CHAPTER VI
THE AIRSHIP IDEA
Ben backed to the fence. He was not a bit afraid of Dave Shallock, but he was fully aware of his tricky nature. He got into a position where he could be sure that Dave’s ally, the fellow he had noticed on the fence, did not get a chance to attack him unawares, side or rear.
The boy seated on the fence did not move, however, and Dave himself did not press Ben closely. The latter decided that his adversary had learned his lesson in past encounters, and was simply bent on giving him a tongue lashing.
“Haven’t you made a mistake, Dave?” suggested Ben.
“Oh, yes, certainly!” shouted Dave in sarcastic tones, “I only dreamed that your father has been waiting for weeks to shove Pete Doty, his particular friend and crony, into my father’s job.”
“Mr. Doty is no more my father’s particular friend than is any honest deserving man,” declared Ben. “Certainly my father never suggested his name as the successor of your father.”
“Tell that to the greenies!” vociferated the furious Dave. “It was all a nice little plot—your jumping in where you had no business, and exposing dad.”
“If somebody hadn’t stepped in,” said Ben, “you mightn’t have any father now.”
“Oh, is that so,” sneered Dave. “I guess my father knows how to run his department without your help. He’s been at it long enough.”
“He wasn’t able to run it to-day, Dave,” declared Ben. “He was ‘asleep at the switch,’ as the saying goes, and I tried to rouse him and keep things quiet.”
“Yah! Looks like it, when you let on that he’d been drinking.”
“I? Never!” cried Ben indignantly. “On the contrary, I tried to shield him, and I don’t know that I had any right to do so, either. Why, I even tried to hide the tell-tale bottle in the ashes.”
“That’s the way you tell it,” interrupted Dave contemptuously. “All right. I just wanted to have the satisfaction of telling you that you and your father will rue the day you stuck your noses into our family’s business.”
“I am sorry for your father, Dave.”
“Bah! you can spare your pity. Maybe you’ll need it yourselves, you and your father. Wait till the tables turn.”
“All right,” said Ben simply. “You are wrong in your guesses, though, as to our having any ill will against your people.”
“I guess my father has a pull—huh! I guess so,” blurted out Dave, as Ben started to leave the spot. “He wouldn’t take back his job working about that dirty boiler and that greasy old engine, if they offered him double what he got. I’d have you know that my father is as good a master mechanic as yours is, any day.”
“I’ve heard that he’s a fine all-round machinist,” acknowledged Ben. “I would like to see him get right up to the top.”
“He’ll get there. Mark you, Ben Hardy, he’s after your father’s scalp, and he’s going to get it.”
“Fair play, and the best man wins,” answered our hero briefly.
“There’s more than that,” shouted Dave down the street after Ben. “My father could just set your father on his pegs. Will he do it? Nix! That’s going to be his revenge. Ha! ha! Old Saxton has bamboozled your father, and my father can produce the evidence——”
“Shut up, you chump!” growled the boy on the fence, jumping to the ground and rushing at Dave and silencing him. “Do you want to give the whole snap away?”
Ben recognized the boy now as he came within the radius of the street lamp. He was a cousin of Dave named Dick Farrell, who lived in another town.
“H’m,” commented Ben, as he proceeded on his way, “was that all brag and bluster, or is there something under all this?”
Ben recalled the remark of Dunn to Saxton that afternoon, when the bluff machine shop foreman had told the manufacturer that he acted as if he were afraid of Tom Shallock. He remembered, too, that it was general knowledge about the works that Shallock had been discharged for cause more times than any man in the place, and had always managed to get back again into the employment.
“Dave said, too, that Saxton was bamboozling father,” reflected Ben. “Well, I have always thought that myself. I wonder, though, what he means when he talks about his father producing the evidence?”
Ben reached the automobile works figuring out all kinds of suspicions and solutions as to the threatening remark of Dave Shallock. His father and Foreman Dunn had just concluded their labors. Mr. Hardy washed up, and was soon on his way home, Ben chattering exuberantly by his side.
Ben, at his father’s request, recited the vivid occurrences of the day. He went into detail about his talk with Mr. Davis, and mentioned the invitation to the aero meet. Mr. Hardy said nothing as to his prospects of going there, but Ben knew that was his way, always turning a proposition over fully in his mind before he came to a final decision, and the son was hopeful.
“Two hundred dollars?” repeated Mr. Hardy in great surprise, as Ben told about the money Bob Dallow had brought him. “That is a small fortune for a boy like you.”
“Father, what did Dave Shallock mean by the threat he made?” asked Ben, quite anxiously, when the conversation had taken a new turn.
“Oh, some boastful nonsense,” said Mr. Hardy indifferently. “I have no time to analyze such talk. Tom Shallock would be a fair workman if he would keep sober. It is certainly true that he has some influence with Mr. Saxton, but he cannot injure us. I shall keep right on doing my best, and honest labor will always command a fair market. As to you, Ben, a very pretty and useful token of regard the men are getting for you will show how they esteem you.”
Ben tried a hint or two to induce his father to take some action about the patents that he had given under the control of Jasper Saxton, but Mr. Hardy was not responsive.
“Father is pretty tired, I suppose,” reflected the youth, “but, all the same, I am going to get mother to urge him up to some action on that patent business. Delays are dangerous, and I haven’t much confidence in Mr. Saxton.”
Bob Dallow greeted them as they reached home. Mr. Hardy went into the house, where his wife had a special lunch spread for him.
“Well, Bob, what about the whistle?” inquired Ben.
“Going fine,” declared Bob. “We made a big mistake, though.”
“How is that?”
“Sold it too cheap. That Vladimir seems to be coining money out of it.”
“Well, I am satisfied,” said Ben.
The conversation drifted to airships before the two boys had been together five minutes. The enthusiastic Bob declared that he was going to make a big record in the new field he was about to enter so ardently. He predicted that if Ben would study up aeronautics and put his inventive ability to work, he would make a grand success.
“You overrate me,” said Ben modestly. “At all events, though, I would like to go to the aero meet next week.”
“We’ll have one fine time, if you do,” returned Bob. “I’ll write you as soon as I get fixed in my new position. In the meantime, let us bring up the subject to your father and see what he thinks about it.”
Mr. Hardy listened with an indulgent smile to the plans and suggestions of their young guest.
“I haven’t the heart to refuse you any reasonable request after your fine record of to-day, Ben,” he told his son, “but I want to take a night’s sleep over this.”
“Yes, that will be best,” remarked Mrs. Hardy.
Bob was obliged to be content with this decision. Ben was sure he would be allowed to go to the aero meet. As to any encouragement as to experimenting on a machine of his own, which was a glowing ideal in his mind, he was not so certain.
He regarded his father with anxious expectation as Mr. Hardy left the breakfast table next morning. As was usual they all went out on the porch, where Mr. Hardy generally rested and chatted a few minutes before starting for the automobile works.
“Well, Ben,” he said with a pleasant smile, as they became comfortably seated, “I’ve thought over this new idea which I see Bob has been so industriously cultivating in your mind.”
“Blame me, that’s right, Mr. Hardy!” spoke up Bob airily. “I’ll bet you, though, that something tangible comes out of it.”
“Your vacation begins next week, Ben,” resumed Mr. Hardy. “You have quite a little capital of your own. You can employ some of it, if you think it wise, in looking up this new idea, and I don’t mind helping you a bit on experiments.”
“Thank you, father,” said Ben joyfully.
“Only don’t let all your common sense and practical ideas go up in an airship that won’t sail,” was Mr. Hardy’s final advice.