CHAPTER XIII.
LUTHER BARR'S TRAP.
Billy's guide conducted him under the bridge and along a gloomy-looking street of poor houses, huddled together like the cages of animals. The windows of many of them were broken and they were otherwise tumbledown, and the young reporter realized that he was in one of the most squalid parts of New York. He grew suspicious and was about to halt his guide and ask him some questions when the ill-favored conductor suddenly stopped in front of a particularly dark, gloomy-looking brick tenement, and beckoning to Billy, urged the lad to follow.
In spite of his misgivings, Billy entered the place and followed his guide up four flights of steep, unlighted stairs.
"Here is Mr. Joyce's room," he announced, flinging open a door. Billy stepped forward through the portal, and found himself in an apartment in which the paper was peeling off the wall from long neglect, and the light only streaked in through cracks in the closed shutters. Save for a rickety chair and a broken-down table, it was empty.
"Where is Mr. Joyce?" Billy was about to ask, when he felt himself seized from behind and a voice hissed in his ear:
"Well, Master Barnes, we've got you where we want you."
At the same instant a stout rope was drawn about him, pinioning his arms to his sides.
In his captor, as he stepped forward, Billy had no difficulty in recognizing Sanborn, the treacherous mechanic, and while he gazed in astonishment at the man there appeared from an inner room Luther Barr and Malvoise, the French aviator.
"You'd better let me go at once," cried Billy angrily. "What do you want with me?"
"Nothing very much," piped old Barr, "nothing very much, my dear lad. You are in a position to do us a great service, that is all, and I am sure, after your providential rescue from the waters of the Sound, you ought to be grateful enough to try to benefit your fellow man by imparting a little information. You see, we saw your rescue and had a messenger track you from the wharf and bring you here."
Billy was puzzled, but nevertheless somewhat relieved. He had thought at first that his capture was due to the fact that the boys' enemies knew that he had overheard their conversation in the stateroom of the Princeton, but it was now evident that they had some other motive in luring him to their obscure meeting place, and had no idea that he had played eavesdropper on their plan to forestall the boys in their treasure quest.
"Tell me first what it is you want to know," said he stoutly, "I cannot say whether I will tell you anything or not till I learn that."
"Well, we won't occupy much of your valuable time then," put in Malvoise; "what we want to know is this: "How soon are those young whelps, the Boy Aviators, going to start for the Sargasso Sea?"
"Suppose I won't tell you," retorted Billy, bravely sparring for time.
"Then we shall find a means to make you."
"Well, I will not tell you one single thing about our plans, and you might as well make up your minds to that right now."
"What, you won't?"
"No, I won't."
Malvoise crouched as if he was about to spring on the boy, but old
Barr interfered.
"No violence now, Malvoise," he croaked; "we can use other means. I really think we shall have to use another method to bring this young man to his senses. First of all, however, search him, he may have papers on him that concern our project."
But a search of Billy's clothes revealed no paper that threw any light on the Boy Aviators' plans, and the baffled plotters looked their rage.
"Lock him in the inner room," ordered old Barr, "it's a nice warm place for a young man to sit and meditate on his stubbornness, and perhaps to-morrow he will have come to his senses."
Without more ado Malvoise and Sanborn picked Billy up in their arms and carried him through the door from which Barr and the Frenchman had emerged and thrust him forward into a small room without windows. It was really more like a large cupboard than a room, and most probably at one time or another had been used as a clothes closet in the days when the old house was a mansion and stood in a fashionable part of the town.
Billy heard the key click in the lock and found himself in total darkness. From outside came to him the mocking voice of old Barr.
"We shall be back at the same time to-morrow, Master Barnes; please be ready to tell us what we want to know at that time."
The others laughed; but Billy, angry and somewhat scared as he was, made no reply. Then he heard their footsteps die away and he was alone in the darkness in the deserted tenement.
He threw himself against the door with all his force several times, till his body was bruised and sore in fact, but it was of stout wood and yielded no more than if it had been the portal of a steel vault.
Seeing the futility of hoping to escape that way, Billy fell to trying to work himself out of his rope bonds. To his great joy after several minutes of wriggling he succeeded in loosening the not very securely tied knot and was soon free; so far as the rope was concerned. This accomplished he felt far more cheerful and set about trying some means of opening the door of his prison.
