“What—er—what do you want?” he stammered, not knowing what to say.
“Where did you come from, Flapp?”
“That’s my business.”
“It was a fine trick you played on us while we were on the march back to Putnam Hall.”
“Trick? I haven’t played any trick on you,” answered Lew Flapp, loftily, as he began to regain his self-possession.
“You know well enough that you robbed that jewelry shop and then tried to lay the blame on me and my brothers.”
“Rover, you are talking in riddles.”
“No, I’m not; I’m telling the strict truth.”
“Bah!” Lew Flapp shoved forward. “Let me pass.”
“Not just yet.” Sam placed himself in front of the barber shop door.
“What’s the row?” put in the barber, who happened to be the only other person in the shop.
“This fellow is a thief, Mr. Gregg.”
“You don’t say!” cried Lemuel Gregg. “Who did he rob?”
“He robbed a jewelry shop up near Putnam Hall and then he laid the blame on my brothers and me.”
“That was a mean thing to do.”
“It is false!” roared Lew Flapp. “Get out of my way, or it will be the worse for you!”
“I’m not afraid of you, Flapp,” responded Sam, sturdily. “Mr. Gregg, will you help me to make him a prisoner?”
“Are you certain of what you are doing?” questioned the barber, nervously. “I don’t want to get into trouble over this. I once cut off a man’s beard by mistake and had to pay twenty-two dollars damages.”
“I know exactly what I am doing. Help me to make him a prisoner and you shall be well rewarded.”
At the promise of a reward Lemuel Gregg became interested. He knew that the Rovers were well-to-do and could readily pay him handsomely for his services.
“You—you had better stay here, young man,” he said, to Lew Flapp. “If you are innocent it won’t hurt you. We’ll have the squire look into this case.”
“I won’t stay!” roared the bully, and making a sudden leap at Sam he hurled the youngest Rover to one side and tried to bolt through the door.
“No, you don’t!” came from the barber, and leaping to the front he caught Lew Flapp by the end of the coat and held him.
“Let go!”
“I won’t!”
“Then take that!” And the next instant Lew Flapp hit the barber a telling blow in the nose which made the blood spurt from that member. Then Flapp dove for the door, pulled it open, and sped up the street with all speed.
“Oh, my nose! He has smashed it to jelly!” groaned the barber, as he rushed to the sink for some water.
Sam had been thrown against a barber chair so forcibly that for the moment the wind was knocked completely out of him. By the time he was able to stand up, Flapp was out of the building.
“We must catch him!” he cried. “Come on!”
“Catch him yourself,” growled Lemuel Gregg, “I ain’t going to stand the risk of being killed. He’s a reg’lar tiger, he is!” And he began to bathe his nose at the sink.
Lew Flapp was running towards the railroad, but as soon as he saw that Sam was on his track he made several turns, finally taking to a side road which led to the Oak Run Cemetery. Here he saw there were numerous bushes and cedar trees, and thought he could hide or double on his trail without discovery.
But he forgot one thing—that Sam was a splendid runner and good of wind as well as limb. Try his best, he could not shake the youngest Rover off.
“The fool!” muttered the bully to himself. “Why don’t he give it up?”
Flapp looked about him for a club, but none was at hand. Then he picked up a stone and taking aim, hurled it at Sam. The missile struck the youngest Rover in the shoulder, causing considerable pain.
“I reckon two can play at that game,” murmured Sam, and he too caught up a stone and launched it forth. It landed in the middle of Lew Flapp’s back and caused the bully to utter a loud cry of anguish.
“Stop, Flapp! I am bound to catch you sooner or later!” cried Sam.
“You come closer and I’ll fix you!” growled the bully. “I’ll hammer the life out of you!”
“You’ve got to spell able first,” answered Sam.
The cemetery gained, Lew Flapp ran along one of the paths leading to the rear. Along this path were a number of good-sized sticks. He picked up one of these, and a few seconds later Sam did likewise.
Near the rear of the cemetery was a new receiving vault, which had just been donated to the cemetery association by the widow of a rich stockholder who had died the year before. The vault was of stone, with a heavy iron door that shut with a catch and a lock.
Making a turn that hid him from Sam’s view for the moment, Lew Flapp espied the vault, standing with the door partly open.
“He won’t look for me in there,” reasoned the bully, and slipped into the place with all possible alacrity. Once inside, he crouched in a dark corner behind the door and waited.
Sam, making the turn at just the right instant, saw Flapp disappearing into the vault. Without stopping he ran forward and closed the iron door, allowing the heavy catch to slip into place.
“Now, Lew Flapp, I guess I’ve got you!” he called out, after he was certain the door was secure.
To this the bully made no answer, but it is more than likely his heart sank within him.
“Do you hear me, Flapp? You needn’t pretend you are not in there, for I saw you go in.”
Still Lew Flapp made no answer.
“Do you want me to go away and leave you locked in the vault?” continued Sam. “It would be a beautiful place in which to die of starvation.”
