“Not very filling,” remarked Frank, turning his kind eyes on the thin boy beside him.
“Awful nourishing though,” said Fatty, eagerly. “I saw in a paper somewhere that there is more juice to a cake of chocolate than there is to a pound of beefsteak.”
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Frank. “I tell you what let’s do. When it comes lunch time, everybody will swap lunches with some other fellow. It will be all sorts of sport. Sort of like grab bag, because we don’t any of us know what anyone else has. I don’t even know what Bill brought.”
“Good work!” said everybody, glancing sidewise at Fatty. He said nothing at all. Experience with the boys had taught him that silence was sometimes his best weapon. He was conscious of a sinking sensation. Already the crisp early morning air was making him feel a few preliminary pangs of hunger. He knew Frank Wolfe too well to think that he, Fatty, would drawanything besides that miserable cake of chocolate!
Ernest was strolling around the parade ground, waiting for them, and shook hands heartily all around. If it happened that his grasp of Fatty’s plump and dimpled paw was enough closer to make the owner give a faint squawk of surprise and pain, it did not seem that Ernest was conscious of it. He smiled blindly and pumped Bill’s skinny arm up and down. Bill did not seem to mind.
After showing the boys all around the camp proper, they walked to the highest part of the cantonment and Ernest pointed out in the distant hills where the caves were to be found.
Kentucky is full of caves, and every little while someone will discover new ones. These, Ernest stated, had been but slightly explored. They had found dangerous drops and passages in the ones thathadbeen opened, and the others had been forbidden. A sign “No Trespassing” shut them off but Ernest thought that after lunch the boys ought to go over and see what they could.
“Why not go now?” asked Eddie. “Then this afternoon we can go swimmin’.”
“That’s all right, too,” said Ernest.
They strolled slowly across fields, down and up dusty roads, and over barbed wire fences that invariably took toll of blood from Fatty. After an abrupt scramble up a steep hillside and around a jagged curve that looked impassable a few feet away, they came into a region filled with overhanging, broken masses of rocks, with dark, forbidding holes yawning at them here and there. As they walked on they saw that a number of the openings were marked “Dangerous.” Finally they came to one that looked as though it had been well traveled.
“We had better not go in,” said Ernest. “It isn’t safe without a flashlight.”
Bill produced one. “Frank and I always carry one apiece for fear we will have night trouble with the flivver,” he explained.
“Good enough!” said Ernest. He took the flash and led the way into the cave. “I will lead,” he said. “I have been in here a dozen times!”
The cave, as caves in Kentucky go, was small but strictly up to specifications. The first space or chamber was scarcely head high and only about eight feet square. This was fairly well lighted from the opening and was littered with lunch papers and boxes, and in the center there was the blackened coals of a fire someone had built. From this they went single file through a narrow and twisted passage for fully twenty feet. They found that they were going down a gentle incline. Strange to say, the air was pure and clear; and a soft breeze fanned their faces. It was gloriously cool.
“Hope your flash is all right,” said Ernest. His voice sounded flat and small in the close passage.
“It is,” answered Bill. “I put a new battery in this morning.”
“I have a flash, too,” said Fatty unexpectedly, “but my battery is almost gone. I put it in my pocket to get a new one and forgot it.”
“We will stick by Bill’s, I reckon,” said Ernest. He turned a sharp corner and disappeared, light and all. Fatty surged forward and pressed close to Bill, but Bill in turn hurried ahead, shaking Fatty’s hand from his shoulder. Bill didn’t want anyone leaning on him in the dark. They felt their way around the jagged rock and found Ernest standing in a high chamber, turning his flashlight here and there on the walls and the vaulted ceiling.
Snow white pillars supported the roof, which was covered with icicles of sparkling stone. Some of these stalactites were five feet in length, but most of them were no larger than the icicles that hang on the eaves after a hard thaw and sudden freeze, and they were even more beautiful. In the light of the flash they sparkled as though covered with small, brilliant gems.
From a far, far distance came the sound of water dripping. Otherwise the silence was complete.
The boys were awed.
“Mamma!” exclaimed Eddie softly. “What a place for spies!”
Ernest walked slowly around the great chamber. It must have been thirty feet in diameter. In the center was a sort of hump or mound of the glistening white stones. Ernest went over to it and they all sat down.
Eddie tried making unusual sounds. His voice sounded very queer.
“There is an echo chamber in one of the caves,” said Ernest. “I don’t know whether it is in this one or one of the others. You shout, and all the walls shout back at you for about ten minutes. It is fierce. Some other day, if you come out, we will spend the whole day exploring. But I have to fly this afternoon. I wish I had thought to bring my lunch; we could have eaten in here.”
Fatty felt chilled. He swallowed hard. “No-n-no place to get a drink,” he hastened to say.
“Well, if you don’t want a drink, Ernest, Fat has enough lunch for both of you, and he sure wants to divide,” said Bill.
Ernest looked at Fatty’s anguished face.
“I could tell it at a glance!” said Ernest cheerfully.
“You can have some of my sweet chocolate, too,” offered Skinny Tweeters.
Ernest clapped him on the back. “Good old scout!” he said. “Fact is, I would rather have half or three-quarters of Fatty’s lunch than anything I know, but I have got to go back to camp. There’s a fellow I have to see at twelve.”
They retraced their way out of the cave with many exclamations over the somber, silent beauty of the place, and on coming out into the air were almost blinded by the dazzling sunshine.
Bill drew in a long breath. “Gosh, I am glad I am not a bat or a mole! I sure would hate to stay down in a place like that!”
“Suppose you had to stay in a dungeon for forty years or so?” asked Eddie.
“Yes, suppose you were one of those old ducks in Venice centuries ago who were sent across the Bridge of Sighs and who disappeared in dungeons deep below the level of the water. No light, no fresh air, nothing to see, nothing to do, no one to speak to, and rats running all around your cell. Stale water and mouldy bread to eat, and not very much of that. Thatwasthe life!”
“Nuthin’ but bread and water,” Fatty gasped.
“Brought to you once a day,” said Ernest.
“I’d uv died,” said Fatty with conviction.
Ernest looked him over with an appraising eye. “Not right away,” he said encouragingly. “You would have been able to stick it out a good while. But what you want to do, my little friend Fatty, is to keep away from the Cannibal Isles. My, my, how popular you would be!”
Fatty wriggled apprehensively.
The boys sauntered along toward camp, sometimes single file, sometimes in a close group around Ernest. Fatty lagged. His thoughts were unpleasant. He thought of the exchange of lunches that Ernest had suggested. He pictured in his mind’s eye the goodies he had seen his mother pack away in the knapsack given away; divided. Certainly he had never started out for a hard day with so many delicious parcels, all wrapped in paraffine paper. It was unspeakable; unbearable! Fatty lagged far behind as though he could hold back the moment. He knew Frank too well to think that he would forget his diabolical plan. He lagged and lagged, and all at once the whole bunch disappeared around a bend. Fatty had an inspiration.
