CHAPTER V
A CHANGE OF SCENE
“What we ought to do now,” Doctor Bolt declared, as the night matron, indignant chin in air, turned toward the door of the private room, “is to notify the officers of Westchester county.”
“I don’t see the necessity for that,” Havens replied. “One may as well look for a pearl in a train-load of oysters as to look for that fellow in Westchester county to-night. Depend upon it, the men who sought employment at the hospital a few days ago were sent here because the hospital happened to be near my home.”
The night matron shrugged her shoulders and passed a scornful glance at the surgeon. The surgeon turned angrily away.
“That relieves me of a great responsibility,” she said. “Ordinarily one becomes responsible for the actions of employes, but when men are sent into your service by a criminal gang for a criminal purpose, responsibility ought to end there.”
“I don’t agree with your reasoning at all!” declared the surgeon. “One should know better than to employ strangers in positions of trust.”
“And when,” continued the night matron, glaring at the surgeon, “a country doctor takes it upon himself to override the rules of a hospital and keeps watch beside a patient to the exclusion of the regular attendants, one certainly should not be held accountable for the safety of that patient. And that’s all I have to say,” she added.
“Settle the responsibility as you will,” Havens broke in. “I have nothing to do with that. What I want now is a promise from each of you that nothing whatever shall be said regarding the matter until private detectives shall have an opportunity to recapture the escaped prisoner.”
“But why the secrecy?” asked the night matron.
“It is my duty as a surgeon to report the entire matter to the police,” shouted Bolt. “I shall do so at once.”
Havens argued with the two for a long time, and finally secured a promise that nothing would be said either of the capture or the escape for three days. The millionaire’s idea was to get the prisoner into his own hands if possible. He knew that the fellow would have a hundred chances of escaping without ever revealing the story of the crime he had committed that night with the police, where he would have not one if guarded by private detectives.
He was well satisfied from the incidents of the night that some person high up in the councils of the police department had leaked in the matter of the employment of the boys on the murder case. He believed, too, that the same influence which had been able to secure the carefully guarded information would be powerful enough to protect the escaped prisoner in case he should regain consciousness and, on promise of immunity, threaten to disclose the names of his accomplices in the incendiary act.
After exacting the promise from the surgeon and the night matron, Havens ordered every workman about the place to remain on guard until morning and, calling his chauffeur, departed for New York in a high-powered touring car. Worn out with the anxiety and exertions of the night, he fell asleep on the soft cushions of the machine, and awoke only when the chauffeur shook him gently by the shoulder and announced that they were at the Grand Central station.
“And I’d like to ask you a question, sir,” the chauffeur said, as Havens stepped out of the car. “It’s about what took place on the way down.”
“What took place on the way down!” laughed the young millionaire. “It has all been a blank to me. I must have slept very soundly.”
“Indeed you did, sir,” replied the chauffeur, “and that’s why I didn’t wake you. You seemed to need the sleep very much, sir.”
“Well, tell me what happened?” Havens said impatiently.
“Why, sir,” the chauffeur went on, “a big car picked us up half a mile this side of the hangar and followed on down to within three blocks of this place. When I drove fast, they drove fast; when I slowed up, they slowed up, too. Very strange, sir.”
“Why didn’t you investigate?” asked Havens angrily.
“You see that marble column at the corner of the building,” declared the chauffeur, pointing. “Well, I stopped once to ask questions of the chauffeur in the other car, and that marble column I’m pointing out, sir, would be just as communicative as that other chauffeur was. He only grunted when I asked questions and kept right on as before.”
Havens thanked the man for the information and went on about the business which had brought him to the city. He was busy all day with lawyers and brokers and real estate managers, and was very tired and sleepy when night fell. It had been his intention to take an afternoon train for St. Louis, but his business had not permitted of so sudden a departure from the city.
He regretted extremely that he had not arranged with the boys to wire their address in the Missouri city. However, he thought, the boys would wait at least twenty-four hours at the point selected, and this delay would enable him to overtake them by train at Denver. He was positive that he could do so if he could catch the Overland Limited at Chicago.
Eight o’clock found him sound asleep in the stateroom of a Pullman car due to start for the west in an hour. He was so tired that the noises of the station; the arrival and departure of trains; the calls of the train starters; the rattling of the couplings under vestibules, soon died away into a dull blur, and then he passed into a dreamless sleep.
His last memory was of a powerful light shining through a slender crack in the drawn blind of a stateroom window. When he awoke again the slender finger of light had become a deep red glow the size of a pail, and the perfumed air of the stateroom had, somehow, taken on the close and unsavory smell of a riverside basement.
