“That’s what it seems like to me,” said the other. “I have investigated a number of infernal machines, and they all make the same sort of sound before they go off.”
“Go off!” cried the clerk, while Joe and Blake were vainly endeavoring to get in a word that would explain matters. “If it’s dynamite, and goes off here, it will blow up the hotel. Get it away! Porter, go up and get that infernal machine, and dump it in a pail of water.”
“’Scuse me!” exclaimed the colored porter, as he made a break for the door. “I—I guess as how it’s time fo’ me to sweep off de sidewalk. It hain’t been swept dish yeah day, as yit. I’se gwine outside.”
“But we’ve got to get rid of that infernal machine!” insisted the clerk. “It’s been clicking away now for some time, and there’s no telling when it may go off. Get it, somebody—throw it out of the window.”
“No! Don’t do that!” cried the officer. “That will only make it go off the sooner. I’ll get some one from the bureau of combustibles and——”
“Say, you’re giving yourselves a needless lot of alarm!” interrupted Blake. “That’s no infernal machine!”
“No more than that ink bottle is!” added Joe, pointing to one on the clerk’s desk.
“But it clicks,” insisted the clerk. “It sounds just like a clock ticking inside that box.”
“And it’s pointing right at the bank,” went on the officer. “That bank was once partly wrecked because it was built by non-union labor, and we don’t want it to happen again.”
“There’s no danger—not the slightest,” cried Blake, while the crowd in the hotel lobby pressed around him. “That’s only an automatic moving picture camera, that we set this morning, and pointed out of the window to take street scenes. It works by compressed air, and the clicking you hear is the motor. Come, I’ll show you,” and he started toward his room, followed by Joe.