Down at the rear end of the car a young man stood up and shouted:
"This way! Here he is! He can"t get away!"
Then it seemed that the students all spotted their game at the same moment, and there was a fierce scramble for that end of the car.
The hunted man saw them coming, and a desperate look settled on his face.
"I"d as lief fall into the clutches of a whole tribe of Apache Indians!"
he gasped. "They"re after my scalp for sure!"
He leaped to the door, and tore it open.
"Stop!" rang out the voice of Frank Merriwell. "You cannot escape, for you will be killed if you leap from the train!"
The man hesitated one moment. He saw the college lads rushing down the aisle, and then, although the train was making a speed of at least forty miles an hour, he descended the steps.
Collingwood and Merriwell came out through the open door. As they reached the platform, they saw the man clinging in the darkness at the foot of the steps. He was in a crouching position, his hands clasping the iron holds. In the gloom his face seemed fully as white as the sleeves of his shirt, which fluttered in the breeze.
"For Heaven"s sake, don"t jump!" cried Frank.
Collingwood tried to grasp the man by the arm. As he did so, the mysterious man dropped from the steps, instantly disappearing in the darkness.
"He"s gone!" gasped Frank, horrified.
"Yes, he is gone!" said Collingwood, hoa.r.s.ely. "That"s the end of him, for surely he was killed when he struck the ground!"
CHAPTER XXIII.
SEEN AGAIN.
For two days Frank scanned all the newspapers for an account of the finding of the body of an unknown man somewhere on the line of the N. Y., N. H. & H. R. R., but he looked in vain.
"Well, that is remarkable!" Merriwell decided. "I can"t understand it.
If that fellow escaped, it is a miracle. And if he escaped, I believe I shall hear from him again," he finished.
The spring term was drawing to a close. But two more events were to transpire before the coming of the long summer vacation. There was the final ball game with Harvard, and then the great intercollegiate athletic tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York--the latter affair to be the great college event of the year.
Frank was entered for several of the contests in New York, but his hand, although improving, would not be in condition to allow him to play ball again that season.
As for the coming vacation, his plans were not perfected as yet. Some of his friends were going to Bar Harbor, some contemplated spending the summer quietly at home, some were going abroad for a flying trip, and many had expressed themselves as quite undecided as to the manner in which they would pa.s.s the summer months.
Frank had boldly proposed a bicycle journey across the continent, but all his friends, with the exception of Diamond, had considered the proposition a joke.
Diamond grew enthusiastic over it, urging Merriwell to carry out the plan, even though but two of them should make the jaunt.
Frank"s plan embraced a party of at least four--possibly more. What made Rattleton believe that Merriwell was joking was that Frank had soberly asked Bruce Browning, the reputedly laziest man at Yale, to make one of the party.
Bruce came near fainting with horror at the mere mention of such a thing.
"My dear Merriwell!" he gasped, "is it possible that you take me for a candidate for a lunatic asylum? Do you think that I am on the verge of lapsing into complete idiocy? Or are you simply trying to have a little sport at my expense?"
"Nothing of the sort, my dear fellow, I a.s.sure you," said Frank. "I am in sober earnest about getting up a party to make the trip across the continent, and I think it would be a fine thing for you if you were to make one of the company."
Bruce was reclining on a couch in Merriwell"s room at the time, lazily puffing away at a cigarette. He languidly reached out his hand and felt for Frank"s wrist.
"Permit me to examine your pulse, old fellow," he murmured. "If you are not trying to work some kind of a horse on me you must be in a bad way.
Ah!" he said, knowingly, with his thumb and finger on Frank"s wrist, "I thought so! Pulse irregular--flutters like an old rag in the wind--flesh hot and dry, eye changing and unsteady, dryness in your throat and general vacancy in your stomach. What you need is a tonic--and you need it bad. You should take whiskey, it may be the only thing that will save you from an utter breaking up of the nervous system or premature death.
The premature death will happen if you try to jolly me any more. I shall carry a gun with me constantly hereafter, and it will not cost too much of an effort to point it in your direction and pull the trigger."
Frank laughed.
"I know you are almost too lazy to draw your breath," he said, "and I also know that the best thing that could happen to you would be just such an expedition as I have proposed. However, I suppose it is useless to waste my breath talking to you, and so I will drop it."
But for all of Browning"s refusal to be one of the party, Frank did not give up the project of a trip across the continent from ocean to ocean during the summer vacation.
But almost immediately other matters occupied his attention.
One night he was spending an evening in town with a jolly party of students. The others were drinking beer and ale, while Merriwell took nothing but ginger ale or bottled soda.
As they were leaving Traeger"s, Frank caught a glimpse of the face of a man who seemed to be waiting for them to come out.
For one moment Merriwell stopped as if turned to stone, and then, with a hoa.r.s.e shout of recognition, he leaped after the man, who had slipped away.
The others followed Frank, and they soon pursued him around a corner, where they found him standing still and staring about in a disappointed manner.
"What is it, old man?" asked Paul Hamilton. "Why did you give that whoop and then chase yourself around here in such a lively fashion?"
"It was not myself I chased," declared Frank. "It was quite another party, I a.s.sure you; but he has given me the slip, for I can see nothing of him."
"Who was it?"
"The man who tried to bribe me to throw the last ball game to Harvard!"
"That fellow?" exclaimed all the lads, excitedly. "Are you sure?"
"Dead sure," a.s.serted Frank, confidently. "I saw his face fairly in the light in front of Traeger"s when we came out."
"Then he was not killed in the leap from the train!" cried Diamond. "How did he escape?"
"Ask me something easy!" exclaimed Frank. "I never expected to look on that man"s face again, unless I looked on it as a corpse."
"Confound him!" exploded Harry Rattleton. "I"d like to hake his break--I mean break his head! What does he want around here?"
Frank was silent. There was a grim look on his face, and it was plain that he had been not a little disturbed by the sight of the mysterious stranger.