“No need to do that, son,” laughed the workman. “We will have 'fun’ in plenty, if you call it that. Why, what do you suppose we are going to do about those people back there in Louisville? Did you expect to let them get away so they could cook up more deviltry? I say not! We have some arrests to make on your nice respectable street, and that house to search. And we want you to have all credit of this affair, young fellow, you and your mates. If it hadn’t been for your precious wireless!”
“I wonder where they were talking the time I caught the messages,” Bill said as their car stopped at a little place where soft drinks were sold.
“The way the Bureau dopes it out,” said the workman, “is that they have a chain of short-circuit wireless stations, so they don’t have to trust anything to letters; not even to word of mouth. That is how all these frightful attacks on innocent persons are arranged so safely.”
He took out a clinking handful of shiny handcuffs and shackles and looked at them lovingly before he tossed them down in the bottom of the automobile.
“I hope if we catch him that we will be able to persuade Mr. De Lorme to talk.” he said.
CHAPTER XI
While the car carrying the Secret Service men and Frank and the disgruntled young Bill dashed back to the city, the car with the dynamiters and their terrible load rolled smoothly on toward Camp Knox at Stithton. They were a clever lot, hiding their infernal machines within the very boundaries of the Government camp, and if it had not been for the boys and their wireless, they might have operated forever. The country was so rough, so uninhabited, that the wandering hoboes strolling along the mountain trails so near the camp never raised a question in the minds of the M.P.’s. And luxurious cars bearing pretty women driving back and forth between Louisville and Camp Knox were so numerous that even the people living along the road had ceased to look after them as they passed.
A couple of miles from West Point the car stopped beside the road, and a young woman in sport skirt and sweater jumped out, a book under her arm, and strolled up into a little grove. The car went on. The lady sat down, felt into a silk work-bag for a piece of candy, and fell to reading.
A couple of miles out of Stithton, in a deep gully where the road was bad the car stopped again. There was a long wait, but no one got out, and an airplane far overhead turned and in a series of circles went humming far to the left. When the car started, the plane, strangely enough, was once more high overhead. But the men in the car did not notice that. Airplanes from Stithton were always buzzing around. The Station at the Camp flew from four to six planes all of every day. The man at the wheel looked up in an interested, casual way, and drove his car carefully forward. A half mile from the Camp the car stopped again and a stout man stepped from the brush. He took the driver’s seat, and the man who had been driving crawled over into the tonneau.