"Has he been around again?" asked Helen, and there was a note of annoyance in her voice.
"He hasn't been seen," said Joe. "But this man may have been in communication with him. Bill may have been studying the trick out since his last failure, and I must admit that he's on the right trail—that is, if it was Bill who put this man up to making the claim."
"What makes you think Bill had anything to do with it?" asked Helen.
"Well, for the reason that this is just the kind of town where Bill would be likely to have friends—I mean in a big manufacturing center. Bill may have found a man who is willing to act to help pull down the reward for him. But this time they failed."
"He may succeed next time," remarked Helen.
"No, I'll take care of that," Joe said. "I'm going to make a change in the box."
As the mechanism of the trick box has been explained in the preceding volume, it will not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that Joe's method of getting out of the box could be changed, so that if a person thought he had discovered the secret panel it could be shifted to another part of the case.
It was two or three days after this, and Joe had made a change in his box which satisfied him that the secret would not soon be discovered, that Helen, coming over to where he sat in his private tent, saw him making what seemed to be torches.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "Do you think our electric lights or gasoline flares are going to fail?" she went on jokingly. The Sampson Brothers' Show was a modern one, and carried a portable electric light plant.
"Oh, no, I'm not worrying about that!" answered Joe. "But I have a new idea for my wire act, and I want to see if it will work out."