In triumph he held up a tangled looking object.
"What is it?" asked Ned in a puzzled tone.
"That's easy. It's false hair like the kind we used on the _Manhattan_ when we gave that show. The chaps that attacked you were disguised and this was a part of their makeup."
"I think so, too. But--shades of immortal Farragut!--look here, Herc!" Ned, as he spoke, pounced on a roll of papers lying in the dust at one side of the road, right under a clump of alder bushes.
"That's right," rejoined Ned, opening the roll and glancing at its contents, "they're all intact, too. One of the rascals that took them must have placed them in his pocket. Then, in pushing into this brush to escape, they were caught and thrown out."
"I guess that's it, and a good thing for us, too. But--gee whiz!"
Without another word Herc plunged into the brush. He fought his way through it furiously. Happening to look up while they had been talking he had caught the glint of a pair of eyes as the light from Ned's torch reflected in them. One of the men had noted the loss of the plans and had returned for them. That much was evident. At any rate, Herc, as usual, acted before he thought, and in two bounds was swallowed in the brush.
Ned, not realizing in the least what had happened, and half inclined to think that Herc had gone suddenly crazy, followed instantly. Presently he found himself at Herc's side. The freckle-faced lad gasped out a few disconnected sentences. Broken as they were, they apprised Ned of what had happened.
"The rascal must have come back to get the plans," he concluded; "I suppose he was watching us and waiting his chance to emerge into the road when the light glinted on his eyeballs."
"Oh, if we could only have captured him!"
"More especially," put in Herc dryly, "as I recognized the man as Chance."
"Sure. I could swear to it. This is the time they've overreached themselves. They tried to steal the plans for some reason best known to themselves, and failed. They tried to disguise their part in the job and failed. I guess their career in the navy has ended for good and all now. In the morning we----"
A pair of arms were thrown round Herc's neck from behind. Caught all unprepared, he was carried off his feet in a flash and in a second a stout cord had been whipped about his wrists confining his hands helplessly behind his back. While this had been going on Ned was served the same trick.