The Boy Aviators on Secret Service; Or, Working with Wireless. Goldfrap John Henry
RASCALS GET A SHOCK
The boy was startled but his presence of mind did not desert him. Lathrop, although, as has been said, a hectoring, dictatorial sort of youth possessed plenty of courage of a certain kind, and was no coward. He therefore exclaimed angrily:
“Take your hand off me. What do you want?”
At the same moment he gave an adroit twist, an old football trick, and in a shake had freed himself from the other’s detaining hand.
“You needn’t crow quite so loudly, my young rooster,” exclaimed the man in the tramp’s dress, “I merely wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Well,” demanded the boy.
“What were you doing up there in the woods while we were talking?”
Lathrop didn’t know whether or not the men were armed, so that he decided that it would be folly to tell them the facts; he therefore took refuge in strategy.
“What do you mean?” he asked with an expression of blank amazement.
“Oh, come,” said the other, but there was a note of indecision in his tones, that showed that he was not as sure of his ground as he had been, “you don’t mean to say that you weren’t lying hidden while we were talking up yonder and heard every word?”
“As I told you,” replied Lathrop, “I don’t know what you are talking about. I am on my way home through these woods and you have stopped me in this unceremonious fashion. If there was a constable within call I would have you arrested.”
“Oh, come on, Bill,” struck in the nattily dressed one of the pair, who had hitherto remained silent, “the kid doesn’t know anything – that’s evident, and we are wasting time here.”
“I’m not sure of that,” retorted the tramp-like man, still unconvinced, “if I thought,” he added with a vicious leer, “that he overheard us, I – ”
The sentence was not completed for the reason that at the moment a lusty voice was heard coming up the path from the aerodrome singing at the pitch of its lungs:
“Three times round went the gallant ship;
Three times round spun she,
Three times round spun the gallant ship
Then down to the bottom of the sea, – the sea, – the sea.
Then down to the bottom of the sea.”
As the singer came upon the scene in front of him he broke off abruptly and the two men who had intercepted Lathrop took to their heels.
“Hullo, there, my hearty,” cried Ben Stubbs, for he was the vocalist, as his eyes took in the situation, “what’s all this?”
His voice held a sharp note of interrogation, for he had immediately recognized one of the two men who had made off as the fellow who had sneaked up the by-street in White Plains the day before.
“Who are you?” demanded the boy suspiciously, not certain whether in the newcomer he had a friend or a fresh source of danger.
“Me? oh, I’m Ben Stubbs, formerly skipper of the tug Mary and Ann, but now one of the crew of the Golden Eagle II, sky clipper. And you, my young middy, I recognize as the chap who was down at the aerodrome a short while ago, and got all het up because Frank Chester wouldn’t let you see the air-ship – now the question is what were you doing with those two fellows, who are as bad a looking pair of cruisers as I ever laid eyes on?”
Lathrop saw at once that unless he told the truth he would be a fair object of suspicion, and at any rate he had made up his mind to warn the boys of the danger that threatened. He therefore in a straight-forward way told of the afternoon’s happenings.
“You come along with me,” exclaimed Ben, as the boy finished his narrative, “we’ve got no time to lose.”
They hurried down the path to the aerodrome and Lathrop repeated his story to the boys.
“Well, forewarned is forearmed,” remarked Frank, “and thank you, Lathrop, for doing the square thing.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Frank,” Lathrop replied awkwardly, recollecting his fiery threats of a short time before. To tell the truth, Lathrop was thoroughly ashamed of himself, and declining the boys’ hearty invitation to supper, hurried home to the house on the hill.
He had learned a lesson he never forgot.
“Now,” said Frank, as soon as he had gone, “we’ll give these fellows a surprise if they come around here to-night that will stick in their minds for a good many years.”
Under his directions everyone got busy for the rest of the afternoon driving wooden posts at six foot intervals all round the aerodrome. When the posts were all in position a copper wire of medium thickness was strung from one post top to another and the ends connected with the dynamo ultimately destined to supply the Golden Eagle II’s searchlight and wireless equipment. By the time Ben Stubbs, who had quite ousted Le Blanc as cook, announced by a clarion summons, beaten on a tin wash-pan, with a big ladle, that a supper, consisting of his famous baked beans, chops, spinach and coffee was ready – not to forget Ben’s masterpiece, a huge strawberry pie, – Frank pronounced his preparations also complete.
After supper everybody sat around the stove in the portable house, for the nights were still chilly, till about ten o’clock. They had all made as much noise as possible early in the evening with the ultimate motive of accentuating the quietness later on.
Frank and Harry stood at the door of the portable house as Schultz and Le Blanc started for the aerodrome and shouted out “good-night” till the echoes rang back from the hills. Then one by one the lights in the two houses went out and all was quiet. That is, all seemed so to two watchers concealed in a thick mass of brush up on the hill, but in reality no sooner had the houses been plunged in darkness than the boys and Ben Stubbs had crept quietly into the aerodrome and sat down to wait for the crisis they felt sure was coming.
Harry and Billy each carried a long thin package that might have contained anything from dynamite to a pistol. Ben Stubbs, with a grim expression on his rugged face, grasped a stout club he had cut that afternoon. It was pitchy dark in the aerodrome and as they waited, in the absolute silence Frank had enjoined, the watchers could hear one another breathing. Upstairs only the rhythmic snores of Schultz and Le Blanc, who were not in the secret, disturbed the silence.
Frank sat with his hand on the switch that would shoot a current of 500 volts through the copper wires surrounding the aerodrome when he connected it. A hole, bored earlier in the afternoon in the wooden wall of the aerodrome gave the boy a command of the view outside in the direction of the woods. So dark was it, however, that even his keen eyes could detect little in the black murk. He saw they would have to judge of their enemies’ whereabouts solely by sound.
They must have sat there in the darkness for an hour or more, with no sound being borne to their ears but the unmelodious snoring of the two mechanics in the loft when, suddenly, and without any further warning there came a sharp “crack” from up on the hillside as a branch snapped under a heavy foot.
“Here they come,” whispered Frank to the boys, whom he knew were there; but couldn’t see any more than if they were in the antipodes.
“Get outside now, you fellows, and when I give the word, let go!”
Silently as cats Billy Barnes, Harry and Ben Stubbs slipped off their shoes and tiptoed out through the door of the aerodrome, which had been left open to allow for the noiseless exit. Frank was left alone in the barn-like aerodrome save for the two sleepers upstairs. The tension in the silence grew painful. When would the persons who had crackled the broken branch on the hillside recover their courage enough to make a further advance?
All at once, close at hand, Frank heard a loud whisper of:
“Well, they are all asleep, evidently.”
“Yes,” replied another hoarse whisper, “that kid you suspected evidently didn’t hear anything.”
“Confound