CHAPTER XVII
ON TIME
The lawyer sat staring in surprise at the little roll of bills Ben had placed on the desk before him. Then his countenance expanded.
“You have solved the problem, Hardy. You are sure you want to invest all that money?”
“To help my father—I guess so!” replied our hero with energy.
“All right,” cried Mr. Pearsons briskly, arising from his chair. “Here sit down at that desk yonder,” and he pointed to an inner room. “Now then, you’re a smart boy, and I see it. Write out in the most exact detail what you want wired.”
“You think your Washington correspondent can follow out instructions explicitly?”
“Oh, I’ll guarantee him.”
Ben went to the inner office and set to work at once. It was fortunate that he had acted as secretary for his father on occasions similar to the present one. Ben made a rough draft of what he wanted to say, and then he studied and revised it. This took an hour of his time.
When he had copied the description, he felt highly satisfied. He believed that any ordinary draftsman could make drawings of the airship parts from his directions. They made four pages of foolscap.
“Excellent—splendid!” declared Mr. Pearsons, as an hour later he read over Ben’s work. “I’ll send this to Washington over the wires instanter. I shall also instruct my correspondent to telegraph your father if he completes the matter to-day.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pearsons.”
“The thanks all belong to you, Hardy,” insisted the lawyer, with an admiring glance at Ben. “Any time you feel like taking up with the law, there’s a place for you in this office, remember that.”
“I’m too full of the airship fever to think of anything like that just now,” smiled Ben.
“That’s all right, follow your bent as long as it is a legitimate and useful one. I think you can advise your father that we have scooped the enemy on the first move in the game.”
Ben had no intention of disclosing his last action to his father, until he was sure that his plan had met with success. He went home and had lunch with his father. They pottered around the work yard for a spell. Then Ben went down town.
It was about five o’clock, and he was on his way homewards again, when he ran up against Caleb Dunn.
“Hold on, there, Ben Hardy,” hailed the foreman at the Saxton Automobile Works. “Just the fellow I wanted to see.”
“What about, Mr. Dunn?”
“About your father’s affairs. Here, give me all the details of this tangle with Saxton.”
Ben realized that the bluff, outspoken foreman was a genuine friend of his father. He began a recital of most of the facts concerning his father’s present trouble.
A sort of a subdued growl issued from the lips of the foreman when he had concluded. His face was grim and angry.
“You come with me, Hardy,” he said promptly.
“Where, Mr. Dunn?”
“To the Saxton works.”
“I had rather not go there,” demurred Ben, holding back a trifle.
“Got to,” declared Dunn definitely, “if I have to lug you there bodily. You ain’t the one who will get hurt. It’s Saxton.”
The foreman pranced down the street at a furious rate. Ben kept up with him. Dunn acted like a smouldering volcano. He gritted his teeth, he clenched his fists ever and anon, he emitted growls and little roars.
“The escape valve will burst if I don’t get action,” he advised Ben. “Hurry up.”
When they reached the plant, Dunn proceeded straight towards the private office of its proprietor.
“Mr. Saxton is very busy over some accounts,” advised the bookkeeper.
“He’ll see me, or I’ll burst in the door,” declared the forcible Dunn, thrusting aside the office underling, and opening the door before him. “You keep with me, Hardy,” he advised.
Jasper Saxton looked up from his desk in an irritated way at the bold intrusion. Then, observing Ben, he scowled darkly.
“What’s that boy doing here?” he demanded.
“I brought him,” retorted Dunn.
“Take him away again. He has no business around here.”
“Yes, he has, and he’ll stay,” observed Dunn sharply. “I need him.”
“What for?”
“As a witness.”
“Witness to what?” demanded Saxton, with a blank stare.
“To what I’m going to tell you. Saxton, you are an unmitigated scoundrel!”
“W—what?”
With a bound the manufacturer came to his feet. He seemed about to spring upon his audacious foreman. He doubled up his fists and tried to awe the venturesome Dunn, who coolly looked him in the eye.
“Oh, yes,” derided the foreman. “Try it. Just once! I think I’d be willing to pay a big fine just for the excuse to give you the beating of your life.”
“What’s that? what’s this?” gasped the astonished Saxton.
“Say,” continued his foreman in sharp, cutting tones. “I’ve worked my last stroke for the meanest man I ever knew. You’ve lost a better man in Martin Hardy, but you’ll miss me just the same. Saxton, you are a thief. You stole poor Hardy’s automobile patents. You are now trying to rob him of his airship patents. You’ve sold your soul outright, and I predict that you’ll go down in failure and disgrace. I’m through with you, and in time every decent man in your employ will leave you in the lurch. You sent me out to-day to use my influence to get that big motor-cycle order from the Evans people. Well, I’ve got it, and I’m going to turn it over to the Diebold works. You unmitigated scoundrel! Come, Hardy.”
Ben saw Jasper Saxton, white and trembling, sink back into his chair in a heap, collapsed. As they got outside, his impetuous but determined companion left him summarily, with the words:
“Tell your father I shall be up to see him this evening.”
“Whew!” commented Ben, in one long marveling breath.
His step was brisk and his face beaming as he went homewards. Things had taken a turn. If he and his father had met with some misfortunes, the same had brought to their rescue staunch, loyal friends.
Ben told his father about Mr. Dunn, and Mr. Hardy brightened up somewhat. After supper Ben went down town to the village telegraph office. He knew the night despatcher, who welcomed him with a friendly smile.
“Nothing for my father, is there, Mr. Noyes?” asked Ben.
“Nothing so far. Expecting something?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, it may come in the half rate grist. That begins soon. Won’t you wait?”
Ben sat down. The dispatcher attended to his wires. Then, as a new clicking succeeded to a brief lapse in business, he smiled and nodded at Ben, while writing out the message.
“I’ll deliver it to my father,” said our hero. “Don’t mind an envelope.”
“Just receipt for him, then,” advised the operator, handing Ben the yellow sheet. “Charges prepaid.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Ben irrepressibly, as he glanced at the sheet and summarily bolted from the place, a keen delight overcoming his embarrassment.
His eyes sparkled and he ran like the wind all the way home. He was the messenger of good news, indeed. As he came to the house he found the sitting room illuminated brightly. It cheered his heart to observe his father laughing cheerily, while there was a growing happy expression on the face of his mother.
They had company. Two men were in the same room. They were Caleb Dunn, and Mr. Earle from the Diebold machine shops at Martinville.
Ben paused unobserved at the open window of the sitting room to learn that Earle had made a splendid offer to his father to start in at work at Martinville.
Then our hero entered the house through the kitchen. On the table he noticed the airship parts that had been returned.
“Father,” he said, bursting rather unceremoniously upon the group in the sitting room, the open telegram in his hand, “here is some good news for you.”
Mr. Hardy took the paper. He was trembling all over as he perused it. A look of intense joy illumined his usually serious face.
The telegram read:
“Claim filed on two airship inventions of Martin Hardy. All rights protected.”