“Fired?” cried Frank.
“Well, about the same thing—I resigned, as a matter of fact,” explained Billy ruefully; “but it all amounts to the same in the long run.”
“Sit down and tell us about it,” commanded Frank, genuinely concerned at his friend’s evident dejection.
Seated on an upturned box, which had contained batteries, Billy related his story, omitting nothing. On his suspicions of Reade, however, he touched lightly.
“You see, I’ve got nothing on the fellow,” he explained, “and although I’m convinced that he gave our plan away to the Despatch, yet I’ve got nothing to base it on.”
“That’s so,” Frank and Harry were compelled to admit.
The three friends spent an hour or so chatting, and then Mr. Joyce, who had been tinkering with his aeroplane attachment quite oblivious to their talk, announced that he would have to be going home. He had some work to do on another invention that evening, he explained.
“Well, say, as we’ve been stuffing in here almost all day and it’s warm enough to be mighty uncomfortable, what do you say if we take a little spin out in the auto. We can give Mr. Joyce a ride home,” exclaimed Frank.
“The very thing,” agreed Harry.
Old Mr. Joyce was nothing loath to be spared the long ride in a train to his home in the outskirts of Jersey City. As for Billy Barnes, he was delighted at the idea.