CHAPTER VI
AN OLD HOME AND A MODERN BUSINESS
AN OLD HOME AND A MODERN BUSINESS
AN OLD HOME AND A MODERN BUSINESS
The full significance of this unique proposition did not appear to the Airship Boys until they had cleared their brains with several hours of sleep. In the preceding few days, as theOcean Flyercame to completion, the three boys had put in long hours at the aeroplane factory. And the final test—the flight in the dark to sea and back—had been a strain that left them exhausted and ready for rest. Losing this by being aroused from bed at two o’clock, put them in a nervous and easily irritated condition. There was little time given that night to a consideration of what was to come.
This was not true of the man who had suggested the daring venture. Long after the boys had left him and while they were soundly asleep in their near-by hotel, he remained at his desk elaborating his plans and taking further steps towards their early execution. Long cablegrams in cipher accumulated on his desk. These were to the London office and mainly devoted to instructions and injunctions to the men already in the field and at work on the coronation program.
Many of his messages asked questions necessary to an intelligent cooperation between the aviators and the London representatives. Not the least important was the one asking for a description of the best landing place and an account of land marks and signals by which this might be easily discerned. Motor cars were to be in readiness to carry the matrices of the special edition to Fleet street, special police permits were to be secured and arrangements made for the printing and circulation of the transported paper in London.
At ten thirty o’clock the next morning Ned was taking his bath. Remembering their luncheon engagement with the managing editor of theHeraldhe looked over his unpressed clothing with a smile. The oil spot on his coat seemed even bigger than it had the night before. The fact was the boys had come to New York unexpectedly and had meant to return to Newark on the noon train. The new aeroplane having demonstrated the complete success of their latest ideas it had seemed right to report their experience to Major Baldwin Honeywell, the treasurer of the Universal Transportation Company and their closest adviser.
“We’ll have to get a move on us to see Major Honeywell before noon,” exclaimed Alan who soon joined his chum. “What do you suppose he’ll say about it?”
“What do you say yourself?” asked Ned as he manipulated the big bath towel. “It comes to me like a dream.”
“I’m afraid we didn’t give it enough consideration,” answered the other boy. “I’m not so warm in my feet on the subject to-day.”
“That’s all right,” panted Ned. “You’ll work into it. I think we did the right thing. We meant to try to do it anyway. Why not have an object?”
“And $50,000,” added Alan.
“That’ll help some,” replied Ned. “Advertising must really pay,” he continued, “when a newspaper gives up that much money just to make the world talk about it.”
“How can a paper afford it?” mused Alan. “It could transmit by cable all the copy those men can write coming over; and cheaper and quicker too.”
“But the pictures!” suggested Ned. “That’s what it’s really for. That’s the big thing. They’ll stand out like the first telephone or the first electric light. I reckon the stuff theHeraldreporters write on theFlyermay seem fresher and better but you can bet the pictures are what the paper is after. They’ll beat the other papers by six days. You know what that means.”
“What’s what mean?” sang out Russell, flouncing into the room. “Mornin’, gents. Hustle along. I’m starved.”
He was told what Ned had been discussing.
“It means that the publication of those pictures the next morning—pictures made at noon one day in London, printed the next morning in New York—will put a crimp in every other sheet in New York. Those are the things that give a newspaper a place in history. It’s the way one newspaper gets to be known above another,” volunteered Bob.
“How about us gettin’ a little place in history?” asked Ned as he got into his clothes. He held up his rumpled trousers. “We may get a place in history,” he went on laughing, “but it won’t be in the ‘History of Fashions.’ We’re a fine bunch to be dining at the Knickerbocker in these togs.”
“Don’t you bother about your clothes,” broke in Alan. “We’re not parading to-day. All you need worry about is that $50,000 contract.”
“And breakfast,” added Bob. “A little coffee and a cool cantaloupe’ll set you up. By the way,” he added with a new laugh, “you can get a new outfit in London—some o’ those swell Piccadilly rags.”
“I suppose you know how long we are to be in London?” interposed Alan. “An hour or less.”
“That’s all right,” persisted Bob, “buy ’em ready made. If they don’t fit that’ll be one proof we’ve been to England.”
“Well,” exclaimed Ned with another look of disgust at his grease-spotted coat, “I’m ready. Now for some breakfast. Then we’ll hurry over and have a talk with the Major. After that, we’ll meet our new friend at the Knickerbocker. Meanwhile, get your heads working. There are a lot of details to be arranged—if theHeralddon’t change its mind—and we’ve got just six days in which to get things ready.”
