"Yes, it was like taking candy from a child," responded c.u.mmings. "Now if you"ll just give me a lift in with him, governor, we"ll get started."
Between them, the two rascals half pushed, half carried Jack"s limp form into the back of the auto. Jarrold dug down into his pockets.
"This is the right road for the Lion"s Mouth, isn"t it?" he demanded of the darky. "It"s years since I was there and I"ve forgotten much about it."
The black looked at him with dropping jaw.
"De Lion"s Mouf out by der ole castle, Busha?" he asked.
"Yes, of course," was the impatient response. "This is the right road?"
"Oh, yas, sah, yas, sah," sputtered the driver.
Jarrold gave him a big bill and told him to "keep his mouth shut with that." The darky looked at the bill and his eyes rolled with astonishment.
"Dere"s suthin" wrong hyer," he muttered as he climbed into his rickety old rig and prepared to drive back to town. "Hones" folks wouldn" give ole Black Strap dat amoun" uv money fo" dat lilly bitty ride "less dey was suthin" fishy. Reckon Ah"ll do some "vestigatin" when Ah gits back to der town."
In the meantime, Jarrold had taken the driver"s seat of the car and c.u.mmings sat beside him. In a cloud of dust they started down the road, the old darky gazing after them till long after they had pa.s.sed out of sight.
Then he whipped up his bony old nag to its best speed and hurried back to Kingston.
CHAPTER XXV
SAM, A TRUE FRIEND
Sam saw Jarrold get up and leave his table suddenly. The boy was on his feet in a minute and on his trail. Jarrold walked off quickly as if in a hurry. But Sam trailed him through the lobby. In front of the hotel stood an automobile, in the tonneau of which sat Jarrold"s pretty niece.
Sam got behind a pillar of the Spanish portico and strained his ears to hear what the two were saying, as Jarrold paused with his foot on the running board. A chauffeur, who had apparently driven his car from some garage, stood beside it waiting respectfully.
The listening boy could not hear much. But he saw the girl clasp her hands as if pleading with her uncle not to do some contemplated act, and he heard Jarrold grate out harshly:
"Shut up, I tell you. What do you know about it?"
Then Jarrold turned to the chauffeur.
"You can go, my man. I"ll drive myself," he said, and then he jumped in and drove off at a fast pace, while Sam stood helplessly on the portico.
Jarrold had escaped his surveillance and it appeared, from the sc.r.a.p of conversation that he had overheard, that mischief was in the wind.
Even had he had the money to hire another car, it would have been too late. Sam felt vaguely that he had been outgeneraled. He went back to the hotel to wait for his chum. But lunch time came, and no Jack.
Sam began to get worried. Still, Jack might have been detained on the ship. Partly to keep from worrying and partly to occupy his time, Sam set out to walk to the ship.
He found old Schultz, the quartermaster, superintending the getting out of the cargo.
"Seen Ready about, Schultz?" he asked, going up to the old man.
"Sure I seen idt him," was the reply.
"Where is he?"
"How shouldt I know? I vos busy votching dese plack peggars vurk. Aber, if I don"d vatch, dey all go py scheebs alretty. Yah."
"But he came to the ship some time ago."
"Ach! Don"d I know idt dot? Budt he leftd again, oh, an hour ago. Some fool call him up py delephones undt tell him he is vanted. Dot is pig lie. n.o.botty vants him on der ship, so he go. Dot is all I know."
Sam looked dismayed. If Jack had left the ship to return to the hotel an hour before, then he should have reached there ages ago. He was not likely to linger, either, considering how anxious he was to observe Jarrold"s movements. What could be the explanation? Was he hurt or injured, or was some plot in execution against him?
But Jack had no enemies in the world so far as Sam knew, and certainly he had none in Kingston, where he was an utter stranger. Was it possible that Jarrold-but no, that sinister personage had been quietly seated at a table in the hotel garden till the time he drove off with his niece.
Feeling puzzled and depressed, Sam went ash.o.r.e once more and called up the hospitals, in the belief that his chum might have been injured. But n.o.body even remotely resembling Jack had been seen there. Nor did his search in other quarters result any more favorably. At length Sam went back to the hotel in the vain hope that Jack might have been delayed in some way, and that they had pa.s.sed each other.
But no trace of his chum did he find there, either. The lad made a miserable pretext of eating lunch and then set out on his search again.
By this time he was absolutely certain that harm of some sort had come to Jack.
As he was leaving the hotel gates, he almost collided with a figure just coming in. He greeted the newcomer with a cry of joy. In the mood he was in, Sam longed for someone in whom to confide his fears about Jack.
"Why, what is the matter?" demanded the other as Sam exclaimed,
"I am glad I met you. I"m in great trouble. It"s about Jack. He left here to go to the ship. He was summoned there by telephone. But on his arrival at the dock, he found that the message was either a mistake or a wilful hoax."
"So?" said the aviator softly. "Go on, my young friend."
"That much I found out by inquiry at the ship after I tired of waiting for him to return."
"Yes, and then?"
Sam noticed something most peculiar about the aviator"s manner, but he was in no mood just then to criticize it.
"Well, that"s about all. He just hasn"t shown up and I can"t find any trace of him."
"That is more than strange," said De Garros in a serious voice, "when I tell you that I myself saw him not more than two hours ago."
"You saw him?"
"Yes."
"Where."
De Garros looked embarra.s.sed. He laid a kindly hand on the shoulder of the anxious lad beside him.
"I hated to believe my own eyes and I hate to tell you what I saw," he said seriously, "but I saw your chum and my friend being helped out of a low dram shop in the negro quarter into a cab. He was-I hate to say it, but I must-tipsy."
Sam started back from the Frenchman with flaming cheeks and angry eyes.