“Some ruffians are attacking the auto!” came from Jack as they drewcloser.
“Yes. Look! There’s a woman in the car. Two of them,” added Raynor.
“They’ve been held up.”
“Looks that way.”
As the two boys neared the car, the whole scene became clear to them. Itwas a limousine and three men, two on one side and one on the other,were poking revolvers into the windows of the enclosed part. As the boyscame up, the chauffeur, who till then had been paralyzed by fear, leapedfrom his seat and dashed off, taking the low stone wall, surrounding thepark, at one bound.
“The great coward! He might have been a big help to us, too,” exclaimedJack with indignation as he saw this.
“Yes, it’s three to two, and they are armed,” cried Raynor.
The next moment, with a startling yell they attacked two of the mensimultaneously. One of them went down with a crash under Jack’s powerfulright swing before he could do anything to defend himself, for none ofthem had noticed the approach of the two American lads.
The fellow’s revolver went spinning over the wall and fell with a ringof metal out of his reach. In the meantime, Raynor was not having suchan easy time with the man he had tackled. This fellow was aheavily-built specimen of dock lounger, or worse, with a Belgian cap onhis head and a handkerchief tied over the lower part of his face.
As Raynor rushed him, he seized the young engineer in an iron grip andpressed a weapon to his side.
“Fool, to interfere! This is your last moment on earth!” he snarled.
From the interior of the limousine, two women, one elderly and the otheryoung, looked out, paralyzed with alarm. Too frightened to scream, theysat stock still as they saw what was about to happen.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVI.
AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Jack saved the day.
With muscles of steel, tensed like tightly coiled springs, he leaped onthe back of the fellow whose revolver was pressing against Raynor’sside, and threw his arms about his neck. Choked and dazed, the mantoppled over backward and fell with a crash to the concrete walk.
“Quick, old fellow, get his revolver before he can get up,” choked outJack.
Raynor, recovering from his struggle, bent over and picked up the weaponand stood with it ready for action. Just as he did so, the third man,who up to now had been deprived of action from surprise at the quicknessof the whole thing, came to himself and made a rush for Jack.
Before Jack could turn, the fellow had seized him and knocked him over.At the same instant, in the distance, they heard the shrill screaming ofwhistles.
“_Les gendarmes!_” shouted the man who had knocked Jack over.
The two recumbent men, aroused from their stupor by their fright at theapproach of the police, gathered themselves up, and the three sped away,running at top speed across the little park where all was dark andshadowy.
In the meantime, the cowardly chauffeur, who had been watching frombehind a tree, saw that the day was saved, and began to consider what heshould do to save himself and his reputation. He had plainly desertedhis employer’s wife and daughter, frightened out of his wits when thethree ruffians demanded the women’s diamonds as they were on their wayhome from the opera. But now he leaped the wall again and shouted to thewomen that he had merely gone to summon the police, seeing that the boyshad the case well in hand. Then he jumped to the seat, and, not wishingto face a police examination himself or involve his employer in one, heturned on full power and sped away.
Hardly was he out of sight, than there appeared a detachment of Antwerppolicemen, led by an officer running at full speed toward the boys. Sometimid householder had heard the screams and shouts, but, too timorous toventure out himself, had telephoned the nearest station; and the suddenappearance of the officers was the result.
“Bother it all,” exclaimed Jack, “here come the police. Although they’dhave been welcome a while back, we don’t want them now.”
“Why not?” asked Raynor, not unnaturally.
“Well, we have a very important letter to the captain with us. If thepolice get hold of us, they’ll want to do a whole lot of questioning,and goodness knows what time we’ll get back.”
“What shall we do?”
“Take to our heels, I guess. It doesn’t look very honest, but we mustget that letter to the captain to-night.”
“That’s so; he said he’d sit up and wait for us,” responded Raynor.
“That is why I’m so anxious not to be detained. Come on.”
The two boys set off, running at top speed.
“Keep in the shadow of the wall,” said Jack; “we don’t want them to seeus.”
But that is just what the police did do. Their leader happened to bekeen of eye and almost instantly he detected the two fleeing forms. Heshouted something in French.
The boys kept right on. They ran like greyhounds. But the police werefleet of foot, too.
Then the boys heard behind them a series of sharp, yapping barks.
“What in the world are those dogs for?” asked Raynor pantingly.
They had passed the park now and were running through a street borderedwith dark houses. Jack’s reply was startling.
“They’re police dogs!”
“Police dogs?”
“That’s right. They have them in New York, too, and I remember readingin the paper that they were imported from Belgium.”
Shouts came from behind them.
They were in French, but the boys readily guessed their import. As if toemphasize their cries, the police, who believed not unnaturally thatthey were in pursuit of the miscreants who had disturbed the midnightpeace, drew their revolvers.
Bullets spattered at the heels of the boys.
“We’ve got to stop,” panted Raynor.