Hurrying back, panting, listening for a whoop that would tell him that someone had returned to warn him to hurry up and join the crowd, stumbling over the loose rocks that filled the uneven path that led up the mountains, he gained the mouths of the caves. But he pressed on. The path dwindled to a narrow tread, scarcely noticeable. He rounded one turn, and then another. Here the dark cave mouths were less frequent. Fatty looked for a good hiding place in the brush. Just ahead of him he saw a long, narrow slit like a crack in the wall of rock.
A very thin and narrow slit it looked, but Fatty could see that there was an open space beyond, and he painfully squeezed through. Three shirt buttons scraped off, and Fatty barked his plump self here and there, but he made it and getting out his waning electric flash, he turned it around the chamber in which he stood. Someone had been there before him at some time, because two narrow flat boxes stood at one side. They would be nice to sit on.
They could hunt and hunt for him now! He was hungry—starved,—and slipping the knapsack off, he spread its contents on the box and gloated. Sweet chocolate indeed! Fatty smiled. Then he commenced to eat. He went from the left to right deliberately, blissfully. Chicken sandwiches, ham ditto, lettuce and egg and mayonnaise sandwiches. Two cream puffs, sweet pickles, jelly roll, nut cake, a large dill pickle, a thermos bottle of iced cocoa.
Fatty ate it all.
Strengthened and refreshed and flushed with triumph, he looked at the empty board, strapped his knapsack on his back and, rather oppressed by the silence, started through the opening.
Then did Henry Bascom, familiarly known to his intimates as Fatty, receive a shock. The narrow opening which had admitted him refused to give him up! It had cost three buttons to come in. It would have cost a goodly slice of Fatty to get out. Sandwiches, cream puffs, pickles, jelly roll and nut cake made a difference, a fatal difference.
Fatty was a prisoner!
The boys, talking busily with Ernest, had nearly reached camp before they discovered Fatty’s absence. Skinny, true friend that he was, turned and would have gone back to find him, but Ernest would not let him.
“Leave him alone,” he said. “I have a hunch that we will not see our dear Fatty again until well after lunch time. And then he will toddle into our midst with a heavenly smile on his face and a perfectly empty pack on his back. I think work around the hangars would be good for friend Fatty, and I could take him on a few flights that would put the fear of the Lord in his heart and make him think of something besides his meals. Speaking of flying, I can take you up for a flight this afternoon if you want to go.”
“You bet we do!” said Bill. “I reckon we got off this time without any of our mothers thinking to make us promise not to fly.”
“Mrs. Bascom made Fatty promise not to fly,” said Skinny. “It was the last thing she said when we came away.”
“Then that cuts 'Hennery’ out,” said Ernest. “Four of you to go. Well, we will make two trips and get in time to have a swim besides. Come on, let’s get Frank and eat lunch.”
They wandered over to a shady knoll where they waited until Ernest had seen the man he expected, and as soon as Frank came they brought out their lunches and ate them with much talk and laughter. There was plenty to drink for Frank came along with a basket full of ginger ale and pop, to say nothing of a couple of dozen ham sandwiches he had bought in the village. There was no need of Fatty’s knapsack. It was a feast; and Ernest and Frank saw that Skinny, who would not ask his tired mother to put him up a lunch, did not lack for good things.
Presently Ernest, who had been lying on the grass telling all the blood curdling tales he could think of, got up, stretched himself and announced that it was time for him to go over to the hangar. Ernest was pilot of the Instruction plane. There was only one as the school was very small, and the government only supported the Field at Camp Knox on account of the amount of equipment there. All the students were going into aviation for commercial service, and soon the Field would be closed and the equipment transported to some of the large Fields where men were trained for Government mail service and matters of that sort. So Ernest was practically in charge of the Field as far as flying went.
Reaching the Field, they found the six planes drawn out and their young pilots lounging beside them.
The Instruction plane, with broad scarlet bands across its wings to distinguish it from the others, occupied the center of the Field. All the planes were equipped with wireless.
Drawing on his gauntlets, Ernest spoke to the two men beside his car. “I will take a couple of passengers on each flight this afternoon,” he said. “Report at the Adjutant’s tent for an afternoon off, if you like. It is a perfect day for flying.” He took his place. “Who is going? Bill and Skinny? Somebody lend them coats and goggles.”
Bill and Skinny, pale with excitement, squeezed into the observer’s seat and with rather a feeble wave at the other boys felt a terrific sense of goneness as the plane went hopping along the Field before it rose in the air.
“Tend the wireless!” cried Ernest, and Bill adjusted the apparatus as they soared up.
One after another the other planes followed. The air was filled with humming. Higher, higher still they soared, until the plain, the woods and even the hills looked like a vivid green and brown map, through which in a silver line the river ran. As they passed over the hills they had explored that morning, still flying low, Bill thought he saw a tiny white object moving on the face of the rock, but forgot it immediately.
As soon as Ernest had attained the height he desired, he turned his plane and waited for the others. Calling terse sentences to Bill, he sent order after order by wireless to the surrounding planes, and in response they formed lines, figures and circles around, below and above the Instructor’s plane. For an hour they hung there in the air, then at a last command the planes one by one circled down to earth, followed by Ernest and the two boys.
Landing, they stepped out of the plane on shaky legs and felt surprised that no one seemed pleased to see them. Even Dee and Eddie looked at them more calmly than they felt the occasion warranted.
But they had no time to strut. Nodding to Dee and Eddie, Ernest hopped into his seat after a critical look over his engine, and the boys crowded down in the observer’s place. This time they were not accompanied by any student planes and after they reached the treetops Ernest asked: “Which way, boys? Have you any choice?”
“Over the hills!” shouted Dee, and Ernest turned the plane toward the mountains.
As they swept toward them, Dee, gazing down, was startled to notice what looked like the caricature of a human face against the wall of rock. Two trees bent over like bushy eyebrows, a dark smear made the nose, and a pile of stones a grinning mouth. Eddie saw it too.
“See that face?” he shouted to Ernest.
He nodded. “I have seen it often,” he said. “It is funny about that. You can only see it from two places. One is where we saw it a moment ago, up in the air, and there is one place you can see it from the camp.”
“Is it a cave?” asked Eddie,
“No, there is just a slit in the rock there. I suppose a thin man could squeeze through, but no one has tried it. It doesn’t look worth while. I was all excited the first time I saw it and hunted it up, but it is nothing at all. Just a funny coincidence.”
“I thought I saw something white sticking out of the cleft place; the nose, I mean,” said Dee.
Ernest shook his head. “A ray of light striking on a spur of the rock,” he explained. “There is never anyone up there except when the men from the cantonment go up, and they seldom go as far as that. No, there is nothing interesting about the place except what you see up here. And as I told you, you can only get the face from one place.”
He wheeled his plane and commenced to circle about the mountain, now flying low, now rising high in the air. As they made a low flight, Dee noticed two men sitting by the roadside. They were tramps, and had a scarlet handkerchief knotted on the end of a stick.
