A Narrow Escape.
A bellow of rage and pain shocked the neighborhood into wakefulness. As the second man leaped savagely at him, Buck evaded a wicked knife stab and struck him full between the eyes with his clenched fist. The fellow reeled, jerked a pistol from his pocket and emptied it blindly at the place where his combatant had stood an instant before.
But Buck was bounding down the street as fast as his legs could carry him, his camera bumping clumsily against his back. A cross-town trolley car was clanging the bell down the next street and the breathless reporter made a running jump to catch it. Just as he did so a third man with a closely-cropped beard sprang after him from the curb. He caught the camera and gave a mighty tug at it which broke the strap, and, with the box in his hands, sent him sprawling backwards in the street. The rushing trolley car did not stop, and Buck’s extraordinary agility was all that enabled him to swing aboard safely.
“It’s a fine night, mister,” said the conductor, as he rang up the fare.
Buck answered him with the sourest of stares.
CHAPTER VII
WHAT HAPPENED TO NED
Alan Hope reached the Newark factory of the Universal Transportation Company shortly before eleven o’clock that night, after an uneventful trip out via the suburban railroad service. He found the big plant gloomy and silent, without a light to show that activity was really going on within. In response to a prearranged code of rings on the bell at the great main gates, he was admitted.
The Ocean Flyer had been wheeled to the extreme end of the big aviation field where she might have plenty of room for her initial rise into the air, and the factory foreman informed Alan that all was now ready for departure at any minute.
Ned Napier arrived within ten minutes after his chum. Although he had sustained no actual mishap on the way out, it was by sheer luck only that he escaped the trap which had been laid for him. He had attended the performance at the Winter Garden, purposely leaving early. In the foyer as he went out a stranger in full evening dress (apparently one of the spectators finishing his between-acts cigarette) accosted him with extreme politeness: