CHAPTER XVII
A VISIT TO THE HOSPITAL
At the hospital, Ralph and young Simmons were informed that the lad they had brought in that morning was better, and that it was almost certain that he would recover in course of time. Naturally, both boys were anxious to see him, as they felt that the lad they had found in the ruins of the dynamited hut could throw a great deal of light on that mysterious occurrence.
For some reason, which he himself could not have defined, Ralph was beginning to link the different strange happenings of the previous night into a continuous chain. Irrational as the idea appeared that there was any connection between the blowing up of the hut and the latest voyage of the gray motor boat, he could not help feeling that somewhere the two occurrences dove-tailed into each other. But he said nothing of this to his chums, as, actually, he had nothing upon which to base his belief.
Permission to see the lad whom they had saved from almost certain death under the smoldering timbers was denied to them, after they had waited some time to obtain it. Percy was bitterly disappointed. Ralph was also rather put out that they could not see and talk to the little lad, who, they felt certain, held the key to the mystery. But he was not astonished. He knew better than Percy Simmons how serious the boy’s condition had been that morning.
“Come back in two days,” the house surgeon said. “I could not think of permitting you to talk to your young friend until then. He must on no account be excited.”
“He is resting easily?” asked Ralph.
“Yes; but – he is terribly fragile and emaciated.”
“Any-anything else?” asked Percy, recollecting certain bruises and marks he had spied on the lad’s body.
“Why, yes. Since you ask, I should say that he has been the recent victim of cruel and inhuman treatment. Do you know anything concerning this?”
“No, we know nothing about him except that we brought him here,” said Ralph; “but we take an interest in the case.”
“Oh, it’s not very interesting,” rejoined the man of medicine, mistaking his meaning; “a simple case of slight concussion of the brain and exhaustion and shock. We have many such cases. It is quite ordinary, I assure you.”
“I guess you and I look at cases from different angles,” smiled Ralph.
“Ah; quite so! quite so!” exclaimed the Canadian surgeon, and hurried off to make his nightly inspection of the wards.
But, before he went, he had a question to ask:
“I say, – Yankees, aren’t you?”
“We are Americans,” rejoined Ralph gravely. “That is, we’re Americans all we know how to be, twenty-six hours out of the twenty-four, and three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and more on Leap Year.”
“My word! You Yankees are – ”
“There’s no such word as Yankee,” struck in Percy, not knowing whether to laugh or be angry.
“Oh, well, Americans, then. Same thing! Same thing! Jolly smart people, just the same. Good-night!”
And off the little bald-headed man bounced, leaving the two lads alone.
“No use waiting here, Percy,” said Ralph, as the surgeon vanished.
Percy looked around the bare office. A desk, a telephone, and a long row of dismal, precise-looking chairs were its sole ornaments. A smell of disinfectants hung heavily in the air. Behind the desk a small man with a closely cropped head, and very neat, well-brushed clothes, was writing in a big book, a supply of spare pens held behind his ears on either side of his shiny skull.
Suddenly the telephone jangled harshly. The man jumped up and went to it. The boys, half unconsciously, paused.
“Hello,” they heard the little man say in snappish, peeved tones, “hel-lo. Yes-yes-yes. This is the Mercy Hospital. Yes, I said. Yes-yes-yes. A boy? A boy wounded in the forehead? Concussion case? Yes, we have such a case here.”
The boys exchanged glances. There appeared to be hardly a doubt but that some one at the other end of the wire was calling up about “their boy.”
The conversation to which they were auditors at one end only continued.
“Who is this? – Who? – Say it again. – Malvern? – No? – Speak louder, can’t you? Oh, Malvin. Yes – ”
“Great Scott!”
The exclamation fairly leaped from Ralph’s lips.
The busy little man looked around angrily.
“Can’t you keep still while I’m ’phoning?” he demanded. “Boys are a nuisance.”
He applied himself again to the ’phone.
