Hiram Dobbs was whistling like a nightingale, Bruce Beresford was polishing up the brass work of the new Ariel for the fifth or sixth time, when suddenly Hiram made a derisive sweep with his handful of cotton waste towards two passers-by—Valdec and one of his crowd.
“Hah!” uttered Dave Dashaway’s assistant—“you’ve had your claws cut short this time!”
Safe and sound, more than hopeful, and very happy felt the young pilot of the Scout. Hiram could defy all his foes now. Day and night, half a dozen men from the aero plant formed a perfect cordon around the hangar which housed the almost sure winner of the International, as Hiram insisted on putting it.
There had been a sort of jollification conference the evening before in a room at the grounds clubhouse, where the manufacturer and his three friends felt free to discuss affairs in general without the fear of intruders or listeners. It was there that Dave explained his recent adventure at the sand dunes. His capture and the destruction of the old Ariel had been the result of a well laid plot on the part of the Syndicate crowd and their allies.
It was Borden who had saved the day. Hiram’s heart warmed anew towards the tramp artist as he realized how loyally the latter had repaid the slight kindness they had shown a homeless wanderer at the Midlothian grounds.
“Mr. Borden warned you too late, Hiram,” explained Dave, “but he found a way, a little later, to be doubly useful in our interests. The men who made me a prisoner at the sand dunes and burned up the old Ariel I had never seen before. I was taken perhaps thirty miles in a closed wagon, tied hand and foot, and guarded by a balking fellow, so I kept pretty still.”
“Where did they take you, Mr. Dashaway?” the interested Bruce had asked.
“To an old building in a big town over the state line. It must have been a factory, at some time or other. It had all gone to ruin, and they kept me in a room in the boiler house, with a heavy iron door to it. The Syndicate crowd sent Mr. Borden down to help their man guard me. I don’t know how he managed it, but he got entire charge of me, and let his supposed fellow watchman lay around the town. The first night he got a wire to Mr. Brackett who came down for me. Since then I have been practicing near the Aero Company’s plant, and watching our new beauty of a biplane grow into the finest craft of its class in the world.”
“And Mr. Borden?” pressed Hiram curiously.
“I don’t think the Syndicate crowd had the least idea that I was free until I showed up on the grounds here,” declared Dave.