As they fled, O’Brien mopped his brow.
“I didn’t feel that place to be so healthy for us,” he said. “And a gun looking so fit! Who said the war was over these five years? Now what in the world of wonders does all that mean? I dunno. Do you?”
Lawrence shook his head.
“Don’t go there again,” warned O’Brien. “Whether I’m with you or no. Do you mind? We have got to find out about it. Did you notice anything funny about that dirigible? No? Well, you don’t know as well as I do, but that old tube is exactly like the one that got cut up last night. Down to the last seam, and even a dent in the steerin’ gear that I made meself trippin’ against it with a hammer in me hand.”
“How do you suppose that happens?” asked Lawrence, his eyes fixed in the distance.
“That’s what I dunno,” said O’Brien. “But the joke is that I don’t think it happens at all. There is something funny about that. Dang funny!”
“Where do you suppose the people were?” asked Lawrence.
“Off amusin’ themselves, or up to some mischief,” answered O’Brien. “They have such a good hidin’ place that they don’t bother to guard their cars at all, at all.”
They landed, O’Brien still sputtering. But Lawrence was silent. He quizzed O’Brien about the locality and learned that it was not far from the railroad. Then finding that O’Brien had an engagement for the evening, he went quietly away. He first went to his rooms, took some money from the trunk, and put on a dark suit. Then he hurried down town, and reaching the Union station, boarded a train and was soon out of the city. He had dinner on the train, and at about nine o’clock reached the little station of Linden, where he dropped off and not waiting for the train to pull out, slipped across the track and was swallowed up by the shadows.
For all his athletics, Lawrence hated walking, as most aviators do, and he groaned in spirit as he trudged over the country in what he hoped was the direction of the mysterious aviation field. It had not occurred to him to ask anyone how to reach it. Instinctively he knew that the mysterious cars had not been heralded to the country at large.