“No, sir, I did not say you were a nuisance. I said, ‘Boys are a nuisance.’ Yes.”
He turned and glanced malevolently at the boys, as much as to say, “Now see what you’ve done.”
Then the conversation went on.
“See the boy? – No, that is impossible. – Two boys were here to-night to – Hey! What confounded impudence!”
Ralph had dashed forward and was clutching his arm. He had jerked the receiver from the fussy little old man and slapped his other hand over the transmitter.
“Don’t say anything about us being here, sir, I beg of you. You may foil the ends of justice. You may – ”
“Hoity-toity! What’s all this? What are boys coming to? Be quiet, sir. Let me talk at once. Hullo, Mr. Malvern! Hello, sir! Are you there?”
But apparently “Mr. Malvern,” to use Canadian telephone terms, was “not there.”
At any rate, the little man hung up the receiver with a thump and a snort.
“That man has left the ’phone. See what you did!” he exclaimed angrily to Ralph. “It might have been something of the highest importance.”
“I assure you, sir,” declared Ralph eagerly, “that the man at the other end of that wire was one whom we have every reason to believe a suspicious character. I had a strong reason for not wanting him to know we had been here to-night, and that was why I interfered, as I’m afraid you think, without just cause.”
“What, hey? Suspicious character, eh? Well, allow me to say, young man, that your own actions are not above suspicion. No, sir!”
The fussy little man took a huge pinch of snuff. While he was sneezing, the boys slipped out.
“Where to now?” asked Percy Simmons.
“To the telegraph office. Then to the police station. We’ve found out something important to-night. Malvin knows that boy! I’m equally certain that he knows the crew of the phantom motor boat, and the fellow who tried to drive us off Windmill Island.”
“Do you really believe it?”
“Just as surely as I do that we are standing here. But don’t let’s waste time. That boy in the hospital knows something, and the ‘other side’ knows that he knows something. It’s up to us to beat them to it!”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE THREE CONSPIRATORS
Harry made his way down to the dock, where the boat had been left, with “both eyes open,” as the saying goes. He did not fear that he would miss sighting whoever came off the River Swallow as soon as they were sure that the boys had gone up town. Of course he was assuming that Malvin and the man he was certain he had spied earlier that day, would leave together. If they did this, even if they vacated the motor craft before he reached it, there was only one road that they could follow, and that was the street down which Harry was walking, the only thoroughfare that led to the dock.
As he hurried along, many thoughts surged into the lad’s mind. What was he to do in the event of the mysterious “third man” actually leaving the boat?
“I guess my best plan will be just to stick to their heels wherever they go,” he said to himself. “Yes,” he went on, busily turning matters over in his mind, “that’s the scheme. While Ralph and Harry are looking after things in town, this end of the game is up to your Uncle Dudley.”
As he neared the wharf, Harry became aware that great excitement and bustle were going forward there. The down river passenger boat had just arrived, and a number of people were struggling to disembark by way of the gang plank, while an equally determined crowd was striving to get on board. Suddenly the boy became aware of three figures among the crowd, whom he recognized instantly.
The trio was composed of Malvin, Hansen and another man.
As Harry saw this third member of the group, he almost gave vent to an involuntary cry of recognition.
The stranger was the same man whom they had encountered on Windmill Island on the eventful previous night.
There was no mistake. Harry recognized instantly every feature of the fellow’s face, which had been etched upon his mind with all the vividness of a photograph.
Harry’s pulses bounded as he made this discovery. So, then, it appeared that Ralph had been right. Unquestionably a link did exist between Windmill Island and Malvin, and also, apparently, Hansen, although the boy was morally certain that the obtuse Norwegian was merely an insignificant pawn in whatever mysterious game was being played by Malvin and the other man.
“Well, this is a discovery,” gasped the boy as he watched the three talking earnestly together, not far from where the River Swallow lay tugging at her moorings.
Then, like a galvanic shock, another thought flashed through his mind.
