Johnny started. At first he thought it was the Professor who had garbed himself in the clothing left in the cabin while his own clothing dried. But instantly he knew he was wrong; this man’s face was too brown and too much seamed to be that of the Professor.
Like a flash, the truth dawned upon him: This was the Professor’s brother. He had not been drowned at the time of the wreck of the Chinese ship, but had, somehow, saved himself after the others had been picked up by the passing steamer. It had been he who had built the cabin by the cliff. That explained the presence of the razor in the cabin. It explained, too, the mystery of the missing chests; he had brought them ashore and had hidden them somewhere on the island.
He had been hiding out, but, on seeing the ship wrecked the previous night, had doubtless decided to cast his lot with these marooned men.
He did not have long to wait for the proof that at least some of these conclusions were correct, for almost instantly the Professor, turning, saw the stranger. For a second his face went white and he seemed about to fall. He recovered himself and sprang forward, and the two men embraced one another, like two children who had been a long time separated.
But now Johnny’s attention was attracted by a suppressed laugh from the men about him, who had been watching the new pilot in his attempt to start the “Dust Eater.” As he looked, he saw that the man’s face was as black as it might have been had he smeared it with burnt cork.
What had happened was that having attempted to start the engine, and having failed, he had climbed back to the fuel tank and there had unscrewed the top, thinking to see if there was gasoline in it. In attempting to look inside, he had put his face too close to the opening, had blown into it, and the feathery coal dust with which the boys had filled the tank had risen up in a cloud to besmirch his damp visage.
The purser was in a fine rage. He ordered the sailor who had rowed him out to the “Dust Eater” in the canvas boat to take him ashore. Once his feet touched the beach, he came racing toward Johnny and Pant.
“Leave this to me,” said Pant. “You and the Professor quietly drop out of the bunch, and then make your way to the north end of the island as quickly as possible.”
He had hardly said this than the purser was upon him:
“Smart trick!” he snarled. “Thought you’d balk us. Took out the gasoline and filled the tank with coal dust!” He seemed about to strike Pant.
With a tiger-like spring, Pant leaped back.
“Better not.” His voice was low, like the warning hiss of a panther.
The purser hesitated.
“Let me tell you something,” Pant said evenly. “There isn’t a drop of gasoline on this island as far as I know; not a drop in that plane, either, but all the same, she’ll fly for a man who understands her.
“Now, I’ll tell you what,” he went on. “You come over to the plane with me. Look her all over. See if there is any gasoline on her. Then you let me try to get her going. See if I can’t do it.”
“All right.” The other man’s smile showed his incredulity.
Together in the canvas boat they went out to the plane. Carefully the purser looked the plane over, then expressing himself satisfied that there was no gasoline on board, he seated himself carelessly astride the fuselage, and with a mock-smile, said:
“All right. Let’s see you start her.”
Pant dropped silently into his seat. This was his chance. If he could make a clean get-away all would be well. Johnny and the Professor would be waiting at the north end of the island. He would pick them up and they would fly away. They would report the wreck of the steamer at the nearest port and leave the rest to the American consul.
Catching a quick breath, he touched a button, then pulled a lever. At once the engine thundered. They were moving.
“Now a little quick work,” he whispered to himself.
He whirled about, and with one swing of his powerful arm pitched the astonished purser from the fuselage into the sea. The next instant the plane rose gracefully from the water. He was away.
The purser came up sputtering, to swim for the shore. The captain roared at Pant, commanding him in the name of all things he knew to stop. Bullets from a seaman’s rifle sang over his head, but all these arguments were lost on him. He was on his way.
Taking a wide circle, that he might give his companions time to arrive at the meeting-place, he at last swung back to the end of the island.
To his surprise, as he eased the plane down into the water, he saw, not two men, but four, awaiting him. Besides his two companions, there was the Professor’s brother and the little shanghaied English sailor.
There was no time for demanding and receiving explanations; not even when he saw four large chests piled on the rocky shore did Pant ask a question. The canvas boat had been fastened to the “Dust Eater”; it was still there. Righting this, he pulled for the shore. The chests were quickly tied together, and the men loaded into the boat. Then, with the line of chests following in their wake, they pulled back to the plane.
The lashing of the chests, two back and two before the cabin, consumed time. When this was done, Pant tumbled into his seat, the other four piled, pell-mell, into the cabin; the motors thundered and they were away.
They were not a moment too soon, for the captain, suspecting the move, had ordered his men to race to the end of the island. Just as the “Dust Eater” rose, graceful as a swan, out of the water, the first man appeared at the top of the cliff.
