CHAPTER XVII.THE LOST TELEGRAMS.
On the morning following the departure of Sam and the boys, Mr. Havens was awakened by laughing voices in the corridor outside his door. His first impression was that Sam and Jimmie had returned from their midnight excursion in theAnn. He arose and, after dressing hastily, opened the door, thinking that the adventures of the night must have been very amusing indeed to leave such a hang-over of merriment for the morning.
When he saw Ben and Glenn standing in the hall he confessed to a feeling of disappointment, but invited the lads inside without showing it.
“You are out early,” he said as the boys, still laughing, dropped into chairs. “What’s the occasion of the comedy?”
“We’ve been out to the field,” replied Ben, “and we’re laughing to think how Carl bested Sam and Jimmie last night.”
“What about it?” asked the millionaire.
“Why,” Ben continued, “it seems that Sam and Jimmie planned a moonlight ride in theAnnall by themselves. Carl got next to their scheme and bounced into the seat with Jimmie just as the machine swung into the air. I’ll bet Jimmie was good and provoked about that!”
“What time did theAnnreturn?” asked Havens.
“Return?” repeated Ben. “She hasn’t returned yet.”
The millionaire turned from the mirror in which he was completing the details of his toilet and faced the boys with a startled look in his eyes. The boys ceased laughing and regarded him curiously.
“Are you sure the boys haven’t returned?” Mr. Havens asked.
“Anyhow,” Glenn replied, “theAnnhasn’t come back!”
“Did they tell you where they were going?” asked Ben.
“They did not,” was the reply. “Sam said that he thought he might be able to pick up valuable information and asked for the use of theAnnand the company of Jimmie. That’s all he said to me concerning the moonlight ride he proposed.”
In bringing his mind back to the conversation with Sam on the previous night, Mr. Havens could not avoid a feeling of anxiety as he considered the significant words of the young man and the information concerning the sealed letter to be openedonly in case of his death. He said nothing of this to the boys, however, but continued the conversation as if no apprehension dwelt in his mind regarding the safety of the lads.
“If they only went out for a short ride by moonlight,” Glenn suggested, in a moment, “they ought to have returned before daylight.”
“You can never tell what scrape that boy Jimmie will get into!” laughed Ben. “He’s the hoodoo of the party and the mascot combined! He gets us into all kinds of scrapes, but he usually makes good by getting us out of the scrapes we get ourselves into.”
“Oh, they’ll be back directly,” the millionaire remarked, although deep down in his consciousness was a growing belief that something serious had happened to the lads.
He, however, did his best to conceal the anxiety he felt from Ben and his companion.
Directly the three went down to breakfast together, and while the meal was in progress a report came from the field where the machines had been left that numerous telegrams addressed to Mr. Havens had been delivered there. The millionaire looked puzzled at the information.
“I left positive orders at the telegraph office,” he said, “to have all my messages delivered here. Did one of the men out there receipt for them? If so, perhaps one of you boys would better chase out and bring them in,” he added turning to his companions at the table.
The messenger replied that the messages had been receipted for, and that he had offered to bring them in, but that the man in charge had refused to turn them over to him. He seemed annoyed at the fact.
“All right,” Mr. Havens replied, “Ben will go out to the field with you and bring the messages in. And,” he added, as the messenger turned away, “kindly notify me the instant theAnnarrives.”
The messenger bowed and started away, accompanied by Ben.
“I don’t understand about the telegrams having been sent to the field,” Mr. Havens went on, as the two left the breakfast table and sauntered into the lobby of the hotel. “I left positive instructions with Mr. Mellen to have all messages delivered here. I also left instructions with the clerk to send any messages to my room, no matter what time they came. The instructions were very explicit.”
“Oh, you know how things get balled up in telegraph offices, and messenger offices, and post-offices!” grinned Glenn. “Probably Mr. Mellen left the office early in the evening, and the man in charge got lazy, or indifferent, or forgetful, and sent the messages to the wrong place.”
While the two talked together, Mr. Mellen strolled into the hotel and approached the corner of the lobby where they sat.
“Good-morning!” he said taking a chair at their side. “Anything new concerning the southern trip?”
“Not a thing!” replied Mr. Havens. “Sam went out in theAnn, for a short run last night, and we’re only waiting for his return in order to continue our journey. We expect to be away by noon.”
“I hope I shall hear from you often,” the manager said.
“By the way,” the millionaire remarked, “what about the telegrams which were sent out to the field last night?”
“No telegrams for you were sent out to the field last night!” was the reply. “The telegrams directed to you are now at the hotel desk, unless you have called for them.”
“But a messenger from the field reports that several telegrams for me were received there. I don’t understand this at all.”
“They certainly did not come from our office!” was the reply.
The millionaire arose hastily and approached the desk just as the clerk was drawing a number of telegrams from his letter-box.
“I left orders to have these taken to your room as soon as they arrived,” the clerk explained, “but it seems that the night man chucked them into your letter-box and forgot all about them.”
Mr. Havens took the telegrams into his hand and returned to the corner of the lobby where he had been seated with Mellen and Glenn.