The third man, – the man of the island, – was also, almost without question, the fellow whom Harry had seen slip along the deck and vanish down the forescuttle, when the Border Boys appeared to board the River Swallow some time before they were expected.
The elation of this revelation was still stirring in the lad’s mind, when the three men, who seemed oblivious of the crowd about them, suddenly shoved their way through the press, and, walking side by side, set off up the road that led toward town.
This was insubordination of the rankest sort on Malvin’s part. He had been told by Ralph to stay by the boat. Now Harry’s mind alternated between indignation and curiosity as he saw the trio coming toward him. Near where he stood was a big pile of empty boxes and barrels. It was the work of only an instant for him to slip adroitly behind these and effectually conceal himself as the men advanced toward him.
They were talking earnestly and eagerly. As they came abreast of Harry’s place of concealment, he heard Malvin’s voice. The fellow evidently did not fear detection or eavesdroppers, for he was talking in a bold, loud voice.
“A lucky thing I hid in that shrubbery and overheard every word the young whelps were saying,” he was exclaiming. “Otherwise we might have walked right into a trap. What do you advise doing, Hawke?”
“So the man of the island is named Hawke, is he?” thought Harry, as he listened with every instinct strained. “Well, that’s one discovery, Mr. Malvin. Another one is that I was not mistaken when I thought I heard something in the shrubbery this afternoon.”
“Give me time to breathe a bit after my confinement in that gasoline compartment,” rejoined Hawke in a surly manner. “I thought I’d suffocate in there. That inquisitive young brat stayed down in the forepeak too long to suit me, I can tell you.”
“Well, it was a good thing I gave you warning by shouting, ‘Look out below,’” rejoined Malvin; “otherwise all our plans might have been upset.”
Hansen’s voice halted the two worthies just as Harry feared they were about to get out of earshot.
“Hold on, you fallers,” he heard the Norwegian say, “vile I skoll gat light by my pipe.”
“Hurry up, then. We’ve work ahead of us,” came Malvin’s voice. “Those brats are off up town to try to talk to Jim Whey. We want to get ahead of them.”
“If that boy talks, I’ll – ” Hawke’s voice trailed off in a threatening growl.
“So Jim Whey is the name of that lad you said was your son till we called your bluff,” thought Harry, as he listened while the Norwegian struggled to get a light in the brisk breeze that was blowing.
“Pshaw! That lad won’t be able to talk for some time to come, if he was as badly hurt as you told me,” said Malvin, reassuringly. “It was right after I’d slipped my anchor and given the kids the go-by that I heard the explosion and saw the flash. I always told you to be careful about that dynamite, Hawke.”
“It was Rawson that would have it stored there,” grumbled the other. “He had a crazy notion that some time we might make a submarine mine out of it, and make things hot for anyone who came snooping around Windmill Island uninvited. How was I to know that that crazy dog would come galloping into the shack and upset the lamp and blow everything to Kingdom Come? If the boy and I hadn’t skinned out as soon as it happened, we’d neither of us be on earth to-night. I wonder where the Artful Dodger was when things exploded?”
“I don’t know,” responded Malvin; “we’d sighted her not long before, and she played the phosphorescent trick, the light stunt and all, but it didn’t scare those pesky kids, except one of ’em who swore she was a spook!”
Hawke burst into a laugh. Harry’s ears burned as he heard.
“I wish they were all like that,” continued Malvin. “Confound them, they ran me out of a good job, and we can’t use the River Swallow any more in our work. And not content with that, they’ve got to start chasing the Artful Dodger now.”
“Well, they’ll chase her a precious long time before they get any satisfaction,” responded Hawke; “and then it’s liable to be in reverse English. Rawson isn’t the sort of man to stand for any monkey business. He’d as lief send ’em all to the bottom as eat, I reckon.”
“Yes, that’s Rawson,” agreed Malvin. “Well, Hansen, got your light?”
