Billy threw his hat in the air.
"Hurray for the BOY AVIATORS afloat!" he shouted.
CHAPTER XIV.
MR. "L. B.'s" DIRIGIBLE
The next morning Ben Stubbs arrived in Boston, and waiting till evening made his way to No. 46 Charlton Street. During the day he had had his whiskers shaved off which entirely altered his appearance.
The house bearing the number he sought was a five-story structure of gray stone, and had evidently once been a home of wealth; but the manufacturing district had long since encroached on the region and it now was the only residence remaining in the midst of monotonous blocks of houses of industry. In fact, at dusk—the time at which Ben Stubbs paid his first visit to it—the neighborhood was practically deserted, as the factory hands who worked there during the day had all gone home and they lived in another part of the city.
Ben "took his bearings," as he would have termed it, before he mounted the flight of steps leading to the front door of the house. He noticed that the windows were all shuttered, and to the casual observer it would have seemed that the house was unoccupied. The sailor's sharp eye, however, noticed that a cloud of smoke was proceeding from a chimney and that numerous electric wires were strung from the street poles into the house.
As he stood there gazing at it an old watchman, who had been sitting in a shanty in front of one of the factories, approached him.
"A gloomy-looking place that, eh?" said the garrulous old man, addressing Ben.
"Ay, ay, shipmate, you may well say that," was the reply, "a melancholer looking craft I never see. Do you know anything about the folks as lives there?"