“I thought he was up to your place,” said Landlord Hinkley. “I’ve no idee whar’ the boy hes gone. He ain’t often out this late at night. I hope he ain’t up to any monkey shines. If he be, I’ll whale him good, big as he be.”
Jack decided that it was no use telling Sam’s father of all that had occurred since the morning. But when he hung up the receiver he was a sadly perplexed boy. When Heiny Dill departed for the hotel that night he promised to find out what he could. On his return the next morning he reported that a wire had been received from Sam, who said that he was going to New York. Landlord Hinkley found, incidentally, that the funds to finance Sam’s journey had been taken from his cash drawer. This was the sum total of young Dill’s information, and it was not enlightening.
In fact, it complicated the puzzle, for if Sam was not implicated in the robbery, and there was nothing to make them believe that he was, there was no apparent reason why he should decamp so suddenly, unless he feared that he might be prosecuted for the theft of the lever. The boys, therefore, were forced to conclude that this was the reason for Sam’s flight.
As for the sudden departure of Hank and Miles Sharkey, that was more understandable. They had practically hired Sam to make his desperate attempt to cripple the Electric Monarch, and knew that their plans must have been foiled when they saw the craft take to the air. This being so, they had probably argued that Sam would be arrested and would implicate them. Flight, then, must have seemed to them to be their wisest course.
And so, for the present, the mystery of the stolen plans had to be given up by the police and those most interested in the recovery of the papers, as an unsolvable puzzle. Of the startling way in which it was to be cleared up, none of those concerned had the slightest inkling. From day to day the boys feared to hear of the plans being filed in the patent office. But, although through Prof. Chadwick’s patent lawyers in Washington, they kept in constant touch with the National Capital, no such papers turned up. In the meantime the boys busied themselves making as complete a set of duplicate plans as possible, covering every patentable feature of the Electric Monarch.
[CHAPTER XXV.]
OFF TO THE FAIR.
Two days after the mysterious disappearance of the plans of the Electric Monarch the promised entry blanks for the Aëro Carnival at Portstown arrived. Inclosed with them the worthy captain had sent a copy of a Portstown newspaper in which there was announced in flaring capitals the following: