Ned’s dismay may be imagined. He was taken straight to the magistrate’s courtroom where the charge against him was heard. In the meantime, Captain Sprowl had engaged a lawyer for him, and the courtroom was thronged when Ned’s case was called. His lawyer cautioned Ned to let him do all the talking and the boy, feeling very nervous and ill at ease before the battery of eyes aimed in his direction, sat silent while the attorney explained to the court the circumstances of the case.
The magistrate heard him out and agreed with him that it seemed a hardship that the boy should be held for disobeying an injunction in order to save lives, but he declared that he had no powers in the matter, as the injunction had been issuedby the higher court. It would be for that court to decide in the matter, and that therefore he had no choice but to hold Ned in bonds of $2,000 for contempt of court. Poor Ned turned pale when he heard this, but the lawyer hastily assured him that it meant nothing, and was merely a formality.
“I’ve got the money right here!” bellowed Captain Sprowl from the rear of the courtroom, flourishing a bundle of bills like a madman.
“Order in the court!” shouted the bailiffs frantically, for the captain’s actions had caused a storm of applause.
The next day Ned’s case came up before the court which had issued the injunction. Hank and Miles Sharkey, with greedy, triumphant faces, sat in front seats to witness the lad’s discomfiture. Ned, seeing their eyes fixed on him, held himself together bravely. In his eyes there was an almost excited light. However, he appeared to be awaiting some sort of a climax.
As for the other boys, they were openly shaking hands in the back of the courtroom and slapping each other on the back. Captain Sprowl bore a wide grin and Ned’s lawyer looked well pleased.
Hank and Miles noted these signs of satisfaction, and they began to grow uneasy. This uneasiness increased to positive alarm when Ned’s lawyer, instead of opening the proceeding in the usual way, asked to see a copy of the will, on the strength of which the injunction had been granted.
“Um-er-er, this is an unusual proceeding, may it please your honor,” stammered Miles, who, not anticipating anything but plain sailing, had decided to save a lawyer’s fee and act as his own attorney.
But the court overruled him and Miles was compelled to produce what purported to be the last will and testament of Jeptha Nevins, deceased, in which he left,“all papers, plans, prints and designs of my inventions whatsoever to my beloved son, Henry Nevins.”
“If your honor pleases, may I examine that will?” asked Ned’s lawyer.
The court bowed its assent. Miles, with trembling hands, passed the paper over to the attorney. Hank rose to his feet and tried to tip-toe out, but he was stopped by a bailiff who told him that he had orders not to let witnesses in the case out of the courtroom. Miserable and dejected, Hank slipped back into his seat. His face was pasty white and his knees shook. But he did not look a whit more wretched and abject than Miles Sharkey, who nervously fingered his face and drummed on the table alternately, while Ned’s lawyer scanned the will Miles had handed him.
The lawyer finally ceased his examination of the paper, and then clearing his throat solemnly, he said:
“Acting for the defendant in this case I pronounce this will a forgery.” There was a buzzof excitement through the courtroom. Miles tried to speak, but words would not come from his dry lips. Hank looked ghastly and sank back in his seat in a wilted, crumpled heap.
“And furthermore,” relentlessly proceeded the attorney, “we have a genuine will antedating this spurious one. If your honor will give me permission I will produce it.”
Forthwith he placed in evidence the will of Jeptha Nevins by which he left specifically to Ned the plans of the Electric Monarch and the proceeds of his other inventions. (The will had been contained in the envelope which Henry Tyler had handed to Ned on board the Electric Monarch the day before.)
“We can prove that this is the genuine signature of Jeptha Nevins and that the other is a base forgery,” continued the attorney,“and I would ask your honor to make out a commitment for Miles Sharkey on the charge of forgery in the first degree and to hold Henry Nevins on a charge of aiding and abetting the same.”
“I didn’t aid nor abet nothin’,” shrieked out Hank despairingly, “it was Miles done it all, your honor.”
“Shut up, you fool,” hissed Miles, but it was too late. Hank had let the cat out of the bag with a vengeance. The commitments were made out and in due course of time both Miles and Hank paid the penalty of their rascality in the form of prison sentences. Hank, however, received a light punishment, as it was clear that Miles Sharkey, who had hoped to reap big profits from the Mellville concern, had been the ring leader in the plot.
We have no space here to relate how the Electric Monarch acquitted herself at the big aëro carnival. But suffice it to say that she won every event for which she was entered, and at the conclusion of the meet Ned was approached by the representative of an aëro-craft manufacturingconcern with an offer to build ships of the Electric Monarch type, paying him a handsome bonus and a royalty.
On their return to High Towers, the boys found Prof. Chadwick very much better, almost in his usual health, in fact, although Dr. Goodenough laughingly said that he was “booked for a long vacation.”
One day, not long after their return to their home, which, by the way, was now also Ned Nevins’, the gentleman who had tried to make negotiations with Ned at the carnival paid a visit to High Towers to try to close a deal with the young inventor.
Professor Chadwick and Dr. Goodenough were called into consultation, and after a long conference, it was decided that it would be to Ned’s advantage to accept the firm’s offer, more especially as he would, under their terms, retain an interest in the Electric Monarch type of hydroaeroplane.
When these arrangements had been concluded, Professor Chadwick reached into a drawer of his desk, at which he was seated, in order to produce blotting paper to sign the contracts. But as he opened the drawer he suddenly paused, turned deathly pale, and pressed his hand to his forehead.
“What is the matter, are you ill?” cried the doctor in a concerned voice.
The boys, full of anxiety and alarm, repeated the question. But Professor Chadwick waved them aside.
“No, not ill,” he exclaimed in a strange voice. “Wait—wait! It is coming back to me now!”
He pressed a spring in his desk, and a secret drawer flew open. As it did so, they all uttered a shout of astonishment.
It contained the long-missing plans!
The mystery was soon explained. The Professor’s memory had come back to him with a rush when he opened the drawer for the blottingpaper. On the day of the trial trip of the Electric Monarch, it will be recalled, he had been left behind. After the boys’ departure, (as it came back to him, he had begun to feel uneasy about the plans, secure though they seemed to be in the safe.)
He decided to find a better hiding place than the safe even, for them, and with that object in view arose from the lounge and opened the receptacle. Taking out the papers, he placed them in the secret drawer of the desk. Hardly had he done so, however, when an attack of vertigo seized him and he fell unconscious. Now that his memory had come back suddenly, as he seated himself once more at the desk, all became clear.
And so the mystery of the vanished plans was cleared up with satisfaction to all of them. After all, they had wrongfully suspected Hank and his allies, and they were glad to learn that their suspicions had been unfounded.
There is little more to tell. Heiny Dill finallyevolved a burglar trap out of his invention, but he makes more money working for the Boy Inventors at High Towers than he does out of his numerous eccentric contrivances. Sam Hinkley returned to Nestorville not long after his invasion of New York, and after he had begged for forgiveness, his father finally gave him the post of night clerk in the hotel, which he fills admirably. Of the fate of Hank and Miles we are already informed.
And so, with Ned Nevins prosperous and happy, and the Boy Inventors broadened and improved by their experiences with the Electric Monarch, we will, for the present, leave them with the best of wishes for their future undertakings. Knowing them to be always on the alert for the latest developments in scientific progress, we are not greatly surprised to learn that their next experimental experiences will be described in a volume entitled, “The Boy Inventors’ Radio Telephone.”