Young Dill had seized Jupe by the back of the neck and
dragged him, half drowned, to the shore.—Page 98

THE BOY INVENTORS’
ELECTRIC
HYDROAEROPLANE

BY

RICHARD BONNER
AUTHOR OF “THE BOY INVENTORS’ WIRELESS TRIUMPH,” “THE BOY INVENTORS AND THE VANISHING GUN,” “THE BOY INVENTORS’ DIVING TORPEDO BOAT,” “THE BOY INVENTORS’
FLYING SHIP,” ETC., ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
CHARLES L. WRENN

NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1914,
BY
HURST & COMPANY

[CONTENTS]

The Boy Inventors’ Electric Hydroaeroplane.

[CHAPTER I.]
A NEW FRIEND MADE.

“Are either Mr. Chadwick or Mr. Jesson about?”

“Humph!” and the gangling, rather disagreeable-looking youth who had answered the summons to the door of the Boy Inventors’ workshop, gave a supercilious look over the dusty and worn, although carefully mended, clothes of the dark-eyed, dark-haired, slender youth who confronted him.

“What do you want to know that for, anyhow?” and upon the personal pronoun he placed a contemptuous emphasis.

“That is a question to which I can only reply when I can see either Jack Chadwick or Tom Jesson personally. My name is Ned Nevins,—not that either of them knows me,—but will you be so kind as to find out if they’ll see me?”

“If you can’t tell me your business, you can’t see them. State what you want to me. If it’s money——”

“It is not!”

The dark-eyed young visitor’s eyes held a warning flash which the other lad, who was half a head taller and far stouter of build than Ned Nevins, affected not to notice.

“Well, you can’t speak to them.” This with an air of finality.

“But you don’t understand——”

“I do, perfectly. They are both far too busy to bother with any inquisitive kind of tramp that happens along.”

“Then you won’t let them know I would like to see them?”

The other’s voice rose angrily.

“I said ‘No’ once. N-O-no! Isn’t that enough?”

“Quite enough.”

Ned Nevins turned away. As he did so, the other lad, an employee of the Boy Inventors, and a former school chum, noticed that he had under his arm a box which he appeared to handle with unusual care. But Sam Hinkley noted also Ned’s dejected and downcast air. He decided to humiliate him still further.

“Get a move on—you. Skip!”

Ned hastened his pace. He felt too disappointed and tired to retort to the bully as he should have done. Sam Hinkley interpreted this as cowardice on Ned’s part, and being a natural bully he decided to improve the occasion according to his own delight. He came up behind Ned and gave the slightly-built lad a strong shove.

Ned faced ’round, and his pale face flushed an angry crimson.

“Don’t do that again, please!”

Young Hinkley’s rejoinder was to make a rush at him. He extended both his hands to shove the visitor, whom he had found so unwelcome, off the premises. But the next instant he met with a setback. Still holding his precious box under one arm, Ned’s fingers closed on the bully’s wrists. They shut down with a grip like steel handcuffs.

“Ow! Ouch! Leggo my hands,” roared Sam at the top of his voice.

“From what I’ve heard of Jack Chadwick and Tom Jesson I don’t believe they would tolerate for an instant the way you have behaved toward me,” was the firm reply. “March!”

“Where are we going?” inquired Sam, writhing painfully under the young stranger’s powerful grip, unable to do anything, try as he would to shake it off.

“Straight into that workshop. From what I can hear, I believe we will find those whom I wish to see inside.”

Sam looked very uncomfortable. He was the son of fairly well-to-do parents in the little town of Nestorville, on the outskirts of which Mr. Chadwick’s home was situated. Jack and Tom had taken him on because he was a youth who had always shown mechanical ability and had pleaded persistently for a chance to work in the big experimental shop at High Towers.

But a fair trial of Sam Hinkley had not resulted in his rising in favor with his young employers. He had been detected in several mean acts. Besides, they felt he was hardly a lad to be trusted with the important secrets of the workshop, in which most of the inventions of the boys and their father and uncle were worked out. So that had Sam but known it, he was by no means so important a factor at High Towers as he imagined.

“Lemmo go and I’ll take you in,” howled Sam.

“Very well. You might have done so in the first place.”

But no sooner were Sam’s hands released than he aimed a savage blow at young Nevins.

“I’ll trim you for this, you—you scarecrow, you!” he bawled out. “I’ll fix you. I’ll——”

“Here, here! What’s all the trouble about?”

The question was asked by a tall, well-built youth with curly dark hair and sparkling, intelligent eyes, who had just appeared at the door of the workshop.

“I—I wanted to find Mr. Chadwick, Jr.,” began the newcomer, while Sam looked abashed.

“Sure you weren’t looking for trouble?” asked Jack, but a twinkle in his eyes belied the implied reproach in the question. He knew Sam Hinkley from the soles of his shoes up. Besides, he had witnessed the last part of the recent scene and realized how the land lay.

“Go back on your job,” he ordered Sam brusquely, “those bolts must be ready by noon at the latest.”

“Bu-bu-but——” began Sam, and then, reading what he saw in Jack’s eye aright, he obeyed, but not without a backward glance at Ned Nevins.

“Why—why, you are Jack—I mean Mister——”

“That’s all right,” was the smiling response, “I am Jack Chadwick. What did you wish to see me about?”

“Principally about getting a job. I——”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing here for you,” was the reply, as Jack glanced with interest at the intelligent face that gazed so eagerly into his own, and then, as he saw the travel-stained lad’s countenance fall he added, “You see this is an experimental shop mainly, and——”

“I know. I’ve heard all about your inventions, the Sky-ship and the diving Torpedo Boat and so on. I love mechanics and I’m sure I could make good if you’d give me a chance.”

“What is your name?”

“Nevins is my name, sir.”

“Ever had any experience along such lines?”

“Yes, sir, my uncle was an inventor. He was poor and worked in a machine-shop, but when he was at home he and I used to spend all our time in a workshop he had fitted up. You see my folks died a long time ago and I was brought up in my uncle’s home. He said that some day I’d be famous if I worked hard and that I had a natural ability for mechanics and——”

Ned Nevins stopped short, flushed over what he felt had been a conceited speech. But Jack glanced at him encouragingly. The young inventor was quick to read character. He began to take an interest in this ragged visitor, who had dropped down out of the skies, so to speak.

“But you are not living with your uncle now, Nevins?”

“Oh, no. He was killed a month or more ago in an accident in the mills. My aunt didn’t want me ’round the house; no more did my cousin. So I packed up what I had; it wasn’t much,” with a rueful smile, “and—and——”

“Set out to seek your fortune. So far, if you don’t mind my saying it, you don’t appear to have succeeded very well. And so you want a job. How have you been making your way?”

“Doing odd jobs for farmers and so on. I’m clever at repairing automobile machinery, and I earned a little that way. You see, my object was to make my way here, otherwise I might have got two or three jobs in garages or machine shops.”

“Why were you so anxious to come here?” demanded Jack, beginning to feel an interest in this persistent youngster.

“Because of a strange legacy my uncle left me.”

“That’s an odd reason.”

“I know it; but may I explain?”

“Surely. Go ahead.”

“Well, it was a legacy that he said would bring me fame and fortune some day. It may have been only an inventor’s dream. My poor uncle had many such, or it may not be all that he thought of it. There were many reasons why I couldn’t consult any one in my own town about it, and as I’d read of you and felt I could trust you and your advice, I sought you out. But if the invention, for that’s what the legacy was, is worth anything or not, I want a job.”

“Come on inside, Nevins. You seem to have the right stuff in you. We’ll have a talk.”

And with a wide-eyed youth behind him, Jack led the way into the workshop. Sam Hinkley viewed his young employer and the latter’s companion with marked disfavor from his work bench.

“Wormed your way into the place already, have you?” he muttered. “I’ll keep my eye on you, young fellow, and don’t you forget it.”

[CHAPTER II.]
AN INVENTION DESCRIBED.

Ned Nevins had told nothing but the simple truth when he stated that he had endured many hardships and much rough travel under unpleasant conditions in order to obtain an interview with the Boy Inventors.

He was a boy of singularly firm character and persistency or he would never have triumphed over the obstacles he had conquered in order to gain his ambition. When Ned’s uncle, Jeptha Nevins, had died, he had entrusted to the boy the tin box which we have seen Ned guarding with so much care. It contained plans and specifications of an invention upon which the elder Nevins had spent all his spare time for many years.

Whether the invention was a practical one or not, Ned, skillful as he was in the line of mechanics, did not know. But his uncle’s faith in the value of his invention was so great that he had inspired his nephew with almost implicit confidence in the soundness of his judgment.

Ned might have stayed in his home town and awaited a more favorable opportunity for setting out on his travels but for one thing. Jeptha Nevins had a son, a hulking ne’er-do-well sort of lad, or rather young man, for he was some years the senior of Ned, who was sixteen.

Following his father’s death, “Hank” Nevins, as he was known among his cronies, made a big fuss when he learned that Ned had been left the plans of Jeptha Nevins’ invention. There was little else but the furniture in the house and a small sum of money in the savings bank; and so Hank Nevins laid formal claim to the plans of the invention from which Jeptha Nevins had hoped so much.

But Ned refused absolutely to give them up to Hank. With almost his dying words, Jeptha Nevins had entrusted the plans to his nephew, for he had long since given up hopes of making anything out of Hank. In fact Ned knew that it had been his uncle’s wish that Hank should know nothing of the invention, but in some way the latter had discovered the fact of its existence, and he hoped, that by selling it, (provided it was in any way practical,) he might obtain some money which he could expend in dissipation.

When he found that Ned was unwilling, or rather refused absolutely, to give up the plans, Hank had flung out of the house with all manner of threats, among them being that he would force his cousin to give up the coveted plans by process of law. Ned knew nothing of law and like many persons similarly situated, the idea of Hank’s resorting to lawyers to obtain possession of the plans alarmed him. Among Hank’s acquaintances was a young law clerk of “sporty” proclivities. With the aid of this young limb of the law, Hank had succeeded in thoroughly alarming Ned as to the legality of his retention of the papers. Matters were constituted thus when Ned determined not to risk the possession of his uncle’s plans any longer but to leave the small cottage, where they all lived, and seek counsel and aid elsewhere than in his native village.

From the first time he had read of them, the Boy Inventors had possessed a large place in Ned’s mind. In his extremity, therefore, he had decided to seek them out and try to interest them in the untried invention.

“Sit down,” said Jack, when the two boys were inside a small room at one end of the workshop which, for lack of a better word, was called the office. It was a very business-like looking room. Books on technical topics lined the shelves at one end of it. Models, samples of materials, test-tubes and other apparatus occupied most of the rest of the available space.

Under the book shelves, however, was a desk. It was to one of the chairs standing beside this latter piece of furniture that Jack motioned his odd guest.

Ned sank into the chair with an alacrity that made it plain that he was tired. He had, in fact, come some miles from his last stopping place that morning.

“I’m sorry that you had that trouble with Sam Hinkley,” began Jack in a kindly tone, “he should have known better than to treat you as he did.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” the other assured him hastily, “I’d have stood for a lot more than that in order to get a chance to see you and tell you what I’ve traveled a good way to say.”

“You said you had an invention, I think.”

“Yes; but it is not, properly speaking, mine,” and then Ned Nevins went on briefly to describe the circumstances by which he had come into possession of the plans in which both he and his uncle set so much store. But up to this point he had not mentioned the nature of the invention and Jack brought him to the point by a question.

“And just what may this invention be?”

Ned Nevins hesitated a few seconds before replying.

“I hardly know just what to call it,” he said, “but I guess an electric hydroaeroplane about describes it.”

Jack’s face betrayed his interest.

“You mean a craft capable of air and water travel that is driven by electricity?” he asked.

“That’s just it. But there are many novel features about it, however. My uncle set most store by one particular novelty in its construction, and that was the fact that it was driven by electricity instead of gasolene. Gasolene is bulky, dangerous and heavy to carry, and sometimes hard to obtain, but by using an electric generator, worked while the machine is in motion, the Nevins hydroaeroplane, as my uncle called it, has plenty of cheap power always obtainable and is simpler than gasolene-driven motors in a number of ways.”

“But about your storage batteries—I suppose that’s the idea?”

Ned Nevins nodded.

“That’s just the point I was coming to,” he said; “one of the most notable features of the Nevins hydroaeroplane is the fact that its power is furnished by storage batteries many times lighter than any yet constructed, and capable of developing many times the power. But the plans will show you all that far better than I can explain.”

“I should like to see them.”

Although he was interested and showed it, Jack Chadwick had seen far too many impracticable inventions to wax enthusiastic over any scheme till he had examined into it for himself. But he knew that if young Nevins had what he said he had, he was in possession of a big thing.

So it was with considerable expectancy that he watched young Nevins fumble with the lock of the battered tin case. Finally he opened the receptacle and drew out a roll of papers. These proved to be blue prints, and closely penned writings covering several foolscap sheets.

Naturally, Jack’s attention was first directed to the blue prints that young Nevins eagerly spread out on the table before him. Accustomed as he was to such things, he read the intricate lines and tracings almost as plainly as print.

[CHAPTER III.]
AN IMPORTANT DECISION.

“Well, what do you think of it?”

Ned asked the question with almost pitiful eagerness. His tone clearly betrayed how much the answer meant to him.

“I think that the idea appears feasible, but of course, I can’t say anything definite yet,” was Jack’s rejoinder. “I will have to consult with my cousin, Tom Jesson——”

Ned nodded that he had heard of young Jesson, who had had so much to do with the Boy Inventors’ work.

“And after we have gone over the plans together we can tell you just what we think of it. Suppose that the idea appears to be possible to work out, what would your plans be?”

“That we each take an equal chance in the profits that may come from it,” replied Ned in quick, certain tones that showed he had thought the matter out all clearly in his own mind.

“Well, that would come later. You would be clearly entitled to more than a third share, for the invention practically belongs to you.”

“Yes, but I have no capital to put into its manufacture. My idea was that you would build the craft, with me to help, for I know my uncle’s ideas in regard to the craft backward, almost.”

Jack smiled.

“I see you have every detail figured out.”

“If you knew how much I have thought of it!” exclaimed Ned.

“I can well imagine that. Well, Ned, I can promise you one thing—if the invention offers any possibility of success we will undertake it. We have nothing on hand just now and this is surely a big idea you have brought us.”

“I believe in it,” declared the boy fervently.

“Well, that’s half the battle. Suppose you come and see us to-morrow morning. We will go over the plans to-night and see what we think of them. By the way, where are you staying?”

“Nowhere just at present. I came straight up here as soon as I arrived in Nestorville.”

“You must have been eager to see us.”

“I was, indeed. I had traveled a good many miles to do so, as I explained.”

“Well, Sam Hinkley’s father keeps a sort of hotel in Nestorville. It is cheaper than a regular first-class place but I think you will find it comfortable.”

“Anything will suit me. I shan’t sleep much to-night, anyhow,” replied Ned, taking no notice of the name that Jack had mentioned.

“Don’t build too many hopes, Ned. I should hate to have to disappoint you.”

The boys shook hands and parted. Jack watched the dusty figure of Ned Nevins as the boy wended his way down the hill.

“There goes a boy with the right stuff in him,” he said to himself. Although he was young in years, Jack Chadwick was ripe in experience, as those of our readers who have followed the adventures of the Boy Inventors through the various volumes know.

For the benefit of those who are making their first acquaintance with the two lads, we will briefly relate the careers of Jack Chadwick and Tom Jesson, his cousin, up to the time that we resume our friendship with them in the present book.

