Mr. and Mrs. Kane were seated in chairs in the middle of the room. They were unable to move, unable to speak, scarcely able to make a struggle.
The farmer and his wife were bound and gagged, tied to their chairs!
VIII
The Stolen Witness
Swiftly, the Hardy boys rushed over to Mr. and Mrs. Kane and began to release them. The farmer and his wife had been trussed up by strong ropes and they had been so well gagged that they had been unable to utter a sound. It was only a matter of a few minutes, however, before their bonds were loosened and the gags removed.
“Thank goodness!” exclaimed Mrs. Kane, with a sigh of relief, as the gag was taken away. Her husband, spluttering with rage, rose from his chair and hurled the ropes to one side.
“What happened?” asked the boys, in amazement.
For a moment Mr. and Mrs. Kane were unable to give a coherent account of their experience, owing to the strain they had undergone, but at last the farmer stumbled over to the window and pointed down the shore road.
“They went that way!” he roared. “That way! Follow them!”
“Who?”
“The rascals that tied us up. They took Jones away with them.”
“Kidnapped him?”
“Yes—kidnapped him! There were four of them. They broke in here and tied up my wife and me. Then they went upstairs and carried Jones away with them. They dumped him into an automobile and made a getaway.”
“Four men!”
“Four of the ugliest looking scoundrels you ever laid eyes on.”
“How long ago?” asked Frank quickly.
“They didn’t leave ten minutes ago. If you had been here just a few minutes earlier you would have met the whole crowd of them.” The farmer was angry and excited. “But there’s time yet. You can catch ’em. They went down the shore road.”
“Come on, Joe!” shouted Frank. “Let’s chase them. They’ve kidnapped Jones.”
Joe needed no urging. The Hardy boys left the farmer and his wife rubbing their chafed wrists and ankles and hastened out of the house over to their motorcycles. Within a few seconds the staccato roar of the powerful machines broke out on the still air, and then they went rocking and swaying down the lane out on to the shore road.
“Some high-handed proceeding, I’ll say,” yelled Frank, to make himself heard above the roaring of the motorcycles.
“Those rascals ought to be in prison,” returned his brother.
The boys followed in the direction the farmer had indicated. Frank then recollected that just before they had turned in toward the Kane farm he had seen a cloud of dust down the main road, evidently caused by a speeding automobile, but he had thought nothing of it at the time, for traffic along the shore highway occasioned no comment, especially on Sunday.
“If we had only been a little earlier!” he groaned.
“We’ll catch up to them. They haven’t much of a start. Maybe we can follow them to some town and have the whole gang arrested.”
The motorcycles roared along at top speed. Both the Hardy boys were skilful drivers, and for a while Frank was able to follow the course of the car they were pursuing by watching the fresh tread mark in the dust. But when the road came to the place where it intersected with the road leading up to the Morton farm the tread mark became lost, as evidently another car had turned out of the side road in the meantime and obliterated the fresh tread here and there.
They passed the lane that led into the Polucca place and continued on down the shore road until they came to a hilltop that commanded a view of a wide stretch of country. Here they could see the road winding and dipping for a distance of more than a mile, until it was lost to sight in a grove of trees. But there was no sign of the automobile they were seeking.
“They’ve given us the slip, I guess,” said Frank, as he brought his motorcycle to a stop.
“They had a good start and they weren’t letting the grass grow under their feet, either. Think we should keep on?”
“There’s not much use. We’d better go back to the farmhouse and hear what Mr. and Mrs. Kane have to say about this.”
They turned their motorcycles about and headed back toward the farm. On the way they discussed the mysterious kidnapping.
“Evidently those men in the other motorboat saw us rescue Jones, or else they heard that he had been taken to the farmhouse,” remarked Joe. “They must be desperate characters.”
“I wonder what will happen to poor Jones now,” said Frank gravely. “They tried to kill him in the first place. This time—”
“Do you think they’ll murder him?”
“It looks like that. They didn’t show him any mercy out in the bay. They left him for dead that time. Now they’ll make sure of it.”
Joe shuddered. “If they were going to kill him they’d hardly go to all that bother of kidnapping him,” he pointed out. “Perhaps they just want to keep him out of the way. Perhaps they were afraid he would tell about their chasing him and setting fire to his motorboat.”
“They were mighty anxious to get their hands on him, when they would come to the house in broad daylight and tie up Mr. and Mrs. Kane. Gee, it’s lucky we came along when we did! They might have been left there for hours without being able to get loose.”
When they got back to the farmhouse they found that the farmer and his wife had somewhat recovered from their harrowing experience, although they were still unnerved. Mrs. Kane, ever the true housewife, was already beginning to tidy up the kitchen and living room, for the intruders had upset everything in the struggle.
“We lost them,” said Frank.
Kane nodded.
“I didn’t think you’d catch them,” he said. “They left here in too much of a hurry. But I hoped you would. They had a big, high-powered car and they didn’t waste any
