"Wasting time!" grunted Adolph. "Let me tickle him with my little toy here. Safety first, as these people always say."
"Be quiet!" ordered Ledermann. "And you too, young fellow! If you try to scream, we will kill you."
"Aw, quit your kiddn"!" said Porky cheekily. "What would I want to yell for? I don"t want to get arrested any more than I am. I want to go home! tell you, how could I hear anything when I was asleep? I want to go home! What"s it to me what you talk about?" He sniffed, and drew his cuff across his eyes.
"Let me have him," said Adolph. "Let me go outside the gates with him."
"No," said Porky, using his cuff again. "I ain"t goin" with n.o.body. I know how to get home. I don"t have to have somebody take me." He tried to wiggle away, but felt Adolph"s clutch close like an iron vise.
"There, there," said Ledermann quietly, as he nudged Adolph under cover of the darkness. "All we want to know is how much you heard. It is nothing to me what you do after that. You see my friend here does not mean what he says, but--well, I may as well tell you how it is." He turned the flashlight on the boy"s face and held it there, watching him like a hawk while he talked. "My friend has invented something that will prove to be a very wonderful thing for everybody in the world, and he is very anxious that it shall be kept a secret until he is ready to put it on the market. Now you are a smart boy, and I will give you one guess to see if you can tell me what we were talking about.
Tell me what you think he has invented."
Porky thought a moment with a deep frown on his face.
"It"s a patent medicine he has invented," he ventured finally.
"That"s a good guess," said Ledermann. "Such a good guess that I think you must have heard some of our talk."
"I didn"t, honest," said Porky. "Couldn"t you see I was asleep?
What do you suppose I care about your old patent medicine? So long as you ain"t policemen, let me go. I want to go home!"
"You shall go," said Ledermann, scowling in the direction of Adolph, "but I am afraid you might follow us and find out about the medicine. If you stay right here for a while, why, we will go away, and you will never know to whom you have been talking in this pitch dark. So we will just get you to do that much for us.
And if you tell any one how you came to be here, or what we have said to you, we will come back and kill you and kill all your people!"
He hissed the awful threat in the boy"s ear, and shutting off the flashlight, he took a cord from his pocket, and wound it tightly around the boy"s wrists and ankles, tying it in a peculiar knot. Then with a handkerchief he gagged him.
"Now," he said to Porky, "you can get that cord off and the gag out, but you are going to sleep for a little while." He took a little pill from his pocket and forced it far back in Porky"s mouth. "We will sit outside and watch you a while," said the spy. He laid the boy down on the floor of the house, propped the door in place, and all was silent. In the house, Porky, lying flat on his back, was trying frantically to work the pill out between his lips before it dissolved. He rolled it forward in his cheek, and turned on his face and blew hard.
The pill rolled out on the floor. Porky went limp. Sweat poured down his face as he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.
There was absolute silence outside but Porky fancied he could hear the breathing of the watchers. It seemed hours and hours before he heard the door move, and knew the flashlight was directed on him. Then he heard a grunt of satisfaction and soft footsteps padding over the close gra.s.s told him that at last the two villains were gone.
Porky did not dare to stir, however, and lay thinking out his next move. He felt that for a little while he was safe. His one concern was for his brother, who had been watching over the greenhouses on the other side of the race-track. It occurred to him that Beany would be waiting for him there. He decided that for a while at least he would not report the affair to Colonel Bright. He wanted to find his brother. But he did not dare leave the toy house, so he lay listening to every sound and working in the dark with the most extraordinary knot that Ledermann had tied in the cord cutting into his ankles.
Beany, who had walked rapidly over to the place allocated for him, had waited in vain for something to turn up, and long after the time set for the meeting had commenced watching for his brother. Something, he felt sure, had happened in some other part of the grounds. He was strangely uneasy. A great desire to find Porky came over him. He walked down the road, leading from the great upper camp, and stood looking in every direction.
watching for his brother.
As he looked, a familiar car swept past him an and stopped. It was the Colonel"s car, and Colonel Bright himself leaned out and beckoned him. Beany ran to the machine and saluted.
"Hop in, hop in!" said the Colonel. "I don"t know which one you are but I want to talk to you. Go on, Sergeant," and the car leaped forward.
