"You can't be sure, my boy. I will take care of this paper, and you may have it on demand at any time. Were I in haste to destroy it, your doubts might creep back upon you and give you regret and pain. I will place it in a private vault with my own valuable papers, where it will remain safe and undestroyed."

"It is trouble too much for a worthless old paper," said Felipe.

His estimation of its value had undergone a most profound change.

"No trouble at all," smiled Merry; "and it is worth preserving as a curiosity, if nothing more. At any time you may have it. By preserving it and holding it ready for you on demand I may save myself from suspicion some future time when somebody shall try to convince you that the doc.u.ment is really valuable."

Frank had settled that point.

"Now, Felipe, my lad," he smiled, "let me warn you to look out for that man Hagan, through whom you came to this trouble. But for Hagan you would not have resorted to certain measures to frighten me, I fancy. You have found him a bad adviser. Had you succeeded in getting money out of me, Hagan would have obtained the lion's share. That was his game."

"Senor Hagan escaped from the fire?" questioned the boy.

"Oh, yes, he got out all right."

"But not Senor Lazaro?"

"I think Senor Lazaro ended his career right there. After the engines came, at a time when the building was wrapped in flames, he appeared at an upper window. The smoke cleared for a moment, and the glare of the fire showed him plainly. He seemed to look straight down at me with hatred in his black eyes. Then he whirled and rushed back from the window, as if seeking some means of escape. A few moments later the old building collapsed and fell. His bones must be buried in the ruins."

"For you, Senor Frank, I am glad," declared the Mexican boy. "He did hate you with terrible hatred, and he would have ruined you. The work of it he had begun."

"Yes, the snake! I heard his boast that he was the reincarnated spirit of Porfias del Norte, whom he would avenge. The man talked like a maniac, for at the last moment he even a.s.serted that he was Del Norte himself."

"For you it is good he did not escape," said Felipe.

"Had he escaped from the fire, the detectives would have nabbed him. The confession we overheard him make was enough to give him a good, long time behind the bars, for he boasted that, in his plot to ruin my plans, he poisoned Watson Scott and bribed Warren Hatch's automobile driver to wreck the machine in hopes of killing Hatch. Sudbury Bragg would have fallen next. That Scott stands a chance of recovering comes wholly through his remarkable stamina and fine physical condition. That Hatch was not killed is a marvel. Alvarez Lazaro was a human fiend, for, in order to injure me, he was willing to murder innocent men--he even attempted to murder two of them."

"Even I of him was afraid," confessed the Mexican boy. "It is not my way to strike the innocent in order to reach the guilty."

"I believe you, Felipe. You did not even wish to strike me if you could frighten me into giving you what you thought to be your just due. I learned that the night you stole into the room where I slept at the home of Warren Hatch and tried to shake my nerve by pressing your knife against my throat."

"But nothing could frighten you," said Felipe. "You told me then I would not kill. I am glad now that I did not. I shall never cease to be glad."

"Not even when Bantry Hagan again finds an opportunity to talk to you?

Hagan is slick, and he has a seductive tongue."

"Thanks for the compliment, me boy," said a voice at the door, and a stout, florid man stepped heavily into the room.

"Senor Hagan!" cried Felipe.

"The same, me lad," was the cool answer. "I thought I'd come to see how you were coming on, and this is the first time I could see ye. I find you have a visitor already. It's slick he calls me, but I'll bet me life he's been playing a slick game of his own with ye. Careful, me lad, or he'll have that doc.u.ment in his fingers, and never again will you see it at all."

"He has it now!" exclaimed the Mexican boy defiantly. "I gave it to him."

"Then it's too late I came. A poor fool you are, Felipe!"

The patient became greatly excited and rose to a sitting position, crying:

"Go you away! I want to see you no more! I will not listen to you!"

Hagan surveyed Merriwell.

"How you do it I can't say," he confessed; "but you have the trick of making friends of any who may give you trouble. It's proud I am to say you can't fool Bantry Hagan and turn his backbone to jelly. Del Norte is dead, but Hagan is alive, and he'll keep you on the jump for a while."

Frank stepped past Hagan to the door. Looking out into the long corridor, he called a young doctor who happened to be pa.s.sing.

"Doctor," he said, "a serious mistake has happened here. Take a look at this man who has forced his way in here. He is no friend of the patient, and you can see for yourself that the patient is greatly excited and wrought up by his intrusion. For the sake of the patient, will you see that this man leaves at once, that he is observed at the door, and that instructions are given to refuse him admittance if he has the cheek to call again."

"Take him away! Take him away!" cried Jalisco.

Immediately the doctor addressed Hagan.

"I think you had better come, sir," he said.

"Oh, I'll go!" grated the Irishman, giving Merry a savage glare. "I'll make no trouble about that. Good day to ye, Mr. Merriwell. Make the best of your success now, but remember that Hagan is no easy mark, and he'll get a rap at you yet."

His face purple with rage, the schemer strode out of the room and soon left the hospital.

Outside the gate he paused, removed his hat, and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. Although it was nipping cold, he seemed to be burning with the heat of an inward furnace.

"I'll walk a bit to cool off," he said, and set out, his head down, his face grim, his manner absorbed.

As he was crossing a street a cab whirled up beside him and stopped. He swore at the driver for his carelessness, but his profanity ended abruptly when the door of the cab swung open and he saw a pair of midnight eyes looking at him.

"By all the saints," gasped Bantry Hagan, actually staggering, "it is the dead alive again!"

The man in the cab lifted a hand and motioned to him. In a low, musical voice, he said:

"Senor Hagan, get in quickly. Come."

A moment the Irishman paused, seeming to hesitate; then he stepped forward and entered the cab.

The door slammed, the driver whipped up his horses, and the cab rumbled away.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A SURPRISE FOR FIVE THUGS.

Frank left the hospital on foot. He might have taken a car, but he preferred to walk. Always when thinking deeply he chose to walk, and he often became utterly oblivious to his surroundings, even on the crowded streets of a city.

He now set out without regard to direction. His talk with the Mexican boy had set him to thinking of Porfias del Norte and Alvarez Lazaro, between whom there had seemed to be some mysterious connecting link. The nature of that link was something to puzzle over, even though both men were dead.

Many times Frank had thought of the strange declaration of Lazaro that he was the avenger of Del Norte, even that he was Del Norte himself.

Such an a.s.sertion seemed that of a madman.