“There seems to be a hoodoo in the air concerning my telegrams,” he said with a smile, as he began opening the envelopes. “The messages which came last night were not delivered to my room, but were left lying in my letter-box until just now. In future, please instruct your messengers,” he said to the manager, “to bring my telegrams directly to my room—that is,” he added, “if I remain in town and any more telegrams are received for me.”
“I’ll see that you get them directly they are received,” replied the manager, impatiently. “If the hotel clerk objects to the boy going to your room in the night-time, I’ll tell him to draw a gun on him!” he added with a laugh. “Are the delayed telegrams important ones?”
“They are in code!” replied the millionaire. “I’m afraid I’ll have to go to my room and get the code sheet.”
Mr. Havens disappeared up the elevator, and Mellen and Glenn talked of aviation, and canoeing, and base-ball, and the dozen and one things in which men and boys are interested, for half an hour. Then the millionaire appeared in the lobby beckoning them toward the elevator.
Mr. Mellen observed that the millionaire was greatly excited as he motioned them into his suite of rooms and pointed to chairs. The telegramswhich he had received were lying open on a table near the window and the code sheet and code translations were not far away.
Before the millionaire could open the conversation Ben came bounding into the room without knocking. His face was flushed with running, and his breath came in short gasps. As he turned to close the door he shook a clenched fist threateningly in the direction of the elevator.
“That fool operator,” he declared, “left me standing in the corridor below while he took one of the maids up to the ’steenth floor, and I ran all the way up the stairs! I’ll get him good sometime!”
“Did you bring the telegrams?” asked the millionaire with a smile.
“Say, look here!” Ben exclaimed dropping into a chair beside the table. “I’d like to know what’s coming off!”
Mr. Havens and his companions regarded the boy critically for a moment and then the millionaire asked:
“What’s broke loose now?”
“Well,” Ben went on, “I went out to the field and the man there said he’d get the telegrams in a minute. I stood around looking over theLouiseandBertha, and asking questions about what Sam said when he went away on theAnn, until I got tired of waiting, then I chased up to where this fellow stood and he said he’d go right off and get the messages.”
“Why didn’t you hand him one?” laughed Glenn.
“I wanted to,” Ben answered. “If I’d had him down in the old seventeenth ward in the little old city of New York, I’d have set the bunch on him. Well, after a while, he poked away to the little shelter-tent the men put up to sleep in last night and rustled around among the straw and blankets and came back and said he couldn’t find the messages.”
The millionaire and the manager exchanged significant glances.
“He told me,” Ben went on, “that the telegrams had been receipted for and hidden under a blanket, to be delivered early in the morning. Said he guessed some one must have stolen them, or mislaid them, but didn’t seem to think the matter very important.”
The millionaire pointed to the open messages lying on the table.
“How many telegrams came for me last night?” he asked.
“Eight,” was the reply.
“And there are eight here,” the millionaire went on.
“And that means——”
“And that means,” the millionaire said, interrupting the manager, “that the telegrams delivered on the field last night were either duplicates of these cipher despatches or fake messages!”
“That’s just what I was going to remark,” said Mellen.
“Has theAnnreturned?” asked Glenn of Ben.
“Not yet,” was the reply.
“Suppose we take one of the other machines and go up and look for her?”
“We’ll discuss that later on, boys,” the millionaire interrupted.
“I would give a considerable to know,” the manager observed, in a moment, “just who handled the messages which were left at the hotel counter last night. And I’m going to do my best to find out!” he added.
“That ought to be a perfectly simple matter,” suggested Mr. Havens.
“In New York, yes! In Quito, no!” answered the manager. “A good many of the natives who are in clerical positions here are crooked enough to live in a corkscrew. They’ll do almost anything for money.”
“That’s the idea I had already formed of the people,” Ben cut in.
“Besides,” the manager continued, “the chances are that the night clerk tumbled down on a sofa somewhere in the lobby and slept most of the night, leaving bell-boys and subordinates to run the hotel.”
“In that event,” Mr. Havens said, “the telegrams might have been handled by half a dozen different people.”
“I’m afraid so!” replied the manager.
“But the code!” suggested Ben. “They couldn’t read them!”
“But they might copy them for some one who could!” argued the manager. “And the copies might have been sent out to the field for the express purpose of having them stolen,” he went on with an anxious look on his face. “Are they very important?” he asked of the millionaire.
“Very much so,” was the answer. “In fact, they are code copies of private papers taken from deposit box A, showing the plans made in New York for the South American aeroplane journey.”
“And showing stops and places to look through and all that?” asked Ben. “If that’s the kind of information the telegrams contained, I guess the Redfern bunch in this vicinity are pretty well posted about this time!”
“I’m afraid so,” the millionaire replied gloomily. “Well,” he continued in a moment, “we may as well get ready for our journey. I remember now,” he said casually, “that Sam said last night that we ought to proceed on our way without reference to him this morning. His idea then was that we would come up with him somewhere between Quito and Lake Titicaca. So we may as well be moving, and leave the investigation of the fraudulent or copied telegrams to Mr. Mellen.”
“Funny thing for them to go chasing off in that way!” declared Ben.
But no one guessed the future as the aeroplanes started southward!