“Always supposing it is a practicable invention,” put in the practical Paul Perkins quietly.
“Of course,” the impetuous Rob hastened to agree.
Talking thus, they neared the De Regny place, which deserves some description, as being, both by tradition and appearance, one of the most remarkable places along the Long Island shores.
CHAPTER VII.
HOW A SECRET PASSAGE WAS USED.
The house was a mouldering mansion of wood, three stories in height, and once a truly imposing specimen of the architecture of the period in which it was erected. Time and neglect, however, had done their work, and it was now dark, unpainted, and forbidding looking, set back, as it was, in a fenced park of several acres in extent. A clump of dark hemlocks surrounded the house, adding to the gloomy note of its unpainted walls, broken shutters and shattered windows, while in the neglected grounds weeds and trailing, unkempt vines ran riot everywhere.
Only to seaward was the place unencumbered by this wild, disordered tangle. In that direction there lay a broad, brick-floored terrace, of immense dimensions, upon which, tradition had it, Marshal De Regny used to strut with a telescope, ever and anon looking seaward for a sight of the expected vessel bearing the rescued captive from St. Helena.
This terrace, the boys were astonished to see, had been recently swept and repaired, offering a broad, smooth floor of considerable extent. At one end, too, stood a brand-new shed, painted green, and quite large. In front, and opening on the terrace, this shed had large double doors. What it housed could hardly be guessed from the exterior. The few fishermen who visited this isolated part of the beach concluded that the green shed must be a sort of boathouse.
The boys, however, basing their conclusions on the conversation they had overheard a short time before, decided that the airship, or aeroplane, or whatever kind of aerial craft it was, with which experiments were being conducted, must be housed within this shed.
Suddenly they saw a slender, erect figure, clad in the uniform of an officer of the United States Army, crossing the rough lawn lying between the house and the bricked terrace.
“It’s Lieutenant Duvall!” exclaimed Rob, hastening forward, followed by the others. The officer presently spied the intruders, and stopped short, with an angry expression on his countenance as he did so.