The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View Part 24

ANXIOUS DAYS

"Come on, boys!" cried Allen, evidently the first to sense the meaning of the alarm.

"Oh, but shouldn't we have some sort of weapons, you know?" spoke Percy.

"Get out of my way!" cried Roy Anderson, brushing past the dude. "My fists are the only weapons I want."

Betty and the other girls hung back in a frightened group. The maid's voice continued to ring out, and now Mrs. Nelson could be heard demanding to know what was the matter.

"Around to the side, fellows!" commanded Allen. "There's an outer door they'll probably try for."

"But who'll guard the front here?" asked Amy's brother.

"Let Percy do that!" Allen flung back over his shoulder. "He probably won't come with us, anyhow," he added.

The three young men hastened around to the side of the cottage, while Percy, hardly knowing what to do, remained with the girls in front. At the side was an old-fashioned, slanting cellar door, the kind celebrated in song as the one down which children slide, to the no small damage of their clothes.

As Allen and his chums reached a point where they could view this door, they saw it suddenly flung up with a bang, and three men spring up the stone steps.

"There they are!" yelled Roy.

"After 'em!" shouted Henry Blackford.

"It wasn't a false alarm, anyhow," added Allen. "Hold on there!" he cried. "Stop! Who are you? What do you want? Stop!"

But neither the commands nor the questions halted the men. They ran on, with never a word of answer or defiance flung back--dogged shadows fleeing through the moonlight to the shrubbery-encompa.s.sed grounds of Edgemere.

"Stop, or I'll shoot!" cried Roy.

"Oh!" screamed Grace, covering her ears.

"Good bluff, all right," complimented Allen. "But it won't work."

Nor did it. Roy's bright idea went for naught, for the men still crashed on. They were lost sight of now behind a screen of bushes, but the boys were not going to give up the pursuit so easily.

"Come on!" called Allen. "We'll have them in another minute! They can't get over the stone wall."

"Stone wall?" echoed Henry.

"Sush! It was another bluff, just as my threat was to shoot," cautioned Roy. "It may turn them back."

But it did not. Evidently the men knew the grounds about Edgemere as well as did the boys, for there was no sign of a halt in their headlong pace. On they crashed through bushes and underbrush, dodging among the trees of the garden, and minding not the flower beds they trampled under foot.

"They're getting away from us," remarked Henry, who was panting along beside Allen.

"Yes, they evidently had a line of retreat all marked out."

"Who are they?"

"Haven't the least idea. Tramps, maybe--maybe something worse."

"You mean----"

"I don't know just what I do mean," replied Allen. "Come on, let's do a little sprint, and we may get them. If we don't they'll soon be down on the beach, and it will be all up with the chase if they have a boat, as they probably have."

"If it was on the ocean side we'd have some chance; the surf is heavy to-night."

"Yes, but they're running toward the bay."

As I have explained, Edgemere was built on a point of land. One side of the house fronted the ocean, and the other the bay. At this point the land was not above a thousand feet wide, and the cottage property extended from sh.o.r.e line to sh.o.r.e line.

As Allen had said, the intruders, coming from the cellar, had turned toward the bay side, and if they had a boat waiting for them in those quiet waters they would have no difficulty in pushing off. But if they had gone the other way the unusually heavy surf would have held them back, at least for a time.

"There they go!" cried Roy, breaking out through the last fringe of bushes.

"And in a motor boat, too!" added Roy.

"If we only had ours," Henry mourned.

But it was vain wishing. The _Pocohontas_ was docked some distance away, and by the time the boys could reach her, and start an engine that was never noted for going without considerable "tinkering," it would be too late.

For the men had luck on their side. They fairly tumbled into a swift looking craft that was near sh.o.r.e, in charge of some one evidently waiting for them. In another instant the chug of the motor told that it had started. Then the boys had the dissatisfaction of standing on the sand, panting after their run, and seeing the men gradually draw out into the bay.

The sky had clouded over and the moon, that might have been a help, was not now of any service.

"Well, there they go," said Allen, in exasperated tones. "I'd give a good deal to know who they were, and what they were after."

"Let's go back to the house and see if we can find out," suggested Roy.

"The fuss started there, you know."

"In the cellar--where the diamonds are," added Henry.

"That's so!" cried Allen. "For the moment I had forgotten them! Come on back. Maybe the rascals got the stones!"

The boys went back the same route they had so recently and so uselessly traveled. As they neared the cottage a voice hailed them.

"I say. Hold on! Who are you? What do you want? Remember there are ladies here!"

"It's Percy!" gasped Allen, trying not to laugh. "He's acting as home guard!"

"I wonder if he has his wrist watch on," laughed Roy.

"It's all right," called Henry, not wishing his sister and the other girls to be needlessly frightened. "We're coming back."

"Did you get them?" asked Betty, from the darkness.

"No, they got away in a boat," answered Allen. "Is anyone hurt?"