Jack Chadwick’s father was the famous Professor Chadwick, whose various inventions had made him well-to-do, and who was known throughout the civilized world. The Chadwick method of steel reduction and the same inventor’s ingenious devices for rock boring and drilling came to the notice of the general public during the construction of the Panama Canal. But Professor Chadwick had to his credit a host of other inventions which, if not quite so well known to the world at large, none the less played a large part in the history of civilization.

The Professor, whose wife had died soon after Jack’s birth and before fame came to him, had purchased the estate of High Towers, lying a short distance from the pretty little town of Nestorville as a secluded place in which to carry on his researches. Not long after he had acquired it, Mr. Jasper Jesson, his brother-in-law and a well-known explorer and biologist, was reported missing while on an expedition in the tropics. As Mr. Jesson was also a widower, the care of young Tom Jesson, the explorer’s only child, devolved upon Prof. Chadwick.

Jack Chadwick and Tom Jesson had thus practically grown up together and were more like brothers than cousins. As time went on, both lads developed a strong liking for pursuits similar to the Professor’s, and when still a young boy, Jack had invented a patent churn, which came into wide use, as well as improving many household devices. The Professor was delighted with the skill and adaptability of both boys, and aided them all he could in their chosen pursuits. They both took technical courses at a school in Boston, not far from which city Nestorville was situated.

Aeronautics before long began to engage their attention to the exclusion of every other study. Professor Chadwick, too, was interested in this topic, which was developed at High Towers, together with some experiments in an improved wireless plant.

In the first volume of this series, “The Boy Inventors’ Wireless Triumph,” we saw how the boys’ hard work bore fruit in an adventurous voyage to Yucatan. They participated in many thrilling adventures and dangerous experiences which culminated in the finding of Tom Jesson’s long missing father.

The next volume showed the boys in a new field of endeavor. There is brotherhood among inventors, and when a friend of Mr. Chadwick’s, who was perplexed by problems connected with a new sort of gun, came to them they were glad to aid him in any way they could.

This work involved them in a surprising series of experiences, not all of which were pleasant. In fact, at times, every ounce of resource, courage and perseverance, which both lads possessed to a high degree, was called into requisition to bring them out of their difficulties. This volume was called “The Boy Inventors’ Vanishing Gun,” and related, in considerable detail, the final triumphant outcome of the trials and tribulations which had beset the youthful mechanics.

In the third book dealing with our young friends, we found them essaying triumphs in a new element. This volume was called “The Boy Inventors’ Diving Torpedo Boat.” The boat was a masterpiece of mechanical construction and a long cruise the boys took in her under the surface of the waves provided a narrative of surpassing interest and gripping power. By the aid of their submarine torpedo boat the boys were enabled to play an important part in succoring some beleaguered Americans, who were in peril of their lives at the hands of a band of bloodthirsty Cuban revolutionists. The boys were put to a hard test during this period of their lives, but after all, their experiences endowed them with increased self-reliance and manliness which was to prove of inestimable benefit to them later on, when these qualities brought them successfully through adventures and trials more rigorous than any they had yet faced.

A Flying Ship was their next craft and in her the boys ventured on a unique quest through the untrodden regions of the Upper Amazon. An odd German professor was their companion and mentor. This was Professor Bismarck Von Dinkelspeil, who was as kind-hearted as he was eccentric. Professor Von Dinkelspeil was in search of an extraordinary inhabitant of the remote Brazilian jungles. The boys met him in a strange way and were enabled to offer him much assistance. Dick Donovan, a lively young reporter, and Captain Abe Sprowl, a rough-and-ready New England skipper, were others of their companions on what proved a unique cruise, the details of which were fully set forth in the volume immediately preceding the present, which was called “The Boy Inventors’ Flying Ship.”

Naturally interested in aeronautics as they were then, the two lads went into “executive session” over the plans of Ned Nevins’ electrical hydroaeroplane as soon as Tom Jesson returned from Boston, which was late that afternoon. He had gone to the city to order some materials needed in a new landing device the boys were working on. Far into the night the two boys pored over the plans, waxing more and more enthusiastic as they progressed.

“It seems to me that this craft is as practical and as possible to construct as an electric roadster,” declared Jack, as they concluded their labors.

“To build, yes, but how about it working when it is built?” said Tom Jesson, who was less of an idealist than his enthusiastic cousin.

“Are you willing to try it, Tom?”

“I am, yes. How about you?”

“I’m confident enough of success to risk some of the money we made out of that Yucatan treasure chest.”

“Then I’ll contribute my share, too. When do we start?”

“Nothing to hinder us getting on the job right away. This is too big a thing to keep waiting. We’ll send for Ned Nevins first thing in the morning. If this invention turns out half as well as it looks, his legacy will make him famous as well as relieve him from want.”

Possibly, if the boys could have looked into the future, Jack would not have spoken so confidently. Troubles they never dreamed of lay ahead of them, and, at that, in the near future.

[CHAPTER IV.]
NED TO THE RESCUE.

In the meantime, Ned Nevins had retraced his steps to Nestorville. It was a pleasant little village, with neat, white houses lining its elm-bordered streets, each with its trim lawn and flower beds. To the boy who had been wandering in the dusty roads so long, it appeared wonderfully homelike and pleasant, although his travel-stained garments looked doubly distasteful to him in the midst of so much neatness and unobtrusive prosperity.

He passed the main hotel of the place and continued down High Street till he came to a rather less pretentious-looking place, bearing over its door the name, “The Hinkley House.” It was not until then that Ned suddenly recollected that Hinkley was the name by which Jack had referred to the disagreeable youth up at the workshop.

“Wonder if he’s any relation?” thought Ned to himself as he ascended the steps and entered the office.

A man with bristly red hair, and a not over-pleasant expression of countenance, stood behind the desk writing in a big book.

“Well, boy?” he asked sharply, as Ned entered the place. “If you’re selling anything we don’t want nothing.”

And then he resumed his writing without taking any more notice of Ned, who eyed him rather amusedly for a few seconds. Then he addressed him in a pleasant tone.

“I should like to get a room here, please.”

“Humph!” the red-haired man looked up with a grunt rather suggestive of a certain barnyard animal. “A room, did you say?”

“Yes, sir. An inexpensive one. In fact, as cheap a one as you have.”

“Sure you can pay for it?” was the uncompromising reply.

“I certainly can or I shouldn’t have asked you for it,” said Ned, with the same flash in his eyes as had come there when Sam Hinkley had addressed him so rudely that morning.

Apparently the landlord of the Hinkley House concluded that he had gone far enough, for in a more amiable tone he said:

“I can let you have a good room for a dollar. Want your meals?”

“For to-day anyway,” responded Ned, who had saved from his garage work along the road enough to make him feel sure of himself for a short time, anyhow.

The business was soon concluded and Ned was at liberty to go up to his room. As soon as he was alone, he drew a chair to the window and sat there thinking deeply. Naturally his thoughts all reverted to one subject, and that was: what would be the verdict at High Towers?

“If they only knew how much depended upon it,” thought the boy to himself, and then his fancy roamed back to that final scene when he had looked on his uncle for the last time and had received what to him was almost a sacred trust. From this his thoughts turned to his ne’er-do-well cousin and the latter’s threats. His uncle had left no will and Ned was not quite certain in his own mind if he had any legal rights to the papers dealing with the electric hydroaeroplane.

“If they were to find out where I had come, they might try to make it unpleasant for me,” he thought with a momentary qualm, but the next moment he put these thoughts aside, and when he descended to dinner he was in a cheerful, hopeful frame of mind.

Mine host Hinkley’s meals were not of the sort that could be described as Lucullan, but they were solid, and Ned ate with the hearty appetite of a growing boy. After he had finished, he decided to saunter out and see what he could of the town. It would at least help to pass away the time till the next day, upon which he felt his fate hung. For the life of him he could not have settled down to read or write till he knew definitely what the verdict upon his unique legacy was to be.

In this frame of mind he wandered through the main street of the little town, which did not take very long, and soon found himself out upon the high road. The road was a pleasant winding one, and Ned walked on briskly, turning over in his mind, as he went, the many events that had recently transpired to work such a change in his career. He could not help an exultant leap of the heart as he thought of the possible outcome of a favorable opinion of the dead inventor’s great lifework.

He was still revolving this thought in his mind when, on rounding a turn in the winding road, he came across a sight which temporarily put all other thoughts aside.

Stalled in the center of the road was a fine looking automobile. Ned, who, as we know, knew a lot about cars, recognized it as a machine of expensive make and as an imported car. Bent over the engine was a man who appeared to be trying to adjust whatever was the matter with the motor. Standing about were two other men. As Ned came up, one of them turned to him.

“Here, boy, do you know if there’s a garage in Nestorville?”

Now, Ned knew that there was not, for he had looked about for one, thinking that if his mission at High Towers failed, he might chance to get employment in such a place till he got money enough to find a better job. So he replied in the negative.

The man, who wore auto goggles, and was big and broad, turned to his companion with a gesture of annoyance.

“Too bad, Smithers,” he said in a vexed tone, “if Elmer there can’t fix that motor we’ll have to leave the car here and telephone into Boston for another.”

The chauffeur straightened up from his labors over the refractory motor.

“I’m afraid we’re stuck, sir,” he said, “this car is a Dolores. If it was any American car now, I could——”

“Never mind that,” interrupted the big man, with an impatient gesture. “I hired you as a competent chauffeur and now the first break-down we have——”

“If it was an American car,” protested the man. “I don’t understand these Dolores and——”

“Maybe I can help you.”

It was Ned who spoke and the big man faced round on him in surprise.

“You!” he exclaimed. “What do you know about cars?”

“A little, sir.”

“Well, at any rate you can’t know less than Elmer,” said the big man with a disgusted look at his chauffeur, who looked downcast and abashed. “What do you want to do?”

“See if I can get your car going for you. I’m interested in this sort of thing, you know.”

“Umph! don’t look as if you owned a car,” commented the man who had been addressed as “Smithers.”

“That’ll do, Smithers,” spoke up the big man sharply. “Elmer owns that he’s up against it, so give the boy a chance to show what he can do.”

In one garage where he had worked for a time the “big man of the place” had owned, as it so happened, a Dolores car. Therefore Ned was not at sea when, in the overalls he had borrowed from the chauffeur, he set to work on the stubborn motor.

“Think you can fix it?” asked the big man, after Ned had requested the chauffeur to start the engine so that he could hear just what was the matter with it.

“I don’t know,” said Ned frankly. “It’s missing in two cylinders. Carburetor trouble, I think. The Dolores has a special make of carburetor, you know, a very sensitive and complicated variety.”

“Go to it, kid,” muttered the chauffeur. “If you can fix that mixed-up muss of springs and air-valves you’re a wonder.”

“If you’ll slow down the engine a while, I’ll try,” said Ned, determined to do his best. It was characteristic of him that he was as interested in this vagrant bit of roadside trouble that had come his way as he would have been in some problem directly concerning himself. As it so happened, however, the problem he was about to try to solve did concern him and, at that, in no very distant manner.

Of this, however, he was not to become aware till later, and then in a manner which startled and rather alarmed him, considering the consequences it involved. But in blissful ignorance of all this, Ned went to work, determined to do all in his power to convince the two rather sceptical autoists that he was not boasting when he had said he thought he could help them out of their difficulties.

[CHAPTER V.]
THE UNLUCKY STORY.

“Once more—that’s it!”

Ned suspended his labors for a moment and listened to the tune of the throbbing motor as the chauffeur started it up, following Ned’s adjustment of the carburetor.

“It’s working better already,” declared the big man. “Boy, you’re a wizard.”

Ned looked up smilingly. In the interest of the work, and the fascination he always felt in conquering the whims of a stubborn bit of machinery, he had quite forgotten for the moment all his trials and perplexities.

“I think I’m getting there all right,” he said confidently, “but it will take a little more time to fix it just right.”

“Ah! You believe in doing things thoroughly, I see.”

“I do, sir. Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well.”

“That’s a belief that will get you a long way in life, my boy,” said the big man. Ned hardly heard him, for the motor was once more roaring and pulsing. He tuned it up, listening to its explosions as a skilled musician might hearken critically to a piece of music.

As he listened, he tightened up a connection here or loosened a valve there till the big six-cylindered motor was humming with the even pulsations of a sleeping baby.

“You can shut her off,” said he, addressing the chauffeur, and then turning to the big man he added, “I think you’ll find no more trouble, sir.”

“What! You have adjusted it, my boy?”

“As well as I can, sir, and, without bragging, I guess you’ll find everything all right now.”

“How long will it remain so?” asked the sceptical Smithers.

“For several weeks, at any rate.”

“You may take the wheel again, Elmer, and hustle us along. Young man, that you’re a mechanic of no mean ability I could see by the way you went to work. What is your name?”

“Ned Nevins, sir.”

“Live here?”

“I do just now, but I come from Millville, N. Y.”

The big man looked surprised.

“Are you any relation to Jeptha Nevins?”

“His nephew, sir. Did you know him?”

“Very well. I am Vaughn Kessler, the owner of the Kessler Mill. Your uncle was my foreman for many years. He was one of the best men we ever had; I was very sorry to hear of his death. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No, thank you, sir, except——”

“Except what? Come, you’ll pardon my saying so, but you don’t look—well, very prosperous.”

“I am all right, thank you, sir, and have good prospects ahead of me,” replied Ned. “What I was going to ask you was not to mention my name in Millville or to say where you saw me if by any chance anyone should ask you.”

“But why? You are not under a cloud there surely, and if——”

“Oh, no sir! It is for quite another reason,” said Ned earnestly.

“Well, it shall be as you wish,” said Mr. Kessler, regarding the boy with some curiosity, “though why in the world you should make the request puzzles me. Good-bye, my boy, and thank you.”

He held out his hand and took Ned’s. The next minute the car that the boy had so cleverly placed back in running order moved swiftly off. As it receded along the road, Ned became conscious that there was something in his hand. It had been left by Mr. Kessler.

“It’s money!” exclaimed the boy, unclasping his fist. “Well, it won’t come amiss, although I wouldn’t have thought of charging him for that little job.”

He unfolded the bill and then gave a little cry of astonishment. It was for twenty dollars,—a small fortune to Ned.

“Well, I am in luck!” he exclaimed. “If only my fortunes have changed, as this seems to indicate, I’ll be lucky to-morrow as well, and that is the dearest wish of my heart.”

It was well for Ned’s peace of mind that he did not know that Mr. Kessler, while fully intending to keep his promise of not mentioning Ned’s name or address at home in Millville, unconsciously let the cat out of the bag when he arrived at Lowell, Mass., his destination. His important interests, and those of his traveling companion, Mr. Smithers, made him a big man there and the late arrival of his automobile, which kept a momentous meeting waiting, called for explanations. To the newspaper men of Lowell, Mr. Kessler told how he had been aided by a shabbily clothed boy on a country road when a trained chauffeur had failed to adjust his car. It made an interesting story, and was telegraphed over the country by a correspondent of a news association. In due course it appeared in the Millville papers under this heading:

MILLVILLE MAGNATE AIDED
BY A LAD FROM THIS CITY.

Vaughn Kessler’s Stalled Auto Started
By Ned Nevins, Motor Genius.

The article beneath these headlines described the whole incident briefly, and stated that Ned was at present residing in the village of Nestorville, Mass. With but few exceptions, the fact that Mr. Kessler was concerned in the story was the chief feature of interest to readers of the article.