“More tramps around here,” said Ernest, catching sight of the men. He turned the nose of his plane upwards, and they commenced to climb higher and higher, the hills and valleys dropping away beneath them. The buildings in the cantonment diminished to doll houses, the rough roads turned to narrow yellow ribbons, the fields became smooth blurs of green and yellow. The mountains took on a new, unaccustomed look. Viewed from far above, they became green and yellow hills with dark depressions in their sides.
On and on they flew. They no longer knew the country. Nothing seemed to matter. They were masters of space; they felt as though they could fly into the face of the sun itself; they felt as though they owned that vast infinitude about, above, below them.
And there in higher space than they had ever dreamed that even those tremendous wings could soar, they met him: an eagle!
Straight toward them he came, without fear and seemingly without surprise. It was Ernest who veered, and the eagle, keeping majestically on his course, passed them by. To watch him Ernest circled and turned.
To his surprise, the eagle had done the same thing and once more they faced each other. The eagle advanced with slow, rhythmic sweeps of his tremendous pinions, his piercing eyes watching the strange intruder. Once more, Ernest turned and gave him the right of way. As they passed, the plane swept so close that they could see the piercing, angry eyes fixed upon them. This time they did not turn for, as they looked, they saw that the eagle himself, gallant and fearless warrior that he was, had turned and given chase. Ernest looked at the speedometer. The eagle was gaining, and they were going at eighty-nine miles an hour. As Ernest kept in a straight line, the eagle commenced to climb. Instantly Ernest changed his course and commenced nosing up into the higher stretches of the air. The great bird flew straight up. Ernest grew grave. If the big bird should fly into the delicate wires of the plane he knew that nothing could save them from a whirling dash to the earth. He did the one thing that could save them. He raced the eagle, up and up, round and round, darting here and there, Ernest growing cooler and cooler as the danger pressed closer, the bird bristling with rage. He could not understand this strange winged creature that evaded and pursued him. There were men, his eternal and ancient enemies, controlling those wide, stiff pinions. He could see their heads turn, their goggled eyes watching him.
Dee looked at Ernest and realized that the strange encounter was a dangerous one. The set mouth of the young pilot and the clutch of his gauntleted hand on the steering wheel gave evidence of anxiety and the keen alertness that comes with danger. Eddie, round eyed and silent, sat watching the manoeuvers of the eagle, which constantly swerved upward in his effort to soar above the laboring plane.
But manoeuver met with maneuver, and the bird, wise and keen, truly king of his kind, found himself pitted against a higher intelligence and keener wit. Slowly the great wings began to lag and it took a visible effort to lift himself above the level on which he swung to rest.
At last with a mighty effort he darted up, and up, away from the plane, then with a quick turn darted toward it, meaning to sweep upon it. But quick as he was, Ernest was quicker, and the great bird whirled only to find the enemy just above him. He wavered, caught himself, struggled to rise, and then with a last dart toward the plane, shot downwards, the plane following. The eagle fell like a plummet, wings half spread, head down. Following as closely as he dared, Ernest traced the drop, and they were close enough at the end to see the wings spread out and the bird make a sudden harsh landing in a plowed field. The earth flew up around him like spray, and he lay where he had come down, motionless save the ever keen, savage eye that still followed their movements.
“Is he going to die?” asked Eddie in an awed voice.
“Not hurt a bit,” Ernest answered, turning the plane upward, “but all in!”
You don’t indulge in long conversations in an airplane. Aside from the noise of the engine, the pilot has his hands and brain busy—too busy to pay attention to his passengers.
So the boys sat watching, until Ernest, making a wide circle, headed for the Field at the cantonment, and landed with his usual skill.
They were both talking at once, telling the less fortunate ones about the affair with the eagle, when Frank came strolling across the field.
“Three more dynamitings, fellows,” he drawled, stuffing a paper into his pocket. “A corner of the New York Stock Exchange blown off, the residence of the Mayor of Charleston, West Virginia, wrecked, and the Fourth Street car barns blown to smithereens.”
“Jingo!” exclaimed Eddie. “What they goin’ to do about all this anyhow? Who do you suppose it is?”
“Well, they have a clue to the organization,” said Frank, “but it won’t do any good, because if they had not been sure of a good disguise, they would never have given them that much information. There was a placard on the wall of the Exchange this morning. It read, “The division of capital must come.” It was signed “Veritas.”
“My word!” exclaimed Bill feebly. “Gee, I am certainly glad I have no capital! That is, none to speak of.” He dug into his pocket and brought out eleven cents, which he handled fondly before replacing it.
“I have heard two or three people say that they thought these geezers who are making the infernal machines are somewhere around Louisville.”
“Mamma!” ejaculated Eddie.
“And papa and Auntie Sue!” added Ernest. “Say, Frank, I tell you what let’s do! My new plane is coming next week, my owntie, downtie, ittie plane that I ownall by myself. No Government about it! And to celebrate, I am going to have two weeks’ leave. Now if you will put me up I will come and visit you, since you are so insistent, and I say we go on a little still hunt after these guys. If they are anywhere in the hills, we can loaf overhead and watch for their smoke or trails or what not.”
“S’pose youdidfind them?” said Bill with a shudder of pleased anticipation. “Suppose you collared the whole batch? What would you do then?”
“We couldn’t collar the whole batch,” said Frank, shaking his head. “They are scattered all over the country. It looks like a brand-new organization to me. Nothing to do with the Bolsheviks or the Reds or any of those ducks. Something perfectly new!”
“Aw, they are all as old as the hills!” declared Ernest. “Just a lot of lazy, half-baked chaps who won’t work and haven’t the brains to study, but who hate everyone else who has anything or does anything. I’d like to see the whole caboodle set to chippin’ rocks for the next fifty years.”
“It is awful, at that, to have that sort of spirit,” said Frank. “I call it plain jealousy. They haven’t anything themselves and they don’t want anybody else to have anything.”
“Not even my eleven cents!” said Bill.
“No, not even your eleven cents,” agreed Frank with a smile. “Well, I went to a meeting of those anarchistic fellows once and, believe me, they all looked hungry. I wonder what they would be like if they were all parcelled out and fed well for two or three months.”
“Gosh, where is Fatty?” demanded Eddie suddenly.
“Speaking of eats!” said Ernest.
“Well, where is he?” asked Eddie again.
“I haven’t seen him since he went off at noon,” said Frank.
“Gone home mad,” suggested Bill.
“He wouldn’t do that,” said Skinny loyally.
“Well, we will go down and have a swim and by that time he had better put in an appearance.”
“I reckon I had better go back up where the caves are and look for him,” said Skinny.
“Don’t you do it!” said Frank. “He can’t get hurt; there is nothing for him to fall off or into, and he will come mogging along after a while. Let’s go down and swim.”
Skinny followed, but unwillingly. He wondered where Fatty was.
When Fatty Bascom, surging heavily against the narrow and jagged opening, found that he could not get out, he could not credit his senses. He was there, he had come through the split in the rock with but little personal damage. Why, therefore, was he unable to withdraw? There must be some trick about it. He tried backing out, but just escaped wedging himself so tightly that he could move neither out nor in. However, he managed to free himself and tried it front-wise, side-wise and every other way he could think of. Fatty was a prisoner.
