CHAPTER VII
THE HAND IN THE DARK
THE HAND IN THE DARK
THE HAND IN THE DARK
The three other boys were not a little alarmed by the constable’s word and manner; but Dan did not show any fear.
“Just pack the earth and stones well around the post, Billy,” he said to his brother, cheerfully, “while I go back to town with Mr. Somes, and get this matter straightened out.”
Dan knew a little something himself about the town ordinances; he was aware that a permit was necessary for the opening of an excavation in a public road. But it was a rule often ignored in such small matters as this. Chance Avery had set the officious constable at this work, and Somes was just mean enough to delight in making the Speedwells trouble.
And on the way to the house of ’Squire English they would pass the office of the council clerk. Dan knew this gentlemen very well, and as Somes pulled up his horse to speak to a friend, the boy hopped out upon the sidewalk.
“Hey! where you going?” demanded the constable.
“I’ll be right back,” said Dan, dodging into the building and leaving the constable fussing in the carriage.
The boy found Mr. Parker at his desk and explained quickly what he and Billy were doing down there beside the river road.
“Digging a hole to set a post? Well, go ahead! I reckon nobody will object,” said the clerk. “You’ll fill it in all right, Dan?”
“But somebodyhasobjected,” explained the boy. And he told Mr. Parker of the difficulty.
“Pshaw! Josiah ought to be in better business,” declared the clerk, and he hastily filled out a permit, headed “Highway Department” and gave it to the youth. “Show that to Justice English,” he advised.
He nodded and smiled and Dan knew that the gentleman appreciated the joke on the constable. The latter was sputtering loudly when Dan returned to the sidewalk. He had got out of the carriage and hitched his horse.
“Here! you come along with me, Dan Speedwell!” cried the constable. “You’re trying to run away.”
Dan saw Chance Avery grinning widely on the other side of the square. It was plain that the captain of the Riverdale Club congratulated himself that he had got the Speedwells into trouble.
They went into ’Squire English’s office. The old gentleman was a crotchety man, stern and brusk of speech, and a terror to the evil-doers who came before him. He did not like boys, having forgotten that he was ever one himself.
“What now? What now, Josiah?” he snapped, looking up from his papers, and glaring under bristling brows at Dan Speedwell.
“This here boy—and some others that I didn’t bring in—are digging holes in the turf along the river road, just beyond Mr. Abram Sudds’ place. You know that piece of turf there, ’Squire, that the town spent so much to grade and make handsome. Well this here Dan Speedwell was digging a hole in it.”
“You’re old enough to know better than to do that, young man,” said the ’Squire, to Dan. “What did you do it for?”
Dan silently tendered the paper Mr. Parker had given him. The justice put on his glasses, looked at it, and turned on the constable wrathfully.
“What do you mean by bringing him here, when he’s got a permit to set his post? Think I’ve got nothing more to do, Josiah, than to monkey with foolish cases?”
“Why—why—he never told me he had a permit!” cried the chagrined constable.
“You never gave me a chance to tell you,” declared Dan.
“Get out of here—the whole of you!” snarled Justice English, as the crowd that had followed Dan and Somes in began to giggle and whisper, just as delighted over the constable’s taking down as they would have been had Dan been punished.
The boys, on Dan’s return from the ’Squire’s office, rigged a clumsy, but efficient, swing-arm for the derrick before they were obliged to go home. But it grew too dark for anything more to be done that night. So they piled into the wagon and started for the other side of town.
As they halted at a certain corner to let Jim and Wiley get out of the wagon, a party of girls came along and hailed them.
“Oh, boys!” cried Lettie Parker, who was a jolly girl with more than a suspicion of red in her hair, and the quick temper which is supposed to go with it. “Oh, boys! you are just whom we wished to see. I don’t believe any of you have heard about the candy-pulling out at Stella Mayberry’s.”
“Stel Mayberry’s?” cried Jim. “I knew she was going to have one; but I didn’t hear when.”
“It’s to-night. She wasn’t at school to-day, so the word didn’t get around. I got a note from her, and so did Mildred,” Lettie said. “And we’ve been around inviting folks.”
“Never heard a thing about it,” declared Billy.
