"I don't smell anything cooking in there," rejoined d.i.c.k with a shake of his head. "We can't hear anything sizzling over the fire, either."

"Then what-----" began Harry curiously.

Bang! interrupted a crashing explosion inside the building.

Boom! Then the door flew wide open, followed by a single great belching of white smoke.

Through the center of this cloud was hurled a human figure. A man struck the ground and lay there, senseless or lifeless, a pool of blood quickly forming on the ground beside him.

Chapter II

THE VANISHING MAN

For the first few seconds the Grammar School boys stood as if chained to the ground, their eyes staring with alarm and horror.

They stared at the man, apparently of middle age, who lay there, and they beheld the blood.

What on earth could have happened?

Boom! It was a lesser explosion that now sounded inside, yet it was enough to galvanize the boys into action.

"Come on!" cried Tom Reade, setting off in the lead. "We don't know nor care what's in there!"

"The house may blow up next," added Greg, following him.

All the members of d.i.c.k & Co. were now in full retreat. They were courageous lads, but, with the immediate landscape in seeming danger of blowing up, getting away was the wisest possible course.

"Say, what do you make of that?" demanded Greg breathlessly, when the Grammar School boys had halted, well out of sight of the cottage and down in the woods.

"Bang!" replied Tom dryly. "That's all I heard."

"And blood," almost chattered Hazelton.

"But what it means is a big puzzle," d.i.c.k added. "If Rip and his crowd are or were in the cottage, they would hardly explode anything purposely and perhaps kill a man. That man appeared to be dead---he must be dead. Rip and Dodge are mean fellows, but they're hardly up to killing people."

"There was an explosion," remarked Tom judicially, though his voice was still husky. "Now, while I don't know everything, I believe there always has to be an explosive in order to bring about an explosion. Am I right?"

"You stand on ground that no one can dispute," nodded d.i.c.k. "But how did the explosive come to be in a building that belongs to the water company, and which is supposed not to have been occupied in some years?"

"What was the man doing in there, for that matter?" demanded Tom.

"He wasn't very well dressed," observed Harry.

"Yet he didn't look like a tramp," Dave put in.

"But the man himself, and the fact that he's hurt or dead, are our two first points to consider," spoke d.i.c.k quickly. "If he's hurt we are bound to bring him help. If he's dead, we'll have to notify---some one."

"I'd like to go back there and have a look at him," quoth Tom, "but the biggest explosion of all may come out of that cottage at any moment now."

"Yet the facts are that another explosion hasn't come, and that the man ought to have help, as a matter of common decency," d.i.c.k urged.

"I'll run to the nearest house where people are living," suggested Tom, pulling off his jacket and making ready for a run.

"What are you going to tell the folks?" Prescott queried. "That the poor fellow is living or dead? I'm going back to find out which."

"We'll all go," offered Dave.

"But what happened to Rip and his mean crew?" asked Hazelton.

"We haven't seen any signs that they were in the cottage at all,"

d.i.c.k responded. "If they were, as none of them came out, they must be badly hurt---perhaps worse."

As a matter of fact, Ripley and his party had not gone into the cottage, but had continued directly towards their homes.

That grisly thought gave all the boys a shudder as they plodded up the slope, between the bushes and thence stepped into the clearing.

"Talk about dreaming!" muttered d.i.c.k, halting abruptly and staring hard at the ground around the cottage.

In the first place, the cottage door was closed. There was no smoke now coming out of the chimney, and all looked peaceful and deserted, save for the presence of the Grammar School intruders.

There was no injured man lying on the ground.

"Crackey!" gasped Greg. "Yet we didn't all dream together, did we?"

"Certainly not," muttered d.i.c.k, again starting forward. The others followed him.

"This is where we saw the man fall, isn't it?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Yes," nodded Greg.

"But there was blood on the ground then," urged Dave. "I don't see any now."

"It must have been goblin blood, then," laughed Tom rather unsteadily, for this mystery began to look unearthly.

"Hold on," hinted d.i.c.k. "Doesn't it look as though fresh earth had been sprinkled here?"

"Of course it does," nodded Harry. "And the earth has soaked up the blood."

"I don't see any soaked-up blood," objected Greg.

"No; because it's so well covered and soaked up," argued Hazelton.

"But wait until I find a stick, and we'll stir up that dirt.

Then we'll find the red stuff mixed to a sort of mud, and-----"

"Come along out of this, you ghoul!" uttered Tom almost wrathfully, as he seized his friend by the arm.