Frank Reade Jr. and His Engine of the Clouds Or, Chased Around the World in the Sky

His pallid, emaciated face showed poverty and privation, an air of utter misery surrounded him, and he had a mournful look in his sunken eyes.

Nobody noticed poor Joe Crosby but the police.

He was then only one of the many waifs of the great city.

Tom Reynard, the detective, had seen him stealing along like a thief, and the zealous officer became so suspicious of the boy’s actions that he began to follow him.

Perhaps he was justified in doing this, for the hoodlums of Chicago were a pretty bad set of rowdies, as a rule.

The detective was a middle aged, sharp, shrewd fellow, of medium size, clad in a black suit and derby hat, his bony face clean shaven, his keen blue eyes snapping with fire, and his reputation for ability the very finest.

He kept the skulking boy well in view and was a little bit startled to see him mount the stoop of a very handsome brown stone house, through the parlor windows of which, partly open at the top, there gleamed a dull light.

Instead of the poor little wretch making an attempt to break into the house as the detective expected, he boldly rang the bell.

A servant answered the summons, and, seeing the boy, she cried:

“What! Joe Crosby—you back home again?”

“Yes, Nora,” the boy replied, in firm tones, “and I am going to stay, too. My stepfather, Martin Murdock, is a wicked man. He lured me to a wretched tenement in West Randolph street, where an Italian villain has been keeping me a prisoner. But after a month of captivity I escaped from there to-night, and now I have come back to make Martin Murdock tell me why he did this?”

“Oh, the rascal!” indignantly cried the girl. “He told us that he sent you off to boarding-school. Come in, Joe, come in.”

“Is my stepfather in the house?”

“Yes; you will find him in the front parlor.”

The boy entered the mansion and disappeared from the detective’s view.

Reynard vented a whistle expressive of intense astonishment.

“Holy smoke!” he muttered. “Here’s a daisy game! Never thought I was going to drop onto a family affair of this kind. Wonder if I could hear what goes on in the parlor if I get up on the stoop?”

He saw that the parlor windows were partly open at the top, and mounting the stairs he crouched in the doorway.

Joe had gone into the parlor.

A well-built man, in stylish clothing, stood in the room.

It was Martin Murdock.

He was apparently about forty years of age and wore a black mustache, had dark hair and black eyes, an aquiline nose, and upon his left cheek a V-shaped, livid scar.

A cry of astonishment escaped his lips when he saw the boy.

“Free!” he gasped. “How did you get away, you whelp?”

“That is my business,” the boy replied, angrily. “You must explain why you had me imprisoned in that vile den.”

“Oh, I must, eh?” sneered the man, with a nasty leer.

“I have thought it over,” said Joe, sharply. “You was a poor man when you married my mother. When she died I know that she left me a large fortune, for I heard the lawyer read her will. You was made my guardian until I come of age, in five years. Now there was one point in the will that would make you wish to see me dead. That was the clause which said you would inherit all my money if I were to die before I am twenty-one. Are you trying to put me out of the way so you can get that money, Martin Murdock?”

He looked the man squarely in the eyes as he asked this question.

Murdock quailed before his victim’s reproachful burning glance for Joe had correctly surmised the dark plot he had in view.

His nervousness only lasted a moment for he quickly recovered.

“Fool!” he hissed, getting enraged at the thought that his wicked scheme was suspected. “How dare you hint that I’d do such a thing?”

“Because I know you are a villain.”

“What!” roared Murdock, furiously. “You insult me. I’ll pound the life out of you, you infernal young scoundrel!”

And he sprang at the boy and dealt him a savage blow that knocked him over upon the floor, rushed up to him and began to kick him about the head.

Weak from past privations, and unable to defend himself, poor Joe groaned in a heart-rending manner, and cried, piteously, as the hot tears ran down his pale, thin cheeks:

“Oh, don’t—don’t, Mr. Murdock!”

“I’ll kill you!” yelled the brute.

“For pity’s sake! Oh, the pain! Stop—I can’t stand it!”

Just then the servant rushed in.

“Shame!” she cried, indignantly.