Page:The Rover Boys on the Ocean.djvu/67

Rh reached the door which he rightfully guessed had just been opened and closed.

"Yes, everything is all O. K.," were the first words to reach his ears. "But I had a sweet job to find Mooney. He's cracked on music, it seems, and had gone to a concert instead of attending to business."

"But he won't fail us to-morrow morning?" came in a second voice, and now Dick recognized the speaker as Arnold Baxter, his father's worst enemy, who had been left at the hospital in Ithaca with a broken limb and several smashed ribs. Baxter had tackled Dick while the two were on a moving train, and, while trying to throw the boy off, had gotten the worst of the encounter by tumbling off himself.

"Arnold Baxter! is it possible!" muttered Dick to himself. "He must have a constitution like iron to get around so soon."

"No, Mooney won't fail us," said Buddy Girk. "I gave him a mighty good talkin' to, I did."

"I can't afford to have him go back on us," growled Arnold Baxter. "I'm not well enough yet to do this job alone."

"How does your chest feel?"

"Oh, the ribs seem to be all right. But my leg isn't. I shouldn't wonder but what I'll have to limp more or less for the rest of my life."