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The Young Engineers on the Gulf, a fiction by H. Irving Hancock |
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Chapter 8. Mr. Prenter Investigates |
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_ CHAPTER VIII. MR. PRENTER INVESTIGATES Tom suddenly felt dizzy. He wished to race back, to be the first to greet his chum and press his hand. But just then Reade felt strangely bewildered. "Of course I don't believe in ghosts!" Tom laughed nervously. "No!" chuckled Mr. Prenter. "This is real flesh and blood that is coming toward us." Now, for the first time, Tom Reade knew just how fully he had believed, in the inner temple of his soul, that Harry Hazelton had been actually killed. "Pulling my work to pieces, are you, Tom?" Harry called jovially. "P---p---pardon me for not coming to meet you, old fellow, b---b----but I'm dumbfounded at seeing you," Tom called back. Harry, too, looked rather unsteady in his gait by the time he joined them. The last few yards he tried to run along the wall. Tom thrust out an arm and caught him just in time. "You've been hurt, Harry!" gasped Tom. "Yes, and I guess I'm a bit weak, even now," Hazelton mumbled. "Hurt? Look at this." Hazelton uncovered his head, displaying a court-plaster bandage underneath which clotted blood showed. "Where in the world have you been?" Tom quivered. "At sea," Harry answered, with an attempt at banter. "What happened to you?" "Tom, you remember the big black man I imagined that I saw last night?" "Of course I do." "He was a reality," Harry went on soberly. "After you had gone he appeared again. We had it hot and heavy. I saw your boat coming, and I yelled---" "I heard you," Tom interposed. "We got along as speedily as we could." "And you didn't find me," finished Harry. "That brute hit me over the head with something. We clinched and rolled into the gulf together. That was the last that I remember clearly for some time. For a long time I had a dream that I was bobbing about in water, and that I had my arms around a floating log. By and by I came to sufficiently to discover that the dream was a reality. I was holding to the log in grim earnest. How I came to find the log I can't imagine. I think, while more than half unconscious, I must have been swimming straight out into the gulf. Then I must have touched the log and clung to it instinctively. Anyway, when I recovered more fully I knew that the 'long-shore lights looked thousands of miles away. I was too weak even to dream of trying to swim back, or to push the log before me. So I got a stout piece of cord out of one of my pockets and lashed myself to the log. I was afraid I might become unconscious again. A part of the time I was unconscious. "Well after daylight I saw a sloop headed my way. It didn't look as though it would go straight by either. So I waved my handkerchief---my hat was gone. After a while the skipper of the sloop saw me and headed in for me. It was a sloop that carries the mails to Hetherton, a village that has no rail connection. "The captain hauled me aboard, questioned me, looked as though he more than half doubted my yarn, and then put me to bed in the cabin of the sloop. He attended to me as best he could. When we reached Hetherton, about noon, a doctor patched me up. I had something to eat, bought this new hat, and hired a driver to take me ten miles to the railway. Then I came over here as soon as I could, and---pardon me, but I'm feeling weak. I'll sit down right here." Harry sat down heavily on the wall. "Why didn't you wire me?" asked Tom. "Why, you didn't doubt but that I'd turn up as surely as any other bad egg, did you?" questioned Harry, looking up. "Chum, I wouldn't admit it, even to myself, but I feared you were dead. But we mustn't waste time talking. Describe that black man to me, and---" "And the company will hire detectives to start right on the trail of that negro," interjected Mr. Prenter. "If---if the expense is really warranted," ended Mr. Bascomb, cautiously. "Warranted?" retorted the treasurer of the Melliston Company. "Why, it is absolutely necessary to protect our work here! That big negro is the key to the mystery. We must catch him if it costs us a thousand dollars." "Oh, well," assented President Bascomb, reluctantly. "I---I guess I'm all right to start in to work now," Harry suggested, trying to rise. "Sit down---you're not!" replied Tom and Treasurer Prenter, in the same breath, as both pressed Harry back to the wall. "We don't need work so much to-day," Mr. Prenter continued. "What we want to do is to solve this mystery. You stay here, Hazelton. I'll go back alone and find a 'bus or a carriage. Then we'll go back to camp and hold a council of war. Something must be done, and we'll decide _how_ it's to be done." Mr. Prenter, though no longer a young man, proved that he carried both speed and agility in his feet. While he was gone Tom endeavored to get a few more particulars from Harry, but Hazelton simply didn't know anything that threw any more light on the dread mystery of the breakwater. "Then a million-dollar undertaking like this is to be constantly imperiled, just because of a senseless moral crusade that you two young men are trying to put through in the camp," declared Mr. Bascomb moodily. Tom covertly signaled his chum to pay no heed to this remark. Within a quarter of an hour Treasurer Prenter returned in a stage drawn by two sorry looking horses. "This will carry us up to the house, if the affair doesn't break down," Mr. Prenter called cheerily. "Come