As Freeze settled himself, he gave Brad and Dan a sharp glance, noticing their Scout uniforms.
“Cubs!” he exclaimed. “Say, haven’t I seen you kids somewhere?”
“Why, we wouldn’t know,” Brad answered. “Unless maybe it was in Webster City.”
“Cubs!” the man repeated. “Now I got it! Dobbs was telling us that they were swarming over the Silverton place and might make trouble—”
“Trouble?” Dan interposed innocently. “What sort of trouble?”
But neither Freeze nor his companion was to be trapped into further speech.
Suddenly suspicious, they started to get out of the car.
“Thanks for offering a lift,” Freeze muttered, “but we’ll telephone for a tow car.”
Mr. Hatfield had observed the headlights of two approaching vehicles.
“It won’t be necessary to telephone,” he said with quiet jubilation. “I rather think help is coming now.”
Even as the Cub leader spoke, Mr. Silverton’s car drove up, followed by a police cruiser.
Freeze and Bauer, abandoning their luggage, made a dash for the hill. Belatedly they realized that they had fallen into a trap.
Mr. Silverton and Saul Dobbs had leaped from the sportsman’s car. Deliberately, they cut off escape.
“Just a minute!” the owner of the pheasant farm said, stepping in front of Freeze and Bauer. “I have a few questions to ask you two.”
“For one thing, I want to know why you’ve been shipping my pheasants out of town? And trespassing on my property?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Freeze muttered, trying without success to shove past the sportsman.
“We don’t know nothin’ about any pheasants,” Bauer added.
“I think you do,” Mr. Silverton corrected. “You needn’t deny that you’ve been trespassing. Dobbs already has confessed his part.”
“Why, you dirty double-crosser!” Freeze accused, starting for the workman. “I’ll get you for this!”
Before he could lay hands on Dobbs, he was firmly grasped by a police officer who informed him and Bauer that they both were under arrest.
“This is an outrage!” Bauer protested bitterly. “You’ve no evidence against us. Dobbs has been telling lies to try to save his own skin.”
“We’ll let the judge decide about that,” the policeman retorted. “Come along without any fuss, or we’ll use the handcuffs.”
Aware that resistance would be quite useless, the two men sullenly submitted to arrest. They were loaded into the police car and taken away.