[CHAPTER IX.]
THE ARRIVAL OF TROUBLE.
It would be tedious to dwell upon the details of the construction of the craft which the boys, by unanimous vote, had decided to call the Electric Monarch. The work went steadily on and Prof. Chadwick, who had returned soon after the boys started work, rendered them valuable assistance. The previous experience with aerial craft, which the Boy Inventors had had, made the work progress far more rapidly than would otherwise have been the case, although the plans and drawings left by Jeptha Nevins were so detailed and exact that they encountered but few very knotty problems.
One day, not very long before the Electric Monarch, which had been finished in scarlet and silver, was ready for her trial trip, two strangers appeared at the Hinkley House. One was a broad-shouldered, clumsy-looking young man with a shock of black hair and carelessly brushed clothes, the other a tall, cadaverous-looking person of about the same age with shifty, rat-like eyes and a general air of furtive watchfulness.
Some time before this event, Ned, as an active partner in the firm of the Boy Inventors, had taken up his residence at High Towers. There were two reasons for this. One was that it was far more convenient to the work which was being rushed to completion, the other that as the Electric Monarch neared the day for her trial trip, Ned grew more and more nervous about leaving the craft unwatched.
Accordingly, he had a small cot fixed up in the corner of the workshop where he slept at night. Ned himself would have been at a loss to account for this nervousness; nevertheless he felt a vague mistrust. It was not that he feared any harm Sam Hinkley might do to the craft, for although there was no love lost toward Ned on Sam’s part, Ned was pretty sure that the Hinkley boy would not dare take active reprisals. But yet he felt that it was well to observe caution.
Sam came and went to his work as usual, and as he, as well as the other workmen, had given their words not to let anything leak out about the Electric Monarch till she was ready for a flight, no uneasiness was felt about this circumstance.
As a matter of fact, even if it had been known that a big air craft was being constructed at High Towers, it would not have excited much comment in the village. The inhabitants of Nestorville had grown too used to hearing about strange inventions being built at the big house on the hill to feel any undue curiosity about them. And yet, Ned vaguely felt that danger threatened.
The two strangers gave out at the Hinkley House that they were traveling for a drug firm. They made themselves friendly with the proprietor who, after being presented with cigars, voted them two “good fellows.” Perhaps he might have thought them “inquisitive fellows,” too, if soon after his new guests’ arrival, when he had been summoned to answer a long-distance telephone, he had noticed one of them slip up to the register, open it and search hurriedly for a name.