One individual in Millville read it with burning eyes. This was Hank Nevins, Ned’s cousin. Following Ned’s disappearance, he had used every means in his power to locate the boy. For this he had a good reason. Not alone did he want to recover the plans and designs of the electric hydroaeroplane, but he was prepared to offer a price for them.

While Ned had been making his preparations to depart quietly from home, Hank, on the advice of his lawyer friend, had visited the head of an aeroplane manufacturing concern who happened to be visiting Millville. Hank had laid before the stranger as full a description as he could of his father’s invention. He left out many important points but the stranger was quick to see possibilities in the idea and offered Hank a substantial sum if he would bring him the plans.

The offer aroused all of Hank’s cupidity. He saw a way, as he thought, to a life of elegant leisure. Only one stumbling block interposed itself, and that was a seemingly insurmountable one.

Ned had vanished, and with him the papers that would have meant money to Hank. On the advice of his legal friend, Hank had advertised for Ned in the personal columns of half a dozen newspapers. But none of the carefully worded appeals to the boy to reveal himself had borne fruit. Hank was obliged to confess to Mr. Melville of the Blue Sky Aeroplane Company that he would be delayed in producing the plans, not admitting that it would be extremely unlikely that he could ever get possession of them at all.

“Well, any time you have them bring them to me,” said Mr. Melville before he left Millville. “And my offer will hold good.”

Hank’s thoughts were not very pleasant ones as he left the aeroplane man’s presence.

“The young blackguard, to run off like that,” he grumbled. “Those plans mean dollars and cents now. How can I get them? If I could locate that runaway brat, I’d soon find a way.”

And now, through that unfortunate article in the Millville Clarion, Ned Nevins’ hiding place had been revealed to the last person on earth Ned would have wished to have known of it.

That night, as soon as his work was done, Hank sought out his budding lawyer friend. The law, like all other professions, has its black sheep. Hank’s friend bade fair to become one of these when he should ultimately be admitted to practice, which was his ambition. His eyes glistened when he heard of Hank’s discovery.

“If only we could get those papers,” muttered Hank, as the two sat together that night. “We’d both have money to burn, Miles.”

Miles Sharkey was the name of Hank’s crony, and the latter part of his appellation suited him from the ground up. In his projecting yellow teeth and undershot jaw, as well as in his fishy, shifting eyes, there was something suggestive of the rapaciousness and treachery of a shark.

“I think I can find a way to make him give them up, Hank,” said Miles, after some moments spent in deep thought, “but it may take a little time to work out the details. Have you any idea what he can be doing in this Nestorville place?”

“Not on the first guess. Just a crazy notion of his, I reckon. But what’s your plan, Miles.”

“I’ll have to think out the details,” rejoined the redoubtable limb of the law, rubbing his tallowy hands together. “But I think we’ll be able to make Cousin Ned disgorge before very long—for a consideration.”

“On the day I get my money, you get yours,” Hank assured him.

“Consider it settled then,” said Miles. “I’d have to be a pretty poor lawyer if I couldn’t think of a way.”

“I—I’m not particular about law,” blustered Hank, “anything to get those plans. He’s only a kid, and once we’ve got ’em he can’t do anything.”

“It’s a great pity you didn’t get hold of them before he skipped out,” said the worthy Miles. “Anyhow, it’s all right. I’m smart enough to attend to that.”

“Miles, you’re a true friend.” And as they parted, Hank clasped his companion’s claw-like hand with a fervor worthy of being bestowed on a better man.

[CHAPTER VI.]
HIS ENEMIES ON THE TRAIL.

Ned Nevins walked back to the hotel with his brain in a whirl. In the first place, the twenty-dollar bill which he fondly fingered as it lay in his pocket, provided a stop-gap between want and what he hardly dared to consider, and that was, a refusal on the part of the Boy Inventors to have anything to do with his cherished plans.

In the second place, his encounter with Vaughn Kessler was a dubious source of satisfaction to him. From one point of view it had, of course, its pleasing side, but somehow, Ned could not free himself of an uneasy feeling that in some way the news of his whereabouts would get back to Millville. In what a devious way this was to happen he had, of course, no conception, and it was just as well for his peace of mind that he had not.

He arrived at the hotel a little time before supper, and having cleaned himself up as well as possible, and carefully brushed his hair and his garments, he descended to the porch and sank down into the most comfortable chair he could find, one commanding a good view of the street.

A boy came along with papers, and feeling that with his twenty-dollar bill snugly tucked in his pocket he could afford to indulge in a few luxuries, Ned bought two papers, one a local sheet, the other a Boston daily. He looked through the latter first and as his eye traveled down the columns it was caught by the Personal Column.

In this section of the paper were published notices to missing relatives and so forth. The type used was large and heavy and calculated to catch the eye.

What was Ned’s astonishment to suddenly spy his own name at the head of a notice two or three paragraphs from the top of the list. He stared at it in some wonder for a minute before he read the notice itself.

“Why, who can be advertising for me?” he thought, and with the thought came an uncomfortable sensation at the recollection of the legal processes with which his cousin had threatened him.

“I’ll read the notice, that’s the best way of solving the puzzle,” reflected the boy. Casting his eye over the paragraph, he read as follows:

“Ned Nevins: It will be to your advantage to communicate at once with your cousin at Millville, N. Y. Big opportunity.—H. Nevins.”

“That’s Hank! what sort of a trick is he up to now?” wondered Ned. “To ‘my advantage,’” he musingly went on. “I’d like to know what there is to ‘my advantage’ that Hank would be likely to take the trouble and expense to advertise about. ‘Big opportunity’—yes, a ‘big opportunity’ to get his hands on those papers. The idea of his thinking that I’d be softy enough to answer such an ’ad’! No, indeed, you’ll never locate me in that way. I’m glad I asked Mr. Kessler to say nothing about having seen me. Hank is working harder than I thought possible for him to locate me, but he won’t do it if I can help it.”

Which shows that Ned, like most of the rest of us, placed undue confidence in his own ability to avoid unpleasantness. We already know how Fate was at work to over-reach him, playing with what appeared to be malignant favoritism, into the hands of those who wished him harm.

He was roused from his reverie by the sound of a quick step behind him, and then a hand was placed none too gently on his shoulder.

“It’s that fresh kid again!” exclaimed a grating, unpleasant voice. “Get up out of that chair instantly—do you hear me?”

“It’s Sam Hinkley!” exclaimed Ned to himself, without, however, looking around. Aloud he demanded:

“Well, what do you want?”

“That chair.”

“Unfortunately it is, as you see, occupied.”

“I wish it at once!”

“You do?”

“Yes!”

“You have a cool way of asking for it. Suppose I don’t give it to you?”

“You’ll be made to!”

“Who’ll make me?”

“I will, I guess. You don’t know who I am?”

“Oh, yes, I do. Your name is Sam Hinkley. I had a little argument with you this morning in which you came out second best, I fancy.”

“I’ll teach you a lesson, you tramp. Are you going to get up?”

“When the supper bell rings, I mean to.”

“Not till then?”

“No thanks, I’m very comfortable where I am.”

“That’s my chair.”

“Indeed, I thought it was one of those placed out here for the benefit of the guests.”

“So it is.”

“Well, I happen to be one.”

This answer took the blustering Sam rather aback. He thought that Ned had sought a chance to rest himself at the expense of the hotel’s hospitality. But it suited his purpose to appear incredulous.

“They don’t take in vagabonds here.”

It was more than flesh and blood could stand. Ned was about to leap to his feet when he was spared that trouble by the chair being yanked from under him, and he fell sprawling on the floor of the porch.

“Haw! haw! haw!” bawled Sam, in high good humor at seeing Ned in such an undignified position.

“Ho! ho! ho!” echoed half a dozen of Sam’s cronies, who had been passing with him when he had spied Ned, to whom Sam had taken an instinctive dislike. The “gang” had been invited by Sam to see the “fun.” If it had not been on the porch of his father’s hotel that Sam encountered Ned, he would have hesitated to try issues with him, for his experience of the morning had shown him that Ned, slender and rather delicate-looking as he was, was a foeman by no means to be despised. But on home grounds he felt safe.

He was rather taken aback, therefore, when Ned scrambled to his feet and advanced toward him instead of retreating, as the bully had expected Ned would do. There was a fire akindle in Ned’s eyes that Sam by no means liked, for he was at heart a coward, although accustomed to lording it over other boys of his own age not a little.

But with the eyes of his cronies fixed upon him expectantly, he felt that he could not retreat.

“What do you want?” he asked, in a voice that he tried to make belligerent, but which, somehow, did not hold quite the warlike note he would have liked.

“I want to give you something you need badly,” said Ned, without raising his voice, but there still glowed that same dangerous light in his eyes.

“Are you ready?”

“Rer-ready for what?” demanded Sam, in vain trying to look unimpressed by this quiet, business-like lad with the steady voice.

“For what I fancy is to be your first lesson in manners.”

[CHAPTER VII.]
NED MAKES AN ENEMY.

A wavering look of indecision crept into Sam Hinkley’s pug-nosed countenance. He would have liked to have the last few moments over again. He felt that he would have acted differently. But he tried to brazen it out.

“You strolling vagabond from goodness knows where, take that!”

It was a vicious blow, with plenty of force behind it, for Sam, although a bully and not possessed of an overabundance of courage, was still wiry and well muscled. But to his surprise his blow did not land. It should have collided with Ned’s chin, but when its force was expended, Ned was not there.

He had stepped neatly aside and allowed Sam to launch his thunderbolt harmlessly. Sam’s friends, grouped beneath the veranda on the sidewalk, closed into a compact little crowd. Plainly Sam was not going to carry all before him as had been his habit hitherto. His cronies saw this at once and some of them inwardly rejoiced.

The office of the little hotel was deserted, and nobody interfered. Sam gathered himself together to renew the combat. His brow grew black. Ned stood waiting. He made no attempt to defend himself. He merely eyed Sam Hinkley with a look of contempt that maddened that pugnacious bully.

Sam eyed his opponent viciously.

“Well?” queried Ned.

“Thought you were going to fight!” roared Sam.

“As I told you before, I’m not a fighter.”

Sam rashly interpreted this as being a sign of weakness. He rushed in once more, swinging his big fists with more vigor than science. Once more Will-o’-the-Wisp Ned was not where he ought to have been, and Sam, carried off his feet by the vigor of his unopposed onslaught, collided with a chair, tripped, and fell headlong on the floor to the porch.

This time the laugh that went up was not at Ned’s expense. The boy stood in the same quiet attitude while Sam, his face crimson with anger and mortification, gathered himself up.

“This ain’t fighting!” he bellowed angrily.

“You can call it anything you like—an acrobatic performance if you wish,” rejoined Ned, without raising his voice or changing his position.

Now there is nothing more irritating than to lose your temper and to make an exhibition of yourself, while the one your rage is directed at stands as steady and unmoved as a rock, hardly deigning to reply to either threats or onslaughts.

Sam was almost beside himself with rage as, with blazing eyes, he made another dash at Ned. This time Ned did not step aside. He ducked under Sam’s terrific left, and coming up, struck the bully a blow in the ribs that caused that worthy to emit a sound resembling:

“Oof!”

Ned took advantage of the momentary pause in hostilities to speak.

“Look here, Hinkley,” said he. “I’m not a ruffian, and I don’t like fighting. We’ll call this off right here and now, if you say so. I’m willing—what do you say?”

“That I’m going to give you the licking of your life!” roared out the enraged Sam.

Again he rushed in, his arms working like twin piston rods. This time Ned did not avoid the other’s rush. There was a rapid exchange of blows, and then suddenly—so suddenly that nobody saw just how it had happened, Sam Hinkley’s head was jerked back.

Whack! Ned had taken advantage of a fraction of a second when the other was off his guard and landed a stinging blow full on Sam’s pug nose. With a roar of anger Sam rushed in to retaliate. This time Ned was not quite quick enough. He stepped sideways to avoid the other’s onrush, but his foot slipped, and before he could recover his balance a heavy blow from Sam’s ponderous fist sent him spinning across the porch.

Sam’s adherents in the crowd watching the two lads set up a shout of delight. A broad grin overspread Sam’s face.

“Guess that finishes the lesson,” he jeered.

“On the contrary it’s only just begun,” retaliated Ned, and before Sam knew just what had happened, two smart blows had rattled against his ribs, the force of them making his teeth chatter as if with the cold.

But Sam speedily recovered himself, and for the next few minutes it was give and take, with the odds rather against Ned, who was lighter of build than the bully, and who was constantly forced back by the latter’s rushes. Sam began to think it was all over.

“Well, Mr. Manners’ Teacher, how about you now?” he sneered tauntingly.

Ned did not reply, but he watched Sam like a cat. He saw that the bully was beginning to wear out under the fast work of the last few minutes. His chest was heaving and his breath came pantingly. He guessed that Sam would have been glad to have called “quits” then and there.

But while Ned might have been willing enough not to fight at the beginning of the battle, his blood was up now, and he was determined to see the thing through. He despised fighting as being ruffianly and unnecessary, but, in a case like the present, he felt that if he allowed Sam Hinkley to walk over him, the latter would make it next to impossible for him to remain in Nestorville.

He avoided another of Sam’s bull-like rushes with an agile step backward. As Sam’s blow missed, Ned could hear him give a loud grunt, a sound that told he was tiring.

“I’m wearing him down,” thought Ned, and watched carefully for an opening that might afford him a chance of terminating the battle.

Sam “rushed” Ned again. This time he, too, appeared to be desirous of ending the fight by a blow that would take all the fight out of his lightly built opponent. But his blow landed on thin air.

Ned’s opportunity had come. His fist shot out like a streak of lightning. It struck Sam under the chin, lifting him off his feet. He toppled and fell backward, landing among the chairs with a crash that sounded like a cook-stove falling downstairs.

“That settles him!” cried some of the crowd of boys that had gathered, and “settle” Sam it did, in more senses than one, for, aroused by the crash of his fall, the bully’s father issued from the hotel and seizing his offspring by the scruff of the neck, angrily bade him get inside.

“It wasn’t altogether his fault”, explained Ned.—Page 69

“It wasn’t altogether his fault,” explained Ned. “I had his chair, you see, and—”

“That’ll do, young feller,” said the elder Hinkley brusquely, “that’s not the first time it’s happened. Sam had a licking coming to him and he got it. I ain’t got nothing to say, ’cepting that supper’s ready when you are.”

And in this eventful manner ended Ned’s first day in Nestorville. It had surely been an eventful one, thought the boy, as he reviewed the various experiences of the last twelve hours before turning into bed.

He was just about to turn out the light when his attention was attracted to the door-sill. Something white was being shoved under the door into the room. It was a folded bit of paper.

Ned sprang forward and picked it up. It was, as he had guessed, a note. He opened it, and as he perused its contents, a smile of good-natured contempt came over his face. This is what he read:

“You think you are smart, but you ain’t through with me yet. I’ll fix you and when I do I’ll fix you good. S. Hinkley.”

“Too bad,” said Ned to himself, as he finished reading. “I’ve not so many friends that I want to make any enemies. But after all, the quarrel was not of my making and I don’t intend to allow Sam Hinkley’s threats to worry me.”

[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE PLANS ACCEPTED.

Ned presented himself at High Towers betimes the next morning. He found Jack Chadwick and Tom Jesson awaiting him at the workshop. Mr. Chadwick was in New York attending to some business connected with his interests. Mr. Jesson was in Boston delivering a series of biological lectures, so that the boys had the place to themselves.

