Chapter XI: 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.

"Hello!" he cried, suddenly. "Say, Jack, look here! Here's a letter postmarked from Woodleigh. That's where you came from, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is!" cried Jack, on the alert, as always, at a sign of any sort from the town where he had spent his boyhood.

"I think we've got a right to open this," said Dick, "though looking at letters that aren't addressed to one is pretty small business, as a rule. However, when people do the sort of thing that these fellows so nearly got away with tonight they don't have a right to expect decent treatment from others."

He looked grave when he had finished reading.

"This letter seems to concern you, Jack," he said. "It's from a lawyer up there, and it's addressed to a man called Silas Broom, at the General Delivery window of the post office in the city here. It says that the boy Jack Danby, about whom Mr. Broom was making inquiries, left Woodleigh some months ago, and has since, it is supposed, been working near here. Now why does anyone want to know about you? And why does this fellow Broom, if that is really his name, have to hear this? He is a great scoundrel, whatever his name is."

"You quit callin' my husband names. Who are you, I'd like to know?"

The older woman emerged suddenly from the hut, in time to hear Dick's last words, and she faced him now like a fury, her arms akimbo, and her eyes snapping. She looked around suspiciously, too.

"Where's Silas?" she asked, angrily. "What have you done with him? Ain't those his clothes there?"

She snatched the clothes up in an instant. Before Dick, who was astonished by her appearance, could check her she had torn the coat from his hands.

"Silas!" she yelled. "Where are you, honey?"

"Here I am--out in the woods," cried her husband, frantically. "They've stolen my clothes, Carrie. Get 'em, and bring 'em here, will you?"

"Comin'!" she called, and darted off with surprising speed, considering her weight and the terrible exhaustion that had seemed to afflict her when she was being brought ashore from the launch.

Dick and the two Scouts were laughing, although a bit ruefully, as she vanished.

"I can't touch a woman," said Dick, sadly. "I'm afraid I'll have to admit that I'd like to--but I guess she could lick me at that, if she was put to it. Is that the one you dragged ashore, Jack?"

"That's the one!" said Jack. "It's a wonder she didn't drown the two of us. But she certainly seems to have recovered pretty completely."

"It's bad business," said Dick, frowning. "Those fellows will get away now. The only hold we had on them was that they didn't have any clothes. Now they'll make tracks, and all ye can do is to tell Captain Haskin what they looked like and what they did. I think we look pretty foolish, myself."

Just then the girl, who had won Jack's admiration by her courage when she was in real danger and by her reproof of the others when they had shown their ingratitude, stepped into the firelight, fully dressed. She did not look at all as if she belonged with the others. She was more refined, gentler, and sweeter in every way. Dick Crawford stared at her in astonishment. Jack had told him about her, but, since seeing the others, he had thought that Jack had made a mistake in praising her.

"I beg your pardon," he said, speaking to her as she stopped and looked about her, evidently puzzled by the absence of her companions. "But I'm afraid we'll have to ask you to tell us what you can of the people you were with. You are not related to them, are you?"

"No," she said. "No, indeed! I came with them because they promised to show me how to reach a certain person for whom my father has been searching for a long time. Then, of course, there was the fire on the launch. But even before that they had kept putting me off, and I didn't like the way they were acting at all. Where are they now?"

"I wish I knew!" said Dick. "However, we can talk more about them later. I think that now the best thing we can do is to get you back to the city. Your father will meet you there, I suppose, won't he?"

"Yes," she said. "My father is not at all well, and he is quite an old man. We are staying at the Hotel Lincoln. I came with them alone, though father didn't want me to, because they were so very positive that our chase was nearly over."

"I think it's my duty to tell you," said Dick, "that these people who were with you seem to be a very bad lot. They made an attempt to kidnap this boy, who helped to save the lives of your whole party, and we have every reason to suppose that they are associated with a gang of thieves who have a grudge against him. I think you had better let us take you back to your father. And if you will follow my advice, you will have nothing more to do with any of them. They will only lead you into danger and trouble."

Dick was anxious to question the girl further, but she was much shaken, and in no condition to tell him anything more. So they all went back to town together, and Dick himself acted as Miss Burton's escort to her hotel.

"I will follow your advice," she promised him. "If any of those people try to see me again, I will refuse to have anything to do with them. But won't you come to see us, and perhaps you will be able to help us in our search?"

"I'll be glad to do that," said Dick. "But if those people approach you again, it might be better to pretend that you still trust them. Don't put yourself in their hands in any way, but try to get them to talk to you. In that way you may be able to get valuable information that would otherwise not be available at all."

Captain Haskin, the head of the detective service of the railroad on which Jack Danby's bravery had averted a terrible wreck, was much concerned when he heard the story of the rescue and the ungrateful conduct of those whose lives had been saved.

"We've got to look after Danby," he said. "He's an important witness for us, and if he turns up missing, it's going to be more difficult to get a conviction, though perhaps not impossible. But I think there's more than that in their attempt to get rid of him."

"What do you mean, Captain?" asked Dick Crawford.

"Why, I don't know, my boy. But these people are not loyal enough to one another as a rule to lead them to run such risks as these villains have encountered just to get rid of a witness who may be damaging to some of them who have been captured. When one or two of them are caught, those who escape are usually so glad to get off free themselves that they disappear and make no effort to help those who were not so fortunate. The fact that they have kept after Danby this way is very suspicious."

"Well, I happen to know," said Dick, "that there are people who seem to have a grudge against Jack, or at least who have an interest in maintaining a mystery that exists as to his birth. I don't like to talk about that as a rule, because it's his own-business, but I'd better tell you. He does not know his real name, or who his parents were, and it is the ambition of his life to discover them. Since he came away from Woodleigh, attempts have been made to find out what has become of him, and a man who was concerned in an attempt to rob me of a considerable sum of money that I was carrying for my employer is one of those who seems most anxious to find out all about Jack. He knows the secret of his birth."

"That would explain," said the detective, "the whole business at once. Now, you see, you've given me something to work on. The railroad can't feel at ease until all the men concerned in that plot that so nearly wrecked the Limited the other night are safely in jail. It isn't that we're vindictive, but when men are ready to imperil the lives of the passengers on the trains we run, it isn't safe for us to let them be at large. They may make another attempt, and there is no way of being sure that the next time we shall be able to stop them. It was all a matter of luck that blocked their plan before--and we can't trust to luck in such matters. It might cost a hundred lives to do so."

"Well, if we can help you in any way, you can depend on us to do anything in our power, Captain. I think any of our boys in the Scouts would do anything for Jack Danby, and, of course, we want to do anything we can to help the railroad safeguard its trains, for the sake of all the people who have to ride on them."

"The most important thing right now is to see that nothing happens to Danby. They have been so bold and so determined in their efforts to put him out of the way already that I am afraid they are not likely to stop at the two attempts. One thing seems very curious to me. The man who carried him off from the camp was entirely willing to kill him--planned to do so, didn't he?"

"So Jack says. And he is not the sort to be scared by idle threats."

"Just so! But now here is a queer thing. These people that tried to carry him off to-day used the same boat as the man who took him from the camp. Presumably they would have served him the same way as the other scoundrel would have done. And yet they seem also to want to get in touch with Jack himself--and not for the purpose of killing him.. It looks as if they were working at cross purposes--as if they did not know that the boy who foiled the train-wrecking plot and the one they have lost are one and the same. Don't you see?"

"I certainly do! Say, this is a confused affair, isn't it?"

"It's like a Chinese puzzle. But we'll work it out somehow."