“I think I can explain, chief,” said the night clerk, coming forward. “It’s plain enough that this fellow,—the ‘Deacon’ as you call him,—tried to get into Mr. Dill’s room. He succeeded, but instead of robbing Dill he was seized by this what-you-may-call it.”
He indicated the sausage machine lying in a heap of spider-like limbs and springs on the floor near-by.
“Dot is not a what-you-mighdt-call-idt——” began young Dill indignantly, “idt is a sissage machine. I pudt him der door py ven I go to mein schleep. I suppose dot dis feller got ger-grabbed by idt ven he come to take all der money dot I told him early in der efenin’ I hadt in mein shoes.”
It was some time before things quieted down and the notorious “Deacon” was taken off to the village lock-up. Young Dill was the recipient of many congratulations on the success of his “burglar-trap.” But somehow they did not please him. As he returned to his interrupted slumbers he muttered to himself:
“I am a preddy bum inventor alretty. I don’d know meinself vot I invent. Here I go to vurk undt make idt a fine sissage machine undt now I haf to turn idt into a burglar-trap—Himmel!”
[CHAPTER XVI.]
THE LOST LEVER.
Bright and early the next morning the young inventors, and the workmen attached to their “plant,” wheeled out the framework of the Electric Monarch and the business of attaching the wings was begun. It was just half an hour from the time the work began to the moment when the last bolt was in place, and like a huge red and silver butterfly the wonderful craft stood poised ready for flight.
The boys had had but little sleep and their dreams had been of skimming the air or gliding over the surface of the sea. Now, as they stood back and gazed at their completed handiwork, they felt a proud thrill of work well done. Come what might of the trial trip, they felt that they had done their very best.