Then his eyes fell on the pile of empty paraffine papers on the small box lying at one side of the chamber, and the truth dawned on Fatty. Fatty, empty and hungry, the lunchless Fatty had pressed through the tight fit of the stone crevice. The well-fed Fatty, augmented by that most ample and filling lunch, had attained a girthjust too much.
Physiology never had interested Fatty. And now he wondered with a chill of apprehension how long it would take him to shrink to his old dimensions. Perhaps it would take days. If, thought the worried one, if food, good food went to feed and build up the tissues as the physical culture teacher said, it might be a day or two before he was starved down to the size he had been before that generous meal!
He sat down on the box and gave himself up to dismal reflections. A day or two! In the meantime what might happen to him? Then he smiled. Of course the fellows would come and look for him. All he had to do was to lounge around and wait until they came to look for him. He knew Skinny! Skinny would stay with him. The thought of Skinny, who would not trouble his mother and so took a single cake of sweet chocolate, made Fatty vaguely uncomfortable. He had no watch, and the time passed on leaden wings. He hung a handkerchief on one of the spits of rock, and thought perhaps it would guide his rescuers. Just how they would proceed to rescue him Fatty didn’t know; couldn’t imagine. Fatty knew that no human agency could get him through that crevice after his own frenzied efforts had failed. All they could do would be to come inside and wait for him to shrink.
He commenced to look around. Opposite the opening was another narrow opening into a black, forbidding space. Fatty approached and leaning in, turned his dim flashlight cautiously around the walls. It was a large, long chamber. He could not see the end, and as he commenced to wonder if by chance there might be wild animals lurking inside, he withdrew and stationed himself by the outside slit.
At least human beings had been there before him. There were the two flat boxes lying almost hidden by a pile of rocks. He went up and looked them over. They were empty. As Fatty hauled them over something glistened on the ground beneath and he picked up a small cylinder made of brass and closed at either end. It was a neatly made, pretty toy and Fatty felt in his pocket for a knife, but he had none. Knives always dug into him. He picked with his fingers at the seam but it did not give. Fatty wanted it for a pencil case. It would hold about four pencils. So he slipped it into his pocket to show Skinny, and carefully buttoned the flap.
It was a nice, shiny brass case, and Fatty thought he could swap it some day for an ice-cream cone or a stick of fruiteena gum.
There was nothing else to look at, and Fatty kicked the boxes back where he had found them. He looked at them several times in a vague way. He was conscious that he had seen them before, but as he thought it must have been in some grocery, with figs or something of the sort in them, he gave it up. It made him somehow uncomfortable. Oh, Fatty, Fatty Bascom! What a pity you did not remember that top box! What a shame that you never trained your eyes to remember what they saw! How much trouble it would have saved!
There was some sand over by the “door” as our poor prisoner called the opening, and there Fatty sat down and waited for the diminishing process to continue.
While he sat there an airplane went humming overhead, and then for awhile there was silence; a silence only broken by the sound of rock crumbling in the inner chamber. Fatty thought of wildcats, and his scalp crept. It worked on him so that he gave up watching for someone, some mountaineer to go past on the narrow mountain trail, and fastened his eyes on the door that led into the mountain. The airplane returned and after awhile went over again. Fatty decided that it was Ernest taking the boys up for a flight. He tried the door for the twentieth hopeless time.
The silence was dense; it covered him like a cloak. The place was cool and shadowy, but there was no chill. Fatty found the sand not at all unpleasant, and wriggled down until he lay on his back, with his cap under his head.
And presently he went sound asleep.
When he awoke he did not know where he was, and lay for a moment trying to place himself. It came to him with a jolt. The chamber was dark, and even outside Fatty could see that the sky was grey with the dusk of night falling. Cramming his cap on his head, he flung himself at the opening and in a flash was through and running down the trail. Stumbling, half falling, running, panting along, he followed the trail, now almost invisible in the waning light, around and down the mountain towards the plateau where the camp lay twinkling with electricity. Fatty’s heart and soul reached forward wildly toward those lights as he raced forward. Behind him he imagined soft padding footsteps and the light, slinking forms of great, gaunt cats stalking him. He had heard that the mountains were full of wildcats. Fatty reflected that they would be glad to dine on anything so juicy and tender as his own plump self. Fear lent him wings.
As he rounded the last curve before hitting the open road that led back to camp, he collided with two tramps coming slowly up the mountain. He bounced back with a cry, and as the ill-looking fellows started to swear, Fatty apologized, and dashed past, giving the strangers a wide berth. Fatty wondered if they were moonshiners. He had heard of them, and each man was heavily loaded with a pack that covered his back. What Fatty could see of their faces in the gathering gloom did not tend to make him want to stop and converse. He fled toward camp. Once he nearly went headlong, but saved himself, and feeling of his pocket to see if he had lost the queer cylinder he hurried toward his goal.
Outside the Adjutant’s office, Fatty recognized the well-known lines of Frank’s little flivver, and around it a dejected group that split up as he approached and greeted him with a volley of questions and reproaches.
Fatty, absent and possibly hurt, had taken on the aspect of a dear departed. Fatty, turning up perfectly hale and hearty, was an object of scorn and reproaches.
Ernest and Frank and Eddie and Dee, ably assisted by Bill and Skinny, demanded to know what he meant by it, where he had been, why had he gone away, and what ailed him anyway.
When the hubbub subsided a little and they were on their way, it transpired that the whole party had gone all the way back along the trail to see if they could see anything of the lost one. They had found no trace of him, and there had been no answer to their shouts.
Fatty thought guiltily that he must have been asleep. The more they talked, giving him no chance to explain, the more Fatty felt that he would not tell anything about his experience. So when at length Frank quelled the uproar by saying, “Let’s let Fatty tell us what he has been doing,” Fatty serenely told them that he had gone off in the woods, had fallen asleep, and that was all there was of it. No adventure, no excitement, nothing. Just that.
“Well, I am sorry for you!” said Eddie with scorn. “You can’t tellme!Iknow why you went, and that’s what you get for going off and hogging all that lunch. Just went to sleep all afternoon. Serves you right! We had a peach of a feed. Frank bought some dandy eats, and pop, and ginger ale, and say! we went up in Ernest’s plane and ran across an eagle. Say, his wings were twenty or thirty feet across, and we had a fight with him!”
“Now I know you are lying,” said Fatty glumly.
“No, sir,” said Eddie. “Didn’t we have a fight with an eagle?” he appealed to Dee.
“I should say we did!” said Dee.
“Well, show us a feather,” demanded Fatty.
“What do you think we did?” said Eddie scornfully. “Reach over and pull out some of his tail?”
“I’d ’a’ done it,” said Fatty. “I found something dandy up where I was, and I brought it home for a souvenir.”
“Well, trot it out!” said Eddie.
“Not much!” retorted Fatty. “Not on your life! It’s a peach of a thing too, but let’s see your feather, and I will let you see what I found.”
