CHAPTER VIII

A TRICK OF THE ENEMY

Frank hurried back to the hotel. A brilliant picture filled his thoughts, his eyes sparkled, and the harder he cogitated the more alluring became the prospect.

“There never was a chance like it,” he said almost breathlessly, as he reached the hotel. “Why! Professor Barrington is not here!” he added, as he entered their room.

Frank was about to go downstairs again, counting on finding his friend in the lobby, when he noticed a sheet of paper with writing on it lying across the table in the middle of the room.

“What’s this, now?” he spoke, picking up the document and scanning it closely. It read:

“I am in serious trouble and wish you to see me and take some messages to friends. Please come at once to 22 Burdell Row.”

The scrawl was signed “Aaron Bissell.” It seemed to Frank that he had heard the professor refer to a person of that name high up in educational circles. It appeared as though the message had called the professor away from the hotel and that this explained his absence.

Frank noted that the message had been hurriedly scrawled and that it had not been folded. In one corner was the notation in pencil: “Tel. 3:43,” and Frank readily discerned that it had come over the hotel telephone about fifteen minutes before.

“I’ll make sure of that,” he reflected, and he verified his surmise from the operator downstairs. There was no valid reason why Frank should entertain any suspicions. It was natural that a friend in distress should send for the professor, who was kind to everybody; still, a memory of the sly nature of Slavin and his adherents flashed into Frank’s thoughts. He went to the clerk at the desk.

“Do you know if anything came by express for Professor Barrington to-day?” he asked.

“Why, yes--just now,” was the response. “Is that it?” and the clerk searched in a rack behind him and produced a satchel with a tag attached to it.

Frank noted that it was addressed to his friend, and bore the printed name of the hotel in New York that he had ’phoned to the evening before. The clerk pushed the satchel towards him as if he expected Frank to take it away, but the latter said:

“I won’t take it just now; not until I see Professor Barrington. It would be a great favor to me if you would place that satchel under special lock and key, and not deliver it to anybody under any circumstances except to the professor himself.”

“It contains something of value, then?” asked the hotel clerk.

“Immensely valuable, yes,” responded Frank.

“I’ll put it in one of the safes, then,” declared the clerk, and did so.

Frank went back to his room. He was satisfied now. If the professor had been called away to leave the coast clear for some new rascality, then Slavin and his friends would be disappointed. Frank’s faint suspicions faded from his mind as he sat down at a table and began figuring on a pad of blank paper.

For an hour he was wrapped in many calculations. Then he sat back like a person planning and dreaming. Finally he got to pacing the floor, his face still wearing an expression of deep thought.

“Hello!” he exclaimed at length, gazing in surprise at his watch. “Why, here I’ve been dreaming the time away for nearly two hours. And it’s strange, with all the interest the professor has in those leases, that he doesn’t return or send me some word. I can only wait, though.”

Frank sat down again at the table, and resumed his figuring on dimensions and estimates. The result seemed to please him. A great many thoughts flashed through his active mind.

“I’ll do it!” he exclaimed at last, rising to his feet and putting on his hat. “I’ll send the telegram, so there may be no delay. I don’t know how Professor Barrington may take it--perhaps Mr. Strapp may not come into my ideas; but I feel I’m right and I’m going ahead on my own hook.”

Frank went downstairs and wrote out and dispatched a telegram to New York City. It was addressed to Mr. Hank Strapp at the Empire photo playhouse. Then Frank went out to the Common, after making sure that no lurking spy was watching him. When he arrived at the stationery shop he dodged in quickly.

It was nearly half an hour later when he reappeared. Thoughtfulness had given place to a buoyant, confident manner. Frank snapped his fingers briskly, and hurried back to the hotel as if he had taken a definite stand on the subject of his recent cogitations, and had done something final regarding it.

“I don’t care much if a dozen Slavins are watching me now,” he soliloquized. “I’ve blocked their game for certain.”