The eagerness of Ned to know the verdict of the two Boy Inventors must have shown itself very plainly on his face, for almost as soon as he had been introduced to Tom Jesson, Jack hastened to relieve the lad’s anxiety.

“I suppose you want to know if it’s good news or bad?” asked Jack.

“I’ve hardly slept all night thinking of it.”

“Then I have something to tell you that you will be glad to hear. We will help you manufacture the craft your uncle designed and——”

Ned’s glad outburst of thanks checked him for a moment, but Jack went on to explain that he and his cousin would take only one-quarter interest in the craft, leaving the remainder free and clear to Ned. The cost of manufacturing would be borne by the Boy Inventors and the patents, when the machine was completed, would rest in Ned’s name.

“Is that satisfactory?” asked Jack when he had finished.

“Satisfactory!” burst out Ned. “It’s generous—too generous!”

“Not at all. So far as money is concerned, when you know more about us, you will know that Tom and I have plenty, most of it realized from our inventions.”

“I know but——”

“Hold on a minute. Here we are, just dying for a chance to get to work on something really new and neither of us with brains enough to think up anything. You come along with just what we are looking for and we feel more like thanking you than considering we are doing anything wonderful.”

“Besides,” added Tom, “even one-quarter interest in the electric hydroaeroplane ought to yield a handsome profit.”

“If, and it’s a big ‘If,’” said Ned with a laugh, “we can get it to work. If not——”

“We wouldn’t tackle it if we didn’t think it was practicable,” said Jack decisively. “So that ends that. Now come along, Ned, and be initiated into the mysteries of the firm, for you know, you are now a working partner.”

“Say, fellows!” burst out Ned enthusiastically. “I don’t know how to thank you——”

“That’s all right. You help us out on building the machine and that will be thanks enough. When we’ve got it working, we’ll shine in your reflected glory and that will be satisfaction enough for us.”

The next hour was one of unmixed delight for Ned, interested, nay wrapped up in mechanics as he was. He had never seen a workshop fitted up on such a scale as that of Jack Chadwick and Tom Jesson,—a private workshop, that is. Lathes and all sorts of machinery of the latest pattern were driven by a powerful gasolene engine. Facilities were at hand for making the parts of many of the boys’ devices. Three skilled machinists were also employed, and summoning them about him, Jack Chadwick briefly outlined to the interested men the big task they were about to undertake.

He was in the midst of his explanations, when Sam Hinkley strolled in. Jack looked at him sharply. One of his eyes was swollen and slightly discolored. He glared at Ned savagely and the look was not lost on Jack Chadwick.

As soon as he had an opportunity, Sam drew Jack aside and demanded, in an indignant and aggrieved voice, to know if Ned Nevins was to work in the shop.

“Yes, and on a partnership basis, too,” said Jack enthusiastically. “He has been the means of introducing us to a wonderful invention. We are going to start in on the work of its construction right away.”

Sam did not appear interested in this information except that a jealous look crept into his eyes.

“I think you ought to know that he’s nothing but a rowdy,” he said. “I’ll bet any invention he’s been telling you about is a fake.”

“The plans look good to us,” responded Jack, “and we are going to risk it. What have you got against the boy, anyhow?”

“He’s a rowdy,” repeated Sam. “He blacked my eye last night.”

Jack, who had a pretty good insight into Sam’s character, could not repress a smile.

“I thought you were invincible, Sam.”

“He didn’t fight fair. He forced me into a row,” grumbled Sam. “I could have licked him all right if——”

“What had you been doing, Sam?”

“Nothing. He took my chair away and when I wanted it back he said I’d have to fight for it and——”

“And you did,” commented Jack with a dry smile. “Well, Sam, my advice is to forget it. If you think you’ve been injured I’m sorry, but Ned Nevins appears to me to be an inoffensive sort of a lad, quiet and unassuming.”

“Oh, he just puts on that to fool you,” muttered Sam.

At this juncture, Jack was called away by one of the machinists and Sam, with a very bad grace, turned to some unfinished work at his lathe. He was still engaged at this when Ned happened to pass by.

“I got your note last night, Hinkley,” he said. “Why didn’t you give it to me in person instead of slipping it under the door?”

Sam made a sound resembling “G-r-r-r-r-r” and went on with what he was doing.

“As I suppose you know,” resumed Ned, “we shall see a good deal of each other in the future. Why can’t we be friends?”

Sam’s face contorted with rage as he dropped the tool he had been using and faced round on Ned.

“Because I hate you, that’s why. You’re nothing but an interloper and a faker and Jack Chadwick will find it out before very long.”

“I’m sorry you think that, Sam.”

“Why?” asked Sam, surprised at the other’s calm, even tone. His outburst appeared to have no effect whatever upon the lad he had desired to impress with his enmity.

“Because I am afraid you are going to be disappointed,” and with these words Ned passed on.

The next few weeks were busy ones about the workshop of the Boy Inventors, but gradually, almost imperceptibly, the electric hydroaeroplane began to take shape. The enthusiasm of the boys infected the workmen and even Sam Hinkley appeared to work with more than usual fervor.

Briefly described, the hydroaeroplane portion of the craft consisted of two twin boats, each about forty feet in length and constructed of a special aluminum alloy jointed together by strong vanadium connections. Between the pair of boats, which will be more fully described later, the storage tanks, which were the novel feature of the Jeptha Nevins craft, were placed.

In the center of each of the boats was a small raised cabin, the cabins being connected by a hollow passageway. At either end of the craft the wings, of biplane pattern, were attached. The wing spread was ninety-five feet which, with the craft’s electric engines of enormous power, gave the giant air-craft a lifting capacity of two thousand pounds.

Above the storage batteries, and between the twin “boats,” were the motors, each coupled to two sets of propellers placed fore and aft on either end of the craft and outside of the wings. A light, but strong, framework supported the outer bearings of the propellers and served to give them sufficient projection to insure balance. The forward set of propellers were so “pitched” as to pull the craft through the air, while the after ones furnished a driving impulse.

One of the most important features of the invention was the device by which electricity was made while she was in flight or skimming over the water. This was a generator of considerable power geared to the shafts of the propellers. As the craft drove along, the storage batteries were constantly recharged by this device. For the initial, or starting “charge” the batteries were furnished with “juice” by a small compressed air-driven generator which could also be used in case of accident to the automatically driven device. Thus the necessity of gasolene was done away with and the Nevins craft was equipped, so far as power was concerned, to cross the Atlantic Ocean. But, of course, no such project entered into the minds of her young constructors.

The planes themselves were covered with sheets of aluminum attached to frames of radiolite, a metal as light as aluminum and of great tensile strength. Landing wheels, supported by powerful shock absorbers, provided for alighting, and special balancing devices, attached to the bow and to the stern of the novel craft, minimized the danger of coming to earth with too great a shock to the weighty fabric.

On the top of each cabin was a powerful search-light, and each was fitted out with two bunks and other conveniences as in the stateroom of an ocean liner. The pilot house was mounted above the covered passage, or tube, already referred to, which connected the two parts of the craft. It contained a wheel not unlike that of an ocean liner and levers to control the balancing wings and the pitch of the planes.

As for the engine-controls, the motor being electrically driven, the machinery to control it was wonderfully simple. An apparatus not unlike a switchboard, as may be seen in any powerhouse, was mounted within convenient reach of the helmsman. The light controls also were affixed to this board. Mastery of the huge craft was within instant power of the driver. A signaling system to each cabin, in case of emergency, was another feature added to the general completeness of the equipment.

Such is a brief description of the Nevins electric hydroaeroplane, a craft in which the Boy Inventors were destined to meet as strange adventures as had ever fallen to their lot.

[CHAPTER IX.]
THE ARRIVAL OF TROUBLE.

It would be tedious to dwell upon the details of the construction of the craft which the boys, by unanimous vote, had decided to call the Electric Monarch. The work went steadily on and Prof. Chadwick, who had returned soon after the boys started work, rendered them valuable assistance. The previous experience with aerial craft, which the Boy Inventors had had, made the work progress far more rapidly than would otherwise have been the case, although the plans and drawings left by Jeptha Nevins were so detailed and exact that they encountered but few very knotty problems.

One day, not very long before the Electric Monarch, which had been finished in scarlet and silver, was ready for her trial trip, two strangers appeared at the Hinkley House. One was a broad-shouldered, clumsy-looking young man with a shock of black hair and carelessly brushed clothes, the other a tall, cadaverous-looking person of about the same age with shifty, rat-like eyes and a general air of furtive watchfulness.

Some time before this event, Ned, as an active partner in the firm of the Boy Inventors, had taken up his residence at High Towers. There were two reasons for this. One was that it was far more convenient to the work which was being rushed to completion, the other that as the Electric Monarch neared the day for her trial trip, Ned grew more and more nervous about leaving the craft unwatched.

Accordingly, he had a small cot fixed up in the corner of the workshop where he slept at night. Ned himself would have been at a loss to account for this nervousness; nevertheless he felt a vague mistrust. It was not that he feared any harm Sam Hinkley might do to the craft, for although there was no love lost toward Ned on Sam’s part, Ned was pretty sure that the Hinkley boy would not dare take active reprisals. But yet he felt that it was well to observe caution.

Sam came and went to his work as usual, and as he, as well as the other workmen, had given their words not to let anything leak out about the Electric Monarch till she was ready for a flight, no uneasiness was felt about this circumstance.

As a matter of fact, even if it had been known that a big air craft was being constructed at High Towers, it would not have excited much comment in the village. The inhabitants of Nestorville had grown too used to hearing about strange inventions being built at the big house on the hill to feel any undue curiosity about them. And yet, Ned vaguely felt that danger threatened.

The two strangers gave out at the Hinkley House that they were traveling for a drug firm. They made themselves friendly with the proprietor who, after being presented with cigars, voted them two “good fellows.” Perhaps he might have thought them “inquisitive fellows,” too, if soon after his new guests’ arrival, when he had been summoned to answer a long-distance telephone, he had noticed one of them slip up to the register, open it and search hurriedly for a name.

“It’s there all right,” whispered the one who had examined the book as he slipped out from behind the desk again. “‘Ned Nevins—Boston.’ I suppose he registered from there because he didn’t want to run any chances of being asked questions about Millville.”

“Shouldn’t wonder, Miles,” was the rejoinder of Hank Nevins, “but he didn’t reckon that we was just as slick as he is.”

The two “drug drummers” were Hank and his unsavory lawyer friend, Miles Sharkey. The two had been delayed in their pursuit of Ned by a very important handicap, namely, lack of funds. But on Hank having written to Mr. Mellville that they were on the track of the plans and had a good chance of securing them, the money for their expenses, (much to the surprise of both of them,) had been forwarded. They then lost no time in heading for Nestorville and laying plans for the recovery of the papers of the dead Jeptha Nevins.

When Landlord Hinkley came out of the telephone-booth, one of his new guests stepped up to him.

“Recollect a young chap named Nevins?” he asked. It may be said here that Hank and Miles had registered under assumed names.

“Nevins?” repeated the landlord. “Nevins? Well, I should just say I did.”

“Stop here long?” asked Miles insinuatingly.

“Quite a few days till he went to live with them Chadwick boys up on the hill yonder.”

Hank and Miles exchanged significant glances. They were on the trail indeed now.

“Um-er, the Chadwick boys,” began Miles at a venture. “Chums of his, eh?”

“Yes, I guess so, in a manner of speaking. My son Sam works for ’em, too. He’s a bright lad, is Sam. Why, sir, I tell you around a bit of machinery that boy’s a marvel. Only last week my wife’s sewing machine went out of whack and gosh ter mighty ef that boy Sam didn’t have it all fixed up hunky dory in two shakes of a duck’s tail. Nuther time——”

There is no knowing how long Mr. Hinkley might have gone on extolling his son’s virtues had it not been for the fact that Miles and Hank were far too impatient to listen to a lengthy catalogue of Sam’s bright doings.

“Yes, yes,” rejoined Miles. “I’ve no doubt your son is a mighty bright boy, Mr. Hinkley.”

“Gets it from his father,” put in Hank with a clumsy attempt at a compliment.

Crude as the attempt at flattery was, Landlord Hinkley swallowed it whole. He smirked his acknowledgments.

“Thank you, Mr. Avery,” this was the name Hank had registered under. “Very handsome of you, I’m sure. Won’t you gentlemen hev a cigar?”

Both the gentlemen accepted with thanks, and while they puffed at Landlord Hinkley’s aromatic weeds, they pursued further the subject that was closest to their hearts.

“Fine cigars, these, Mr. Hinkley,” commented Miles, with a wink at Hank to show that the remark was ironical.

“Oh, yes indeed,” responded the landlord, “Flor de Telphono, we call ’em. Telephone cigars, you know.”

“Telephone cigars, that’s an odd name,” said Hank, with a wry face over his weed. Hank was one of those hollow-chested, pale-faced youths who think it smart to smoke but do so only with a great effort of will power.

“Yep, they calls ’em that, the boys says, because you can smoke ’em here and smell ’em in Boston.”

This choice witticism having being properly laughed at, Miles and Hank went further on their “fishing expedition.”

“These Chadwick boys now,” pursued Hank, “friends of young Nevins likely?”

“Wa’al, I dunno. I reckon he’s working for ’em on some sort of contraption. You know these Chadwick boys is right smart lads on such doodads. The Boy Inventors, they call ’em. Reckon maybe you’ve heard on ’em.”

“No, I don’t know that I have,” rejoined Miles. “So young Nevins is working for them, eh?”

“Er-huh. Has bin fer quite a spell.”

“Sort of mechanic, I suppose?”

“Wa’al, thar’ you got me,” admitted Mr. Hinkley. “I hearn’,” he went on, sinking his voice and growing confidential, “that them boys is working on some sort of er flyin’ machine er some sech foolishness.”

Miles and Hank flashed a glance of comprehension between them. They had reached their goal, then.

[CHAPTER X.]
HEINY PUMPERNICK DILL.

“Hey, you black feller, dis be der place py vere der Poy Inventors vork, I don’t dink?”

Old Jupe, the Chadwicks’ colored factotum, paused on his way from the village with a big basket and looked his questioner over from head to foot. It was an odd figure that he inspected. He found himself facing a blond-haired youth of about eighteen with apple-red cheeks and bright, twinkling blue eyes.

Perched on the top of the youth’s tow-colored head was a small derby rakishly tilted to one side. A green bob-tailed coat—it had probably once been black—was carefully buttoned over a striped blue and white vest. The turned up ends of his baggy trousers were so far from the tops of his low, yellow shoes that they showed about two inches of startling red socks.

“Who you done calling black feller?” demanded Jupe, with justifiable indignation. “Ah’m a genelman ob color ah am, and I wants that mistinctly undercunstumbled.”

“Vell, dond go py geddin’ a mads, Mister Gentelemans vot vos colored,” said the tow-headed youth in a conciliatory tone. “My name vos Heiny Bumpernick Dill.”

For answer Jupe threw back his woolly head and burst into a roar of laughter that showed two rows of white, gleaming teeth between his thick red lips.

“Ho! Ho! Ho!—Ha! Ha! Ha!” he exploded. “Oh! gollyupmtions! ef dat ain’t mostest funniest ting I eber heard.”

The tow-headed youth gazed at the negro’s mirth with an expression that was at first amazed and then grew rapidly indignant.

“Vos ist los midt you?” he demanded wrathfully.

“Loose? Der ain’t nutting loose wid me, am dere?” demanded Jupe, fingering his waist band and in turn looking surprised.