“Let me out!” came from the bully, and now he got up and showed his face at the small grating near the top of the door. “Let me out, Rover, that’s a good fellow.”
“Then you don’t want to die of starvation just yet?”
“You wouldn’t dare to leave me here, you know you wouldn’t!”
“Why not? Don’t you deserve it, after the trick you played on Dick and Tom and me?”
“I tell you it’s all a mistake. Let me out and I will explain everything,” went on Flapp, who was now thoroughly alarmed.
“I’ll let you out—after I have summoned the town constable.”
“Don’t have me locked up, I beg of you, Sam. Give me a chance,” pleaded the bully.
“You don’t deserve any chance. You tried to send me and my brothers to prison, and you have got to suffer for it.”
“Then you won’t let me out?”
“No.”
“I’ll pay you well for it.”
“You haven’t got money enough to pay me, Flapp, and you know it.”
“If you have me locked up I’ll say you helped me in that robbery.”
“Ah, so you admit you did it,” cried Sam, triumphantly.
“No, I admit nothing,” growled the bully.
“Good-bye, then.”
“Where are you going?”
“I am going after the cemetery keeper and the constable,” answered Sam, and walked off without another word.
CHAPTER XI
ATTACKED FROM BEHIND
Lew Flapp watched Sam’s departure with much anxiety. As my old readers know, he was a coward at heart, and the thought of being put under arrest for the robbery of Aaron Fairchild’s shop made him quake in every limb.
“I must get out of here, I really must,” he told himself, over and over again.
He shook the door violently, but it refused to budge. Then he tried to reach the catch by putting his hand through the grating, but found it was out of his reach.
“It’s a regular prison cell!” he groaned. “What a fool I was to come in here!”
He tried to reach the catch by using his stick, but that was also a failure.
“Wonder if I can’t find a bit of wire, or something?” he mused, and struck a match he had in his pocket.
Now it chanced that the widow who had given the new vault to the cemetery association had a horror of allowing supposed dead folks to be buried alive. As a consequence she had had the vault furnished with an electric button which opened the door from the inside. It had been stipulated that a light should be placed close to the button, but as yet this was not in place.
By the light of the match Lew Flapp saw the button, and these words over it:
To Open the Door and Ring the Bell
Push This Button.
“Good! that just suits me,” he chuckled to himself, but immediately had something of a chill, thinking that the button might not yet be fixed to work.
With nervous fingers he pushed upon the object. There was a slight click, and he saw the big iron door of the vault spring ajar.
“The trick is done, and I am free!” he murmured, and sprang to the door. But here he paused again, to gaze through the grating. Sam was out of sight and not another soul could be seen. The coast was clear.
“Now good-bye to Oak Run,” he muttered to himself. “I was a fool to come here in the first place, even to meet that Dan Baxter!”
In a moment more he was out of the vault and running to the rear of the cemetery as fast as his legs would carry him.
In the meantime Sam made his way as quickly as possible to a house situated at the front corner of the cemetery, where the keeper of the place resided.
A knock on the door brought the keeper’s daughter. She knew Sam and smiled.
“What can I do for you, Sam?” she asked.
“Where is your father, Jennie?”
“He just went down to the village to buy a new spade.”
“Oh, pshaw! that’s too bad.”
“What is the matter? I hope you’re not going to have a funeral in your family.”
“No funeral in this, Jennie. I met a thief in Oak Run and tried to have him arrested. He ran into the cemetery and hid in the new vault and I locked the door on him. Now I want your father or somebody else to help me take him to the lock-up.”
“A thief! What did he steal?”
“Some jewelry. It’s a long story. Do you know where I can find somebody else?”
“Jack Sooker is working over to the other end of the cemetery—cutting down an old tree. You might get him.”
“Where?”
“I’ll show you.”
Jennie ran to get her hat. She was just putting it on when a bell began to ring in the hall of the cottage.
“Gracious me!” gasped the girl.
“What’s the matter now?”
“That’s the bell to the new vault.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There is an electric button in the vault. When you push it, it unlocks the door and rings this bell. It was put there in case somebody was in the vault in a trance and came to life again.”
“What!” ejaculated Sam. “Then that rascal must have pushed the button and opened the door from the inside.”
“Yes.”
“I’m off. He is not going to escape if I can help it.” And so speaking, the youngest Rover dashed off the porch of the cottage and in the direction from whence he had come.
It did not take him long to reach the new vault and a glance through the open doorway showed him that his bird had flown.
“What a dunce I was not to think of that electric button!” he mused. “I knew Mrs. Singleton had stipulated it should be put in. She has a perfect horror of being buried alive.”
Sam looked around in all directions, but could see nothing of Lew Flapp.
But not far away was a pile of loose dirt and in this he saw some fresh tracks, pointing to the rear of the cemetery.
“That’s his course,” he thought, and set off in that direction. He still carried the stick he had picked up and vowed that Lew Flapp should not get away so easily again.
The end of the cemetery bordered on the Swift River, a stream which has already figured in these stories of the Rover boys. It was a rocky, swift-flowing watercourse, and the bank at the end of the burying ground was fully ten feet high.
