Presently he turned and looked about him. They were standing on the top of the cliff with only the glittering stars above them. It was a wide, rocky, flat surface—an ideal spot from which to launch an aëroplane, sloping sharply as it did, toward the outer edge.
Over a small part of this surface a rough shed had been built. The roof was completely covered with boulders, and when the great, gray painted doors, which closed the front, were shut, it would have taken a keen eye to detect the presence of that ingenious shelter for the aëroplane.
“How did he catch you?” Dick asked, turning to Holton.
“I was too blamed cocksure,” the officer answered bitterly. “He was wise to me all the time. When I come snooping around the house I finds the door open, and like a fool, in I walks. Next thing I knew he had a gun at my head.”
“But how did he know you were around?” Merriwell interrupted.
“One of his pals piped him off the other night,” Holton explained. “That was the signaling you saw. The guy had seen me following, and put Randolph wise. That’s why he came back so soon. Well, he politely tells me what he’s going to do, and then locks me into a room while he gets his air-tight place ready. I unfastened the shutter, but there was no way to get out through the bars. So I hauls out my notebook and scrawls a note. You got it, didn’t you?”
Dick nodded.
“I hadn’t more than tossed it out the window, when he comes back and makes me go into that room. I knew from the look in his eyes that he’d shoot me then and there for two cents. He was just itching to do it. Otherwise, I’d have made a fight for it. But I had a little hope that maybe you or some one would find the book and get me out.”
He paused and wiped his face with a handkerchief.
“I can’t describe the rest,” he went on slowly. “It was awful. I never hope to go through a thing like that again. Say, Jack, was that straight what he said about your taking the monoplane and going after him?”