But Jack was younger, more agile, with better wind. Realizing this, the fugitive wheeled around the corner into an alley.
It was a short one, leading to some sort of a stable yard. Yet, though Jack Benson reached that yard in about record time, he gave a gasp of dismay. For the well-dressed fugitive was already out of sight, nor did noise from any quarter show the line of his further flight.
"Confound him, I'm not going to lose him as quickly and easily as that!" raged young Benson.
"Looking for your pop?" demanded a laughing, broad-faced woman, appearing at a back door that opened into the yard.
"Yes," declared Jack, pulsing. "Which way—"
"He went in there," nodded the woman, pointing to the nearly closed door of a small barn.
It might have been that the woman was purposely deceiving him, to aid the fugitive, but to that suspicion Jack had no time to give thought. He sprang into the barn to find it empty. He stood there, panting, for a moment, growing sick at heart with disappointment.
Then he heard a slight rustling on a haymow overhead, that was reached only by a ladder. Up that ladder rushed the submarine boy, springing into the hay.
As he did so, the well-dressed fugitive darted out from cover at another point in the mow, leaping straight down to the floor. After him sprang Jack Benson, and landed full upon him.
But the fugitive, by a supreme effort fear, rose, shaking off the boy, and started to dart out into the open.