“Hyolax,” said O’Brien. “In a year no gasoline will be used except for old type autos and farm trucks. I tell you hyolax is some bird when it comes to power!”
“I wonder if I will have any trouble managing it,” said Lawrence dubiously. “I ought to try it out, seems to me.”
“That is what we came for,” said O’Brien. “I have an idea you are going across very soon. And Mr. Ridgeway wanted to let you have one chance anyhow to get used to this type of dirigible. As far as hyolax goes, it works exactly like gasoline except that it is about twenty times more concentrated and its driving power is much greater. You will be crazy over it.”
A few minutes later the big dirigible, manoeuvered into the open, rose lazily from the sand and in obedience to a command from Mr. Ridgeway, they turned out to sea. For the next two hours, high above the tossing waves, Lawrence manoeuvered the balloon, learning its tricks as a good horseman learns the whims of a favorite steed. Lawrence was crazy over it, as O’Brien had said, and the two older men, Mr. Ridgeway and O’Brien, as well as the two mechanicians who accompanied them, were astounded by the delicate perceptions and skillful handling that the boy pilot gave the balloon.
When at last they had, as O’Brien expressed it, “put the tube to bed” and had once more mounted in the invisible roads of the air, Lawrence was at the wheel of the plane, and bad work he made of it for the first ten minutes. It was like driving a flivver after a twelve-cylinder touring car. The plane wobbled and shifted until he hit his stroke again. Reaching the home field, Lawrence silently hopped out of the plane and followed Mr. Ridgeway and O’Brien into the auto. He was very still all the way home. The day was gone, and dinner was served soon after their return. Then Mr. Ridgeway sat frowning, and presently leaned forward to say:
“I will have to have a talk with you both, and on my life I don’t know where we will be safe. I am afraid everywhere.”
“Right you are!” said O’Brien. “But I have just the place. A brother of mine has a drug store over on H street. There is a basement where he keeps his surplus stock. The stairs is at the right of the store as you go in, away back behind the screen where they dodge to make you up tonic pills out of newspaper and sugar.
“I will go ahead, and tip me brother off, and then you come along wan at a time, and when you go in hold on to the left lapel of your coats so he’ll know you and go right back to the stairs and down ’em. I will have chairs ready.”
The plan worked, and Mr. Ridgeway and Lawrence wandered through the small drug store and down the concealed stairs, to find O’Brien ready with three soap boxes for seats.
Four walls, covered with rows of bottles of all sizes under the sun, comprised the furnishings. As O’Brien said, there was not room enough anywhere for a kitten to hide. There was a door at the top of the stairs, and this O’Brien closed and locked. Another door at the bottom he also closed, then turned expectantly to Mr. Ridgeway. That gentleman smiled.