Havens made an effort to lift his hands to his head, but found that he was unable to do so. The great red light was staring viciously into his smarting eyes so he closed them, turned his head aside, and lay for a moment in silent thought.
He had no idea as to where he was, or how, or how long ago he had been transported to that villainous place. He knew that violence had been used, for there was a trickle of moisture on his forehead which could not be the result of heat or exertion. There was a smart there, too, and so the moisture must be blood.
The air was thick and damp, bearing the odor of long confinement in filthy quarters. Opening his eyes, directly, he saw that the walls were dark, but not with paint or paper. They were stained with the mold and unsavory accumulations of many years.
The light which shone in his face came from an electric contrivance which seemed at that moment to be a long distance off. Finally, after much study and many smarting examinations, he saw that it was a light nodding and swaying on a mast, and that it shone through the dirty panes of a window before entering the gloom where he lay.
It was plain to the millionaire, then, that, in some mysterious manner, he had been taken from the stateroom and conveyed to one of the disreputable resorts on the river front. He had no idea as to whether he was looking out on the East river or the North river. All he knew was that his hands and feet were tied; that his head ached furiously, and that his lips and tongue were parched with thirst. In a moment he heard a door open and then an old woman, toothless and shrunken of shoulders, stood before him, bearing in her hand a smoking kerosene lamp.
“Well, dearie,” she said with a wicked leer in her watery old eyes.
Havens indicated by motions of his lips and tongue that he needed a drink of water. The old woman had undoubtedly been prepared for this, for she drew a flask of spirits from a capacious pocket in her clothing and held it exultantly before the eyes of the captive.
Havens shook his head.
“It will give you strength,” pleaded the hag. “Strength for what you’ve got to endure. Better take a drop or two!”
In a moment the young millionaire managed to say that he wanted water, and the old hag, with the air of one who considered that a weak-minded man was turning away a blessed boon, restored the bottle to her pocket and brought water in as filthy a tin cup as Havens had ever set eyes on.
The woman eyed him curiously as she held the cup to his lips.
After draining the cup Havens found strength to ask:
“How did I come here?”
“The boys brought you,” was the reply.
“The boys?” repeated Havens. “What boys?”
“The boys always will be having their sport!” the old woman answered indefinitely. “Very bad boys, I’m sure.”
“Why?” demanded the millionaire.
“Oh, my, oh, my!” exclaimed the old hag. “You mustn’t ask so many questions. I’m not here to answer questions.”
“How much do they want?” demanded Havens, coming at once to the point, as there was no doubt whatever in his mind that he had been abducted purely as a financial speculation. “How much?”
The old hag shook her head gravely.
“After a few days,” she said, “the boys will listen to talk of money. Just now,” she went on, “your society is what they desire.”
Then, for the first time since his rude awakening, the events of the night before flashed across the brain of the millionaire. He remembered the pursuit of the Louise, the act of arson at the hangar, the shooting of the stranger, and the escape from the hospital. To his mind, also, came with double force and meaning of the story the chauffeur had told of the pursuing car. With all these memories in his mind he had little difficulty in associating his present situation with the efforts which had been made to prevent the departure of the boys for the Pacific coast.
“How long do you intend to keep me here?” he asked in a moment.
Again the old woman shook her head.
“I’ll give you ten thousand dollars,” he said, “if you’ll set me down at the Grand Central station in an hour.”
“Not near enough, dearie,” the old hag replied, a greedy gleam coming into her watery eyes. “Not near enough, dearie!”
“Twenty thousand!” exclaimed Havens.
The old woman glanced about the apartment cautiously.
CHAPTER VI
A SMALL EXPLOSION
“Now,” suggested Ben as the purr of the motors came softly on the evening air, “do you suppose Havens has really caught up with us?”
“Impossible!” cried Jimmie, “we’ve stopped a good many times on the route, but he couldn’t overtake us, for all that, for the reason that he wouldn’t leave New York before afternoon. According to that we would have at least ten hours the start of him.”
“That’s right!” Ben agreed. “Perhaps the motors we hear belong to the flying machine of some sport out for a twilight ride. There are a good many aeroplanes passing between St. Louis and the east at this time of the year. We may hear other machines before morning.”
“Suppose,” Carl suggested, with a startled expression in his eyes, “that the clatter in the sky is caused by the flying machine operated by the fellow who chased Jimmie up New York bay?”
“Then that would mean trouble,” Jimmie grinned. “But, say!” he went on in a moment. “I wouldn’t mind meeting that fellow where the going was good. I’d show him that his machine is a back number.”
