LITMIR.BIZ

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a moment a single sharp whistle sounded near at hand, and then Frank, crouching close to the ground, saw a black figure come toward Wat Snell.

      The wind that was moaning over the sea swept up the road and caused something to flap around the shoulders of this figure like a great pair of wings.

      For all of the darkness, Frank recognized this figure, and he was seized with an indefinable feeling of fear such as he had never felt before.

      With an effort, Frank steadied his quivering nerves, remaining quiet to watch and listen.

      The person who had appeared in answer to Snell's signal was the man in black, and he quickly pounced upon the boy, like a huge hawk upon its prey.

      "The ring!" he cried, hoarsely. "Where is it?"

      Wat gave a low cry of fear.

      "Don't!" he gasped. "You're hurting me! Your fingers are hard as iron, and they crush right into a fellow!"

      "The ring!" repeated the man, fiercely. "Produce it!"

      "I haven't got it."

      "What?" snarled the mysterious stranger. "You have not kept your word! What do you mean?"

      "Don't shake a fellow like that!" quavered Snell. "You act like a madman."

      "Answer my questions! Why haven't you kept your word?"

      "Couldn't."

      "Why not?"

      "Didn't get the chance."

      "But you said you could get a boy to assist you—the fellow who rooms with this Merriwell."

      "I thought I could, but the cad went back on me."

      "He refused to aid you?"

      "Yes, sir."

      "And you have found no opportunity to get hold of the ring yourself?"

      "Not yet—but I will, sir," Snell hastily answered. "All I want is to know that you will pay me as you agreed. Don't hold onto my arm so tight; I won't run away."

      "Bah!" cried the man in black, as he half-flung Wat from him. "What beastly luck!"

      "It is bad luck," confessed Snell, falteringly. "But it isn't my fault. I have done my best."

      The man in black said nothing, but stood with his head bowed, the elbow of his right arm resting in the hollow of his left hand, while his right hand, fiercely clinched, supported his chin. The wind continued to flap the cape about his shoulders.

      The man's attitude and his silence gave Snell a feeling of fear, and he drew away, acting as if he contemplated taking to his heels, for all that he had said he would not run.

      "I do not propose to endure much more of this," muttered the man, at length. "I'll have that ring soon, by some means!"

      "You must consider it very valuable," said Wat, curiously.

      "Valuable!" came hoarsely from the lips of the man in black. "I should say so! If it were not, I shouldn't be making such a desperate struggle to get possession of it."

      The lad who was listening a short distance away, strained his ears to catch every word.

      "There must be some secret about the ring?" insinuated Snell. "The gold in it amounts to little, and the old black stone——"

      A strange sound came from the throat of the man in black, and then, seeming to fancy that he had admitted altogether too much, he hastened to say:

      "The ring is valuable to me; but it is worth little to anybody else."

      "I suppose that is because nobody else knows its secret?" came from Snell.

      "Secret! Bah! It has no secret!"

      But it was not easy to convince Snell that this was the truth.

      "Then why should you go to such extremes to get possession of a wretched old thing of that sort?" demanded Wat.

      "I have told you. The ring belonged to me—was stolen from me. It has been in our family a great length of time, and was given me by my father. I prize it highly for that reason. I do not know how it came into the possession of this Merriwell family, and I cannot prove my claim to my own property, so I must recover it in such a manner as is possible. That is the truth."

      Wat said nothing. Somehow he was doubtful, for it did not seem that anybody who was sane could resort to such desperate expedients to recover an ugly old ring that had no particular value save as an heirloom.

      As for Frank, he might have believed the strange man's story, but for the fact that the man had told him something entirely different. One story or the other might be true, but in any case the man in black was a liar.

      There was a brief silence, and then Snell asked:

      "How am I to know that you will surely pay me seventy-five dollars for the ring? You pounced upon me a few minutes ago as if you would rob me of it if it had been in my possession."

      "That was all through my eagerness and excitement," declared the man, soothingly. "I meant you no harm, but I was very anxious."

      "Well, I don't know; I am afraid I will be left when I get the ring and hand it over, so I guess I'll——"

      "What?"

      Wat edged a little farther away.

      "I guess I'll throw up the job," he hesitated.

      "Do you still think you can find a way to get the ring?"

      "Think so! I know I can get it, sooner or later, if I want to."

      "Then look here, to prove that I am sincere I will pay you this much in advance. It is a twenty-dollar gold piece. Now you cannot doubt my earnestness and fairness in this matter. If you bring me the ring within forty-eight hours, I'll pay you, besides this twenty, the seventy-five dollars I offered in the first place."

      Snell eagerly clutched the piece of money.

      "You're a brick!" he cried. "And I'll lay myself out to get that ring. I haven't begun to try the schemes I have in my head. I will meet you here to-morrow night at about this time, and I'll do my best to have the ring. Only, if I haven't got it, I want you to promise not to jump on me and grab me the way you did to-night."

      "Don't be afraid. I won't harm you."

      "Well, you can scare a fellow out of his boots, and I don't like to be scared."

      "I am afraid you are something of a coward," said the man, a trace of contempt in his tone.

      But little more passed between them before the man in black turned away toward Fardale village, and Wat descended the road in the direction of the academy.

      Frank hugged the ground at one side of the road, and he was not seen by Snell.

      But, by the time Wat had gone so far that there was little danger of discovery if Frank moved from the locality, the man in black had vanished in the night.

      Still, Frank sprang up and went scurrying lightly up the hill, keeping to the grass at the side of the road, so his feet made scarcely a sound.

      He hurried along the road till Fardale village was almost reached, but he saw nothing more of the man in black. The mysterious stranger had vanished as completely as if swallowed up by the earth.

      Frank had hoped to trace the man to the place where he was stopping, but he was forced to give this up and hurry back to the academy.

      Still he had not wasted his time.

      "They will meet there to-morrow night, eh?" he muttered. "Well, it would not be a very difficult thing to have an officer on hand with a warrant for this stranger."

      He went straight to his room, hoping to find Hodge there.

      He did. Bart was seated in his favorite attitude, with his feet on the table, and a cigarette in his mouth!

      CHAPTER

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