CHAPTER XXTHE STOWAWAY
The young aviator took a long, earnest stare at the mysterious person who had just stated that he was a stowaway. In a flash Dave seemed to get hold of one end of a long chain of circumstances and mysteries.
“A stowaway?” repeated Professor Leblance, incredulously. “You mean aboard theAlbatross?”
“Yes, sir.”
“From the time when she first started?”
“And before.”
“You amaze me!”
“I am amazed at myself,” came the words, in rather a depressed way. The speaker dropped his head, and both of his interlocutors looked troubled and more puzzled than ever. “I’ll tell you, gentlemen, I’d rather not say much till I am sure your airship is out of the country. You know you promised I should stay aboard if I wanted to,” he added to Mr. King.
“I surely did,” assented the airman, heartily.
Dave had been studying the profile of the stowaway. He had noticed that his ebony hue was due entirely to soot or greased lampblack smeared over face and hands. Further, the keen glance of the young aviator had scanned closely the clothing, even down to the necktie of the stranger, and then—he was a stranger no longer to Dave.
“Mr. King, may I speak to you for a moment,” said Dave, moving out of the cabin into a passageway. In some surprise the airman followed him there.
“What is it, Dashaway?” he asked.
“The stowaway. I know him, Mr. King,” declared Dave, hurriedly. “There is a certain mystery about him he dares not explain just now, and you are embarrassing him dreadfully. Don’t ask him any more questions. Tell him to come to my stateroom. Later, I will explain everything to you about him.”
“Well, well,” commented the airman; “you seem to have the faculty for preparing surprises for your friends, I must say. I’ll do what you suggest, but I’m curious to understand what it all means.”
“You shall soon know,” promised the young aviator, and he went to the little partitioned-off space where he and Hiram slept. He sat down on one of the berths, placing a stool in the middle of the room for his expected guest.
“You will find a friend in there,” reached Dave’s ear, a little later, in the tones of the airman.
“Did—did you want to speak to me?” rather falteringly asked the stowaway, entering the stateroom. Mr. King retired and closed the door after him.
“Why, yes,” replied Dave pleasantly. “Say,” and he grasped the hand of his guest in a hearty way, “I am glad to see you, and doubly glad because you have made good, just as I knew you would. I once told a friend you were of the right kind. You’ve proved it, Elmer Brackett, and I’m proud of you.”
“Yes, I see you know me. Made good! Proud of me?” repeated the boy in a dazed, half-stunned way.
“Why, you saved theAlbatross, didn’t you?” cried the young aviator, in a spirited tone, bound to rouse and buoy up his guest. “The lives, too, probably, of every person aboard. What are you crying for—joy?”
Sure enough, young Brackett was crying. He acted like a boy in such a tangle of circumstances that he was fairly crushed. Finally he blurted out:
“Joy? None of that for me, ever again, I guess.”
“Why not?” challenged Dave.
“Oh, you don’t know, you don’t know!” cried the young man. “It seems as I sit here, in the strangest position a fellow ever was in, I reckon, that I’m in some terrific dream. There’s only one clear idea I can cling to—to get out of the country, away—away——”
“Away from that villain, Vernon? Am I right?” spoke Dave, quickly.
“Yes, that’s it,” assented Brackett, in a lost tone of voice.
“I thought so. Now then, see here, you are among the best friends any fellow ever had. You have just been the best kind of a hero ever was. Forget everything else for the present. Make up your mind that whatever your troubles may be, there’s a combination aboard theAlbatrossstrong enough to help you fight your way clear out of the last one of them, and—tell me all about it.”
There followed the most interesting hour of Dave Dashaway’s life. The friend of everybody, he had been the confidant and helper of many a lad in difficulties. As bit by bit the strange history of Elmer Brackett came out, however, Dave conceded that it was the most remarkable case he had ever handled.
Briefly, the reckless, impetuous son of the big man in the Interstate Aero Company had become the helpless victim of the schemes of Vernon. Young Brackett did not tell Dave everything. He hinted that while in a muddled condition he had been induced by Vernon to forge a number of notes.
Once completely in the power of the schemer, the latter showed no mercy. He appalled Brackett by claiming that he could send him to the penitentiary, disgrace his family, and almost ruin his father’s business. These claims were, in a measure, exaggerations.
Elmer Brackett then lost his head completely. His one thought was to escape from Vernon. He disguised himself, after sending a letter to his father, warning him against the forgeries, and saying he was going to seek some foreign country where he could lose himself and be forgotten.
“I had no money, I dared not appeal to friends, for Vernon was seeking for me everywhere to tighten the chains of his power around me,” related the youth, bitterly. “I thought of you, and while tracing down theAlbatrossI ran across Davidson and young Dawson and theirDictator. Maybe it was a wild idea, but I thought how it would just suit me to get away from this country by airship, for Vernon had claimed that if I left him he would have the detectives looking out for me everywhere. Well, I hung around Senca. Then, as I didn’t think much of the way theDictatorshowed up, I went to Croydon.”
“It was you, then, who asked my friend, Hiram Dobbs, about me, and wore a false mustache?”
“Yes, I was disguised,” admitted Brackett.
“And you were, too, the ghost who scared the watchman at theAlbatrossaerodrome nearly into fits!”
“That was me, too,” admitted Brackett. “The night before you started I sneaked aboard the airship. I stowed myself away behind the big boxes of provisions near the cabin here. I heard and saw what was going on. Then that crowd of outlaws came, I got the magazine gun from the arsenal, and—here I am.”
“And here you wish to stay till we get across the Atlantic?” said the young aviator. “Good! Now, then, take my advice; forget all this wretched fear and trouble that is part of your past. Help us win the great prize, and when this trip is over trust to it that Mr. King and Mr. Dale will find time and money to squelch this miserable Vernon, straighten out your affairs, and start you on a new career.”
Elmer Brackett, minus the lampblack and encouraged by Dave, was soon quite another person in appearance and spirits to the refugee stowaway. Dave imparted to his friends only as much of Brackett’s story as was necessary.
The following morning the boys awoke to find theAlbatrossout of all sight of land, fairly started on the great trip across the broad Atlantic.