The boys searched the sky eagerly for a light which would indicate the position of the aeroplane. After a long time they saw a faint gleam almost directly overhead. The airship seemed to be descending.
“I wish we hadn’t built this fire,” Ben suggested.
“Suppose we put it out!” Carl advised.
“No use now,” Ben put in. “The fellow knows exactly where we are. Besides,” he went on, “if we should attempt to leave our present location, the clatter of the motors would show him exactly where we landed.”
“Then all we’ve got to do,” Jimmie explained, “is to remain right here and watch our machines all night. That’s what I call a downright shame!”
“We don’t have to all watch at the same time,” Ben advised. “You boys go to sleep after we get our supper and I’ll stick around until midnight. Then one of you can go on guard until four in the morning and the other watch until we get ready to leave.”
“That’s about the way we’ll have to do it,” Jimmie responded, “only,” he went on, “if the fellow makes his appearance at the camp and tries any funny business, the one on watch must wake the rest of us.”
This being agreed to, the boys ate a hearty supper and Jimmie and Carl crawled into a hastily set up shelter-tent and were soon sound asleep. Ben did not remain by the camp-fire after that. Instead, he took a position beyond the circle of light, from which the machines were in full view, and watched and listened for the appearance of the mysterious aviator.
Directly the whirr of the motors came louder, and the boy saw the bulk of an aeroplane outlined against the field of stars above.
It was quite evident that the stranger was seeking a place to land, and Ben, resolving to take the initiative, hastened out into the field swinging an electric searchlight.
“Now,” he thought, “we’ll see if this fellow wants to meet us face to face, or whether he wants to sneak about in the darkness in order to work mischief to our machines.”
After the boy had waved his searchlight for a moment a shout came from above, and a machine every bit as large and as finely finished as the Louise came volplaning down to the field.
The rubber-tired wheels had scarcely ceased revolving in the soft earth when Ben stood by the side of the machine, from which a man of about thirty years—a tall, slender man, with very blue eyes and a very blond head—was alighting.
“Hello, son!” the man exclaimed, as he came up to where the boy was standing, “are you out on a trip for your health, too?”
“That’s about the size of it,” answered Ben.
“Where from?” was the next question asked.
“New York city,” was the reply.
“Good old town!” exclaimed the stranger, walking toward the fire as if inclined to make himself quite at home.
“You bet it is!” answered Ben, following along close by his side and watching his every move with suspicion.
The boy regretted now that he had not awakened his chums before giving the signal to the stranger. There was no knowing what the man might attempt to do. Ben did not fear physical violence for he considered himself more than a match for the intruder. But he knew that a stick of dynamite or some other destructive explosive tossed into the mechanism of the machines would render them absolutely useless.
For this reason he watched the visitor closely, never taking his eyes from the rather large and ham-like hands which swung pendulously at his sides. The stranger did not appear to notice the attention he was receiving.
“What I came down for,” he said as he approached the camp-fire and stood warming his hands before the blaze, “was to ask questions.”
He smiled brightly as he spoke and gave a searching glance at the shelter-tent where Jimmie and Carl were sleeping.
“It’s easy enough to ask questions,” suggested Ben.
“Easier than to get them answered,” responded the other. “I found that out this afternoon.”
Ben eyed the stranger in wonder but asked no questions.
“About the middle of the afternoon,” the man went on, “I came upon a machine lying in a little dell back in Indiana. I shot down with something like the nerve I exercised in visiting you, and began talking with the aviator. He certainly was about the most insignificant looking specimen of humanity I ever saw.”
“Wait a minute,” smiled Ben. “He had a small, weazened face, large, wing-like ears, and hunchy shoulders—shoulders which give one the impression that he has spent the most of his life at the end of a mucker’s shovel in the subway. Is that a good description?”
“A better one than I could have given!” answered the stranger. “You must have seen him somewhere. I hope your experience with him was not so unfortunate as mine.”
“He made you trouble, did he?” asked Ben.
“He stole a pocketful of spark plugs,” was the reply.
“Yet you seem to be traveling all right,” suggested the boy.
“Oh, he didn’t get all I had,” was the answer. “I volplaned down to him, and he invited me to partake of a lunch he was serving himself on the grass. Just for form’s sake, I sat down with him. Then he began asking questions. He wanted to know where I came from, if I had seen any other machines in the air that afternoon, and if I had heard anything of two aeroplanes starting out on a journey across continent to the Pacific coast. After a time his questions became personal.”
“And you answered them, I suppose!” laughed the boy.
“No, I didn’t,” returned the stranger. “I closed up like a clam in a short time, and then he arose and, without my permission, began examining my machine. To make a long story short, he got the spark plugs out of a box under the seat without my knowing it. I never discovered the loss until I was some distance away.”
