Page:Air Service Boys Over Enemy's Lines.djvu/182

174 over here in Germany beats me. But he managed to do it it seems. And she's been kept a prisoner in this old château of his ever since?"

"But what was his object?" asked the amazed Tom.

"It had a heap to do with finances," Jack told him. "While he held a paper that gave him charge over her daughter over in America, and a part of the big Gleason fortune also, there were valuable papers he had been unable to get his greedy hands on. She absolutely refused to tell him where they were hidden. As a last resort what did the wretch do but go all the way back to America."

"You mean to fetch his ward across with him, Jack?"

"Yes, just to use Bessie as a lever to compel her mother to give up those valuable papers. I always said, you remember, Tom, that man was hugging some secret to his heart. And so he was."

"He's been treating Bessie badly then, half starving her, I think you said?" continued Tom.

"Just what he has, poor girl," growled his chum, savagely. "It's an awful thing to be hungry! I don't see how any one can stand it. But he hasn't broken the spirit of either of them yet, though Bessie's getting so weak