CHAPTER XXII.
"Z.2.X."
"Z.2.X.? Well, such things are rather out of my line, but I have heard of it—yes," replied the doctor, looking more puzzled than ever. "But what do you know about it?"
"Till two days ago—nothing," replied Jack, "but now I believe that I know where there is a trainload of it."
"Good heavens, boy, you don't know what you're talking about. Why, the stuff is as valuable—as valuable as radium. Possibly it is worth more."
"Then even a small quantity would restore my father's fortune and his health?" asked Jack, persisting in his line of inquiry.
"Undoubtedly it would restore his fortune, and in my belief his health, which he is unlikely to gain otherwise."
"Then I'll do it," said Jack, speaking for himself and Tom, for the two lads had discussed the idea the night before. "Those dividends from our share of the hydroaëroplane plant will fit out an expedition, and if we fail—well, we can still sell out our interest and help dad get on his feet again."
The telephone bell jangled. Jack answered it. The voice that came over the wire was that of Professor Jenks. His tones trembled with excitement as he spoke to the boy.
"I have analyzed that sample from the Colorado River," he said.
"Well, what is your verdict?" asked Jack, with a painfully beating heart.
"That when all the expenses of reduction and refining and transportation and digging are deducted that it will be worth at least $100 an ounce," was the reply. "It would bring an even higher price, for the placing of a large amount on the market will probably have the effect of lowering it."
"Great Scott!" breathed Jack, "and there's a whole island of it there for the taking."
"Yes; but how are yow going to get it? The cliffs are unscalable, the river unnavigable. It might as well be in Mars for all the good it does anyone," objected the professor.
Jack's next words were direct, to say the least.
"I've figured out all that," he said. "We can get it, if it's there to be got. I've a reason now for going out there if it's possible to come to some arrangement with Zeb Cummings. Can you meet me at the hospital this afternoon to talk over the matter?"
"Are you serious?" gasped the professor.
"Perfectly," Jack assured him. "If we can't get at it by earth or water we can reach it from the air, can't we?"
"Heaven bless my soul, I never thought of that," choked out the professor. "I—Melissa's calling me. I'll meet you at the hospital this afternoon."
"Tom and I will be there," said Jack, but the professor, at the imperious bidding of Melissa, had hung up the receiver.
The result of the conference held that afternoon at the bedside of Zeb Cummings was the formation of the Z.2.X. Exploration Company, the members being Jack, Tom, Zeb Cummings and the professor. The capital was to be furnished in equal amounts by the professor and the boys, and Zeb Cummings was to be an equal partner in the enterprise, he having furnished the information on which Jack hoped to rehabilitate his father's fortunes.
As for the professor, he did not so much regard the pecuniary side of the expedition as the opportunity he would have to write an epoch-making book and confound his scientific rivals. In their enthusiasm, the adventurers did not take into consideration the fact that the map might be wrong, or that the strange metals be just visionary deposits. The boys' enthusiasm drowned all doubts in their minds; Zeb and the professor never were as optimistic.
Dr. Mays, when he had been placed in full possession of the facts and considered them, decided that under the circumstances the boys could go and undertook to quiet any apprehensions Mr. Chadwick might have concerning the trip. It was found that enough had been saved from the wreck of the inventor's fortunes to enable him to live comfortably while the boys were away, besides which he had royalties from several inventions coming in. Still, the bulk of his fortunes had vanished and the radio telephone was not yet a practicable instrument to put upon the market.
But with Z.2.X. the boys hoped to make it a perfect transmitter of speech over great distances.
Of course, Jack's plan was to utilize the Wondership on the enterprise of finding Rattlesnake Island and its treasures. After long consultations with Zeb, who was now convalescent, it was decided to ship the craft, in sections, to Yuma on the Colorado River and make the start secretly from some point below there.
It was in the midst of these plans, and while the boys' workshed was littered with lists of provisions and equipment that Dick Donovan injected himself into the situation. The red-headed young reporter descended upon them one day when they were busily packing the Wondership away in big crates, which were labeled in various ways so as to give no inkling of the contents.