“You left him there in the dell you speak of?” asked Ben.
“Yes, I left him there in a little hollow between two hills.”
“Why didn’t you go back after you had discovered your loss?” asked Ben, suspiciously. “You might have caught him if you had gone back.”
The firelight was uncertain, and the visitor’s face was turned half away, but Ben was almost certain that he saw the red blood mounting to his temples. The man also seemed embarrassed by the question.
“I did go back,” he answered after a moment’s hesitation, “but the fellow had disappeared. I thought this might be his fire.”
There was a short silence, during which Ben poked aimlessly at the burning brands and the stranger looked critically around the camp. In a moment, with a complimentary remark regarding the Louise and the Bertha, the intruder arose from the ground where he had been sitting and walked carelessly toward the machines. Ben followed him, watching every movement as if his life depended upon the scrutiny.
The two machines stood quite close together, and as the stranger approached them Ben stepped a pace in advance and whirled about. The stranger started back with an exclamation of surprise.
“We don’t permit strangers to inspect our aeroplanes,” Ben said.
“Pardon me,” the other smiled, “I really didn’t mean any harm. It is quite natural that one should desire to inspect a beautiful machine.”
The stranger kept pushing on, and at last brought his thin body into contact with the boy’s sturdy one. There was no doubt in the mind of the boy now that the fellow was there for mischief. He struck out swiftly from the shoulder, but the intruder dodged the blow neatly and, taking a package from the right-hand pocket of his coat, hurled it toward the aeroplanes. Ben’s clenched fist caught the other’s arm as the throw was released, and the missile, whatever it was, went wide of the mark.
Ben saw the glitter of a shining surface in the firelight, and the next instant an explosion which seemed to shake the earth sounded in his ears. Without waiting to see the effect of the explosion, the stranger faced about and ran at full speed toward the spot where he had left his aeroplane.
Ben followed him a few paces and then, deciding that it would be unsafe to leave the machines, turned back toward the camp-fire to see Jimmie and Carl come tumbling out of the shelter tent, rubbing their sleepy eyes. What Ben feared was that a second person had landed from the stranger’s machine before it had shown above the camp-fire.
“What’s coming off here?” demanded Jimmie.
“Gee!” exclaimed Carl, “I thought that was the crack of doom!”
“Get down to the machines, quick, you boys!” Ben cried out. “There may be some one trying to work them an injury.”
The two boys darted away, stopping only to secure electric flashlights, and were soon seen examining the aeroplanes. Ben waited a moment for some indications that the boys had met with a lurking enemy, and then started away in pursuit of the treacherous aviator.
He was not in time, however, to stop the fellow before his machine launched into the air. As his aeroplane rose, Ben saw that he swung his face for an instant toward the camp. For only a moment the light of the fire shone on the face so turned back. Ben thought he had never seen a more villainous expression on any human countenance.
The boy returned to the machines and joined his chums with an angry scowl on his face. He was angry at himself for having for a minute regarded the stranger in a friendly spirit.
“Where’s the artillery?” asked Jimmie, flashing his light about the aeroplanes. “I thought I heard cannonading.”
As briefly as possible, Ben explained what had taken place, and the three walked over to the spot where the missile had struck and exploded. There was a great hole in the ground, and tiny fragments of a tin can lay scattered about, lying at some distance from the hole.
“Nitroglycerine!” exclaimed Ben, picking up one of the fragments.
“That only goes to show,” Jimmie answered, wrinkling his freckled nose, “that this trip of ours is not at all like a Sunday School picnic. I wish we had caught him before he mounted his machine,” he went on. “I’d like to fill him so full of holes that he could go away and play that he was a Swiss cheese.”
There was very little sleep in the camp that night. The boys were away at daylight, and a couple of hours later saw the machines snugly tucked away in a hangar not far from the aviation field near Forest Park.
They waited about the post-office, taking turns watching at the general delivery window, until nearly noon but, as the reader well understands, Havens did not make his appearance. Their vigil during the afternoon produced no better results. Toward evening they tried to reach Havens by wire in New York, but their dispatches met with no response for a long time. At last a message came from the millionaire’s private office at the hangar in Westchester county.
It was very brief, and gave only the information that Havens had taken a stateroom for St. Louis the previous evening, and that he had mysteriously disappeared before the train had left the city.
“That’s a knock-out!” exclaimed Jimmie.
“And now,” asked Ben with a puzzled look, “shall we go back to New York and help find Havens, or shall we cross the continent in quest of the burglars?”