“Aw, I don’t care what you found,” said Eddie. “You have missed the best time you ever had, and the best swim, and I’m sorry for you.”
It turned hot again next day, and Fatty hung his flannel shirt away. The queer cylinder was in the pocket. Mrs. Bascom found that shirt a few days later and put it in the wash. The cylinder, looking nice and bright and brassy, she laid in the drawer beside Fatty’s handkerchiefs.
Fatty found it there on Sunday when he dressed for Sunday School, and thinking that there might be a chance for a dicker between lessons, he rubbed it up on his pocket handkerchief, and putting it in his breast pocket where the end gleamed out enticingly, he started off.
Now it happened that the innocent looking cylinder that looked like a new sort of pencil case was an infernal machine of the deadliest kind!
Filled with the most powerful explosives, the compact little engine of destruction was powerful enough to shatter a building. If Fatty had known ... if Frank had known when he bounced and jolted home in the flivver.... if Mrs. Bascom had known when she shifted it to the pile of handkerchiefs—well, this would have been a different story, with a different ending.
As it was, Fatty walked sedately to church, and with no trip or jolt violent enough to send Fatty skyward in scraps.
He could not stick it out until after Sunday School, however, and during the service brought it forth for the admiration of the boys in his class. A group of heads gathered about some object held under the back of the seat caught the attention of the Superintendent. Walking down the side aisle, he came back toward the front of the church by way of the middle aisle and leaned suddenly over the shoulders of the interested group. He quietly took the cylinder out of Eddie’s hand.
“Rowland,” he said sternly, “I regret to see you acting thus during Sunday School. If you cannot deport yourself in a proper manner I shall have to report you to your parents. I will give you your toy after service.”
Without giving Eddie a chance to explain he walked off, bearing the cylinder which he deposited on the desk.
“He thinks it’s mine,” whispered Eddie with a grin.
“You give it right back as soon as you get it!” hissed Fatty.
“Who wants your old cylinder, anyhow?”
“Ido,” said Fatty. With a possible swap in view it was wise to boost his prize. “If I can get the top pried off it will make a dandy pencil case.”
“It might do for that,” said Eddie. “Tell you what, Fat. I will give you a nickel for it.” And Eddie who always had honestly earned money in his pocket took out a bright coin and with one eye on the Superintendent, danced it in his palm where Fatty could see it.
He looked and was lost. After all he didn’t want the old brass thing. So the nickel became his and after Sunday School was over, Eddie went meekly down to the desk and waited for the cylinder.
The Superintendent was talking to one of the elders and saw Eddie out of the corner of his eye. He picked up the brass tube, but fumbled it. It rolled down the slope of the desk and would have fallen had not Eddie caught it deftly as it fell.
“Never do that again!” said the Superintendent severely.
“No, sir,” promised Eddie, and went off, little knowing that his quickness of movement had saved a perfectly good Sunday School and all the innocent people in it.
He looked the cylinder over and decided that the top had been screwed on. A wrench would take it off, but as Eddie did not carry a wrench in his Sunday clothes, he put the cylinder in his pocket and, whistling happily, went home to dinner, where his mother at once insisted on the Sunday suit being put away.
So once more the pretty brass tube with its deadly load found a temporary resting place in a clothes press where nothing more deadly than Christmas plum pudding had ever been harbored. Once more, all unconscious, Fatty and Eddie had handled the frightful thing and there it hung within reach of Eddie’s little baby brother Jack and the careless hands of Virginia.
Fatty forgot all about it.
He was not at the club room the next time the boys gathered to take some messages. Theirs was, thanks to Bill’s three aunts, the only wireless in the city capable of carrying long distance messages. So they seldom bothered with any of the short circuit lines that crossed and inter-crossed. They were tuned for far-away messages. This night, however, as Dee sat idly tapping out the words that crossed his instrument, he heard something that caused a strange alertness to take possession of his mind. And these were the words:
“From the adjutant’s office, two shivering maples make the brows, a slit the nose. In the inner chamber, six. Wash Seattle.”
With breathless intentness Dee listened for more. A faint “Correct” reached him, then the word “When?” “The Thirteenth” was the answer. After that silence save for the weather reports coming from the Great Lakes and a jumble of messages flying from here and there from boy to boy across the city. The words Dee had heard might well have been some of these, but where had he heard of the “shivering maples” for eyebrows? He racked his mind in vain. Eddie, clamoring for the table, came raving up, followed by Bill.
The three boys were alone. Dee told them what he had heard but for awhile they were able to make nothing of it. Suddenly Eddie exclaimed, “I know what! Do you suppose it is the face we saw on the hillside out at camp that day?”
“I don’t know,” replied Dee, startled.
“What was that?” asked Bill.
The boys told him.
“Well, if there is a face there, what do they want with it?” he asked. “I bet that is it, but how are we going to know what they mean? Say, suppose it has something to do with all that dynamiting? What would 'Wash Seattle’ mean?”
“Washington and Seattle,” said Dee. “The next places to be dynamited.”
“My, my, you are cheerful!” said Bill, shivering. “I say we report this to somebody!”
“We can’t,” answered Eddie. “Frank and Ernest are both away, and I am afraid to tell the police.”
“If we mix up in it, we will get our own little heads blown off like as not,” said Bill ruefully. “Mine is a nice head.”
“Aw, what ails you?” said Eddie. “Nobody is going to know! What did you do with that book anyway, Dee—the one you showed Anna the day the man was run over?”
“I gave it to the police, but I copied the writing in it,” said Dee. “If Anna won’t tell me exactly what it says, I am going to take it down to the Public Library and find out just what it means. I can translate it near enough by one of the dictionaries there.”
“That’s a scheme!” said Bill.
“I am going home now,” said Dee. “I want to take a look at it.”
“Come back if you find it. It is early,” called Bill.
“All right, I will,” answered Dee, and went down the stairs three at a time.
When he reached the house his father and Zip had just crossed the street on their way around the Park. Dee could not help a feeling of sadness as he saw his stepfather, a man who should have been in full health, shuffling carefully along with the hesitating gait of the nearly blind. He called a greeting, to which Zip replied and his father nodded. Then Dee hurried up to his room. But he stopped there only long enough to get a key, and went up to the attic. He required no light but went over to his mother’s trunk, opened it, and found the paper he had hidden there.
As he retraced his steps he heard a familiar ticking, crackling noise. He smiled as he thought what tricks his brain was playing him. A mouse in Zip’s room of course, but it sounded exactly like a wireless that needs adjustment. With a smile he stepped down the hall and paused at Zip’s door. The noise continued, and with a paling face, blank with amazement, Dee recognized the sound of a wireless trying to pick them up!
Racing down the stairs, he heard Zip’s high prattle as the two returned. Dee slid off the side of the porch and sank down into the depths of the honeysuckle bush. The two men came up the steps.
They were talking rapidly but close as he was Dee could catch nothing of the low sentences until Zip turned the door knob. Then Mr. De Lorme said: “What was it—the thirteenth? We will have to make haste!” and together they disappeared in the house.