“If we do, we may get shot,” gasped Jack. “Quick, in here.”
He seized Raynor’s arm and pulled him inside an iron gate in a high wallthat surrounded a garden, in which stood a pretty, old-fashioned house.It appeared to be unoccupied.
“We’re in a fine pickle now,” muttered Raynor.
“Yes, I’m sorry we ran. If they catch us now, we’ll have an awful timeexplaining.”
Raynor shuddered.
“You don’t mean they’ll send us to jail?”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot about these foreign police. They’relikely to do anything.”
“And we can’t speak their language,” added Raynor. “That makes itworse.”
“I’m afraid that it does,” agreed Jack. “But hush! here they come.”
Headed by the nosing, sniffing, rough-coated police dogs, held inleashes, the police came running down the street. The boys had outrunthem and hoped that by crouching in the shelter of the wall within theiron gate, they could throw them off the track.
But in this, they had calculated without the dogs!
As the dogs came level with the gate, they stopped and sniffedsuspiciously. The police behind them began to talk excitedly, wavingtheir arms and talking with their hands as well as their tongues.
“It’s all off now,” whispered Jack.
“Couldn’t we run up that gravel walk and get back of the house?”breathed Raynor.
Jack shook his head. He didn’t dare to talk.
Suddenly the leader of the police squad pointed to the iron gate.
“Open it and search the house and grounds thoroughly,” he said inFrench. “These are desperate criminals, it is clear. Great credit willcome to us, _mon braves_, can we catch them.”
The iron gate was pushed open.
The next moment the two American boys with beating hearts steppedforward and faced this body of men, who, it was plain, believed Jack andhis chum to be miscreants of the blackest sort.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
&nbs
p; CHAPTER XVII.
RAYNOR’S UNLUCKY POCKET.
It was the most unpleasant predicament of his life in which Jack nowfound himself. Naturally, his chum felt the same way about it. The ironyof the situation was irritating.
Having chased away, at the risk of their own lives, some desperatecrooks, the lads who had done all this found themselves accused of beingnefarious characters.
“They are Anglise,” exclaimed one of the men as he turned a bull’s-eyelantern on them.
“No, sir, we are not. We are Americans,” exclaimed Jack proudly.
The leader of the gendarmes laughed in an amused way.
“Your country should be proud of you,” he said in good English with aprovoking sarcasm.
In fact, neither Jack nor Raynor looked at his best just then. Theircaps were gone, lost in the struggle with the would-be robbers, theirhair was tousled, perspiration streamed down their faces and theirgarments were torn and dusty.
Jack felt all this, and the knowledge of it did not tend to cheer him.Had he been a policeman and known no more of the facts than did thegendarmes, he felt that he would have been justified in acting in thesame way. But he determined to try to explain the case.
“We are off the American tank steamer _Ajax_,” he said. “To-night we hadan important errand in this section of the city. On our way back to theship we heard screams, and investigated. We found three men trying torob an old lady and a younger one who were seated in the closed part ofa blue limousine.
“After a struggle we disarmed them and put them to flight. Just as youpeople came up, the chauffeur, who ran away during the fight,reappeared, jumped into his seat and drove off. We were in a hurry toget back to our ship and so, foolishly, as I can see now, we ran off,thinking that if we stayed we might be detained and questioned.”
“Is that all?” asked the officer calmly.
“That is all,” responded Jack.
“It is enough.”
“Enough for what?” The man’s tone nettled Jack in spite of himself.
“Enough to secure you both a lodging in the prison of the cityto-night.”
The boys looked aghast.
“What! Do you mean to make us prisoners and lock us up?” asked Jack, whohad hoped that at the worst nothing more would be done than to questionthem and, having ascertained the truth of their stories, set them free.
The officer nodded and then gave a brisk command. At his words, apoliceman took hold of both boys by the right and left arms, twistingthem back so that if they made any great struggle to escape, their armswould be broken.
It was not till then that the full seriousness of their positions brokeover the boys. Raynor gave a wrench to free himself of the grip of thepolice, but an excruciating pain that followed made him quickly desist.
“Keep cool, old fellow,” advised Jack, “this will all be straightenedout.”
Then he turned to the English-speaking policeman.
“Of course we can send a message to the ship, and then you can speedilyascertain that we are telling the truth and set us free,” he saidbravely, but with a sinking heart.
To his dismay the reply was a decided negative.
“You will be allowed to tell your story to the examining magistrate inthe morning,” he said coldly. “And in the meantime, allow me to informyou that if it isn’t any more probable than the one you told me,—well——”
He shrugged his shoulders and twisted his sharp-pointed, little blackmustache.
“But, great heavens, man, it’s the truth!” burst out Jack.
“No doubt, no doubt. All our prisoners tell us that,” was the reply.
Suddenly the little officer’s eyes fell on Raynor’s coat. It bulgedconspicuously in one of the pockets. He stepped quickly to the Americanlad’s side and, with a cry of triumph, drew out a revolver.