“Close one!” grumbled Pant through the tube.
“Safe enough now, though,” sighed Johnny.
Their journey to a port on the largest island of the scattered group was made in safety. The wreck was reported; then the “Dust Eater” was loaded aboard a steamer bound for San Francisco. They were to have a safer if not a more eventful journey home.
It was only after the four chests had been safely stowed away in a large stateroom aboard the steamer that Johnny and Pant were let into the secret of their contents. Then, with his brother by his side, the medical missionary unlocked one of the chests and lifted the lid.
The two boys leaned forward eagerly.
What they saw first was nothing more than sawdust. The missionary put his hand into this sawdust, and drew out a half-gallon can. This can had a small screw top. This he took off, and, having poured a little of the contents into the palm of his hand, held it out for the boys’ inspection.
“Oh!” exclaimed Johnny in surprise. “Do you mean to tell us that we have gone through all this to save four chests of oil?”
“But wait,” said the Professor quickly. “This is no ordinary oil. It is Russian napthalan. It is worth at the present moment, a dollar and a half an ounce. There are sixty-four ounces in that can, seventy-five cans to the chest, and four chests. Figure for yourself its value. But money,” he went on in a very serious tone, “is not the principal reward. It never is. There are in America today tens of thousands of children suffering from a terrible skin disease. They have no relief. A salve, of which this oil is the base, will at once relieve their condition, and in time will cure them. To save these children, is this not a cause for which one might gladly risk his life many times?”
“It is,” said Johnny with conviction. “I am glad we came.” In this expression he was quickly seconded by Pant.
Later that evening, after the moon had spread a long yellow streamer across the waters, Johnny and Pant sat in steamer chairs side by side silently gazing across the sea. Each was busy with his own thoughts. Johnny was going over the events of the past few months. In these months many mysteries had leaped out of the unknown to stare him in the face and challenge his wits to find their answers. Some had been solved; others remained yet to be solved. There was the white fire of the factory which had worked such wonders with steel and, closely associated with that, were the fires that had started, apparently without cause, on the red racer in the desert and the savages’ canoe. These remained mysteries, as did the problem of the composition of the new steel. He wondered still if the vial he had put away on the upper shelf of the laboratory in the factory could possibly add some light to this problem.
Of two things he was certain: The dust-burning motor was a complete success and the blue steel was the most marvelous steel ever invented. He hoped that Pant and he would not now be long in revealing these facts to those most interested. They would delight the heart of their employer and would bring great joy to the aged inventor of the motor.
First, though, they must return from the coast to the factory with their machine. He hoped that, by this time, they had succeeded in shaking the contortionist off their trail.
“But you never can tell,” he whispered to himself.
As if his mind had been working on these very problems, Pant said suddenly:
“We’ll take the boat rigging off the ‘Dust Eater’ when we reach the Golden Gate and rig her up with landing wheels. Then we’ll fly home. What do you say?”
“Looks like the best plan,” said Johnny. “That’ll give the motors one more try-out and us another thrill.”
Had he known the kind of thrill it was going to be, he would doubtless have favored shipping the plane by freight.
Johnny Thompson was happy; he thought he had never been so happy in his life. They were on their last lap home. The flight over the Rockies and across the Great American Desert, then over the vast prairies, had been accomplished with ease and pleasure. In a few hours they would be dropping down to the landing field at the factory.
“I only hope the inventor has come to himself enough to tell them the secret formula,” he mumbled to himself. He was thinking of the new process steel and again, for the hundredth time, the vial in the laboratory flashed through his mind.
“Guess I should have told them,” he mused. “Might be something in it. Might be—”
Pant’s signal at the speaking tube broke in on his reflections.
“Plane to our larboard aft,” he called. “Big blue one with wide planes. Looks like a racer.”
Johnny started. What plane could this be? They were not in a region frequented by airplanes, nor in the path of an air mail line. But then, he reassured himself, planes were common enough the country over.
He could not, however, shake off at once the sense of fear that gripped him. He had not forgotten their mad race across the desert, nor his narrow escape on the mountain lake. A race in an airplane might not end happily, especially with him at the wheel.
His mind became at ease presently, and he again took up the thread of thought that had been broken off. Should this day’s work be completed in safety, their days of thrills and dangers would, for a time at least, be over.
“Seem to be following us,” broke in Pant again. “Man, but they’ve got some speed! Let her out a notch or two.”
The plane seemed fairly to leap from beneath them as Johnny, obeying instructions, “let her out.” She was a good, substantial plane, of the type that is destined to become the express-carrier of tomorrow, but she was not of the fastest model.