For a long while Dee dared not move.
The thirteenth!
When the door closed behind Mr. De Lorme and Zip, Dee scrambled out of the dense bush, cut through into the alley and turned toward Bill’s. He was shaking but whether with fright or apprehension he could not tell. He only knew that something of awful import was close at hand.
There was a wireless in Zip’s room! Actually a wireless in his father’s house! And was it chance that his father was asking about the thirteenth?
When Dee reached the back gate he sat down on the curb and gave himself up to his thoughts. But thinking did not help. It was all a miserable muddle; no head, no beginning, and no end. Dee sneered at himself for a suspicious cub, yet he knew that other houses never had the dark air of mystery that hung over his home. And his mother’s letters. When they flashed into his mind, Dee knew that there was something afoot that at least called for an explanation. What was his part in the dark play unfolding back there? What was it that the blinded chemist was working on so endlessly?
Dee determined to know. At first he decided to talk it all over with the boys, then to keep his own counsel until he had some real clues. At the present he could only connect his father and the scraps of information that he had gathered with the dynamiting that had been going on, and reflection told him that he had very little indeed on which to base his suspicions.
Certainly there was not a word in the letters to his mother; his father’s reference to the thirteenth might have had a very different meaning, and all the other straws of circumstance might have meant nothing at all. Dee realized how suspicion colors everything.
Finally he went up to the club room and said that he had not seen Anna; he would see her the following day. He soon went home, dragging his unwilling feet to the door of the house that now seemed the abode of evil spirits. As he turned the knob he glanced at his wrist watch. Nine o’clock.
He went slowly up to his own room, entered and leaving the door wide open behind him, went over to the window and sat down in the dark. He stared hopelessly out into the dense waving branches of the trees, thinking, thinking. He was perfectly still, and when Zip came hurriedly out of the laboratory and glanced into the boy’s room, he evidently did not see him and passed on downstairs. He returned presently, a package under his arm, and went into the laboratory, locking the door. Still Dee sat in the darkness, silent and moody. He heard a plane humming overhead and knew that it must be Ernest in his new flyer on his way to Stithton. Ernest had told the boys that he would always fly low and beat out taps in the exhaust whenever he went over.
Once more Zip came out of the laboratory and left the house. Although the night was clear, he wore a light raincoat, and he carried a small black satchel. Dee had seen this satchel many times. Zip took it when he went down-town, as a woman carries a shopping bag.
Another half hour went by, with Dee moodily staring into the street.
Then, very softly, so that Dee could scarcely hear the muffled ticking, the wireless in Zip’s room commenced to call. Over and over Dee heard the signal. Finally with swift decision he leaped to his feet. Remembering that Zip might return at any moment, he went softly down the stairs and slipped the latch so that Zip could not unlock the door. Dee hoped that he would think the latch had slipped. In any event, he would be obliged to ring for admission. Slipping off his shoes, he raced up the carpeted stairs, and noiselessly passing the door of the laboratory, entered Zip’s room and commenced his search for the instrument. The faint ticking guided him and he discovered the wireless cleverly concealed in a bureau. The drawers had been changed so that the whole front opened like a door. There Dee found a perfect set of instruments, and dropping on his knee, he answered the call and commenced to take the message.
“How goes it?” asked the wireless, and Dee, remembering Zip’s pet word, said, “Fine, fine!” and waited.
“Take this down,” said the wireless next. “We need ten cases. See that they are in charge of the keeper in the inner chamber. The thirteenth is the day.”
“All right,” answered Dee, and waited breathlessly. In the silence he thought he heard his father walking in the hall. Reaching over, he turned off the electric light.
“Two men are coming to take the stuff out,” the wireless went on. “They will come as usual. Be very careful. We are closely watched. Leave the garage—”
With a start Dee turned, and the receiver jolted from his hand. The room door had opened suddenly, and Mr. De Lorme entered. He had evidently heard the ticking and was hurrying to take the message.
As he crossed the dark room to the electric light, Dee sat motionless. He was caught! There was no way for him to escape. Mr. De Lorme pressed the electric button and flooded the room with light. Then Dee, blinking in the sudden glare, looked up full at his step-father.
But what a change! In all his life Dee had only known his step-father as bowed, half helpless, nearly blind, his eyes always guarded by the dark, disfiguring glasses. Now before him stood a straight, sinister man, with clear, piercing eyes that bored into his own. As he saw Dee an indescribable snarl distorted his features.
“Spying!” he cried, and with a savage blow knocked the boy down.
Dee leaped to his feet. A trickle of blood ran down where De Lorme’s heavy seal ring had cut his cheek, and Dee mechanically wiped it away. As De Lorme took a step toward him the front door bell rang. Zip had returned. For a moment Mr. De Lorme hesitated, then taking Dee by the collar roughly bundled him to the attic door, thrust him up the stairs, and Dee heard the key turn in the lock.
The boy sat down on the top step, his heart pounding furiously. Well, he was a prisoner all right! He wondered dully if they would kill him. He supposed so. And that very plan was being discussed down in the closed laboratory. Mr. De Lorme was walking the floor, furiously gesticulating, tossing the hair from his forehead, striking one hand savagely into the open palm of the other.
“Of course we will have to get rid of the worthless cub,” said De Lorme. “I have kept him with me because of the fat inheritance he will receive when that old aunt of his dies. She does not know where he is, but it has been enough for me to know where thepropertyis. And that can’t escape. But I can’t afford now to have him about. He knows too much. Get rid of him, Zip.”
“How?” asked Zip blankly. Zip was perfectly willing to assist in the manufacture of infernal machines that would blow hundreds of innocent persons to a frightful death. That was part of Zip’s distorted creed—the wholesale abolishment of property and personal power; but he was kind to animals, and it did not occur to him that Mr. De Lorme meant what he said, so “How?” he repeated.
“Any way you like!” raved the madman. “Shoot him! Poison him! Drown him!Idon’t care! Do you suppose that we can afford to get ourselves strapped into the electric chair for a blundering cub like that? You might, but not I. I, De Lorme, the maker of explosives, I who am known in our Order as the Avenger: what right haveIto risk my life for a cub?”
“How much does he know?” asked Zip.
“Much or little, it does not matter,” said De Lorme. “He was at the wireless; he has seen me with my disguise off. Why, you were the only man living who knew that I am a perfectly well man! That boy has never guessed or dreamed that I am not half blind. Think how I stumbled round the Park with him. Half to win pity from our most aristocratic and respectable neighbors, half to fool that boy.”
“Why not swear him to secrecy and make him one of us?” asked Zip.
“One of us, one of our Order?” thundered Mr. De Lorme. “He is a slave to what he calls law and order; he is all patriotism. They have lectures in their schools. Ah, when we get this government into our hands things will be different! Then Truth will be taught. Get rid of him, Zip. I command it!”
“I don’t like it,” said Zip stubbornly.
De Lorme turned on him with the savage suddenness of a panther. “Then do you want to be snuffed out for disobedience?” he demanded.
