“Is—is that right?” asked the hotel clerk, doubtfully.
“Are you sure it isn’t dynamite?” inquired the officer.
“Well, if we’re not afraid to take a chance in going in the same room with what you call an infernal machine, you ought not to be,” said Joe, with a smile.
This was logic that could not be refuted, and they followed the boys to the room. There, just where they had left it, was the camera, the motor clicking away industriously. It worked intermittently, running for five minutes, and then ceasing for half an hour, so as not to use up the reel of film too quickly. Also, it made a diversity of street scenes, an automatic arrangement swinging the lens slightly after each series of views, so as to get the new ones at a different angle.
“Now we’ll show you,” said Blake, as, having noted that all the film was run out, and was in the light-tight exposed box, he opened the camera and showed the harmless mechanism. Several of the hotel employees crowded into the room, once they learned there was no danger.
The boys explained the working of the apparatus, and this seemed to satisfy the officer.
“But we were surely suspicious of you at first,” he said, with a smile.
“Yes,” said the clerk. “A chambermaid called my attention to the clicking sound when she was making up the room. I investigated, and when I heard it, and saw the queer box, and remembered that we had had dynamiting here, I sent for the police.”
“We’re sorry to have given you a scare,” said Blake, and then the incident was over, and the crowd in the street dispersed on learning there was to be no sensation.
“Say, I think there’s some sort of hoodoo about us,” remarked Joe, as he and Blake sat in their room.