Johnny risked a glance back. Pant seemed to be fumbling at something near his belt beneath his heavy leather coat.
“If he were only up here at the wheel!” Johnny groaned.
“Drop down a few hundred feet,” suggested Pant. “If it’s necessary, we might make a landing.” Johnny tilted her nose groundward.
As they came closer to earth, they realized at once that a landing was impossible; they were passing over range after range of low, rolling hills. There were no valleys to the crooked streams that flowed between the hills.
“Shoot her up again; better traveling,” suggested Pant.
It seemed to Johnny that he could catch the thundering throb of the other plane’s engine. But this was only imagination. Truth was, however, that the other plane was gaining on them. Yard by yard they came closer. As the miles sped from beneath them, the distance diminished. Now they were a mile away; now three-quarters. And now they plunged into a great mass of white mist, which was a cloud, and were for a time lost to view.
As they came again into clear sky, Johnny gasped. The other plane appeared to have doubled her speed. It could be only a matter of moments now. What mad thing did those fellows mean to attempt? Did they hope to force them to the ground? Would they ram them? To do so seemed certain death to all.
“They’ve got parachutes!” shouted Pant through the tube.
Parachutes? Johnny’s mind was in a panic. Perhaps they meant to take to their parachutes after ramming the “Dust Eater.”
“Johnny!” Pant’s voice was even and composed, “just slow her up a bit and hold her in a steady, straight line.”
“Slow up!” Was Pant mad? The other plane must be all but upon them! Without question he obeyed. Straight as a chalk line they shot on through the blue.
One minute, two, three, four, five. As Johnny counted them on the dial of the clock in front of him, he expected at any one of them to feel a sudden shock.
But the shock did not come.
“As you are,” he heard Pant breathe at last. “No, I think you might circle a bit. Looks like we’re over a meadow. Not a bad landing-place. They’ve taken to their parachutes. Their plane’s on fire, but she’ll carry on a mile or two before she drops.”
“Their plane’s on fire!” Pant had said it in such a composed tone of voice that one might think it quite the thing to expect at this juncture.
Glancing back, Johnny saw him struggling to replace something beneath his leather coat. It looked like a long black leather case.
With trembling hands he set the plane to circle downward, to follow the burning plane, which was now careening wildly. Some two miles back the two parachutes of the others, white specks against the blue, were nearing the ground.
“We’ll just have a look at their plane and be away again before they arrive,” suggested Pant. “Their fuselage is of sheet-steel. It won’t burn. There may be something of interest in the seat or somewhere.”
Johnny did not fully approve of this maneuver. Yet, since Pant was in charge of this expedition, he proceeded to put the suggestion into execution.
* * * * * * * *
“Here’s what I found in that plane.” Pant drew some jagged bits of rusty metal from a canvas bag. It was four hours after the burning of the blue racer. The two boys had made a landing near the wreck, and Pant had hurried over there, to return with two objects which he found in the seat: a canvas sack and a pair of gloves.
They were now safe on the landing-field of the factory. They were “home.” Their journey and its dangers at an end, they were resting on the grass for a few moments before going to report to their employer.
“This is all there is left of the bar of new process steel they made away with. They tried to work it by heating it in the usual way, and failed. They found out some way that we were trying out some parts made of the steel, and were all for running us down and taking it away from us.”
Johnny examined the bits of metal carefully. “I believe you’re right,” he answered.
“And these gloves,” said Pant, holding the pair up for inspection, “establish the identity of the driver of the blue racer. No one but your friend, the contortionist, the frog-man, could wear such long-fingered affairs as these. I suppose,” he said thoughtfully, “that we could have the sheriff out in that country hunt those fellows up.”
“What kind of a case would we have on them, though?” smiled Johnny. “The sky’s all free property up to date, isn’t it? You can’t have a fellow arrested for following you, can you?”
“I suppose not,” Pant reluctantly admitted. “Well, anyway, we got their machine.”
“Pant,” said Johnny suddenly, “you set that airplane on fire.”
“What?” Pant started and stared. “Well,” he said after a few seconds, “what if I did? Didn’t do it until they had shown they were planning to run us down, and then, not until I knew they had parachutes. That was all right, wasn’t it?”
“Sure it was all right,” smiled Johnny. “It was more than all right—it was good.”
For a time the two were silent.
“You set their auto on fire back in the desert, too,” Johnny resumed.
“Sure I did.”
“How’d you do it?”