“I saidt idt ‘Vos ist los!’” yelled the German boy. “Vot is idt der madder midt you anyvay?”

“Oh, dat name! Golly to goodness, chile! Dat name suttinly got on mah risibles. Heiny Pump it quick—oh! ha! ha! ha!” and throwing back his head, old Jupe went off into another spasm of mirth.

“I saidt idt Bumpernick——”

“Was dat you say. Bumper——”

“Nodt. Bumper-Bumper. P-U-M-P-ER—Bumper!”

Jupe scratched his woolly thatch. This was getting too much for him.

“P-U-M-P-E-R spells Pumper, chile,” he said.

“Dots vot I saidt idt, aind’t it? Bumper—Bumbernick. Dot’s my name, aind’t idt?”

“Say, lookah hyah, Massa Bumper, is you all crazy or am I?” demanded Jupe.

“Vos dot you say? I am grazy?” bellowed Heiny Pumpernick. He dropped a little wickerwork satchel he carried and doubled up his fists.

“I been adtletic feller alretty yet,” he shouted. “You bed my life you no comes making der funs by me, py chiminy, black feller!”

“Was dat? Who yo’ all calls black fellers—you—you—yaller-headed Dutchman,” ejaculated Jupe, thoroughly angry in his turn.

Now there is nothing on earth better calculated to arouse a German’s ire than to call him a Dutchman, and the same is the case when a negro is addressed as a “black fellow” or a “nigger.” Both the German youth and old Jupe were now fighting mad.

“I calls idt to you, black fellers,” sputtered out young Dill, doubling up his plump fists. “I’m an adtletic feller, I pet you mein lifes. You calls me Mister Dill oder I pust you vun py der nose.”

“Ho! ho! ef you all do dat you be a dill in er pickle, ho! ho!”

“Who is dot vot you calls a bickle? By chiminy, nigger, look idt out midt yourself!”

Without more words the redoubtable Heiny Pumpernick Dill let fly with his fists at Jupe who, for his part, was ready enough to begin hostilities. Now it so happened that this Homeric battle took place on the banks of the large lake mentioned in other volumes of this series. It was a body of water used for experimenting with models of craft of various kinds and had been the scene of the testing out of the diving torpedo boat, as readers of the volume dealing with that invention will recollect.

The fist of the exasperated German youth, as it leaped out, landed on a spot on Jupe’s anatomy which, while it was not calculated to do him much injury, still gave him plenty to think about.

“Woof! Wha’ fo’ yo’ alls hit me in der stomick?” indignantly roared out Jupe. Without more ado he dropped the basket he had been burdened with and the lid burst open. Instantly the ground was covered with a score of lively hard-shell crabs, but in the heat of their anger neither of the combatants noticed this.

Jupe’s retaliation for the German youth’s blow was vigorous.

“Gollyumptions! Ah makes yo’ all call me a genelman ob color befo’ ah kicks yo’n off’n these hayar groun’s,” he cried indignantly.

The next minute it was Mr. Dill’s turn to cry “Oof!”

But he quickly recovered and then, closing in, the two pugilistic heroes engaged in a tussle which speedily brought them in a rolling, kicking, struggling heap to the ground. Over and over they rolled on the banks of the lake and their struggles speedily brought them among some of the escaped crabs. These lost no time in dealing with the combatants. One fastened itself into young Dill’s long yellow hair while another seized Jupe by the back of the neck. Two piercing yells went up simultaneously.

“Oh! Ouch! Help! De debbil am got hold ob me by de neck!” roared out Jupe.

“Leggo mein hairs, py chiminy!” screeched the German boy. “Himmel! Donner! Blitzen!”

Over and over they rolled, with the crabs holding fast with a tenacious grip. Their struggles quickly brought them to the bank of the lake. What with anger, and what with pain, they were past noticing anything and just as Jack and Tom, who had been attracted by the uproar, came running down the gravel walk to ascertain its cause, a loud splash and a despairing yell announced the fact that the two doughty heroes had plunged into an element calculated to cool their wrath.

[CHAPTER XI.]
THE CONVERTIBLE SAUSAGE MACHINE.

Jack and Tom arrived at the brink of the lake just as the two combatants, sputtering and splashing like a pair of grampuses, arose to the surface.

“It’s Jupe!” cried Jack, “but how in the name of time?”

“But who is the other fellow?” shouted Tom.

“Never mind that now. Jupe can’t swim and the water is deep there. We’ve got to get him out.”

The boys speedily stripped off their coats and kicked off their shoes preparatory to plunging to the rescue, but before they could do this, young Dill, who was a good swimmer, had seized Jupe by the back of the neck and dragged him, half drowned, to the shore. Jupe, dripping with water and mud, clambered out little the worse, except in appearance, for his adventure.

He was followed by young Dill, who was a sorry-looking object indeed. The water had caused the gaudy dye of his vest to run in great streaks down his light-colored pants. His hat, which had stuck to his head throughout the struggle, was sending streams of green water down over his rubicund face, while round his feet, as he emerged from the lake and stood before the boys, was a crimson puddle. The dye on young Dill’s socks was certainly not of the “fast” variety, except in color.

At the sight of the two extraordinary figures Jack and Tom could hardly refrain from bursting into roars of laughter. But they retained their gravity and looked sternly at Jupe.

“Perhaps you will explain what this means?” began Jack.

“Ah-ah-ah-ah,” sputtered Jupe, opening and shutting his mouth like a fish newly removed from the water.

“Well, we are waiting,” said Jack, while Tom turned away, suddenly overcome by a mysterious fit of coughing.

“Vait idt a minutes undt I vill explanation idt to you,” volunteered young Dill. “Dis is der vay idt vosn’t. I vos comin’ py der house to see der Poy Inventors undt I asked idt ob dis black——”

Jupe suddenly came to life. Shaking his woolly head like a poodle he shouted out:

“Don’ you alls done go fer ter call me no black feller,” he shouted.

“You no call idt to me Dutchman, I no call idt to you black fellers, aber no mans call me Dutchman.”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! What’s all this about?” demanded Jack. “How are we to understand anything with all this jabber? You there, Mister——”

“Dill is mein name, sir,” said the young German with a dignity which assorted oddly with his weird appearance.

“Well, Mr. Dill, you appear to be in a pickle,” said Jack with a grin he could not repress. “Will you explain to me what was the cause of all this?”

“Ah-ah-ah,” began Jupe again, but Jack shook his head at him and the voluble young Dill told the story of the causes leading to the combat.

“Well, you both appear to have been well punished,” said Jack when he concluded, “and now perhaps you will tell me what you wanted to see us about.”

“Vot I vanted to see you abodt ain’d it?” asked the German boy.

“Yes.”

“I vanted to see idt der Poy Inventors alretty.”

“Well, you see them.” Young Dill’s face showed his astonishment, but he wisely repressed any comment. “What can we do for you?”

“You can do me for a fine inventions vot I haf,” responded the German youth. “I used to vurk midt a delicatessens pefore I pecome an inventors. I haf midt me in dis liddle satchel a motel of mein inventions.”

“Well, what is it? What is the nature of it?” demanded Jack.

“Idt iss a new kindt of sissage machine,” explained the proud youth, forgetting all about his recent immersion in the glow of the inventor’s enthusiasm, “chust py touching a lefer idt vill make bolognas, frankfurters, liebervurst, or any oder kindt of sissage dot is alretty. Vot you dink of him?”

“Huh!” grunted Jupe aside, “ah’s seed lots ob crazy inventors sense ah wourk hyah, but dis am de fustest sausage machine inventor dot I ebber clapped mah ole eyes on.” He stared at young Dill as if he had been a natural curiosity of some sort.

Jack bit his lip hard to keep from laughing. As for Tom, he exploded into a roar of laughter which he could not restrain. Young Dill looked bewildered.

“I seel idt to you der Dill Convertible Sausage Machine for fif’ dousandt tollars!” he exclaimed with the air of a person making an unheard-of offer.

“I am sorry, Mr. Dill,” said Jack, with exemplary gravity, “but we couldn’t handle your invention if you made a much cheaper price on it. However, you can no doubt dispose of it elsewhere.”

“Ugh! Yo’ alls better try er butcher shop, Dutchy,” muttered Jupe, “an’ ef dey don’ want it dere take it to a crazy house; maybe they kin use it and yo’ alls, too.”

“Budt don’d you tink idt iss a goodt inventions?” persisted young Dill.

“Excellent! Fine!” declared Jack, with a side wink at Tom. “But we couldn’t handle it at all. And now, Mr. Dill, we’ll have to say good morning. We are very busy. I’m sorry for what happened, but really you know you brought it partly on yourself.”

“Himmel! oder you hadt bought idt my convertible sissage machine I vould nodt haf cared if I hadt been drowned all over,” declared young Dill.

With a melancholy face he gathered up his little wicker satchel. The boys were turning away when a sudden idea entered the young German’s head. His face became irradiated with a ray of hope.

“I haf idt here a motel of der convertible sissage machine,” he said, “aber you dakes me py der house I show you how to make bolognas, frankfurters, lieber——”

“It wouldn’t be of the least use, Mr. Dill, you’d only be wasting your time,” said Jack. “Excuse us now, please, we must hurry off.”

The young German was left standing alone on the gravel walk in the midst of his rubicund puddle. He looked after the retreating figures of the two boys and Jupe with a melancholy countenance. But he was gratified none the less to observe that Jupe appeared to be getting what is commonly known as a “calling down.”

“So dey don’d vant idt der convertible sissage machines,” he muttered. “Vell dey don’d know dot dey let a fortune slip through dere fingers der same as sissage slip through my machine, ain’d idt.”

His eyes fixed themselves on Jupe’s humbled figure.

“Chust der same,” he muttered in a low tone, “midt vun handt I can lick you—nigger!”

Having done this justice to his outraged feelings, young Dill wrung the water out of his coat-tails and set out on the road to Nestorville. He thought that he had seen the last of High Towers. Had he but known it he was destined to do the boys a singular service ere long, but as he trudged along singing “Hi-lee! hi-lo!” to himself in a melancholy voice he was totally unaware of this.

[CHAPTER XII.]
HANK AND MILES MEET THEIR MATCH.

“Mr. Avery” and “Mr. Reynolds,” the names by which Hank Nevins and Miles Sharkey had chosen respectively to be known, were seated on the porch of the Hinkley House taking their ease with their feet elevated so as to afford a good view of the soles of their boots to any passers-by, when young Dill came down the street.

Having recovered from his first disappointment, the young German, who came of a persevering race, determined to remain in Nestorville for a time at any rate and try to see the Boy Inventors again, regarding the Convertible Sausage Machine, at a more auspicious time. He had a small sum of money saved up, quite sufficient for his needs, and he resolved to buy some new clothes at the first opportunity and then make a more imposing descent upon High Towers.

As he rightly argued, his appearance that morning had not been calculated to inspire confidence.

“Der great inventors, aber Eddy’s son, aber Macaroni, der inventor of der hairless telegraph, nefer fall py a pond midt a nigger,” he mused. “Maype dose poys dink I am a faker. Aber I don’d plame dem. I gedt idt me a new oudfit of clothes undt den call aroundt again. ‘No trouble to show goodts’ as de used to say idt ven I vos in pisiness.”

This train of thought brought him as far as the Hinkley House where our Teutonic friend bethought him that after his strenuous exertions of the morning some dinner would be the proper thing.

“Dis looks idt like a goodt quiedt hotel, aindt idt?” he said to himself. “I makes idt a pest (guest) of meinself here, py chiminy.”

By some mischievous chance the odd figure of Mr. Dill, rendered doubly striking since his immersion, caught the eye of Hank Nevins,—alias Mr. Avery,—as he sat discussing, with his chum Miles, the best means of carrying out their designs against Ned Nevins and his Electric Monarch.

There was nothing that Hank liked better than to tease some one who looked as if he might prove an unresisting victim, and here was one ready to his hand, at least so he judged.

“Hello, Dutchy,” he remarked amiably, “been taking a bath with your clothes on?”

Young Dill faced round on him and looked him over from top to toe.

“Aber I dink idt a bath do you no harm, mein freindt, aindt idt,” he remarked blandly, “midt or midoudt clothes on.”

This was not exactly what Hank had expected, and a subdued chuckle from some hangers on about the hotel porch did not increase his good humor.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t cross on the same boat,” observed Hank. “If I’d seen you I’d never have landed.”

“So——” observed young Dill amiably, “veel dere vos no chance of your seeing me alretty.”

Hank winked at the loungers in order to show them that he was now prepared to have some fun with the queer-looking German youth.

“Is that so? How was that, Dutchy?” he asked with a grin.

“Pecos I come on a passenger boat,” rejoined young Dill with all the equanimity in the world.

A look of intense discomfiture spread over Hank’s face.

“The Dutchman’s too much for him,” he heard some one whisper. As might be expected this remark did not tend to smooth over Hank’s feelings toward the simple-looking young German. Instead he determined to launch some shaft of wit at him that would squash him flatter than a pancake. But so far all his attempts had proved boomerangs.

“I suppose you know all about sausages?” he asked.

Young Dill’s eyes glittered. Here was a subject in which he was deeply interested.

“Oh ches!” he burst out eagerly, “sissages und——”

“Never mind that, Sauerkraut,” sneered Hank. “What kind of meat makes the best bologna?”

Young Dill, who was smart enough in his way, saw that some joke was going to be had at his expense if he did not look out. The loungers leaned forward expectantly. Hank looked triumphant. At last he thought he had the “Dutchman” up a tree.

“You vant to know vot kindt of meat makes idt pest bolognas?” he asked innocently.

“That’s what I said, Dutch,” grinned Hank.

“You ought to know dot aber bedder dan me alretty,” said young Dill gravely.

“Is that so, old Sauerkraut? How’s that?”

“Pecos der pest bologna is made midt calf’s headt, undt you vos veel supplidt mid dot,” drawled out young Dill, and without waiting to hear the roar of laughter that went up at Hank’s expense, he wandered into the office and registered. His signature was a peculiar one. This is how it read on the register:

“Herr Heiny Pumpernick Dill,—Inventor At Large (and Small)—N. Y.”

After ascertaining what time dinner would be ready, Herr Dill went to his room and busied himself till the meal was served by tidying up as well as he could, and removing the effects of his immersion. In this he could not but admit that he was not very successful, and he resolved immediately after dinner to saunter out and see what he could find in the way of smart attire in the village.

“I vunder now if I couldt gedt idt some yellow gloves,” mused young Dill to himself as he carefully unpacked the model of the sausage machine and placed it on the floor.

“An inventor midt yellow gloves,—undt a redt necktie vould be some class as an inventor. Aber he vould be as stylish as Macaroni oder Eddy’s son.”

He fussed over his invention for a while to pass away the time till the dinner bell rang out its summons. It was an odd-looking contrivance. From a cylindrical steel box projected several hooked steel arms manipulated with springs in a way which no one but the inventor could by any possibility have mastered.

While young Dill was working on one of these arms, there came a sudden sharp snap and he jerked his arm quickly out of the way and upwards.

“Himmel!” he exclaimed, “dot machine makes idt a preddy goodt trap alretty. Dot lefer nearly caught it mein fingers. Maype if I can’t sell idt as a sissage machine, I make idt a purglar trap oudt of idt alretty—Hi-lee! dere goes der dinner bell! Dinner! I am coming on der ger-jump!”

[CHAPTER XIII.]
READY FOR FLIGHT.

“Well, fellows, the Electric Monarch is ready for her trial trip at last.”

