Shouldering his trunk, he climbed the ladder and slid it back into his room. After that he carried the ladder to its place on some hooks against the wood-shed.
“Fellow’s foolish to keep a ladder outside his house,” he grumbled. “Invites thieves.”
For all that, as he tiptoed back up the stairs, he experienced a surprising sense of relief. The thought-camera, he supposed, was gone for good, and with it a great deal of his responsibility in the matter.
CHAPTER XXI
LIQUID AIR—ALMOST
In the wing of the airplane, sailing high above the western prairies, Goggles was in a tight place. He had never been in a tighter one and never expected to be in the future, if indeed there was to be a future.
Just what had he expected when he crawled into that narrow place? Certainly not this. Perhaps he had hoped that someone would unlock the trap door after they landed. Then he would catch him. But now, as he thought all this, and his head went into a whirl, the little dark man looked up and saw him. For one full minute he did not speak or move; only his beady eyes bored into the boy’s very soul.
“So you’re here!” he said at last. “Don’t you think I did a good enough job messing things up? Well then, you and the Big Shot are agreed. But what’s he want?”
“I don’t know.” Goggles spoke slowly. He was thinking hard. He was, as we have said, in a tight enough place surely. Securely sealed up in a duramen tube a half mile in air with no means of communicating with his friends and with this enemy staring him in the face, his situation was anything but pleasant.
“Why do you want to spoil things for us?” he asked in as quiet a tone as he could command.
“I—why, now I don’t.” The little man laughed mirthlessly. “I’m paid to do it. I do what I’m paid to do.”