“All right. Sick of the place anyhow. I’ll do no more work!”
Hiram had been casually interested in the episode. Suddenly it suggested an idea to his quick mind. He took a dollar bill from his pocket.
“Say, my friend,” he spoke, “I like exercise. You lend me your jacket and hat, and I’ll give you that, and do the rest of your work.”
“Well!” murmured the man stolidly. “Must have lots of money to waste it that way. That’s a bargain. Leave the old coat and hat where they’ll find it, will you? There you are,” and the speaker divested himself of the bulk of his uniform, and went off with the dollar, chuckling gleefully.
Hiram waited till the man was out of sight. Then he went to the side of a path and proceeded to daub his hands and face with dust. The clumsy jacket came nearly to his knees. The hat was helmet-shaped. It dipped both front and rear and well shadowed his face.
“I think I’ll do. I can surely pass for what I pretend to be, if I don’t get where it’s too light,” decided Hiram.
A more industrious “white wings” never worked on the International grounds. Hiram seemed to have eyes for every stray fragment of rubbish. He boldly invaded the precincts of the Syndicate camp. Just inside several hangar’s men were playing cards, smoking and conversing.
“I don’t see anything of Mr. Borden,” soliloquized Hiram disappointedly. “There’s Worthington, though, and his special man, Valdec.”
The humble, dust-covered grounds-man picking up rubbish, suggested nothing suspicious to the two men, as Hiram poked around a bench on which they were seated engrossed in earnest conversation. Hiram speared an empty cigarette box not three feet away from the foot of Valdec. He approached close to the side of the bench making a great ado of kneeling, and picking up the fragments of a torn programme of the meet.
“Yes, I’ve got the altitude stunt fixed for good,” he overheard Valdec observe.