Thus spoke Jack Chadwick the following day. The body of the great land and water craft, looking like a butterfly with its wings off, stood, resplendent in glittering paint and varnish, inside the big construction shed.

All that remained to be done to fit her for the air was to equip the framework with the wings which were made detachable. This had been a necessary modification of Jeptha Nevins’ plans, as the shed in which the craft had been constructed was not wide enough to permit the wings being attached while the Electric Monarch was still under cover.

At first this had proved quite a problem, but with the aid of Professor Chadwick who, as has been said, had taken an active part in the work, the boys evolved a plan whereby the wings, (or planes,) had been made detachable and could be bolted or unbolted at pleasure. As the weight of each plane did not exceed fifty pounds, despite its broad spread, the work of putting on or taking off the wings was a comparatively easy one.

It was an interested group that stood in the shed and surveyed their completed work. The Electric Monarch, they knew, was without question the most unique craft of its kind that had ever been constructed. Perfect in every detail as the great craft was, the boys felt a thrill of pride run through them as they viewed their completed handiwork. Professor Chadwick had spared no expense in aiding the boys at their task and the result was as perfect a bit of mechanism as had ever been assembled. Outside the shed the great wings were ranged on special racks ready for attachment.

To fit the Electric Monarch for flight all that was required was the charging of her powerful storage batteries. The craft would then be ready for the crucial test which would prove whether she was to live up to her name or be merely a mass of expensive junk fit only for the scrap-pile.

It was small wonder then, that with the boys’ feeling of glad pride, there was mingled no little anxiety. They stood on the threshold of either a monumental triumph or an ignoble failure.

“Well, Ned,” said Jack, clapping their slender young assistant on the shoulder, “there’s your Electric Monarch as fit for flight as she ever will be.”

Ned Nevins turned his large eyes gratefully upon the boy he had learned within the past weeks to love and respect.

“If she succeeds it will be owing to you, Jack, and you, Tom,” he said happily; “as for Professor Chadwick, I owe him a debt of gratitude I can never repay.”

“Nonsense, my lad,” spoke the Professor, with a kindly smile, “win or lose, we have all learned much during the last few weeks. Ned, your uncle, had he lived, would have been one of the world’s great inventive geniuses.”

“I know it. I am sure of it,” said Ned gratefully. “My poor uncle! This would have been a proud day for him if he had lived.”

He resolutely fought back his momentary feeling of sadness, and in order to regain his composure helped Jack adjust a brace and tighten one or two bolts.

“An’ you alls means ter tell me widout confabulation or fear ob controversial flabbergumbugism dat dis yar monstrositfex am er gwine ter fly er swim?” demanded Jupe, lapsing, as he always did under excitement, into a perfect spasm of word coining.

“We hope so, Jupe,” rejoined Tom. “Why, are you aching for a ride?”

“Who, me?” and Jupe’s eyes grew wide. “No, sah! Ah’m nuthin’ but jes er tumble-bug so far as de desirousness ob cirperambulatin’ de air am consarned.”

“So you wouldn’t care to go up, Jupe?” inquired Ned, with a smile.

“No, sah! Wid emphaticness, ah says, N-O-No! Ef dat ting eber fall frum de etarnal hebbins!—Laws-ee! What a confabulating smashup dere is agwine ter be aroun’ hyar.”

“But we don’t figure that it will fall, Jupe. At any rate we are going to fly out over the water and then the twin boats will keep us afloat whatever happens.”

“Wa’al, sah, Massah Jack, be dat as it may, I’d rabber be on der groun’ lookin’ up dan in der sky lookin’ down,” declared the old negro with great positiveness.

“Let us make a final trip of inspection,” suggested the Professor. The idea was hailed gladly. Led by Mr. Chadwick, the lads, laughing and chatting gaily, went through the cabins and the strong structure designed to support the Electric Monarch when in flight.

The staterooms were finished with glittering paint and everything was spick and span as a new pin. Leaving the first cabin they passed through the connecting tube into the other one. This having been minutely examined, even down to the electric stove with which it was provided, the professor led the way into what was, to the boys, the most interesting part of the craft.

This was the pilot house. It has been already described, so we shall not go into any details further than to say that every appliance was in place, the wiring perfect, and all in readiness for the pilot to take the wheel and guide the most wonderful craft of the age on her initial flight.

Running fore-and-aft the entire length of the Electric Monarch, was a narrow plank runway. This was so that any part of the craft might be reached with ease when she was under way. The runway extended out to the bearings of the propellers already mentioned, and it would be part of the duty of whoever was entrusted with the oiling to venture out occasionally within reach of the whirling blades and apply lubricants to the bearings. On the water this would be a comparatively simple matter. None of the boys was quite sure in his mind just how this duty would appear when the craft was many hundreds of feet above the earth.

However, they were not worrying about such details as this just then. There was but one thought uppermost in the minds of each of the eager young constructors of the Electric Monarch.

Would she live up to expectations?

Possibly Ned, who was new to aerial work, was more nervous than his companions over the thought of the trial trip. This was not surprising. It requires courage of a rare sort to attempt for the first time to climb the air in an absolutely untried craft. Yet this was the ordeal they had to face. Moreover, there was a strong possibility that a failure might result in death.

“Have you decided yet upon the course we will take on the trial trip?” Jack inquired of his father as they finished their inspection, a tour, by the way, on which Sam had not been invited, to his great chagrin.

“Yes; if all goes well we will fly straight for the ocean, provided it is calm. That will give us a fine opportunity to test out the hydroplane devices.”

“I feel sure enough of success to plan a voyage across the Atlantic,” declared Tom confidently.

“That would be a little bit premature, my boy,” said the Professor, with a smile.

“But provided the Electric Monarch is all we expect, wouldn’t it be feasible?”

“I see no reason why not,” responded Mr. Chadwick. “At any rate in the present state of aeronautics, if the dream of a flight across the ocean is to come true, it seems to me that the Electric Monarch will be the first to make the adventurous voyage.”

“Ned, you will be famous yet,” declared Jack. “I can see the name of Ned Nevins in the Hall of Fame.”

“Huh! Maybe you see it in de bottom ob de deep blue sea,” sniffed Jupe sceptically. The old negro had no love for air craft since his experiences in the electric storm in Yucatan.

While the foregoing scene had been transpiring at High Towers, a far different one had been taking place at the Hinkley House. Having finished his dinner, a meal at which he caused much merriment by his odd antics and remarks, young Dill had sauntered out in search of new apparel. He had succeeded beyond his wildest hopes in finding some striking attire. From the stock of the village tailor he had selected a suit of green, red and black check, originally made for some amateur theatricals, a red waistcoat and a funny little blue hat with what he called a “rudder” stuck on behind.

From the tailor shop, where he insisted on having his packages wrapped up, young Dill passed to the haberdashery where he invested in a startling necktie and some radiant socks. Then, with triumph in his eye, and with his purchases under his arm, he retraced his way to the hotel.

“By chiminy,” he said to himself, as he hurried along quite unconscious of the wondering glances cast his way. “Py chiminy grickets, I show dem vot style is, I bet you my life!”

The German youth went straight to his room to change into his gorgeous raiment. He was still in the midst of this task, every now and then stealing a look at himself in the mirror, when his attention was arrested by the sound of voices in the next room.

The partitions in the Hinkley House were not particularly thick, this being caused by the fact that landlord Hinkley, being of an economical turn of mind, had partitioned off all his large rooms into two apartments when he became the proprietor of the hostelry.

As a consequence, conversations carried on in even ordinary tones were plainly audible in the adjoining rooms.

“Py chiminy, I hope dose fellers in der next room don’d talk it py dere schleep,” mused young Dill as he tied his rainbow cravat, “or I get no schlumbers, ain’d idt?”

The next instant his attention; was attracted to the speakers in the adjoining room by a singular circumstance. It appeared that he himself was the topic of their conversation.

“That pig-headed Dutchman with the comedy clothes,” was what he heard.

“Py chiminy, dot means me!” exclaimed young Dill, “der vind vos in somedings. Dere vos a voodpile in der nigger in dot next room. I dink I listen me a leedle closer, ain’d idt?”

[CHAPTER XIV.]
HEINY OVERHEARS THE PLOT.

Now, as my readers have no doubt seen by this time, Heiny Pumpernick Dill was no fool. In fact, despite his eccentric outside, the German youth possessed a keen, smart mind, which acted well in almost any emergency.

Giving a final flourish and grimace at himself in token of admiration of his new necktie, young Dill crept silently across the room and laid his ear against the partition. In this position he could hear every word that was being said in the next room.

“So you know that the Dutchman was at High Towers this morning?” said one of the voices, that of Miles Sharkey, although, of course, young Dill could not recognize it.

But he recognized the voice that replied without hesitation:

“Yes, I made it my business to find out about the sauerkraut-eating Heiny,” was the rejoinder.

“Ah-ha! Now comes it oudt!” exclaimed young Dill to himself. “Dot is der feller vot dinks he get funny midt me and laughs midt der wrong side of his face yet.”

“Is he a friend of that High Towers bunch?”

The voice that was unfamiliar to the German youth put the question.

“Aber am I ein friendt or not?” muttered young Dill. “I vould like to know dot.”

“No, he’s no friend,” it was Hank speaking, “in fact, from what I hear, he got into a row of some sort up there to-day.”

“Aber dot’s right, budt idt vos in der lake vot I gedt,” said young Dill to himself.

“So he is not one of the crowd at all?”

“No. He’s just a butter-in of some sort. I hear they get a lot of cranks up there.”

“Oh, ho! So I’m a ker-ank, am I?” muttered the German boy, shaking his fist at the unconscious pair in the next room. “You vatch me! I bedt you my life some day I ker-ank you der wrong vay, mein freindt.”

“Well, crank or no crank, he certainly put it over on you before dinner to-day, Hank. I’d advise you to leave him alone in future.”

“So his name vos Hank,” murmured young Dill, as he listened. “All righd, Hank, you gedt fixed by a ker-ank—by chiminy, dot’s boetry de firstest vot I ever make!” exclaimed the lad, as he formed the involuntary rhyme.

“Oh, I’ll fix him, never fear,” rejoined Hank. “The tallow-headed buttinski! But first we’ve got other things to attend to. The Dutchman can wait.”

“You chust bedt he can vait, Mister Hank,” muttered Heiny, on his side of the partition, “vaiting is one of der best things he does, und ven he gedts idt goodt undt retty den he yump—by chiminy!—he yump!”

“That’s right, we had better discuss what we mean to do. If they make that trial trip to-morrow we shall have to act quickly,” said Miles in reply to Hank’s last remark.

“What did you find out?” he added.

“Well, I spent quite a bit of time snooping around up there. I found a fool of a colored man who told me a lot.”

“Dot vos der plack feller, I bedt you my life,” chuckled the German boy, with his ear to the partition. “Veil he iss a chump und dot’s der first true word der feller in der next room has spoken.”

“So the colored man was easy, eh?”

“Easy? I should say. I told him I was from Edison’s place and was just looking around. He didn’t loosen up much so I gave him a dollar and he told me all he knew. He’s a bigger chump than that Dutch kid.”

“So-o-o-o!” fairly hissed Heiny, on his side of the wall, “veel, Mister Schmardty, maype dot der Tutch poy is not so much of chump as you dink.”

“Well, what did he tell you?” demanded Miles impatiently.

“About all I wanted to know. I posed as being interested in young Nevins, but not wanting him to know that I was around till the success or failure of the Electric Hydroaeroplane was assured.”

“Now comes it oudt,” muttered Heiny, pricking up his ears.

“Yes, and then—upon my word you are slow. Hank,” came Miles’s voice.

“Humph! that’s all the thanks I get after all the work I’ve done,” came in an aggrieved voice from Hank.

“That’s all right, Hank. Of course I know you’ve done well. But get down to cases.”

“Well, then,” continued Hank in a sulky tone, “I learned that the Electric Monarch is completed. The trial trip will probably take place to-morrow morning, or it may be delayed till night. If we mean to strike, we must do so quickly.”

“Yes, if we can’t get hold of the plans we must do all we can to cripple the ship, for if once it is a proved success, our game is up.”

“That’s right. Confound that young cousin of mine. He’s checkmated me.”

“Not quite yet, Hank,” was the confident reply. “Even if we don’t get a chance to injure the ship or steal the plans, I’ve yet another scheme up my sleeve—a legal one.”

“A legal one?”

“Yes, I’m smart enough for that. But we won’t work it till the time comes. In the meanwhile we must do what we can to stop this trial trip from coming off.”

“Have you any plans in that respect?”

“No, I confess I hadn’t till you told me about that Dutch boy. Why can’t we use him?”

“What, that dunderhead!”

“Ah-ha! So-o-o-o I am a dunderhead, too, iss idt?” growled Heiny from his side of the partition. “I’m dunderheadt midt ears on my dunderheadt, though, py chiminys!”

He started counting on his pudgy fingers.

“Chump! Dutchman! Dunderheadt! Dot makes three! Very veel, Hank, I makes it all ger-skvare midt you before I gedts drough, I bet me.”

“Of course he’s a bonehead,” came the other voice, which made poor Heiny squirm.

“But that’s all the better for our purpose. If he had any sense he might suspect something. As it is——”

“He don’d know somedings,” chuckled Heiny to himself.

“Hanged if I can see what you are driving at,” growled Hank. “I wouldn’t employ that Dutchman to mop off a floor.”

“Of you did I mop idt midt you,” muttered the young German indignantly.

“Now, listen, Hank,” said Miles, “the German got into trouble up there to-day, you say? Very well, he’s naturally sore at the whole High Towers crowd. All right. We go to him and offer him a chance to get even. Nobody would suspect him of contemplating any harm to anything or anybody; he hasn’t got sense enough.”

“Py golly, I premeditate harm to you all righdt, mister,” grunted young Dill angrily.

“What do you mean to get him to do?” inquired Hank eagerly.

“We’ll discuss that later. The thing to do now is to get him on our side.”

“I’ll attend to that,” said Hank, “leave it to me to fix that Dutchman so that he’ll eat out of my hand.”

“Vell now dot is nice of you,” said young Dill to himself as the two men in the next room vacated it, closing the door behind them.

[CHAPTER XV.]
THE BURGLAR TRAP.

The German lad finished his preparations for astonishing Nestorville with elaborate care. Having adjusted his derby at what he considered a fetching angle, he prepared to descend and to conquer.

“Maype so I cotch idt an heiress,” he said to himself, “undt den I bodder no more midt der convertible sissage machine.”

Heiny was perfectly right when he concluded that he was about to astonish Nestorville. The porch of the hotel was fairly well occupied when he descended, and the street was also pretty well thronged. The sight of the German youth in his tight-fitting check clothes, gaudy socks, rainbow tie and yellow gloves created an amount of attention which gratified Heiny to the full.

“For der first time dey see idt in dis penighted village vot clothes vears a chentleman,” he said to himself.

His first jar came when a small boy stepped up to him.

“Say, mister?” said the urchin.

“Vel, vot idt iss, mein poy?” asked Heiny.

“Wot cher sellin’?”

“Sellin’? I do not comprehension you.”

“What you advertisin’ then. Squirts Savory Soap or Odles Orient Oats?”

“Mein leedle poy, I adtvertise idt nuddings.”

“Nor sell nothing?”

“Nein. I am a chentleman of leisure undt an inventor.”

“Oh, climb back in der cage,” advised the rude urchin, and amidst a shout of laughter from his cronies he dashed off.

