After I was in bed I could hear the murmur of his voice below, as he talked with the Professor.  Just as I was dropping off to sleep the voices grew suddenly louder for a moment or two, as if a door had opened somewhere.

“Maybe,” I heard the Professor say, “but they’d never send a kid like that.”

Mr. Snider answered something,—­I could not distinguish the words.

“Oh, rats!” said the Professor, “what could he have seen?”

Again Mr. Snider murmured.

“Oh, sure, sure,” the Professor’s voice came again, “I was for keeping him, from the first.  But just to be perfectly safe.  We want to keep him till the first crowd has gone, anyway,—­and till the second one has gone, if you say so.  I don’t care.”

Another mutter from Snider; the Professor laughed and spoke again: 

“It won’t make a bit of difference.  Bowditch has got all those hayseeds hypnotised.  That’s where you come in,—­with your pink whiskers. ...  Say, that door’s open!”

There was a sound of footsteps, and the soft closing of a door.  Presently another door closed, outside, and I heard the two men come upstairs.  I jumped out of bed, and locked the door of my room.  It was fairly plain to me that I was in the house with a couple of swindlers, of some kind or other, and though I didn’t believe they would harm me, there was no need to take unnecessary chances.

They went into one of the front rooms.  I heard four thumps, one after the other, as they took off their shoes, and threw them on the floor, so I judged they were going to bed.  As I lay there, listening for them to begin to snore, I fell asleep myself.

I waked, a little at a time, in a room which was in broad daylight, with the sun shining through one window.  For a moment I could not remember where I was,—­at home, on the “Hoppergrass,” in the jail at Bailey’s Harbor, or on the other yacht.  Then I recalled Rogers’s Island, Mr. Snider and the Professor.  I got up and listened for them, and looked out of the window, but I neither heard nor saw anybody.  I dressed, unlocked the door, and tried to open it.  But I could not do so,—­a bolt had been shot, or a button turned, and the door was locked outside.  While I was rattling and shaking at it I heard Mr. Snider in the passage.

“Dear me!” he said, “what’s the matter?  Is that you, James?  Just wait a moment.”

I heard a fumbling, and my door came open.

“Dear me!” said he again, “this bolt had slipped over, and locked the door.  It does that sometimes.  An old house, you know, all out of repair.  You must have thought we were trying to keep you inside.  It did look that way.”

What a clumsy liar he was!  I said nothing at all to him, but hurried down stairs as fast as I could without running.  I felt much safer with the Professor,—­perhaps he was as big a rascal as the other,—­but he wasn’t as slimy in his manner.