along, folks." Soon afterwards the four were back on the porch. Nicolas came gliding out to see what he could do for their comfort. "Just circulate around and make sure that no one gets close enough to hear what we're talking about," Mr. Prenter directed. He had already ordered the driver of the stage to withdraw a few rods and await orders. "Now, then, Hazelton," continued the treasurer, "we're anxious to hear more of your strange story." "I've told you all there is to it," protested Harry. "Surely, there must be some more to it." "There isn't." "Then, for the tale of an engineer who was all but murdered, and a case enveloped in mystery from end to end," cried Mr. Prenter, "we have a most singular scarcity of details." "There are only two more details needed, as it appears to me," Tom remarked quietly. "Good! And what are they?" demanded the treasurer, wheeling around to look keenly at the young chief engineer. "The two details we now need," Reade continued, "are, first, who was the negro? Second, who was behind the negro in this rascally work?" "Only two points to be solved," suggested the treasurer mockingly, "but pretty big points. Of course, the first point is---" "To find that negro, and get him jailed," Tom declared incisively. "Good enough!" nodded Mr. Prenter. "The detectives will find the negro." "Will they?" Tom asked. "Then that will be something new, indeed. I've seen detectives employed a good deal, Mr. Prenter, and generally all they catch are severe colds and items to stick in on the expense account." "Oh, there are some real detectives in this country," contended Mr. Prenter. "We'll engage some of them, too." "The expense of hiring detectives will be very large," murmured Mr. Bascomb uneasily. "Yes, it will," agreed the treasurer with a laugh. "But never mind. It's always my task to find funds for the company, you know." "Harry," Tom broke in, "just what did that negro look like?" "About six-foot-three," answered Hazelton, slowly and thoughtfully. "He was broad of shoulder and comparatively slim at the waist. He must weigh from two hundred and twenty-five to thirty pounds. As to age, I couldn't tell you whether he was nearer thirty or forty years. From his agility I should place him in the thirty-year class." "Any beard?" "Smooth-faced." "Scars?" "I couldn't see that much in the dark." "Color of his clothes?" "Some darkish stuff---that's all I can say." "Could you pick him out of a crowd of negroes?" "Not if they were all of the same height and weight," Hazelton admitted. "Do you think you ever saw him before?" Reade pressed. "I'm sure that I never have," Harry replied. "Then he wasn't one of our men in this camp at any time?" Mr. Prenter interjected. "We have never had a man in the camp as large as this negro," Harry rejoined. "Such a very large black man ought not to be hard for the detectives to locate," Prenter continued. "Very good, sir. Then you can let the sleuths have a try at the matter," Tom suggested. "Have you any telegraph blanks here?" Tom went inside, coming out with a pad of blanks. Mr. Prenter addressed a dispatch to the head of a detective agency in Mobile. "We'll get the 'bus driver to take this over to town," said Mr. Prenter, as he signed the dispatch. "You had better send your dispatch by Nicolas, who is so faithful that he can't be pumped, and he never talks about things that he shouldn't." The Mexican was accordingly sent away in the stage. When he returned Nicolas busied himself with getting supper and setting it on the table. Superintendent Renshaw returned from the work in time to join the others at table. "Mr. Reade, how are you going to protect the works to-night?" inquired the superintendent. "I'm going to order Foreman Corbett and twenty men to night duty," Tom answered. "The motor boat will also be out to-night. We'll have every bit of the wall watched by men with lanterns." "What you ought to do," suggested Treasurer Prenter, "is to light the breakwater up with electric lights. You have steam power enough here, and with a dynamo you could supply current to the lights." "There's the expense to be considered," mildly observed President Bascomb. "The expense is a good deal less than having the wall damaged by more explosions," said Prenter, rather sharply. "Reade, how long would it take you to get an electric light service going?" "It ought not to take more than three or four days, sir, if we can pick up a suitable dynamo in Mobile. But there's another point to be considered. We very likely would have to obtain the permission of the Washington authorities before we could run a line of lights out into the Gulf of Mexico. You see, sir, so many uncharted lights might confuse the navigators of passing ships." "Write Washington, then, and find out where you stand in the matter," directed the treasurer. "Yes, sir; I'll do that," Reade agreed. "But don't order any electrical supplies until you've got an estimate of the cost and have it approved by me," hinted President Bascomb. This cautious direction made Mr. Prenter shrug his shoulders. Dinner finished, all hands went out to sit on the porch. Mr. Bascomb soon began to ask questions about the camp, the housing of the men, and about other details of the camp. "Although it is dark it's still early. Wouldn't you like to go over through the camp with us?" proposed Tom. Mr. Bascomb agreeing, the whole party set out, only Nicolas remaining behind to keep an eye over the house. Though he did not then suspect it Tom was on the threshold of more trouble in the camp. _ |
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