“Climb py der cage?” muttered young Dill, looking about. “I see no cage, undt efen if I didt I vouldn’t climb in—no, sir, not vile I haf nice room midt conversationings thrown in free of charge for nuddings.”

“On a trip?” asked a tall gangling village youth of the “half-baked” age, approaching the German boy.

“No, I am oudt on der ocean sufferin’ seferely midt sea sickness,” responded Heiny with withering scorn, and the village youth subsided.

“I vonder vot is der madder midt me?” thought young Dill to himself, seeing that he was the observed of all observers in and about the hotel. “Oh, vell! I subbose dot a vell-dressed man is not often seen hereabouts.”

He sat down in a chair on the porch and before long a cadaverous-looking individual, with lank, black hair and a solemn countenance seated himself beside him.

“A stranger in our city, sir, I take it?” began the newcomer.

“Yes, dey all seem to dink I am stranger dan anydings dot dey see yet,” rejoined Heiny good-naturedly.

“A natural ignorance, my dear sir. You, I take it, come from the centers of cosmopolitanism?”

“Vell, I don’t know dot town. I come from New York,” was the German youth’s reply.

“A noble city, sir.”

“Vell, I don’d know about dot. Dey vouldn’d buy mein convertible sissage machine.”

“What, you are an inventor?”

“Ches, an inventor at large—(undt schmall)——” declared young Dill, throwing out his chest proudly.

“You must make a great deal of money.”

“Oh, enough to lif py meinself—enough for dot! I don’d vant for nuddings. Der best in clothes or foodt is none too goodt for me,” and the German swelled with pride. He did not notice the glitter that had come into the eyes of the cadaverous man at the mention of money. He eyed young Dill cunningly and then asked:

“A guest of this hotel, sir?”

“Ches, I stop here. Idt iss nodt a badt blace but der pickles iss no good,” said young Dill loftily, as if he had been used to hotels all his life.

The cadaverous man leaned over toward the German youth confidentially.

“If you carry large sums with you I need not warn you of the danger of thieves.”

“Oh, no, I am careful midt mein money,” young Dill assured his new-found friend, “I alvays schleep midt idt in der toe of vun of mein shoes,”

“Ah, indeed. May I ask why?”

“Vell, you see, ker-ooks dey look under der pillow undt in der clothing but dey nefer dink of lookin’ py der toes of mein shoes. A goodt scheme, ain’d idt?”

“Excellent. Good evening, my dear young man. I have much enjoyed our conversation.”

And the cadaverous-looking man bowed himself out, looking back as he went with a covert smile on his face.

“Thank you, my Teutonic friend,” he said to himself as he made his way across the office. “I’m much obliged to you for confiding to ‘Deacon’ Terry the place where you hide your roll. To judge by your clothes it must be a fat one. I think I’ll investigate your shoes to-night.”

So thinking, “Deacon” Terry, the notorious hotel thief, examined the register, made sure of the location of “the inventor’s” room and then politely requested that his baggage be transferred to a room on that floor, as the room he had been assigned to did not please him. His request was at once granted, for the “Deacon” possessed an impressive, not to say ministerial manner, which gave not the least clue to his real character.

Without appearing to feel the slightest concern in them, young Dill watched, with intense interest, the movements of Hank Nevins and Miles Sharkey, following the conclusion of the evening meal. Matters were further complicated in the German youth’s mind by the fact that they did not approach him, as he had expected, but instead, engaged the landlord’s son in conversation.

By adroitly maneuvering, young Dill succeeded in getting into a position where a pillar in the lobby hid him from view and afforded a capital screen behind which to listen to the formation of the plot which he was sure was going forward. He had learned earlier in the day that Sam Hinkley worked at the High Towers workshop and was considerably surprised when he saw the boy allow himself to be drawn into talk with Hank and the man the German youth knew as “Der stranger.”

“I’ll bedt idt er pretzel dot der iss some more crooked pisiness going forvarts,” he thought to himself as he watched Sam in deep conversation with the pair he already knew plotted mischief to the Electric Monarch. “Does two fellers iss so crooked dey could behind a corkscrew hide. I vatch undt lisden. Maybe I find idt oudt some more. If I do, I tell der poys by der Electric Monarch and den maybe dey give me a chob.”

With this idea in mind, he worked his way to the position he adjudged most favorable for his eavesdropping. Now young Dill was no friend to sneaky ways, but in the present case he felt that the end justified almost any means. He knew enough to realize that the Boy Inventors’ project was threatened by two men whom he instinctively felt were bad characters, even if he had not overheard their talk of the afternoon.

He had not listened long when all his suspicions were confirmed. With cunning skill Miles Sharkey was working on Sam Hinkley’s hatred of Ned Nevins to enlist Sam in the plot against the Electric Monarch. But to young Dill’s chagrin, he could not get close enough to hear all their conversation without risking being discovered. He had, therefore, to content himself with fragmentary bits. But such as these were, they were quite sufficient to inform him that Sam Hinkley was ready to turn traitor to his young employers.

“Then you’ll do it?” were the last words the German youth heard Miles address to Sam Hinkley.

“You can depend on me to fix the young sneak,” he heard Sam answer. “But when do I get my money?”

“When we get ours from the party I told you about. Is that satisfactory?” asked Miles, who appeared to act as spokesman.

“That’s all right,” was Sam’s reply, as he strolled away, and the two conspirators exchanged triumphant glances.

“Now dey come py me, I bedt you my life,” muttered the young German to himself as he flopped into a chair and appeared engrossed in a newspaper which happened, by good luck, to be lying there. Sure enough it was not many minutes before he heard a honey voice addressing him.

It was Hank. He expressed great regret for the occurrences of the morning.

“I don’t know what got into me,” he said, “anyhow I apologize very sincerely.”

“Oh, dot’s all righdt,” said young Dill easily, “und at dot I don’d dink dot you hadt very much on me.”

Hank agreed, and then after some more conversation he approached the subject that young Dill knew he had been leading up to all the time.

“You know those Boy Inventors, as they call them, up at High Towers?” he asked.

“Vell, I can’t say dot I know dem,” replied Heiny truthfully, “but I like to get a chob by dem.”

“Oh, looking for a job, are you?”

“Ches, I needt some money preddy badtly und I don’d mindt telling you dot I aindt particular how I get idt alretty.”

Hank fell into the trap readily. “This fellow’s easier than I thought,” he chuckled to himself. He proceeded to “feel out” the German youth a little more, and then made him a confidant in their plans, young Dill appearing to fall in readily with all their schemes.

Briefly the plot was this. Young Dill was to present himself at High Towers in the morning. Seemingly he was to be in quest of work. But his real mission was to take advantage of any opportunity that might present itself to disconnect one of the wires leading from the storage batteries to the motor. Failing in this, he was to injure the Electric Monarch in any way that he could, Hank having previously found out that young Dill understood considerable about machinery.

To all this the young German appeared to agree. In fact he was even enthusiastic.

“I guess I make more money on dis chob dan I vouldt oudt of mein sissage machine,” he said.

“Money!” exclaimed Hank. “Why, if you can pull this thing off right you’ll be able to buy a new suit every ten minutes.”

“Den I’m your man,” said young Dill.

Soon after this he went to bed. He would have liked to go to High Towers that night but he knew that he was watched. Moreover, as there was to be no attempt made to injure the machine till the next morning, he would not have accomplished any useful purpose, except perhaps, to scare the plotters away, which was the last thing he wished to do.

Before turning in, the German youth expended a few loving caresses on the convertible sausage machine, and then, placing it on the floor, he tumbled into bed and soon his snores proclaimed that at least one guest of the Hinkley House was enjoying peaceful slumber.

It was after midnight that a door down the corridor from the German youth’s room was cautiously opened and the cadaverous head and lank black locks of “Deacon” Terry protruded themselves into the dimly lighted passage. Apparently satisfied that every one was in bed, the “Deacon” slipped out of his room and tip-toed down the passage to young Dill’s door.

Bending, he listened at the key-hole. The nasal music which greeted his ears caused a satisfied smile to creep over his features. He fumbled in his pocket for a minute and then a jingling sound proclaimed that he had found what he was in search of—a bunch of skeleton keys.

With a deftness born of long practice the “Deacon” inserted one of the keys in the lock of young Dill’s door. There was the slightest of clicks and then the Deacon cautiously pushed the portal open. An instant’s pause, and then with the gliding motion of a snake, he slipped through the door.

“Snap!”

A sound like the firing of a pistol was followed almost immediately by a most appalling yell.

“Help! Ouch! Help!”

The next moment a figure came flying into the corridor. Attached to it was what at first sight appeared to be a gigantic spider. Down the corridor the figure fled, yelling at the top of his voice.

All through the hotel, doors could be heard opening and shouts and cries rang through the entire structure from office to garret!

“It’s fire!”

“There’s murder!”

“Call the police!”

“Thieves!”

“Fire! Fire!”

Mingling with these and a dozen other frantic cries from alarmed guests came the clanging of gongs as the night clerk, aroused from his doze in the office, sprang to the emergency alarm and pulled it. This redoubled the confusion.

In the midst of the pandemonium there came skyrocketing madly down the stairs into the half-dressed crowd swarming in the lobby, an extraordinary and alarming figure. It was that of a man clad only in shirt and trousers upon whose face was stamped the wildest terror. Frightened cries broke from his lips and the horrified onlookers perceived that, attached to him, behind, was a gigantic spider, or such at least the thing appeared.

With a last frantic cry the victim of the repulsive-looking creature gave a bound and fell headlong on the floor of the crowded lobby. As he did so there was a metallic clang, the “spider” was detached from his waistband and the excited crowd saw that it was in reality a metallic device of some sort.

It was just at this moment that the fire department and the police department, the latter consisting of two men and a chief, with a resplendent star of pie-plate proportions, burst into the thronged lobby. The chief rushed up to the prostrate man and raised him to his feet.

The instant his eyes encountered the other’s face, the village functionary gave a cry of astonishment.

“It’s ‘Deacon’ Terry, the crook!” he exclaimed, with a firm grip on the man. “There’s a description and a reward out for his capture.”

“What have you been up to now?” asked one of the policemen, but before the discomfited thief could reply, a strange figure in red and white striped pajamas shoved its way through the excited throng that jammed the lobby.

“I can tell you dot. Dot feller dere vos try to make a robberies midt mein room. Mein burglar trap—dot used to be a sissage machine—makes a capture by him.”

“Who in thunder are you?” demanded the chief, regarding the wild-looking German youth with amazement.

“I am Heiny Pumpernick Dill, inventor at large (undt schmall) of der Convertible Sissage Machine. Dot iss, idt used to be a sissage machine—now I make idt of him a burglar trap.”

“Say, is this fellow crazy or what?” exclaimed the chief, who had been unable, not unnaturally, to make head or tail of this jargon.

“I think I can explain, chief,” said the night clerk, coming forward. “It’s plain enough that this fellow,—the ‘Deacon’ as you call him,—tried to get into Mr. Dill’s room. He succeeded, but instead of robbing Dill he was seized by this what-you-may-call it.”

He indicated the sausage machine lying in a heap of spider-like limbs and springs on the floor near-by.

“Dot is not a what-you-mighdt-call-idt——” began young Dill indignantly, “idt is a sissage machine. I pudt him der door py ven I go to mein schleep. I suppose dot dis feller got ger-grabbed by idt ven he come to take all der money dot I told him early in der efenin’ I hadt in mein shoes.”

It was some time before things quieted down and the notorious “Deacon” was taken off to the village lock-up. Young Dill was the recipient of many congratulations on the success of his “burglar-trap.” But somehow they did not please him. As he returned to his interrupted slumbers he muttered to himself:

“I am a preddy bum inventor alretty. I don’d know meinself vot I invent. Here I go to vurk undt make idt a fine sissage machine undt now I haf to turn idt into a burglar-trap—Himmel!”

[CHAPTER XVI.]
THE LOST LEVER.

Bright and early the next morning the young inventors, and the workmen attached to their “plant,” wheeled out the framework of the Electric Monarch and the business of attaching the wings was begun. It was just half an hour from the time the work began to the moment when the last bolt was in place, and like a huge red and silver butterfly the wonderful craft stood poised ready for flight.

The boys had had but little sleep and their dreams had been of skimming the air or gliding over the surface of the sea. Now, as they stood back and gazed at their completed handiwork, they felt a proud thrill of work well done. Come what might of the trial trip, they felt that they had done their very best.

Only one thing marred their delight at the completion of their long task. Professor Chadwick, who from time to time suffered from severe headaches, would be unable to accompany them on the initial voyage. Instead, one of the workmen, a man named Joyce, was selected to go along.

When everything was in readiness for the start, Jack visited his father’s study. He was in hopes that even at the eleventh hour the Professor might feel well enough to accompany them. He well knew what a disappointment it was to his father to have to remain behind. But Professor Chadwick had been warned by his physician not to risk excitement when suffering from one of his nervous headaches.

Jack found his father lying on a lounge in the library.

“No, Jack, my boy,” he said in answer to the boy’s anxious inquiries, “I’m afraid the trial trip must be made without me. I am under doctor’s orders and cannot disobey them.”

“I wish you could come, father,” replied the boy, “but if everything goes off all right you will have many opportunities to ride in the Electric Monarch. Now, since you can’t come, I am going to entrust to your care the plans and blue prints of the craft.”

“Yes, they will be safer here.”

“I have just brought them from the workshop. See, here they are,” and Jack produced a voluminous roll of papers. “We are responsible to Ned Nevins for the safety of these and we must see that they are looked after carefully.”

“Put them in the safe, my boy, and then give me the combination. If I feel better later on I should like to look them over.”

Jack went to a large wall safe in one corner of the room, opened it and placed the papers within. He then gave the combination to his father on a slip of paper. When this had been done he felt easier in his mind.

“They are safe enough now,” he thought. He mixed his father a draught of medicine and then, summoning a servant, he told her to be ready to answer any call from the library, in which room Professor Chadwick intended to spend the day.

When this had been done Jack felt that further delay would be useless. Bidding his father good-bye, and promising to give him every detail of the trip on his return, the boy hurried out to join his comrades.

It was a cloudless day. There was not a breath of wind to stir the leaves. A better morning for the testing of the Electric Monarch could not have been imagined.

“Well, Tom, we’re all ready, I guess.”

“As ready as we ever will be, Jack. The big moment is due. Everything all right to your mind, Ned?”

“Down to the last nut on the last bolt,” replied young Nevins positively.

“Then we had better climb on board and get ready for the start.”

Joyce, a stalwart, middle-aged mechanic, followed the boys on board the Electric Monarch. They first visited the pilot house. It had already been decided that Jack, on account of his previous experience with aerial craft, was to have the wheel. He gave a last look over the equipment. The next instant he uttered an exclamation of dismay.

“The landing lever is gone!” he exclaimed.

“What!” the cry came from all three of his companions simultaneously.

“It’s gone!” cried the boy. “Look here, it’s been unbolted from the sector. Boys, the trial trip is off if we can’t find it.”

As it was the landing lever that controlled the descending impetus of the craft, it can readily be seen that it would have been foolhardy—suicidal, in fact—to have attempted to start without it.

“It was here the last thing last night,” cried Ned. “I know because I looked the whole craft over before I turned in.”

“Just the same, it is gone,” declared Tom.

“Somebody has taken it,” struck in Joyce.

“Yes, somebody with a spite against us,” added Ned, and in his mind the thought of Sam Hinkley flashed up.

“Has anybody seen Sam about this morning?” he asked.

