The boys got up and moved away. The man by the marble column stared after them for a moment, a gleam of growing resolution showing in his black eyes. Turning suddenly, he dropped his newspaper into one of the vacant chairs and bolted for the street.
His mind had evolved a plan, and it was aimed at the motor boys.
[CHAPTER II.
STARTLING NEWS.]
Matt and McGlory decided that they would not use an automobile for their morning’s work. The cowboy would go downtown by the subway and Matt would use a surface car. They separated, McGlory rather dazed and skeptical about his prospective fortune, and Matt more confident and highly delighted over his chum’s unexpected good luck.
It chanced that Matt had spent some time in Arizona, and he knew, from near-at-hand observation, how suddenly the wheel of fortune changes for better or for worse in mining affairs.
One of Matt’s best friends, “Chub” McReady, had leaped from poverty to wealth by such a turn of the wheel, and Matt was prepared to believe that the same dazzling luck could come McGlory’s way.
Within half an hour after leaving his chum, the young motorist was in the Flatiron Building, asking the man on duty at the elevators where he could find Mr. James Arthur Lafitte, the gentleman whom Cameron had mentioned as being interested in the problem of aëronautics. Lafitte, Cameron had told Matt, was a member of the Aëro Club, had owned a balloon of his own, and had made many ascensions from the town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts—which was near Matt’s old home in the Berkshire Hills; but, Cameron had also said, Lafitte had given up plain ballooning for dirigibles, and, finally, had turned his back on dirigibles for heavier-than-air machines. He was a civil engineer of an inventive turn, and with an adventurous nature—just the sort of person Matt would like to meet.
Having learned the number of Lafitte’s suite of rooms, Matt stepped aboard the elevator and was whisked skyward. Getting out under the roof, he made his way to the door bearing Lafitte’s name, and passed inside.
A young man, in his shirt sleeves, was working at a drawing table. Matt asked for Mr. Lafitte, and was informed, much to his disappointment, that he was at his workshop on Long Island, and would probably not be in the city for two or three days.