“Very well,” replied the lawyer. “Come this way.”
He turned into a street bordering the water front, and casting a rapid glance around, failed to see any one except three men, attired in the garb of sailors, crouching in an adjoining doorway.
The lawyer drew his handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his face with it, and while apparently returning it to his pocket, dropped it. Instantly the three sailors darted from the doorway.
One of them, in a captain’s uniform, darted up behind the boy, flung an arm around his neck, pulled his head back, and clapped a sponge saturated with chloroform to Walter Grey’s nostrils.
A cry of alarm pealed from the startled boy’s lips, but it was quickly checked by a pressure of his assailant’s arm, and the moment he began to inhale the fumes of the drug he became stupefied.
His dark eyes were flashing with excitement.
He cautiously glanced around, and then saw a young man coming.
“Well?” gruffly asked the man who held young Grey.
The lawyer picked the drugged boy up and hastened over the muddy street with him toward a big whaling ship lying at one of the docks.
In the meantime the three sailors surrounded the newcomer.
He proved to be a dashing-looking young man, with a dark mustache, a symmetrical and athletic figure, and an intellectual face.
He had been behind the lawyer and the boy when they left the depot, and seeing the assault and Milburn’s indifference, he correctly concluded that the boy had been led into a trap.
“You scoundrels!” he panted: “what are you doing to that boy?”
“Keep away thar!” roared the captain, threateningly. “Mind yer own business and clear out of this.”
As the three seamen closed in on him, the stranger doubled up his fist and struck out straight from the shoulder.
Biff! Bang! Thump! went his fists like pile drivers, and every time they struck a man went down.
“When people of your stamp fool around Frank Reade, Jr., you generally get left!” muttered the gallant stranger.
The sailors swore as they got up, and the captain drew a pistol.
“Cuss yer!” he growled, as he leveled the weapon at Frank’s head. “I’ll blow yer brains out fer them welts!”
Bang! went the pistol, and a cry escaped Frank.
He clapped his hand to the side of his head where the ball had grazed his scalp, and reeling back, fell senseless to the ground.