Seated in the Breslin Hotel restaurant—the busy Broadway throng passing just outside the window—while melons, cereals and ham and eggs fell before the attacks of the three boys—each individual head began “working.”
“First and most important,” began Alan, “excepting the details of the contract of course, we’ve got to decide how we are to get away with those matrices; that is, how are we to pick ’emup without losing the time to send ’em over to Jersey or out to the suburbs? We certainly can’t make a landing at theHeraldoffice in the city. And if we can’t do that in New York we can’t do it in London. Where do we land in London within a few minutes motor run of Fleet Street?”
“And we’ve got to have a fourth man,” added Bob. “Are we going to select him or will theHeraldwant to send one of their own men?”
“Those things’ll work out,” exclaimed Ned. “But they’ll have tobeworked out and we haven’t any time to waste. I think we ought to invite theHeraldman out to see the machine. He’ll certainly want to meet some of the business men we know.”
“Let’s bring Major Honeywell to luncheon with us. He expects to go over to Newark with us to-day. Then we’ll get a big car and motor out early in the afternoon. With that off our minds we can get down to business,” suggested Alan.
“Say,” exclaimed Bob, “I don’t see any need to bother about picking up that bundle of matrices. That’s easy.” To the looks of inquiry he responded, “You know the postal crane that young Roy Osborne planned for use on oceansteamers? Well, the model is finished. He figures on installing it on liners so that passing ocean aeroplanes can swoop alongside, toss off the latest London or New York papers with the mail bag, and pick up the ship’s mail as the express trains do on land.”
“That’ll be all right when the time comes,” laughed Alan, “but I don’t know any liner that needs to spend money now on such an equipment. It’s a little previous isn’t it?”
“Just in time,” exclaimed Bob. “We need it now. At two o’clock when these sheets are ready, they can be tossed into a fast motor, whirled to the Battery, thrown on theHeraldmotor boat, rushed out into the sound and delivered to our ocean tug in fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe less.”
“And then?” asked Ned.
“And then?” repeated Bob contemptuously. “Why, there is Osborne’s postal crane rigged up on the tug and waitin’ for our ‘pick up arm.’”
“Simplest thing in the world,” Ned chuckled. “Great! Check off that problem.”
“And meanwhile theFlyerloses twenty minutes soaring around over the bay,” suggested Alan. “You ought to allow for that in the contract.”
“Lose nothing,” went on Bob. “We won’t lose a second. We can come from Newark to the Sound in eight or nine minutes. We’ll be all set and ready to start at two o’clock. When the matrix bundle is hustled into the automobile, theHeraldwill notify us—”
“Wireless!” suggested Ned.
“Sure,” exclaimed Bob. “Ten minutes after the auto leavesHerald Square, they’ll give us the signal by wireless. Then we’re off. Eight minutes later, we ought to grab the bag off the tug and drop our ‘good-bye.’”
“How about London?” asked Alan.
“I pass that up,” replied Bob. “What I don’t know about London is a whole lot. That’s up to some wiser head than mine.”
“That suggests something,” said Ned after a period of thinking. “We’ve generally planned to make Roy Osborne our companion and fourth operator.”
“He’s the best young man at the works,” Alan condescended to admit.
“But,” went on Ned shaking his head, “I can now see that our other man ought to be an Englishman or at least some one who knows London inside and out. Remember, we never planned flying into London. Now, we’ve got to do that and go as far as we can toward the center of the city. Maps and charts won’t help much if we are going high or at anything like full speed.”
“We’ve got six days to find an Englishman,” argued Alan.
“And even if we have one who puts us just where we ought to go it’s a cinch we’ll be pinched,” suggested Bob. “I reckon they’d do just that thing here in New York if we tried to use Central Park as an aviation field.”
“That’ll be up to theHerald,” announced Ned, “and we’ll have to talk it over. I have an idea that the newspaper can arrange for some special permit. If it can’t there’ll have to be some figuring.”
“We can’t chance that,” urged Alan. “There’ll be trouble enough without fighting the London police. Two or three hours conversation in some police station would upset everything.”
“Well,” announced Ned as he paid the check—he was usually the banker for the three boys—“we can’t settle anything sitting here. Let’s hurry down to the office.”