“But she means for you boys to come,” Mildred Kent, the doctor’s daughter, said, more quietly. She spoke to Dan. “I hope you can come. We’ll go over on our wheels as soon after supper as we can.”
“We’ll be late getting there, Mildred,” said Dan Speedwell.
“But we can all come back together. You know where she lives?”
“Oh, yes. Down the river road.”
“We’ll hurry along,” said Billy, “so as to get over to Mayberry’s as early as possible.”
The Speedwells drove away. They went around to several other farmers to pick up the evening’s milk before going home. Then, when their chores were all done and they had supper, Dan and Billy mounted their motorcycles and dashed away through the town and out the river road toward the farmhouse which was the scene of the evening party.
While within the immediate confines of Riverdale they had to run moderately; but it was already after half-past eight, they wanted to reach Mayberry’s before the fun was all over, and therefore “let out” the motors when they got upon the river road.
The white highway before them was deserted clear down to the bend at which Dan Speedwell had first seen the maroon car of the bank robbers on Saturday afternoon. That trio of criminals had gotten away: all pursuit had been futile.
But as the two boys shot around the bend they sighted an automobile chugging slowly toward them. It was not far beyond where the shadowy outline of their rudely constructed derrick was visible.
An automobile on this road was no uncommon sight; but the attention of Dan and Billy was called particularly to it because it showed no lights!
The boys flashed past the slowly moving machine at racing pace; yet Billy gained some particular knowledge of the car and its single occupant.
“Hey, Dannie!” he shouted. “Did you see him?”
“The fellow at the wheel?”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t help seeing him; but I’m not sure who it was. The car I know,” responded Dan.
“Poole’s?” asked Billy, eagerly.
“That’s what it was—Burton Poole’s car,” said the older brother.
“Then I’m sure I made no mistake. My eyes didn’t fool me. That’s Chance Avery in the car alone, running without a light. It would be a good joke to reporthimfor breaking a town ordinance and have him up before Judge English,” cried Billy.
The candy-pull broke up at an early hour, for all hands had to face lessons on the morrow. The girls had come out on motorcycles, too, and they were a gay party that started for Riverdale after bidding the Mayberrys, and those guests who lived near the farm, good-night.
Dan and Mildred Kent got off a little in advance of the rest of the riders, and led the company by several hundred yards. They were very good friends, Dan having dragged Mildred to school on his sled when they were both in the primary grade, and the fact that Doctor Kent was wealthy and the Speedwells were comparatively poor never made the least difference in their friendship.
“I heard the boys saying something about you and Billy buying an auto, Dan,” said Mildred Kent. “Is it a joke?”
“We can’t tell about that yet, Milly,” responded Dan, chuckling. “Just at present itlookslike a joke, for, as Billy says, the machine is up in the air.”
“Do tell me what you have done,” urged Mildred.
“Wait until we get along the river road a bit and I’ll show you the car.”
“You don’t mean it’s Maxey Solomons’?”
“Itwashis,” admitted Dan, cheerfully. “And if we can get it out of the tree where it lodged last Saturday, we’ll show some of the folks around here that it is a real flying machine, although we hope to keep it out of the air for the future.”
They were wheeling along the road at a fast clip, but easily. Just as Dan spoke there sounded ahead an echoing crash—the fall of some object which made quite a startling noise on this quiet evening.
“What can that be?” demanded Mildred.
“I declare I don’t know,” said Dan, and quite involuntarily increased his speed.
There followed the sudden noise of a rapidly driven automobile—a car that was just starting ahead of them. In half a minute Dan knew that the car was hurrying toward Riverdale. Before he and Mildred had traveled three hundred yards the motor car was almost out of their hearing.
“What do you suppose has happened?” cried the girl.
Dan did not reply. It was a moonless night, but the heavens were brilliant with stars and their light made pretty plain objects along the road.
Their swift motorcycles had brought Dan and Mildred almost to the spot where the Speedwells had set their derrick in the afternoon. The contrivance had disappeared!
“Stop!” shouted Dan, and shut off his power and leaped from his saddle. He ran to the side of the road. There was the stump of the post he and Billy had set. It had not broken off, but had been chopped down with an axe!
And the whole apparatus had been allowed to fall over the precipice. In the darkness below the wall Dan could not see whether or not the falling derrick had crashed upon the automobile in the tree-top.