Jack Haydons Quest | Page 8

while Mr. Haydon went up country, accompanied only by
a few natives who had been with him in other journeys. He came back
after an absence of five weeks to Mogok, found Buck better, and
announced that they would return to England at once. They had packed
and started forthwith, and returned by the usual route.
"Did my father seem quite himself, just as usual in every way, Buck?"
asked Jack.
"No," said Buck thoughtfully. "He didn't quite. There was somethin' on

the Professor's mind, I'm sure o' that."
Jack put forward Mr. Buxton's suggestion, but Buck waved it aside.
"Touch o' the sun," said he. "Oh, no, nothin' like that. The Professor
was as fit as he always was, right as a bull-frog in a swamp. No, it was
a sort of anxiousness there was about him. He was that careful that you
might almost call him fidgetty."
"Fidgetty!" said Jack in surprise, as he remembered the perfectly
equable manner of his widely-travelled father.
"Yes, that's as good a word as any I can jump on at short notice,"
replied Buck. "He seemed as keen on getting back to London as some
o' these globetrotters who have got sick o' foreign parts."
"That was rather strange," commented Jack. "You've been with my
father twelve years now, Buck. Did you ever see him like it before?"
"Never in my knowledge of him," said Buck, shaking his head. "As a
general rule the Professor was as calm an' easy campin' in a jungle as
another man in a front seat at a circus. It was all one to the Professor,
let things come how they might. But this time he seemed as if his only
idea was to get back. Not that he said much about it. The most I ever
heard him say was, 'Well, Buck, I don't care how soon I get into Lane
& Baumann's office,' an' he only said that once when he was fretted at
losing a day by missing a boat at Rangoon."
At this moment the carriage drew up at the door of the hotel. They had
scarcely entered the door when the hotel clerk came forward with a
cablegram. It was from Messrs Lane & Baumann, asking if anything
was yet known of Mr. Haydon.
"If he was anxious to see them, they are just as anxious to see him,"
said Buck, handing the form to Jack. "Every day they wire, an'
sometimes twice a day, to know if I've got hold of any news."
"I wish I'd been to see them before I left London," said Jack. "I might

have got some useful information from them. What do you believe has
happened to my father?"
"I dunno what to think," said Risley, "except that some o' these Dagoes
got him in a corner and went for his pocket-book. He'd got plenty of
money with him."
"But if he'd been attacked by thieves," argued Jack, "the police would
have found something out before this. He could not have been hidden
away from them."
Buck shook his head. "Some o' these Dagoes are very sly and deep," he
replied. "I've heard queer stories about 'em at times. They say there are
brigands around."
"Yes, yes," said Jack, "in Sicily and in some of the wilder parts of
Calabria, but not in Brindisi, Buck, not in this big port."
"Well, I give it up," said Buck, "but there's a queer twist at the bottom
of it somewhere. The Professor ain't the sort o' man to worry us by
goin' into hiding somewhere, and lyin' low."
"Of course he isn't," said Jack. "My father was prevented from
returning to the hotel, that's clear enough; and we've got to find how."
"Say, I'm your man, Jack," returned Buck. "I shan't feel easy till I've
had a glimpse o' the Professor with his old, quiet smile on him. We'll
hunt every hole there is."
For two days Jack and Buck hunted every hole about Brindisi, and,
stimulated by the promise of handsome rewards, the police, too, did
their utmost, but all was in vain; the missing man had disappeared as
though the earth had opened and swallowed him. Absolutely the only
thing out of the ordinary that the police could discover was that a
fisherman's skiff was missing one night, and was found the next
morning a couple of miles down the coast, floating idly about. But the
painter was drifting astern, and it might easily have happened that it
had been carelessly fastened, and the rope had slipped from the

mooring ring and allowed the skiff to drift away.
On the afternoon of the second day Jack announced his decision.
"Buck," said he, "I'm going back to London. I want to see Lane &
Baumann. It's quite possible that some