“That would settle the matter,” declared Tom, with seeming irrelevance. “If my life depended on putting him back with those ruffians, I don’t think I’d say. But I don’t know.”
Inwardly Tom was wondering over the mystery that seemed to have injected itself into the case of young Ralph. First the doctor had hinted at some secret, then there was the letter with its vague allusion, and now the rascally Rook seemed to have some knowledge of the lad.
Rook thought a moment, drumming the table with his fingers as if meditating.
“Do you mean to say that you and some other meddling jackanapes didn’t pick the kid out of the creek where we’d left him?” he asked presently.
Tom, who was a shrewd lad, saw by the man’s manner that he was—to use a slang term—fishing. He therefore shook his head.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said, “but I can tell you this—the police of Boston are on your track for abducting my cousin Jack.”
A swift look of alarm sped across Rook’s face. Radcliff’s hand, which he had raised to light a pipe, shook violently. Tom saw that he had scared them, and determined to follow up his advantage. But Rook interrupted him.
“Why, what do you know——” he began, when there came a startling interruption.
Somewhere upstairs a door slammed, and then there was the sound of a stealthy footstep creeping, apparently, toward the stairway. Radcliff started up in wild-eyed terror.
“What is it?” he gasped. “Oh! What is it?” Tom himself was considerably startled, and Rook turned pale.
“I—I don’t know,” he stammered. “Hark!” They listened, hardly daring to breathe. The time, the place, and the ghostly stories that clustered about the old mansion, all combined to make the interruption an alarming one.
“It’s—it’s a ger-ger-ghost!” stammered Radcliff, his teeth chattering.
“Don’t be a fool!” hissed Rook. “There ain’t no such things. It’s a rat or a——”
A fearful yell suddenly broke the breathless silence. It rang through the deserted house in a way to make the blood run cold.
Radcliff could stand no more. With one bound he cleared the table, knocking over the lamp as he did so. Instantly the light was extinguished, plunging the place into total darkness.
The scream was repeated, followed this time by a ghastly sort of chuckle coming out of the darkness. Even Rook’s iron nerve gave way. With what seemed an echo of the spectral yell, he plunged forward, collided with a long, old-fashioned window that opened into the room, and plunged clean through the frame, with a crash of glass and splintering of wood.