“Savvee you, alle same!” he replied and pointed off to the north. “Savvee you, alle same,” he repeated. “No can do.”
“Go to it!” shouted Carl. “Trot along and play you’re in a Chinese laundry on Pell street. We love to see you eat, but we don’t like the exuberance of your conversation!”
In ten minutes’ time the Chinaman, climbing the steep dip of the bowl toward the north, disappeared from view in a thicket.
“Well, of all the consarned, everlasting, inscrutable combinations I ever saw in my life!” exclaimed Carl, “this combination of Chinaman and ignorance and hunger is about the worst! Now, what do you suppose he came in here for, and then went away in broad daylight?”
“He probably came here to fill up!” answered Ben.
“What do you understand he meant by pointing to the Bertha and then pointing east? It seemed to me that he wanted to inform us that he had seen a machine like that in that direction.”
“It might have been the outlaw machine now chasing Jimmie,” suggested Ben. “He might have seen it before it passed over to the coast. It’s a wonder to me that he wouldn’t get out of the country after being trussed up by his own people.”
“It’s just one of the mysteries of the case,” laughed Carl. “We don’t know anything about the Chinaman, or of Jimmie’s motive in going away, or of the smugglers!”
The boys gathered up the remnants of the meal and sat down to wait for the return of their chum. They had remained seated only a short time when Carl called the other’s attention to the glistening planes of a flying machine away to the north and east.
“There’s the Chink’s machine!” he exclaimed.