Calling a taxicab, the trio hastened down Broadway to Fifth Avenue and south on that street to an old fashioned brick residence yet standing almost within the shadow of the Flatiron building. There was nothing on the windows to indicate the nature of the business of the house.Hurrying inside, the boys paused for a few moments in a large room at the right, the front windows of which looked out on the avenue. They were apparently familiar with the place, the contents of which no longer left a doubt as to the kind of business transacted in the house.
Framed photographs, wash-drawings and scale plans of aeroplanes hung on all walls. On the old-fashioned marble mantle was a confusion of odds and ends: samples of balloon cloth, rubberized silk, gossamerlike aeroplane covering; thin bars and blocks of steel; a bundle of strips of wood that had apparently been scientifically tested. Above these, tacked to the wall, was a small white flag or burgee on which, in faded red, appeared the word “Cibola.” This was the flag carried on the first aerial craft made by Ned and Alan, the dirigible balloon with which the Aztec temple was discovered on the hidden mesa in Navajo land.
On one side of the room two desks, their tops down and locked and covered with dust, bore end plates marked “Mr. Napier” and “Mr. Hope.” On the other side of the room was a flat desk. The top was a special map of the United States, Canada and Mexico covered with a sheet of beveled glass the exact size of the desk. On an adjoiningsmall desk stood a covered typewriter. While Ned and Alan opened their desks, Bob left the room and made a tour of three rooms in the rear. In the two middle rooms a half dozen elderly and sedate men were busy on books. All showed deference to Bob above his years. But, beyond shaking hands as if he had been some days absent, there was little conversation.
In a rear room it was different. A square shouldered man was in charge. Between the windows was a breast-high, glass-encased, recording instrument ticking off the seconds of Washington Naval Observatory time. Over this, the second hand of a large clock jerked forward monotonously. At one side, on a table, reposed several compasses. On two desks were small engineering instruments, books, nautical almanacs and drawing tools.
“Well, Lieutenant,” exclaimed Bob, “how’s the ‘old calculator’?”
“Oh, the major seems to get a new idea each day,” responded the man, shaking hands. “How’s theFlyer?”
The details of the previous night’s test were described.
“I suppose you boys will be back now on commoner things for a while. Pretty lonesome here. I haven’t seen one of you in ten days.”
“You worked out that great circle from St. Johns, Newfoundland, to Cape Clear in Ireland, I suppose?” went on Bob throwing a leg over a desk. When the man nodded, the boy added, “Well, that’s all changed. We’re goin’ to start from Newark and head straight for London. You’ll get a request to route us on that line.”
“It won’t make much difference,” answered the calculator as he opened a portfolio and selected an outline sheet covering the Atlantic ocean. “As I remember it, a great circle course connecting Fastnet Light off Cape Clear and St. John’s harbor, if you continue it west, will pass just south of New York harbor.”
“Then St. Johns wouldn’t be much out of our way?”
“Almost on your path.”
“There’s a new deal on,” explained Bob. “Get busy and project the new course. And you might as well get down to all deviations; we’ll be goin’ in a few days.”
When Bob came back down the hall both Ned and Alan were busy at their desks, in which all sorts of mail had accumulated.
“Hey,” called Ned as Bob passed the door on his way upstairs. “Here’s an idea. There isn’t one of us really fit to go up there and have luncheon with theHeraldman. Let’s ask him down here. This is the place to talk it over; we’ll cut out the eatin’.”
“It may happen to be just our host’s time for eatin’,” laughed Bob.
“I’ll chance it,” answered Ned, “on the theory that newspaper men can always go without food. If I can catch him, I’ll try to call it off and have him come down here.”
A little later all three boys met in a sunny front room on the second floor, the comfortable office of Major Baldwin Honeywell, treasurer of the Universal Company. The white haired, military looking, elder man tried to absorb and digest three lines of talk; the result of the previous evening’s experiment, the prospects of the new airship; matters in abeyance in relation to the Universal Transportation Company; the experience in theHeraldoffice, the unique proposal, its acceptance and the coming contract.
“We were goin’ to carry you up to the Knickerbocker,” explained Ned. “Now our man is comin’ here at one o’clock. It’s up to you, Major, to see that every thing is all right.”
Again Bob was off and up on the third floor. One following him would have known at once that in the back room that overlooked a grass plot in the rear, telegraph instruments were busy. A chief operator and two assistants were recording reports. One of the assistants sat at a wireless desk.
“Get the works at Newark,” exclaimed Bob with a good-natured salutation for all. “I want to hold some conversation with Tom.” A moment later he was busy with the key of the wireless.