It was the one Raynor had taken from the foot-pad; but its discoverymade things look black for the boys. The officer’s eyes narrowed. Helooked at them with a sneer.
“So,” he said, holding up the pistol, “you two honest, law-abiding ladscarry pistols abroad at night! This discovery alone, _messieurs_, provesthat your story is a concoction from beginning to end. If you reallycome off a ship, you are samples of the sort of sailors we don’t wanthere.”
Jack tried in vain to be heard, but a wave of the hand enjoining silenceand a crisp command to the subordinate police silenced him.
The next moment, held as if they had been desperate characters, the twoboys found themselves, under armed guard, being marched through thesleeping city of Antwerp to prison cells.
Here was a fine end to their evening of adventure. But protests, theyknew, would be worse than silence, and so they submitted to beingignominiously marched along without uttering a word. Beside themstrutted the little officer, vastly proud of his “important captures,”word of which he took care reached the newspapers that night.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN DURANCE VILE.
The boys passed a sleepless night in a none too clean cell. A sentrypaced up and down in front of the bars, as if they stood committed forsome heinous offense. To keep their spirits up, they tried to make lightof the affair. But in that dreary place, with the stone-flagged floorand the steel grating, it was pretty hard to be lively.
“Never mind; it won’t last long, and think what a laugh we’ll have onthese fool police once we are out,” said Jack with a dismal attempt at achuckle.
“Yes; but in the meantime, they have the laugh on us,” objected Raynorwith grim humor. “Anyhow, I’m not sorry. Those ruffians would certainlyhave robbed those two women if we hadn’t done something,” he added.
“We made our mistake in not standing our ground and facing the police,”decided Jack.
“I guess they’d have gathered us in on general principles, we being theonly people in sight. Their motto seems to be, ‘We’ve got to collarsomeone and it might as well be you.’”
“That’s the way it appears to be,” agreed Jack with a sigh.
It seemed as if that night would never pass. But, like everything else,it came to an end at last. With a great clanking and parade of police,the boys were marched forth and ordered into a covered wagon. Then theywere jolted off over the cobbled streets and finally ordered to alightin front of a building that looked as if the old burgomasters of theplace might have transacted business there.
It was, in fact, one of the ancient guild-houses of the city, and bore acoat of arms on its ornate, time-stained front. Inside, it was cool anddark, with scrupulously clean floors and furnishings. Had the boys beenin any more pleasant situation, they would have admired the quaint oldcarved beams and the stone-work enriched by clever, bygone masons’tools. But just then they had no eye for architecture.
They were ushered into a large room whose groined ceiling and dark oakpanels made it appear that only twilight ever filtered through thestained-glass windows, set in frames of carved stone. At one end, behinda high desk of dark, shiny wood, which looked as if it were as old asthe building, sat a dried-up dignitary with a skin like parchment,peering through a great pair of heavy, horn-rimmed spectacles.
In front of him was a huge pewter ink-stand with pens sticking up in itlike quills upon a porcupine. Before this personage, whom they guessedto be the officiating magistrate, the boys were marched with much pompand ceremony. Then the little mustached official who had played theleading part in their arrest stepped forward.
With a bow and a flourish he explained the case. To the boys’astonishment, too, they saw their caps handed up. Evidently the policehad found them and taken them up as evidence. This was a hopeful sign,for in each cap the owner’s name was inscribed.
“They’ll know that we told the truth about our names, anyway,” saidJack, nudging Raynor.
At this juncture there was a
sudden disturbance in the back of the courtroom, and in broke a burly, sun-bronzed man. It was Captain Bracebridge,the last man in the world the boys wanted to have see them in such aposition. They crimsoned with mortification and felt ready to sinkthrough the floor.
The captain burst through a line of small Antwerp police, who tried torestrain him, like a runaway horse through a crowded street. He camestraight up to the boys and gasped out breathlessly:
“Read about it in the papers and rushed straight here. What’s the truthof it all?”
“Then you don’t believe that police story?” asked Jack gratefully.
“Of course not. Tell me all about it.” He turned to a short, sallow man,carrying a big bag, who had followed him in, like the dust in the trailof the whirlwind. “This is a lawyer. He’ll straighten this thing out ina brace of shakes.”
The lawyer made a long harangue to the court, of which none of theAmericans understood a word; but apparently he had asked leave to takehis clients into a consulting room, for presently they were ushered intoa chamber which might have been, and probably was, used for the purposein medieval times. They were in the midst of their story, when anotherdisturbance occurred outside. A handsome automobile had driven up, outof which stepped a portly personage with dignified, white whiskers,gold-rimmed eye-glasses, top-hat and frock-coat.
“Monsieur La Farge, the head of the government railways,” whispered theloungers in the court room as he hastened down the aisle and whisperedto the magistrate, who received him with great deference.