“Aye, aye,” growled the Norwegian.
“Then come on. We’ve wasted too much time already.”
The trio struck off up the road toward the town. Harry, after waiting what he deemed a safe period of time, slipped from his place of concealment and followed them.
His brain was fairly in a whirl with what he had overheard. It explained many things.
Judging from what the men had said, the “spook motor craft” was called the Artful Dodger and was engaged in some nefarious business, as, indeed, the boys had already guessed. A man named Rawson was in command of her, and he was evidently a desperate character. The mention of the submarine mines, the explosive for which had been detonated by accident, amply demonstrated that.
Moreover, Malvin must have visited the island the night before, after they had left with the boy, and taken Hawke on board the River Swallow, concealing him in a small space under the gasoline tanks forward. Nor was this all. The injured lad, Jim Whey, was clearly a cog in the machine somewhere.
Also, judging from what he had overheard, Jim Whey knew much of the machinations of the gang of which, apparently, he was an unwilling member. Otherwise, why should the men have feared that he might talk to the lads who had rescued him? That Jim had revelations of importance to make, was clear from what had been said.
“I’ll have to hurry up and meet the others,” exclaimed Harry to himself as he hastened along, taking care to keep a safe distance behind the three men he could see ahead of him.
“My! I guess I’ve got something to tell them that won’t sound like any ghost story from Spook Land!”
CHAPTER XIX
RALPH GETS A TELEGRAM
Harry met his friends at the telegraph office after he had tracked the three men from the River Swallow to a telephone pay station, the same one, in fact, from which Malvin had called up the Mercy Hospital. His excited face at once showed them that he had news of importance to communicate, and they listened eagerly to his story, standing outside the place so as to be sure there were no eavesdroppers about. Ralph had already sent his telegram and was to have an answer in an hour.
Harry Ware wasted no words in telling his experiences. His narrative was soon over, and Ralph suggested an immediate start for the police station.
“We surely have got enough evidence against the gang now to warrant informing the police,” he said. “Of course, we’ve no idea what sort of work this Artful Dodger and these men are engaged in. But we know it is something unlawful, and that is excuse enough for us to let the police know what is going on.”
They were not long in reaching the police station, a solid-looking gray stone building with two lights burning in front of it. They ascended a flight of stone steps and entered the place, which was empty except for a stout sergeant seated behind an oak desk. As soon as he spoke, the boys discerned that he was a recent importation from England.
“Is the inspector in?” asked Ralph.
“The h’inspector h’is h’in, but h’I dunno h’if you can see ’im. W’at’s yer business, coveys?” inquired the sergeant, twisting a big mustache and looking important.
“It’s – it’s of a private nature,” said Ralph, who was spokesman of the party.
“Ho, dear! Private, h’is h’it? Well, h’I’ll notify the h’inspector, h’and per’aps, – mind, h’I don’t say for certain, – per’aps ’ee may see you to-morrer.”
“But we must see him to-night. It’s important, I tell you,” cried Ralph to the apathetic official, who appeared to be about to go to sleep.
The reply to this was unexpected.
“Yankees, h’ain’t yer?” asked the sergeant.
“Yes; Americans, that is. What of it?”
“Ow, nuffin. H’only you Yanks h’are h’always in such a bloomin’ ’urry.”
“Naturally we are in a hurry. We are on the trail of some malefactors. Some bad men. They are engaged in some sort of nefarious business, and we thought it our duty to notify you at once.”
“H’oh, h’is that so? W’at ’ave they been a-doin’ h’of?”
“Why, we don’t exactly know. You see – ” began Ralph in explanation. But the sergeant cut him short.
“So you don’t h’even know w’at they’ve been a-doin’ h’of, hey? H’I thought there was something precious h’odd h’about this ’ole business. Look ’ere, young chaps, ’ow do you suppose we can h’arrest these men, – h’even supposin’ there h’are h’any such persons, – h’unless we know w’at they’ve been a-doin’ h’of?”