Frank was first impatient, then amazed and finally anxious as six o’clock arrived and no word came from his absent friend. His early suspicions took a more definite form. He finally went downstairs again and asked the hotel clerk the location of Burdell Row. He found it to be about four miles distant, but a street car would take him there. By this time Frank was worried. It was strange, he thought, that the professor should remain away so long when his mind was so set on the leases they had under consideration.

Within an hour Frank reached Burdell Row. It was a narrow, crooked thoroughfare in a poor section of the city, and lined with cheap stores. Frank came to No. 22 to find it a low, rickety building occupied by an ice cream parlor.

The proprietor, a coarse featured, shabbily dressed man, was the only person visible through the grimy front windows. Frank entered the place and was about to question the man when, glancing past the straggly strings of curtains festooning the archway leading to the back room, he descried a familiar form at a table. It was Professor Barrington.

“I came about that gentleman,” said Frank, going straight into the rear room. “Why, he is asleep.”

The professor sat in a chair, his eyes closed and his head leaning over. Frank went up to him and seized his arm and shook it.

“Professor--Professor Barrington!” he called loudly. “Wake up! What does this mean?”

Frank eyed the proprietor of the place suspiciously as his friend stirred, mumbled some meaningless words and sank further down in the chair.

“Why, he’s asleep, as you see,” retorted the man, indifferently.

“How long has he been here?” inquired Frank, both suspicious and alarmed now.

“He came here about three o’clock this afternoon and asked if a man named Bissell was here. I told him no; but that a man had been here an hour before who said that if anybody inquired for a Mr. Bissell, he was to wait. So this man took a seat, as you see. In a little while the first fellow came in again. He talked with this one here. Then he ordered two glasses of lemonade. Then he came out. He said the old man was asleep, that some friends would call for him, but to let him sleep until they came. He gave me a dollar for the privilege. That’s all I know about it.”

Frank doubted this. The speaker had a bad face and looked sneaking and untruthful. More than ever did Frank distrust the man. He was satisfied from the professor’s condition that something to make him drowsy had been mixed with the lemonade.

“I think I see it all,” mused Frank, succeeding in getting his friend to his feet. He led him to the street, where the fresh air began to revive him.

“Eh? Ah! Why, Durham, have I been asleep? No, no--I must not leave here,” he resisted, as Frank strove to move him along. “I must wait for a friend.”

“You have waited for him for over four hours already, Professor,” observed Frank, “and he has not come, nor will he come----”

“But I received a telephone message from Mr. Bissell.”

“You are mistaken,” insisted Frank. “I have reason to believe that the person who sent the message to the hotel, did so to keep you out of the way until he carried out some new nefarious scheme to block your educational film project.”

“Durham!” almost shouted the professor. “You amaze me. You do not mean that that man who told me his name was Taylor has been playing a new trick on us?”

“Just exactly that, I fear,” replied Frank. “You have certainly been lured away and kept away from the hotel for some purpose.”

“Why,” cried the professor, fully roused, “it’s a new plot to get that satchel!”

“No, not that,” declared Frank. “The satchel is all right. It arrived just before I started in search of you. I got the clerk to place it in the safe and instructed him to deliver it to nobody but yourself.”

“You relieve me greatly, Durham,” declared the professor. “But what could be the object of sending me on this fool errand?”

“I can only guess,” replied Frank, “but I think our enemies are busy on that lease.”

“You don’t mean the big place I’m so anxious about?” questioned the professor, growing excited again.

“Just that,” said Frank, and explained about being followed by Slavin and his confederate and about seeing them in the place afterwards.

The recital had an extraordinary effect upon Professor Barrington. He became greatly excited and wrung his hands. Then, noticing a taxicab coming down the street, he ran out in front of it, heedless of danger.

“Hi, there!” he shouted; “stop that machine! Jump in, quick,” he directed Frank, and then to the man: “Boston Common--and drive for your life!”