All this time the boy was thinking, “I’ve got to get the better of him. I must do it. But how?”
He moved a little. Something poked into his side. What was that? Oh yes, he remembered. A bottle! A sudden desperate plan came to him.
“Well,” he spoke slowly, “as long as we’re here, we may as well talk about something. Let’s make it liquid air.”
“Air ain’t no liquid,” the little man protested.
“Sometimes it is.” Goggles’ courage was growing. “You can make it liquid by putting it under very high pressure and getting it down to 216 degrees below zero. When it gets into liquid form you may keep it in a bottle for three or four days.” At this point he pulled the flat bottle from his pocket. It was half filled with a pale liquid. The little man stared at the bottle. “Liquid air is strange stuff,” Goggles went on. “It’s cold, colder than the North Pole. Put a fresh rose in it for a second, take it out and you can pinch it into a powder. Put a steel clock spring in it, take it out and it will snap like glass. Stick your finger in a bottle of it and I’ll break it off like an icicle.” He thrust the bottle out before him. The little man seemed to shrink back.
The boy’s tone did not change. He might have been a professor lecturing to a class. “Yes, liquid air is strange. I could pour it over my hand, or even put it in my mouth and, providing I got rid of it at once, it would not harm me. One minute of holding a spoonful in my mouth would mean death.
“If I were to pour even a small amount down your neck—” (he drew himself forward ever so little), “which I could—I’m strong. Much stronger than you think. I have strong fingers and arms. If I poured a quarter of a bottle down your back you would die. No one would guess what killed you. The liquid air would turn to gas and there you’d be. You—”
A strange look of terror came into the little man’s eyes as he cried in a shrill high-pitched voice, “You let me be! Don’t touch me! I’ll leave at the next stop, and you’ll never see me again. So help me, you won’t!”
Goggles settled back in his place. As he did so, his right hand was closed about the bottle, carefully concealing a printed label.
After that the big bi-motored plane with its flying baseball team in its cabin and that curious cargo in its wings sped across the land. Not once did Goggles relinquish his hold on that magic bottle. From time to time the little dark man spoke. His words were always in the nature of a confession. He had been hired by Big Bill Tyson to break up this trip. He had not been told why—he had only been paid to do it. He knew about locks. Locks had always been easy for him. He had a key to the lock on the door to this place. How? Well, that did not matter. He hadn’t succeeded in breaking up the cruise. Now he was going to quit.