“Perhaps he crossed the river,” thought the youngest Rover. “But he couldn’t do that very well unless he had a boat and then he would run the risk of being dashed on the rocks.”
The edge of the river reached, Sam looked around on all sides of him. Lew Flapp was still nowhere to be seen.
“I’ve missed him,” thought Sam. “What next?”
As the youngest Rover stood meditating, a figure stole from behind some bushes which were close at hand. The figure was that of Lew Flapp, who had been on the point of turning back when he had seen Sam coming.
“He will raise an alarm as soon as he sees me,” reasoned the bully. “Oh, if only I could get him out of my way!”
He gazed at the youngest Rover and when he saw how close to the water’s edge Sam was standing, a sudden thought came into his mind. As silently as a wild beast stealing on its prey, he crept up to Sam.
“There! how do like that, Sam Rover!” he cried, triumphantly, and gave the youngest Rover a shove which sent him over the bank and into the rocky stream below.
Sam gave out one yell and then, with a loud splash, sank beneath the surface.
Lew Flapp gazed for a second in the direction, wondering when Sam would reappear. But then a new fear took possession of him and off he ran, this time harder than ever.
His course was along the river bank for a distance of a hundred yards, and then he came out on a road leading to a small place called Hacknack.
“To Hacknack!” he muttered, after reading a signboard. “That’s the place I’m looking for. One mile, eh? Well, I had better lose no time in getting there.”
The bully was a fair walker and now fear lent speed to his limbs, and in less than fifteen minutes he reached the hamlet named. He gazed around and presently located a small cottage standing near the edge of a sandpit.
“That must be the cottage,” he told himself, and walking to it he rapped on the door four times in succession and then four times again.
There was a stir within and then an old woman, bent with age and with a wicked look in her sharp, yellowish eyes, came to answer his summons.
“Is this Mother Matterson’s place?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m Mother Matterson,” squeaked the old woman. “Who are you and what do you want?”
“My name is Lew Flapp. I’m looking for a fellow called Si Silvers,” he added, for that was the name Dan Baxter had assumed for the time being.
“It’s all right, old woman; tell him to come in,” said a voice from inside the cottage, and Lew Flapp entered the house. Immediately the old woman closed the door after him and barred it.
CHAPTER XII
FLAPP AND BAXTER PLOT MISCHIEF
The cottage which Mother Matterson occupied was a much dilapidated one of a story and a half, containing three rooms and a loft. Some of the windows were broken out and the chimney was sadly in need of repair.
Many were the rumors afloat concerning this old woman. Some said she was little short of being a witch, while others had it that she was in league with tramps who had stolen things for miles around. But so far, if guilty, she had escaped the penalty of the law.
“So you’ve come at last,” went on the person in the cottage, as Lew Flapp came in, and a moment later Dan Baxter came into view. He was tall and lanky as of old, with a sour look on his face and several scars which made him particularly repulsive. “I had almost given you up.”
“I’ve had my own troubles getting here,” answered Flapp. “At first I couldn’t locate Hacknack and t
hen I had the misfortune to fall in with Sam Rover”
“Sam Rover! Is he on your track now?”
“I rather guess not,” and the bully of Putnam Hall gave a short laugh. “He has gone swimming for his health.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you,” answered Lew Flapp, and in a rapid manner he related all that had occurred since he had met Sam in the Oak Run barber shop.
“Well, all I can say is, that you are a lucky dog,” came from Dan Baxter, at the conclusion of the recital. “You can thank your stars that you are not at this moment in the Oak Run lock-up.”
“I shouldn’t have run any risk at all if it hadn’t been for you,” growled Flapp.
“Oh, don’t come any such game on me, Flapp. I can read you like a book. You know you don’t dare to go home—after that trip-up at White Corners. Your old man would just about kill you—and you’d be locked up in the bargain.”
At these words Lew Flapp winced, for he knew that Dan Baxter spoke the truth. He was afraid to go home, and had come to Hacknack simply because he knew not where else to go and because Baxter had promised him some money. The amount he had realized on the sale of the stolen jewelry had been spent.
“See here, what’s the use of talking that way?” he grumbled. “I didn’t come here to get a lecture.”
“I’m not lecturing you,” came hastily from Dan Baxter. “I’m merely telling you things for your own good, Flapp. I want you to pull with me. I know we’ll get along swimmingly.”
“You said you’d let me have some money.”
“And I’ll keep my word.”
“I need at least fifty dollars.”
“You’ll need more than that, Flapp. You’ve got to stay away from home until this matter blows over, or until your old man patches things up with that Aaron Fairchild and the White Corners authorities. I’ve got a plan, if you care to listen to it.”
“Sure, I’ll listen—if you’ll only let me have that money.”
“I’ll let you have all you want—providing you’ll agree to help me.”
“Well, what is your plan? But first tell me, how about this woman?” And Flapp nodded his head toward Mother Matterson.
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