“That’s for you to find out,” cried Ralph, growing rather heated, for the sergeant’s manner implied that he did not place much credence in the boy’s story.
“Ow! For h’us to find h’out, h’is h’it?”
“Of course. We have reported them as suspicious persons. If we can see the inspector, I will give him full details.”
“You will, will yer. Well, that’s bloomin’ condescending h’of yer. The h’inspector ’as to go to a dawnce ter-night, and h’if yer wants ter see ’im, you’ll ’ave to come around to-morrer.”
“You refuse to let us see him, then?”
Ralph was red hot by this time.
“H’I do, yes. By wurtue of the h’authority in me wested. H’as h’if h’I’d disturb ’im for a bunch h’of kids!”
“You may be sorry,” warned Ralph. “In our opinion, there is some work of grave import going forward, – probably smuggling, – although of that we are not certain.”
“Oh, what’s the use of talking to him!” exclaimed Persimmons, glaring at the placid sergeant. “Thank goodness, we’re Americans and get after our law-breakers, instead of going out to pink teas when there is work to be done!”
“Yes, I guess the American police and Custom officials keep their eyes open, in which respect they offer a refreshing contrast to the Canadian authorities,” sputtered Harry Ware equally irritably.
“Oh, keep quiet, boys. What’s the use of talking!” said Ralph with a helpless look.
“H’ow, no. Talk all you want to, mates,” said the cockney sergeant. “H’it h’amuses me, don’cher know.”
“Well, what do you know about that!” gasped Harry.
“M’ dear young chaps, h’I know nothing whatever h’about h’it,” replied the sergeant.
Fairly baffled by such obtuseness, which seemed impossible to be natural and therefore only assumed to irritate, the boys left the police station.
“Well, what shall we do now?” asked Harry hopelessly. “I guess we are up a tree for fair.”
“I don’t see it in that light,” responded Ralph. “On the contrary, these obstacles make me all the more determined to nail this crowd and find out what sort of crooked work they are up to. We’ll go back to the telegraph office and find out what reply I’ve got from dad at Montreal.”
“And then?”
“Well, I’ve got a plan if you fellows will consent to it.”
“We’re in on anything you suggest, Ralph,” responded Harry, while Persimmons vigorously nodded his endorsement to that.
“Well, then, fellows, my plan is this. It’s plain there is no use wasting time on Canadian officials. Therefore we’ve got to rely on the American authorities.”
“Looks that way,” agreed the others.
“All right, then. We’ll leave here for Piquetville without saying anything to Malvin about our destination. We’ll anchor off shore there and go up to the dock in the tender. You can explain that the engines have gone wrong, Percy. Then we’ll communicate our suspicions to the authorities and bring them off to the anchored River Swallow. In that way we can nab the whole bunch.”
“Including the third man, – Hawke?” asked Harry anxiously.
“Including him, I hope. It’s my notion that Hawke has some articles of value on his person which are to be smuggled, and that Malvin took him off the island after the hut blew up for that purpose. It’s likely that Hawke was to be hidden on our island till a chance came to smuggle whatever they are transporting illegally across the border. Circumstances prevented this, and so Malvin concealed him on the River Swallow. I’ll wager that he’ll be on board to-night by the time we get down to the dock.”
Talking thus, the three lads were not long in reaching the telegraph office.
Ralph entered the place eagerly.
“Any reply to that message I sent a while ago to Montreal?” he asked anxiously.
The operator glanced up at him with an odd look.
“Why, yes,” he said, “one came a few minutes ago.”
He handed him a pink telegraph form with a recurrence of his odd look. Ralph noticed it, but it was not until he had glanced over the despatch that its significance burst upon him like a thunderclap. No wonder the operator had had a queer expression on his face! This was the message:
“Am under arrest here. Suspected of diamond smuggling. Don’t worry. It looks like a joke on the authorities. – Dad”