CHAPTER XIII

A MIDNIGHT SCARE

There was a trolley line, newly built, which ran through Seabright, touching some of the other seacoast towns, but not Harbor View. As luck would have it, just when Frank Racer took after the strange man, hoping to make him stop by calling to him, one of the trolley cars came past.

In a flash the man had jumped aboard the electric vehicle, and, as fate would have it, the motorman happened to be behind time. No sooner was the queer stranger in the car, which had not even stopped for him, than the knight of the controller handle swung it clear around in an endeavor to keep up to his schedule, and with a whizz the car darted off.

"Wait! Wait!" yelled Frank, waving at the conductor. The latter shouted something, what it was the lad could not make out. Andy rushed up and joined his brother.

"Missed him; didn't we?" exclaimed the younger lad ruefully.

"Yes, worse luck," replied Frank. "He always seems to get away from us."

"There'll be another car along in fifteen minutes, boys," said a kindly fisherman pa.s.sing along.

"It wasn't the car we wanted, it was someone on it," answered Frank.

"Fifteen minutes will give him such a start that we can't follow him."

"Was he a pickpocket?" asked the fisherman.

"We don't know what he was," said Andy. "Come on, Frank, we'll go back and talk to Jim Hedson."

"I was thinking of taking the next car, and keeping after this fellow,"

spoke Frank, with his usual determined manner.

"What would be the use?" asked Andy, who generally took the easiest way. "He might get off anywhere along the line, and we could hunt all day and not find him. It would be time wasted."

"I guess you're right," a.s.sented Frank, with a sigh. "But I hate to give up. I'm sure there's some great mystery back of all this, and Paul and that man are in some manner connected with it. I shouldn't be surprised if that man had wronged Paul in some way."

"How, by taking his motor boat?"

"No, in some other way. It was a queer thing why Paul should be out in his boat alone in the blow. Then to have the boat disappear, and to be seen again towed by this man."

"You're not sure of the last part."

"I am pretty sure. But let's ask Mr. Hedson what he knows about it."

The boys did not find the boatman in a very kindly frame of mind. He greeted them rather sulkily as they approached:

"What do you lads mean by scaring off customers?" he asked.

"We didn't scare him off," answered Frank st.u.r.dily.

"What do you call it then? Wasn't he coming here to hire a sailboat off me, and didn't you chase after him, and make him leave on the car?

Now he'll likely go to Hank Weston at Edgemere, and hire a boat off him. I lose the trade."

"We're sorry," explained Frank, "but if you noticed that man you saw that he ran as soon he saw us. We didn't say a word to him. He just turned tail and sprinted."

"So I see," grumbled Mr. Hedson, "but I thought maybe you flew some kind of a distress signal."

"We were only too anxious to talk to him," put in Andy. "But he's afraid of us."

"Afraid; why?"

"Well, there's some mystery about him," went on Frank, "and we'd like to discover it. It's connected with a boy whom we saved from a gale."

And he told about Paul, and how the man had hastened away that day on the beach. "Do you know anything about him?" finished the elder Racer lad.

"Only this," spoke the boatman, not quite so angry now. "He come to see me yist'day, and asked if I had a sailboat I could hire out for a few days. He said he wanted to go cruising out to sea to bring in a boat of his that was disabled."

"A boat!" interrupted Frank eagerly. "Did he say what kind? Was it a damaged motor boat?"

"He didn't say, and I didn't ask him. I arranged with him to take my _Spray_ and he was to come to-day and get her. Now you see what happened."

"We're sorry to have spoiled your business," spoke Frank regretfully, "but perhaps it's just as well you didn't hire that man your boat. I don't believe he's to be trusted," and he told about the suspicion they had that the stranger had already been seen towing a disabled motor boat with a gasolene craft.

"The question is, where has he left the damaged boat--Paul's boat?"

went on Andy. "This thing is getting more and more complicated. Why should he want a sailboat to go out and tow in the motor craft, when he was seen in power vessel yesterday?"

"Maybe whoever owned the power vessel took it away from him," suggested Frank.

"I wouldn't wonder but what you're right!" exclaimed Jim Hedson, slapping his big pain down on his broad leg. "Now I think of it, I didn't like the looks of that man. He wouldn't look you square in the eye, but kept shifting around. I'm just as glad I didn't hire him my _Spray_, and I'm sorry I took you fellows up so short. I'll keep a lookout for that man, and if I see or hear anything of him I'll let you know. You're cottaging over Harbor View way; aren't you? I think I've seen you there."

"Yes, we're the Racer boys," replied Frank, "and we'll be obliged to you if you can put us on the track of this man. It isn't so much for our sake, as that we want to find out who Paul Gale is."

"Paul Gale!" exclaimed Mr. Hedson "That's a good name for the lad found as he was. Well, I'll do my best."

"Where to now?" asked Andy, as he followed his brother up the street.

"To the fertilizer factory. I think we can make a deal with them about our whale better by talking than over the telephone."

"We ought to have some of Chet Sedley's fifteen cent perfume if we're going up there," said Andy. "It smells worse than ten skunks on a wet night."

"Oh, well, I guess we can stand it a little while."

The fertilizer factory, where fish, chiefly menhadden, were ground up and treated, before being spread on farms and gardens to enrich them, was not a very delightful place. The boys soon located the manager, who had heard about their whale, and he made them a good offer for it, agreeing to take the carca.s.s away promptly.

Paul improved but slowly, and, as far as his mind was concerned, there was no change. The past was an entire blank to him, and Dr. Martin, as the days pa.s.sed, shook his head in doubt.

"I'm afraid it's going to take a long time," he said.

"Have you given up hope, Doctor?" asked Mrs. Racer, as she followed him from Paul's room.

"No, not entirely, but I'm disappointed that there is not a glimmer of the past. Perhaps if he could see something or someone connected with his former life it might produce a shock that would start the sluggish brain cells to working. Otherwise I don't know what can be done."

Andy and Frank, in their goings to and fro about the bay in their sailboat, kept a close watch for the mysterious man. But they did not see him. Neither had Jim Hedson heard anything.