The masked look that appeared to hide Pant’s face faded. “I’ll show you, Johnny. Just because you’re such a good pal I’ll show you.”
Detaching from his belt the black leather case, which Johnny had seen twice before, he walked to the plane and, after attaching two wires, started the motor.
“Watch the grass over there a hundred feet.”
Suddenly the ground began to smoke, and a patch of grass turned to brown, then black.
“Fairly rips up the ground, she does,” Pant said with a proud grin. “There’s a piece of gas pipe somebody’s left sticking up in the ground over there about three hundred feet. Watch that!”
Johnny watched with popping eyes while a foot of the pipe turned first red, then intensely white, then toppled over like a weed in a forest fire.
“Pant,” he said breathlessly, “what is it?”
“I don’t quite know myself,” Pant smiled, as he shut off the motor. “There’s been a lot of things like it. X-ray, violet-ray, radium and the like, you know. But this is something I got up myself—sort of a cross between fire and lightning, near’s I can find out. I’m having it patented, though for the life of me I don’t know what you’d use it for. You can’t go around the world setting autos and planes on fire when they come up behind you.”
“And that,” said Johnny, “is the white fire?”
“Exactly! I got a lot of fun out of that business in the factory. Fooled you, didn’t I?”
“Yes, and helped us a lot. That’s why you didn’t stay about when the manager was with us?”
“Sure it was. I had to go back and get the show going.” Pant threw back his head and laughed.
“Well,” said Johnny, rising and stretching, “guess we’d better go in and make our report.”
“Leave that to you,” said Pant. “I’ll run over and see if my patent papers are at the postoffice.”
“And there,” said Mr. McFarland, a half-hour later, as Johnny sat by the desk in his private office, “are a couple of papers you might be interested in.”
The instant he had them in his hand Johnny recognized his father’s signature.
“Notes,” he murmured. “Why, they’re marked ‘Paid in full.’ I—I don’t understand.”
“You will remember,” said the manager, struggling against a huskiness in his voice, “that your banker told you he held notes against your father. He never told you who the real owner was. He was acting according to orders in doing this. I was the real owner, and now—since you have rendered a service to our company which more than balances the account—I am giving them to you marked ‘Paid in full.’”
Johnny’s mind whirled. His good fortune seemed too good to be believed. His debt of honor was canceled. He might face the world with a clean start.
“I—I,” he stammered, “I can’t thank you.”
“There is no occasion,” said the magnate. “It is a plain business proposition—value for value received.
“You may be pleased to know,” he hurried on, glad to change the subject, “that we found a glass bottle left in the laboratory by the inventor, that tells us what the new element in the steel is. We have also discovered a method of heat treatment which enables us to work the metal. We are now in a position to manufacture engines and utilize this new steel. It will be worth millions, and the inventor, who is slowly recovering, will receive his share.”
Johnny was experiencing strange sensations. “Where,” he managed to ask, “did you find the bottle which gave you the secret of the formula?”
“Upper shelf; right-hand corner; central laboratory. Why do you ask?”
“For no reason,” said Johnny, a queer smile playing about his lips, “except that I guess I was the fellow who put that bottle there.”
He then explained how he had made the test at night, to help keep himself awake, and how he had not dared to reveal the results for fear of being censured.
They had a good laugh over it, and at the end Mr. McFarland said:
“Just for that you may have the chummy roadster which you and Pant drove so far. And, by the way, send Pant to me. He must have some reward. How do you think he’d like the plane you drove?”
“Guess he’d like that O. K.,” smiled Johnny. “Thanks for the car. If you’ll allow me, I should like to use it driving back and forth from your factory to the School of Engineering. I’d like to spend a half day in each place. There are a lot of things I need to know.”
“A splendid idea!” said Mr. McFarland. And at that Johnny bowed himself out.
A half hour later he and Pant sat drinking coffee and munching doughnuts in the small kitchen of the aged inventor of the dust-burning motor. They were telling their story to the delighted old couple. And that story, better than mere assurance, informed them that the invention was a huge success and that they were rich. No other pleasure could have so fittingly crowned this series of adventures than did this simple story-telling to two old people who appreciated it all as no others could.
Johnny stuck to his purpose of attending the engineering school. He learned there many of the secrets of science and industry. The time soon came, too, when he might put his knowledge to work. For, one day, he received a wire from Pant, who was again on the Pacific coast with the “Dust Eater.”
“Come at once,” the telegram ran. “Need you. Big new sea mystery. Will explain on arrival.”
What that mystery was and how they solved it must be told in our next volume of mystery and adventure, “The Black Schooner.”