“I—­I think so,” came Hal’s low, quivering reply.

“Do it—­like lightning, then!”

In his hand Jack held the flashlight “gun.”  It was one of those patent affairs, arranged to fire a charge of magnesium powder by the explosion of a cap when the trigger was pressed.

Dropping to one knee, Hal set the camera, half by instinct, half by guess.  While he did so, Jack fixed a charge of the powder in the firing pan of the “gun.”

These preparations made hardly any noise; such as might have been heard in a silent room was drowned by the tap-tap of a small hammer that Josh Owen was at the moment using.

And now, without glancing back at the stern, the ex-foreman half-turned his head, so as to give a profile view of his face.

Hal, kneeling, turned up quickly to nod the signal that the camera was ready.

Pop!  Flare!

As the cap exploded, a blinding flash filled that side of the shed for a brief instant.  It was as through a lightning bolt had plunged into the place.

Wholly unprepared for any such happening, Josh Owen let out a yell of fear, rose up and leaped back so that he upset and extinguished his dark lantern.

“Wha-wha-what was that?” he faltered.

In the intense darkness that followed the flash Jack and Hal stole away.

Suffering all the terrors of a guilty conscience, increased by the terror of the inky darkness under such circumstances, Josh Owen tremblingly felt for his momentarily useless lantern.  It took him some moments to find it.  Even then his fingers shook so convulsively that it needed several trials before he got the light going.

By this time Jack and Hal were safely outside.  More than that, Jack held in his hand the padlock of the door, with the false key in it.

“Why not slam the padlock shut over the door and lock him in there until we can get someone here?” whispered Hal Hastings.

By this time the two boys were hiding behind the corner of a nearby building.

“I thought of that,” whispered Jack, “and I’d like to do it.  But Owen has a fearful temper.  If we locked him in there, and he knew he had to be caught, he’d do thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.  As it is, if you watch out, you’ll soon see him quitting that shed and getting away as fast as he can.”

Not more than a few seconds later Josh Owen appeared at the door of the shed.  He shut off the light from his dark lantern, then stole swiftly towards the fence.  Going up and over, he vanished from sight.

“Now, we’ll lock the shed, take this false key to Mr. Andrews, and let him decide whether to rouse Mr. Pollard or Mr. Farnum,” announced Jack Benson.

Grant Andrews, as soon as he was aroused at the boarding house, and had been made to understand, took the false key, saying: 

“I’ll go over to the hotel and call Dave Pollard.  Then I’ll do whatever he says.”