But without tools this was difficult—in fact, an impossible feat—as Billy, after a long period of wasted effort, found out. If only he had some kind of tool, however, he might be able to make some impression on the lock, he thought.
It was quite by accident that he encountered what he wanted. He was leaning back against the wall, after a long period of vain effort on the door, when his hand encountered what his sense of touch told him was a clothes hook, formed of bent wire—a relic of the days when Billy's dungeon was used as a cupboard evidently. With eager fingers the young reporter unscrewed the hook from the wall and then went to work to straighten it out till he should have a serviceable bit of wire with which to pick the lock. In his capacity as a reporter, Billy had some knowledge of the methods used by burglars; but he never thought, at the time the subject had interested him, that he would ever have occasion to put his knowledge to practical use.
Now, however, with his clumsy skeleton key he set to work poking about in the lock as eagerly as any marauder trying to effect an illicit entrance to a rich trove.
Just as it seemed that he would have to give up in despair, the lad's wire encountered a "tumbler" of the lock that yielded to its pressure.
Billy with a beating heart pressed and the lock, which in spite of its age seemed to have been recently oiled, probably by Barr, responded. The next instant with a click, the lock slid open and Billy walked out of the stifling air of the coop—free.
It was the work of only a few minutes for him to reach the street, as Barr and his accomplices had not taken the precaution to lock the outer door in their hurry. Probably they didn't think it necessary, anyhow, as it could never have occurred to them that Billy would be able to effect an escape from the locked closet, except by working a miracle.
Swiftly the boy threaded his way through the streets and finally reached the Astor House. He found that the boys had preceded him there and had gone away, after leaving a message with the clerk for Billy to call up the Chesters' Madison Avenue home in case he should happen to arrive after they had left.
Billy at once made his way to the 'phone booths and was soon in communication with Frank at the other end of the wire.
"This is the second time to-day you've worried the life out of us," exclaimed Frank, much relieved as he heard Billy's voice. "When you didn't appear at the Astor we were badly puzzled, I can tell you. We thought something had happened to you."
"And it nearly did," retorted Billy indignantly, "I've got a long story to tell you, Frank."
"Get right on a car and come up," was the rejoinder.
Billy was soon speeding uptown to the Chester boys' home. He found all the adventurers there in the room over the garage which had been given up to the lads as a workshop and experimental laboratory. With what wonderment the boys listened to Billy's tale may be imagined.
"I'd like to see the rascals' faces when they open that closet to-morrow morning," cried Lathrop Beasley, who had joined the boys' party at Frank's urgent invitation.
"It will be a case of 'gone, but not forgotten,'" grinned Billy. "But seriously, fellows, this shows the necessity of starting as soon as possible. It means a race between us and old Luther Barr."
"And we mean to win it," put in Frank in a determined voice. "It will not take long to adjust the pontoons to the Golden Eagle's frames, and that done we are practically ready."
"Where do you intend to start from?" asked Billy.
"We were talking that over on our way up to the city," was Frank's reply. "My plan was to charter a large cabin motor-boat at some point on the Gulf coast—say Galveston—and then round the point of Florida and keep on east across the Caribbean. Once we have arrived on the outskirts of the Sargasso we can erect the Golden Eagle on her pontoons and make a flight for the galleon."
"A good idea," cried Billy, eagerly, "we ought to have no difficulty in getting a good boat at Galveston."
"I have one already," was Frank's astonishing reply. Frank loved to spring surprises.
"What?" shouted the amazed young reporter.
Frank drew out a telegram.
"I got this to-night in response to a wire I sent a yacht broker there some days ago," he said.
"Read it out, Frank," urged Billy.
"Have what you want in gasolene yacht, Bolo. Fifty feet over all, twenty-five horsepower engine, auxiliary sails and fine cabin. Will charter reasonably. Wire at once if you want her."
"Sounds good," commented Harry.
"So I thought," said Frank, "and as we've no time to lose, it would be a good idea to telegraph them to get her ready for sea at once. I will also instruct the agent to get a ship chandler to stock her with provisions for a cruise of two months."
Billy threw his hat in the air.
"Hurray for the BOY AVIATORS afloat!" he shouted.