Of course Dick, being in a way a member of the firm, had to be told what was going on, and the result was that after a lot of hard pleading the boys consented to allow him to come along.
"He's got red hair," said Zeb, "and that ought to make him good on the trail, same as a buckskin cayuse."
The boys didn't quite see the logic of this, but they knew from former experiences that the young reporter was a good campmate, and they were, on the whole, glad that they had included him. But when young Donovan came to High Towers, he was not aware that he was followed by Bill Masterson, who, as we know, was the son of the proprietor of the Boston Moon, on which paper young Masterson also worked as a reporter.
Ever since Dick Donovan had written for his paper, the Boston Evening Eagle, the wonderful story of the boys' adventures on the trail of the giant sloth of Brazil, other Boston reporters had regarded him as worth watching. In some way, young Masterson learned of Dick's frequent visits to High Towers while the preparations for the Colorado trip were going forward.
"It's my idea," he told his father, "that those Boy Inventors are planning another big stunt and that Dick Donovan is to go along and write the story. Do we want to get beaten again?"
"We do not," said his father, a heavily-set, dictatorial man, perpetually at war with the Evening Eagle. "That last beat of Donovan's on the Brazil story jumped the Eagle's circulation sky high."
"Well, why not let me trail along after them and find out what I can?" said young Masterson. "No use letting the Moon get soaked again, and besides, I want to get even on those young fellows, anyhow, for the mean trick they played in having me arrested, even if it didn't come to anything, and the case was dropped.
"Jove!" he cried suddenly, as a new train of thought was suggested to him. "I'll bet I've got it. This trip, or whatever it is, they are planning has something to do with that miner, Zeb Cummings, the chap I ran down."
"Well, it's worth keeping a weather eye on, anyway," decided his father. "I guess you'll get the assignment."
"And I'll run it down, too," declared young Masterson boastfully. "I owe that red-headed, chesty Donovan a grudge anyhow."
That evening young Masterson met by appointment the two youths who had been with him in the automobile the day that Zeb was run down. They were both sons of wealthy men, and had more money than was good for them. Masterson found that both Sam Higgins and Eph Compton were willing to do all they could to harm the boys who had been responsible for their arrests, and so it came about that Jupe, on his way to the village to post some letters, was enticed into talk one night, and while he was chatting and accepting the good cigars three amiable young men pressed upon him, the mail was abstracted from his pocket.
There were two letters, one from Dick to his city editor telling him of the progress made and informing him of the day for the start, and the other from Jack to his father, who was a guest of Dr. Mays. Jack gave full details of their plans and other information concerning the trip, so that the three plotters, a few days before the expedition set out, knew as much about it as the boys themselves.
Armed with this information, Masterson, Higgins and Compton had no difficulty in getting money from their parents, all of whom would have described themselves as "keen business men." As for Jupe, he was too badly scared to say anything about the loss of the letters, and as Masterson, after steaming them open and abstracting what he wanted of their contents, posted them to their proper destinations, the boys started out on their long journey west without the slightest idea that anyone but themselves and one or two others knew of their plans.
The professor's going was not unaccompanied by difficulties. Miss Melissa had insisted that if he was to accompany the expedition, she was going along, too. This being manifestly impossible, the man of science was driven to the subterfuge of placing a bag of fossils in his bed to represent him. On the night of the start, Miss Melissa looked into his room every few minutes to make sure he had not escaped.
It was not till morning that she discovered that the man of science had effected his escape through his bedroom window, climbing down a latticework to the ground. At first she was half inclined to pursue him, but thought the better of it when she read the note the professor had left behind.
"Well," said Miss Melissa to her little maid, "there's one good thing—he won't be cluttering up the house with old stones and rocks for some time to come."
"What shall I do with them fossils what he put in his bed to make believe it was him, miss?" asked the maid.
"You may throw them into the creek at the back of the house, Mary," said Miss Melissa, and went placidly about her dusting and sweeping and "setting to rights."
But of all this, the professor, on the train speeding westward, was blissfully unconscious. Perhaps even if he had known it, he would not have cared much, for even his scientific mind was warmed and thrilled by the prospect of the aërial search for the mineral treasures of Rattlesnake Island.