“No, I don’t,” said Zip, “but you are so angry that you can’t see straight. How are we to get rid of the boy here; here on a block where every man and woman and child knows him? You yourself have made him make friends.”
“It was a safeguard,” said Mr. De Lorme. “Think of the fool women who have sent jelly and beaten biscuits home with him for his sick father! Bah!”
“All right,” said Zip, pressing his momentary advantage, “It is as you made it, is it not? Well, we will not be here much longer. We can keep him a close prisoner, and when we go we will decide what to do with him. There are millions of safer places than this for the sort of work you want me to do.”
Mr. De Lorme pondered this. “All right,” he agreed finally. “I am willing to concede this much. See that the boy is kept a close prisoner for the next two days. He cannot possibly escape from the third story.”
“No, there is not even a balcony,” said Zip.
“Go up in the morning—no, tonight, and put the fear of death into his soul,” said Mr. De Lorme. “I cannot see him. It disturbs my balance, and I am unfit for our delicate labor when I am nervous. Let him have food, but not too much.”
He snatched the door open and went over to the door leading into the attic and shook it. It was stout and heavy, and yielded nothing to his savage handling. Dee heard him, and running down, leaned his ear against the panel. So he heard the end of the strange conversation.
“That will hold him,” came the muffled voice of Mr. De Lorme. “Give him water too. I shall have to work all night now, if this dynamite and the infernal machines are finished in time. Better take a nap, Zip. You are worthless when you are sleepy.”
“Will you rest?” asked Zip.
“No, not I,” said the arch plotter. “I need no rest when I do this work, only I must not be annoyed. Do not mention the boy to me!”
Heavy footsteps passed down the hall and a door closed. Stepping backwards up the stairs, Dee gained the top and lighted the electric light.
He wondered what next. The next came quickly. Zip appeared, locking the door behind him. He had a pitcher of water in his hand. Setting it down he looked at Dee with a queer grin. Dee did not speak.
“What made you do that?” Zip asked finally.
“Do what?” said Dee, willing to talk in the hope of gaining some information from the plotter.
“Monkey with the wireless,” explained Zip. “You must know about the whole thing.”
Dee laughed. “I reckon I do,” he said. He resorted to a trick.
“I wonder if you thought I wasallin the dark all the time,” he asked. “Don’t you suppose I knew what you were working on back there in that laboratory? What do you think I am? As blind ashepretended to be? I guess not! What do you think about the men who come here in the middle of the night? You make me tired!”
“Well,” said Zip, surprised off his guard, “if you have known about our Order and the dynamite we are producing, I suppose you know where we are storing it and all the rest of it.”
“I am not telling anything I know,” said Dee. He had learned what he wanted to know from Zip’s loose tongue. But the man’s next words chilled him.
“I was sent up here to tell you that you will have to behave pretty well if you hope ever to get out of this,” he said. “Your life hangs on a thread, and a thin one. De Lorme would have killed you tonight if I had not begged for your life. I may as well tell you that you are a prisoner, and your best chance is to behave and make no trouble. I will bring your breakfast to you in the morning.”
“All right,” said Dee. “Leave it on the stairs. I don’t want to talk to you or see you again.”
“Keep talking like that and you won’t get any breakfast,” growled Zip sullenly, and left.
Dee found some extra bedding and made himself a very comfortable bed on the floor, where he slept soundly until morning. The first thing he heard was the key turning in the lock as Zip placed his breakfast on the stairs and retreated. The attic had been intended for servants’ quarters. Dee explored and found in one end a small bedroom and a decent bathroom. He ran a cold bath and, plunging in, felt fit for any fate. Next he found a pile of magazines that had evidently been left by the former owners. He looked at his tray and thanks to Anna, began to think that his imprisonment was not to be painful at least. By afternoon, however, time commenced to drag. Three or four times he had heard Bill and Eddie whistling down in the street. The whistle had a peremptory note. Dee wondered what was up.
He went to the window, but the screen was nailed in and he was afraid to call. And the boys did not look up. It was a tall house. By five o’clock Dee was walking the floor. When about six Zip came with his supper and peered at him over the top step, Dee refused to speak.
“All right!” said he. “Tomorrow you go on bread and water, young fellow, and you will find it down here at the door. I won’t come a step for you until you come off your high horse.”
“There is water up here,” Dee said.
“Bread it is, then. As soon as you act decently you shall have more. We are pretty busy downstairs. When it comes the thirteenth, just listen and you will hear some noise.”
He chuckled evilly and went down, locking the door.
Dee did not eat his supper. He sat by the window and puzzled out plan after plan.Howcould he get the message to the boys? How could he effect an escape? It grew dark and below he heard the children playing, and saw a gleam of white as the girls walked two and two back and forth on the block.
Presently he heard a whistle. Then another, in a different key. Bill and Eddie were below. Dee pushed against the screen, but it did not give. He knew it would mean death if he whistled. Then inspiration came.
Taking his flash from his pocket, he sent a message into the night. It was a frightful risk. If Mr. De Lorme and Zip happened to be taking their evening walk, they would see it, but Dee knew that he must take a chance. The thirteenth was drawing near. Perhaps hundreds of innocent men and women would die on that day if he was not freed.
“S.O.S.! S.O.S.!” over and over he flashed, wondering if the boys would understand that secrecy was vital.
The whistling stopped suddenly, and Dee ventured another message. Then he stopped, straining his eyes into the deepening darkness. In what seemed about an hour, but what must have been ten minutes Dee’s heart leaped. Out over in the ornamental bushes that filled the lower end of Triangle Park came a tiny flash of light, then another. A moment more, and Dee caught the Wireless Club signal. He flashed an answer. Then as briefly as possible he declared his dangerous position. “Go away! Danger! Tell Ernest and Frank. Help at once!”
There was no answering flash to this, and Dee wondered if the scheme had been discovered. He did not dare leave the window, although he was listening with all his might for sounds at the stairway for he knew that if the flashes had been seen his life would pay the forfeit.
All at once the light glimmered again, this time from the fence surrounding the Reform School across Third Street.
“All set! Two o’clock! Be ready!” they flashed.
Sleep banished, hope springing in his breast, Dee awaited the appointed hour.
At two o’clock a light flashed in the brush over in the Park.
“Are you there?” it asked.
Dee’s flash winked back “Yes!”
“Bill talking,” said the flash in the Park.
“Don’t waste time,” begged Dee.
“Going to throw rope,” said Bill. “Where’s best window?”
“Side next to Corey’s,” Dee replied, remembering that side of the house had a blank wall until it was broken by the dormer window in the third story. He hurried over to that window and with his pocket knife cut the screen. It was rotted by the wind and rain, and crumbled easily under his knife blade. Then he leaned far out and distinguished four dark forms creeping beside the house.
