The Steel Horse. Charles Austin Fosdick
it?" said Arthur. "If your guardian finds you can he make you go back against your will?"
"Certainly. He has often given me to understand that he will have full control of my actions as well as of my property until I am twenty-one years old."
"Then he told you what isn't so," declared Joe.
"I guess not," answered Rowe doubtfully. "At any rate, when I ran away from him two years ago he gobbled me with the aid of a policeman and took me back."
"But you are older now than you were then," said Joe. "How old are you, if it is a fair question?"
"I was eighteen last month."
"Then snap your fingers at that guardian of yours, and tell him you are done with him."
"That wouldn't make a particle of difference to him," replied Rowe. "He would have detectives after me, and I don't know but there are some on my track this very minute. That's why I registered under a fictitious name, and adopted this uniform. It is worn by so many wheelmen around here that it will not be likely to attract attention. But I am going to change it the first thing in the morning, trade off my Rudge safety for another wheel, and then put for the country and stay there as long as my money lasts."
"Say, Joe," said Arthur suddenly, "he looks a good deal like Roy Sheldon, doesn't he?"
"He is the very picture of him," answered Joe, surprised.
"And you say," added Arthur, this time addressing himself to Rowe Shelly, "that your guardian put detectives on your track when you ran away from him two years ago, and that he has probably got them on your track to-night?"
"I don't think I used those words, but that was what I meant," replied Rowe. "Why do you ask the question, and what makes you glare at me in that fashion?"
"I didn't know that I was glaring at you," said Arthur. "But I wish from the bottom of my heart that you had changed that uniform for another a hundred years ago, or else that you had never adopted it, for it has been the means of getting one of the best fellows that ever lived into trouble."
"Art," exclaimed Joe, starting up in his chair, "do you think—do you mean to say—"
"Doesn't everything go to show it?" exclaimed Arthur, who was very highly excited. "His uniform is the counterpart of ours; he looks so much Roy that a stranger couldn't tell one from the other if he were to see them together; he has the best of reasons for believing that his guardian has put detectives on his track, and who knows—"
"Good gracious!" cried Joe, starting up in his turn; "I never once thought of that."
"What are you afraid of?" inquired Rowe, whose face betrayed the keenest anxiety and apprehension. "I hope you don't think that my resemblance to your friend has brought him into difficulty."
"That is just what we are afraid of," replied Joe soothingly, while Arthur Hastings paced the room like a caged tiger. "But, of course, nobody can blame you for it. If one of the detectives you spoke of saw him, he probably mistook him for you, just as Arthur and I mistook you for Roy Sheldon. It's a case of mistaken identity, and that's all that can be made of it."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Arthur; "it is a clear case of abduction."
"We'll have to see a lawyer about that."
"Then let's be about it. What are we wasting time here for?"
"Let us first make sure that Roy has been spirited away by somebody who thought he was Rowe Shelly. Say, Art, you remember the carriage that was driven away just as we came out of the Academy of Music, don't you? Well how do we know but Roy was in it, and that he was the fellow who resisted arrest?"
"That's so," exclaimed Arthur. "Suppose we go right back and interview that policeman if we can find him."
When Arthur proposed this plan Rowe Shelly's face grew white again.
"That will be a dead give-away on me, won't it?" said he.
"I don't see why it should be," replied Joe. "We're not going to tell any one that we have seen you. If you are afraid of it, go somewhere while we are gone, and then we can say, if we are asked questions we don't care to answer, that we don't know where you are."
The young stranger evidently thought this a suggestion worth heeding, for when Joe and his companion left the room he followed slowly after them, first carefully reconnoitering the office to make sure there was no one there he did not want to meet.
"What's your opinion of that fellow, any way?" asked Joe, as he and Arthur hurried along the street toward the Academy of Music. "He tells a queer story, but I really believe there are some grains of truth in it."
"So do I," answered Arthur. "And if it turns out that Roy has been kidnapped, I shall believe it is all true. I wish that Shelly boy had been in Guinea before he adopted our uniform."
"Or else that we had been there," added Joe. "He's got as much right to it as we have. Look here, Art. We mustn't let the Mount Airy folks know anything about this."
"Not by a long shot. They'd order us home as they did when they read in the papers that Matt Coyle had tied you to a tree in the woods. If Roy is in a scrape we'll help him out of it and get well on our way beyond Bloomingdale before we say a word about it."
The boys were not obliged to go all the way to the hall in which they had passed the evening, for they met the officer of whom they were in search at the lower end of his beat. Arthur thought he looked at them rather sharply as they came up, but he answered their questions civilly enough.
"Policeman," said Joe, "will you please tell us what sort of a looking fellow it was who was put into a carriage in front of the Academy of Music, and driven away just as the performance ended? You were on duty there at the time."
"Aw! go on now!" replied the officer goodnaturedly. "He must have been one of your own crowd, for he wore the same kind of clothes."
"What was his name?" asked Arthur, whose heart seemed to sink down into his boots when he heard this answer.
"Aw, now!" said the officer again, "what's the use of my wasting my time with you? You know more about him than I do; but I will tell you one thing: you had better keep clear of him, or he will bring you into trouble. He's a bad nation. He stole a pile of money from his guardian before he ran away."
"Not the boy who was put into the carriage, if it was the one we think it was," said Joe earnestly. "In the first place, he has no guardian, and he never stole a cent, for his father gives him all the money he needs. There's been a big mistake made here, Mr. Officer."
"Haw, haw!" laughed the policeman. He turned on his heel and started back along his beat, but he did not shake off the boys. They wanted to learn something before they left him, so they kept close to him, one on each side.
"But I assure you there has been the biggest kind of a blunder made," Joe insisted. "The wrong boy has been arrested. His name is Roy Sheldon, and he left Mount Airy with us this morning. Everybody there knows him and us, too."
"No, I guess not," replied the policeman, with another laugh. "Bab's been in the business too long to make a mistake that might get him into trouble."
"Who's Bab?"
"Why, Bab—Babcock, the detective," answered the officer, in a tone which implied that he had no patience with a boy who could ask him so foolish a question. "The youngster had the cheek to appeal to me for protection, but I told him he had better go along peaceable and quiet, for it would only make matters worse for him if he didn't. I knew Bab, you see."
"Well, this is a pretty state of affairs, I must say," exclaimed Arthur, his anger getting the better of his prudence. "Of course Roy resisted, as any other decent fellow would have done under the same circumstances; and when he asked for protection from one of whom he had a right to expect it, he was told that he had better go along if he wanted to keep out of worse trouble."
"That's enough from you, young man," said the officer, shortly. "If you give me any more of your insolence