"You or your brother said something about a hunch. Never mind which one, I"ll bet you both think alike. Now I want to know all about it. What"s that hunch all about?"
Beany was silent.
"Come on, I"m listening," he said, urging the boy to words.
Beany looked up into the strong, rugged face and studied the keen, kind, twinkling eyes that made the Colonel the best loved man in the American army, then leaned close to the Colonel, and told him of the two men at the ice-cream stand, and then, going back, he told of their recognition of the captain as the man who had driven the car at the Troop D Farm. The Colonel listened, even forgetting to smoke, and a frown deepened on his face.
"Where is your brother now?" he asked.
"I don"t know," said Beany. "At the green house waitin" for me, I suppose."
"Would he go home, or back to the Police Camp?"
"No, sir, we always wait for each other," explained Beany.
"Well, we are in town now," said the Colonel, "and soon as I do an errand downtown you may take me to your house, and then the Sergeant will run you back to the Camp. If you find your brother, telephone me. I don"t need to tell you to keep silent.
Don"t forget what a big thing you"re doing, my boy, and also what a great reward if you find the formula. Think of it, a college education! And I will see to it that you will each have one."
"Yes, sir," said Beany thickly. "I keep a-thinkin" about the college education."
"That"s right," said the Colonel heartily. "That"s right! Just think what a fine thing to earn. The chance to have four years, in fact, to have six years good hard study in a good school and college. Think of the fellows that would jump at a chance like that!"
"Yes, sir," said Beany, and added earnestly, "I wish they had it to jump at. Here is your corner." He skipped out of the car, and when the colonel went in to the big office building, Beany stood on the curb and looked around him. Beany was tired and dirty and pale through the grime. He had had no supper. He was low, very low in his mind. All that talk about college again.
Hang it! He had clean forgotten that hanging over him, and had been enjoying all this spy hunting for its own sake.
The more he thought of that college education, the more he glared. He groaned, and turned just in time to face a couple of men who were hurrying across the sidewalk. They glanced a him, stopped short, and the smaller man went dead white.
"Look, Ledermann!" he cried in a choking voice. "It"s the same!
What did you give him?" He screamed suddenly, his face worked, and grew purple. Then down he went frothing in such a terrible convulsion that Beany bolted into the Colonel"s car, frightened out of his wits. A crowd gathered, and at once ambulance was summoned, and policemen were taking the names of people who had happened to be near; but no one thought of taking anything at all from the Boy Scout who sat so still beside the Colonel"s driver.
When the ambulance had clattered away with its gong ringing noisily, the Sergeant turned to Beany.
"Well, you did for him all right!" he said.
"What did I do?" demanded Beany.
"That"s all right," said the Sergeant. "I have my eyes all right, all right. You tell the Colonel or I will. Those b.u.ms give you a look, and threw a fit. Both of "em. I saw their eyes stick out a yard. They acted like you was a ghost. You do look pretty pale, at that! Well, I bet you"ve done for one of them.
I never saw a harder fit in my life. You certainly gave him some scare."
"I never saw him before," Beany said over and over. When the Colonel came out, the Sergeant gave him a glare, and he repeated the incident as they drove toward the Colonel"s house. The Colonel said he would telephone to the hospital, as the man would no doubt come out all right.
Beany said good-night to the Colonel and slipped back in the seat beside the Sergeant.
"Funny about that fellow," said the soldier. "Did you hear what he said? He said, "What did you give him?" Looks queer to me.
Looks like he thought you were the ghost of somebody they had just killed. Must be you looked like somebody--" the man stopped, and stared at Beany for a startled second.
"Where"s your twin?" he asked suddenly.
Beany went cold. A thousand frightful thoughts and possibilities surged up in his mind. Where was Porky?
He turned and struck the Sergeant a sharp blow on the arm.
"Drive fast!" he demanded, and settling low in his seat, watched the road drive at their car and disappear under it, as the Sergeant, eager as, claimed the privilege of the Colonel"s car and leaped past everything on the boulevard.
"Where will you go?" cried the Sergeant in his ear.
"Here by the gate first," said Beany, leaping out of the car.