Bill’s flash sent up a single gleam. Dee answered it. As Dee leaned out, a slim line, weighted at the end, whirled toward him and fell. Again it rose, this time reaching the level of the window. Over and over this happened, one after another of the group below trying to send the weighted end close enough for Dee to seize it. Suddenly he waved to the fellows to stop, and withdrew his head. Flashing his light over the attic, he spied a bed-slat and carried it to the window, then waved a signal for the ropes to be thrown. Holding the slat at right angles with the window, the third trial sent the rope whirling over the slat, and Dee grabbed it. He rapidly drew it up, knowing that the other end would hold some sort of instructions. Sure enough, there was a scrap in Frank’s handwriting, so Dee knew that both Frank and Ernest must be below.
He read the words, “If your scrape is serious, pull the string three times and we will send up a rope. If you have just had an ordinary fuss with your dad, say so, and be a sport and stick to your guns.”
Dee laughed noiselessly, and pulled the string three hard jerks.
Immediately there was a quick pull on the line, and Dee commenced to haul up. A rope followed the string, and another note was bound to the end.
“Throw rope over beam, and pay down the end,” it read.
Dee did so and soon the heavy rope hung taut. It was difficult work getting out of the window and starting down the three story slide in the pitch dark, but Dee knew it was his one chance. He had but little faith in the continuance of Zip’s friendship; he knew him too well. And as for Mr. De Lorme, Dee knew that his life was worth absolutely nothing as long as he remained in that house. And of more importance still, there was the mystery of the dynamite to unravel. The fatal thirteenth was drawing near.
Sliding painfully down the ropes Dee thought of all this and as soon as he felt his feet on the ground he jerked the rope down with his own hand, and turning to Ernest and Frank, who were hastily coiling it, whispered,
“Let’s get out of this!”
One at a time, they made their way through the back garden into the pitch dark garage, and out the other door into the alley. Once in that comparative security, they raced up the alley and turned in at Bill’s gate. Up to the club room they hurried, Dee whispering, “Don’t make a light!”
But Ernest would not talk until he had made sure that there were no listeners, and then in as few words as possible Dee told his story.
The boys’ eyes grew round and wild as they listened, and at the conclusion Ernest looked at his watch, and said to Frank, “Where is the flivver?”
“Out front,” replied Frank.
“You, Bill, sneak in and get a couple of your mother’s long coats, and Frank will take Dee and Bill and me up to the landing-field at Camp Taylor where I parked my plane. I want the kids to look like a couple of girls going out of here, so if we are seen or watched they will not spot Dee. I hope for an hour or two before they find he is gone. Bill can come back. You, Eddie, get down to the end of the Park, where the bushes are thick, and watch that house. If anyone goes out, follow him. And for the love of Mike don’t let a cop catch you, because youcan’t explain. See? This is not a little hold-up or second-story job. It may be the discovery of the gang that has been sending infernal machines all over the United States. I am going to fly with Dee over to the United States Intelligence Branch of the War Department at Cincinnati and let Dee tell his story.”
Bill came hustling out in a moment with coats and hats, and the two tall boys (not as tall as Mrs. Wolfe, however) enveloped themselves in her wraps and walked sedately out of the front door and stepped into the chugging flivver.
Fifteen minutes later at Aviation Field a man and a slim boy left the car and hurried aloft in a little racer that belonged to Ernest, setting their faces toward Cincinnati.
Frank and Bill went back home and not knowing just what part to take, went up to the club room to wait for news of Eddie. Half an hour later, just as dawn was beginning to streak the sky, he appeared. A half dozen morning newspapers were under his arm and he looked the early-bird of a newsie to the life. But he flung his papers on the floor and himself into the biggest chair.
“Oh, gee!” he said in a hushed voice, “things are didding down there at Dee’s. I say that is an old whale when it comes to plots.”
“Don’t gabble,” demanded Frank. “Tell us, did you see anything?”
Eddie refused to give up his information except in his own way.
“Have a heart, man!” he said, waving a grubby paw at Frank. “Can’t you see I am all out of breath?” He panted loudly a couple of times, then condescended to tell his experience.
“I went down there in the bushes,” he said, “and glued my eyes to that house. There wasn’t a soul in the street, and nobody came. But by-and-by I thought I saw someone sneaking around the corner from the back and sure enough there were two men pussy-footing it up the front porch. Well, someone must have been watching for them because as soon as they reached the door it slid open a little bit and they went in. They didn’t have time to ring at all. When I saw that there were no more of them, I skinned across and tried to see in the windows.”
“You little loon, you might have been shot!” muttered Frank.
“All for the Cause!” said Eddie airily. “Well, I couldn’t see a thing, so I went over to the next porch and swiped the papers on two or three steps, and then I laid down in the hammock like I was a newsie and dead tired. But I had an eye to the crack of the hammock, waiting for them to come downstairs. I knew they would have to come out. Then all at once I happened to think that the house has a back door, and I thought, 'Suppose they go out that way!’ Because they came around from the back.
“So I skinned around and drifted along by the fence till I came to the garage. I went in, and say, fellows, hope I may die if I didn’t fall right over the hood of a big machine! I made a clatter that you could have heard up here, but I was sure afraid to pick myself up. So I laid still as long as I dared, then got up and sneaked behind a couple of barrels in the corner, and there I waited some more, and pretty soon in waltzed the two men. They never made a sound, and they scared me nearly to death. They didn’t walk; they just sort of appeared. One of them had a big suitcase, and I bet it was full of dynamite, because he set it in the bottom of the car easier than if it had been eggs. The other one opened the garage doors and got in the driver’s seat and started the car, while the other fellow sat down beside him, and lifted the suitcase on his lap like a sick baby. Then they backed out and in another second were gone.
“That car was a whiz. It was big as the ark, and it went with less sound than I have ever heard an engine make. And I have had some experience, I will say!”
“Of course!” said Frank absently. “Well, one thing is clear, they take their stuff away somewhere in a car. Gosh, Rowland, if that suitcase had gone off there in the garage, it would have mussed you all up, wouldn’t it?”
“I should sayso!” said Eddie solemnly. “I thought of that. Oh, yes, there was one thing. Just as the car started, one of the men said something about 'the last trip tomorrow afternoon.’ So I bet they are coming back for more.”
“Good, and more of it!” said Frank. “We must find out where they are taking their stuff.” He yawned. “I wonder if you fellows aren’t sleepy. Seems as though I hadn’t had a nap for a year or so.”
“I can’t sleep,” said Eddie, and Bill echoed him.
“All right,” said Frank, “you can stay here, and if Ernest comes while I am dozing, come wake me up. He won’t stay in Cincinnati any longer than he has to. Don’t know what he will do with Dee. His life isn’t worth much around here I should say, if old Papa De Lorme was to get track of him. Ern will attend to that, I know. He will bring Dee back disguised as a hot dog if he has to. So long! I won’t be able to think if I don’t sleep for a spell.”
He went off, and Bill and Eddie sat talking in low tones. Presently Bill took up the wireless. “Wonder if I can catch any fish this early?” he said idly, then his eyes bulged as he listened.
“Two more cases needed,” the wireless ticked. “Reached here safely with suitcase. If chosen messengers ask, tell them machines and bombs are under shale in back chamber. Rush work. Will motor in about four tomorrow afternoon. Be ready.”