had better be disturbed, and I will have an opportunity to tell you the rest of my story.”
Frank had left off at a recital of his starting out that morning to decide upon a location. He now told of the plot to trap the professor and keep him out of the way until Slavin and his fellow schemers got ahead of him, as he supposed.
“My! All that would make a regular motorphoto film,” broke in Pep.
“It makes me furious,” exclaimed Mr. Strapp—“to think that honest people are to be so pestered by such riff-raff! I have a good mind to hand this Slavin fellow over to the police on the charge of blowing us up at the Grove.”