No, nobody had. The boy had not put in his usual appearance, which seemed odd, for recently he had appeared to take more interest than usual in the Electric Monarch.

“You surely don’t suspect——” began Tom.

“I don’t know what to say,” interrupted Jack, “it looks odd, that’s all.”

“But what object could he have had in taking it?” asked Tom.

“Better ask Ned that,” was the response. “He told Ned he’d get even with him some time for giving him a lesson on the porch of the Hinkley House.”

“Well, suspicions won’t find that lever,” said Ned. “Suppose we look for it. Let’s start a hunt.”

“Not much use,” declared Joyce. “Whoever took that lever has hidden it where we can’t find it.”

“I guess that’s so,” admitted Jack ruefully. “I don’t want to accuse any one till we know, but it looks as if——”

A shout from beside the ship interrupted him. It was Jupe. He was pointing down the hill.

“Gollyumption!” shouted the old negro, who had been an interested though inactive onlooker. “Hyar comes dat crazy Dutch kid!”

Sure enough, up the hill was coming, as fast as his pudgy legs would carry him, the rotund form of the doughty inventor of the convertible sausage machine.

“Bother him. We don’t want that pest around now. Hullo! what’s the matter with him?”

For young Dill was waving his arms like a windmill. He dashed up, puffing like a locomotive, the next minute. It was plain he was wildly excited about something. But for some seconds he could only puff and gesticulate while his eyes rolled as if he had eaten something that had disagreed with him.

“What’s the trouble, are you sick?” asked Jack, looking down from the pilot house.

“Aber-poof—Poys! You haf missed idt somedings—poof—from der—sheeps?”

“Sheeps?” exclaimed Tom, puzzled.

“He means ship,” exclaimed Jack. “Say, fellows, he knows something about the missing lever. Is that it, Heiny?”

“Ches. Der liver of der sheep iss gone, ain’d idt?”

“It certainly has. Do you know anything about it?”

By this time Heiny had recovered his breath. In a torrent of speech that nothing could stop he rattled off the story of the overheard conversation, of Sam’s treachery and of the way in which he had seemingly fallen in with the conspirators’ plans. Early that morning he had got out of bed and tracked Sam Hinkley to High Towers. He had watched while the treacherous youth had unscrewed the lever and then had followed him through the fields to an abandoned well into which the rascally boy had thrown it. During his narrative, Heiny gave a good description of Hank Nevins and Miles Sharkey, from which Ned had no difficulty in identifying the plotters. The manner in which they had discovered his whereabouts, though, was, of course, a mystery to the lad.

But there was no time to waste just then in discussing the best means of ensuring the punishment of the conspirators. The main desire of all the boys was to get back the lever and be off on the interrupted test. Under young Dill’s guidance the old well was soon found. It was almost filled up with rubbish and it was an easy matter to get the lever out.

“I don’t know how we can reward you for this service,” Jack said to young Dill as they made their way back to the Electric Monarch.

“Dere is an easy vay to do dot,” said the young German, with the air of one who already has his mind made up.

“Well, what is it?”

“Make me der mashed shot of der Elegdrig Monarch.”

“The what?” Jack regarded the lad with a puzzled look. Young Dill had certainly done them a splendid service and Jack, as they all did, wished to reward him for it in some substantial way.

“Der mashed shot—der goot luck—der——”

“Oh, the mascot!” cried Jack.

“Dot’s idt. I make idt a fine mashed shot. I am strong. I am villing. I am an inventor, at large (undt schmall) und——”

“But just what are the duties of a mascot? If I make you one I’d like to be sure you understand them,” said Jack with a wink at his companions.

“Oh, dot vos easy. Der dooties of a mashed shot are to sit in a corner undt keep making a noise like a rabbid’s foot oder a horse’s-boot.”

“Horseshoe, I guess you mean. However, you seem to have a pretty good idea of the job and we can use you, anyhow, I guess.”

“Den I gedt der chob?”

“Yes, you are one of the crew of the Electric Monarch.”

“Hoch! Der Monarch!” shouted Heiny Dill, throwing his funny little “rudder” hat high in the air, “ven do vee start?”

“Thanks to your clever detective work, right away.”

[CHAPTER XVII.]
OFF AT LAST!

The frame of the Electric Monarch thrilled to the first impulse of her powerful motors. But that thrill was nothing to the sense of suppressed excitement that ran through the boys’ veins as Jack, with throbbing pulses, set the lever that sent the electric current into the driving machinery.

Outwardly calm, every person on board stood at his station waiting the word for the start. Tom Jesson was in the bow, Joyce, oil can in hand, was at the stern. Ned Nevins, pale but keeping a firm grip on his nerves, stood by the motors. His “big moment” had come at last. The dream of Jeptha Nevins was to be put to the test.

Heiny Dill had had a special office created for him at the last moment. He was, in addition to his self-conferred title of mascot, the “chief cook and bottle washer”—in other words, the steward of the Electric Monarch. He felt the responsibilities of his office to the full as he stood with his rotund face stuck out of the port cabin window waiting for the start. He already had the electric stove going and a big kettle of boiling water on it. Just why, he could not have said, but he felt that it was in line with his responsible position to be doing something.

“Hold tight, everybody. We’re going up!”

The shout from the pilot house was like a bugle call. Each boy involuntarily straightened up at his post. The propellers beat the air faster and faster. On the “bridge deck” the boys held tightly to their caps. It was like being in a hurricane. The mighty power of the motors made a roaring noise, like the voice of a cataract. The craft shook from stem to stern like a live thing struggling against captivity.

Suddenly there came a jerk and a yell from Heiny as, amidst a crashing of pots and pans, he was flung to the floor. On the “bridge deck” the crew hung on tight. Their faces showed the tense strain as Jack applied full power.

Off like an arrow from a bow shot the great craft across the smooth slope leading down to the lake. The speed was terrific. The craft pitched and swayed so that it was only by holding on for dear life that the boys could keep their feet.

“Ledt me oudt! Ledt me oudt!” shrieked Heiny, from amidst the wreckage of his cooking utensils. “I don’d vant to be a mashed shot!”

“Gracious, if we don’t rise in a second we’ll be in the lake!” cried Tom in dismay, but above the roaring of the motors and propellers no one heard him. But the same thought was in the minds of all. Ned, white as ashes, peered straight ahead as the massive craft dashed down the hill. Were all their hopes doomed to disaster, after all?

In the pilot house Jack saw the impending disaster. He threw his entire weight against the lever that set the wings at a rising inclination. The device was new and stiff. His most strenuous exertions failed to move it.

He heard a voice at his shoulder. It was Ned Nevins. He had guessed that something was the matter and had clawed his way into the pilot house down the pitching, swaying bridge.

“The rising lever! Quick!” he cried.

“I can’t move it. It’s stuck!” shouted back Jack.

Ned braced his foot against the sector and both boys threw the last ounce of their strength into making the refractory bit of machinery move. It did, with a suddenness that threw them both to the floor of the pilot house.

But the next instant they gave a glad shout of delight which echoed from one end of the craft to the other.

The Electric Monarch was rising, shooting straight upward toward the blue heavens at tremendous speed!

Jack scrambled to his feet like a shot. For one instant the Electric Monarch was shooting skyward without a guiding hand at the wheel. The next moment her young skipper, with a firm grasp of the spokes, was directing her course due eastward toward the ocean.

While he did this, Ned set to work with oil can and file on the lever which had so nearly caused disaster. He soon had it fixed and had taken to heart a lesson which had for its text, “It’s the little things that count.”

“Gracious,” he said to Jack, as they shot straight onward at a height the barograph showed to be 2,500 feet, “that lever came near wrecking us.”

“Never mind that now,” was the response, “just see how splendidly she is behaving. Ned, old boy, the Electric Monarch is a success. A bigger success than we dared to hope.”

“She is indeed,” said Ned, almost reverentially, as he glanced down from the pilot house window at the landscape flying by far below them. It was his first experience in the air and he felt just a bit creepy and scared.

But that feeling soon wore off, and before a glittering expanse of water in the distance showed them that the ocean lay before them, Ned Nevins, the virtual owner of the Electric Monarch, was at work on the motors, oiling and adjusting as if he had been an engineer of a flying ship all his life.

The motion of the craft was delightfully smooth and even. If it had not been for the furious wind of the propellers, and the roaring of the motor, it would have been difficult to believe they were moving at all. Yet the speed indicator showed that they had attained a velocity of fifty miles an hour and their maximum speed had not by any means been reached.

Jack knew that with new machinery it would have been risking over-heated bearings and all manner of engine trouble, to let the Electric Monarch out to her full capacity.

Jack’s cheeks glowed and his eyes shone as the craft drove onward, with his firm hands on the controlling wheel. It was invigorating and blood-quickening to feel the way in which the Electric Monarch responded instantly to every move of the controlling devices.

“Of course the Electric Monarch isn’t mine, nor have I any right to any share in her but the builder’s, and yet I can’t help feeling that we all have a part in her,” said the boy to himself. “That Jeptha Nevins must have been a wonder. If he had only lived, this would have been a proud day for him. He certainly left Ned a great legacy in those plans. I wonder——”

Jack broke off short in his ruminations. The plans! It was true they were in the safe at High Towers, but it was also true that just the moment before sailing they had learned that enemies were interested in securing them. Enemies backed by powerful interests, too, judging by what Heiny Dill had said.

A troubled look crossed Jack’s face. His father was ill. In case intruders gained access to the library, he could make but a feeble resistance. But the next moment he dismissed the thought as ridiculous. How could any one know where the plans had been placed? And even so, if an attempt was made to blow open the safe, the servants would be bound to hear.

“Just the same,” thought the boy, “I wish we’d notified the police before we started.”

But at that moment a wind flaw struck the Electric Monarch and Jack’s attention was fully occupied in handling the craft as she heeled over like a ship in a heavy sea. When she was once more on an even keel, he had other matters to occupy his mind.

[CHAPTER XVIII.]
NED’S TERRIBLE PERIL.

Beneath the Electric Monarch, soaring eagle-like far above it, a glimmering speck against the blue, lay the Atlantic. The ocean was in a calm mood. Viewed from above, its surface appeared to be as smooth as a mirror.

But Jack knew that appearances were deceptive. The Atlantic is never absolutely at rest. Even on the calmest days its bosom heaves with long, swinging swells, running shoreward to break in heavy, thunderous surf on the beach. He drew from a pocket beside the wheel the glasses with which the receptacle was equipped.

Controlling the wheel with one hand, he raised the glasses to his eyes with the other. He gazed downward through them and saw that the sea was lazily swelling in long, oily combers, which could be ridden with ease even by a cockleshell of a boat, whereas the Electric Monarch was actually two capable cabin cruisers fastened together Siamese-twin-like by ligaments of vanadium and steel and aluminum alloy.

“It’s safe enough to go down,” said Jack to himself and sounded two blasts on the electric whistle.

This was the signal to the engineer to come into the pilot house for a consultation. Ned soon presented himself. He was grimy but happy.

“How’s everything running?” asked Jack.

“Smooth as oil. You’d think the motors had been in commission for a long time instead of being on their initial trip.”

“That’s good. I didn’t have much fear but they would work all right. I’m going to try a drop, Ned.”

Jack watched Ned narrowly to see if the news had any effect upon him but Ned simply nodded his head in a business-like way and remarked:

“Very well, sir.”

At this juncture there came a shrill whistle on one of the speaking tubes leading to the helmsman’s wheel.

“Hullo, there’s Tom calling from the stern,” cried Jack, “wonder what’s up now.”

He placed the tube to his ear and then gave an exclamation of concern.

“Oh, that’s too bad.”

“What’s the trouble?” asked Ned.

“Why, Tom has an attack of air-sickness. It’s pretty bad while it lasts, but fortunately it is soon over. I’m going to call him in to lie down in the cabin a while. Can you leave your motors and stand watch astern, Ned?”

“Certainly. They’re all right for half an hour, anyhow. The current’s fine.” The boy glanced at the indicator, which showed a strong, steady supply of “juice.” Jack hailed Tom through the speaking tube and ordered him to come in at once and lie down. He then hailed Heiny, who by this time had gotten over his first scare, and told him to get some hot coffee ready.

“Tom will be ready for duty before long,” said Jack, as Ned left the pilot house, passing, as he made his way aft, Tom, who looked white and ill. But he assured Ned it was nothing, simply an attack of air-sickness which would soon pass over.

Ned took up his place in the stern between the two long supporting frameworks of the rear propellers. The wind was terrific but otherwise he felt no inconvenience except from the excessive vibration. He had not been standing there more than a few minutes, keeping a watchful eye all about him, when he noticed that the port stern bearing of one of the propellers was beginning to smoke.

“Hullo! We’ll be having a hot box first thing we know,” said Ned to himself. “I’ve got to oil that fellow and look sharp about it, too.”

He glanced out over the path he would have to travel. Ned was a plucky boy, but he felt a qualm pass through him as he looked. The propeller was fully ten feet out from the main structure of the craft and was supported by a thin framework of braces.

The task in front of Ned was to straddle this framework and make his way aft to the heated bearing, with nothing but 2,500 feet of space beneath his shoe soles. For a minute he felt tempted to ask Jack for instructions. But then his pride, always keen with Ned, came to his rescue.

“I’ll do it,” he determined, taking a firm grip on his faculties. “But it’s going to be some job.”

He gripped his oil can firmly, resolved to waste no more time. Then clambering up to the framework, he straddled himself over the top part of it, holding on to the lower part of it as best he could with his feet.

It was like riding a bucking broncho in mid-air. The gale from the big propellers swept around Ned like a hurricane. He felt his cap swept off his head and dared not look downward to watch it go hurtling toward the sea. He knew that the sight would be too much for his nerves.

Rallying himself with an effort, Ned began his dangerous crawl along the framework. The further out from the main structure of the craft he got the more nerve-racking became the task. The slender framework shook and swayed as if it was determined to shake him off, and send him flying into space.

Ned gripped his handholds till the paint flaked off on his palms. But little by little he managed to work his way toward the bearing. The propeller, a whirring blur before his eyes, dazzled him. The wind from it seemed to catch his breath and jam it back down his throat. He clung to his perch with the courage of desperation.

At last he reached a point from which he could reach the bearing. He raised the oil cup and doused the smoking metal with oil. And then, his duty done, he was horrified to feel a sudden wave of deadly nausea sweep over him. The sea seemed to rush up toward him, and his senses swam in a wild delirium.

“I must get back! I must! I must!” he said to himself, and then the terrible grip of air-sickness descended upon him again and again, and deprived him of all power to move.

Almost three thousand feet in the air, perched on a slender, bucking framework, and a prey to the most severe form of air-sickness, Ned’s position was perilous, indeed.

Suddenly he felt his senses leaving him. For a second he fought against insensibility with all the power he possessed. But it overmastered him. Ned felt his head swimming round and round like a detached body in an aurora of blazing light. All at once something seemed to give way.

He felt himself falling! falling!

Then a blackness like night shut down upon him and he knew no more.

It was perhaps a quarter of an hour later when Tom presented himself to Jack and announced that he was fit for duty.

“Very well, Tom, go back to your post and send Ned to resume his.”

Tom left the cabin. In less than ten seconds he was back. His face was blanched and his lips white. Jack noticed he was trembling violently.

“What in the world is the matter, are you ill?” demanded Jack.

“No—no, it’s Ned.”

“What’s up? Anything the matter with him?”

“He’s—he’s g-g-g-gone!”

“Gone!”

“That’s right. I went aft and there was no sign of him. Joyce says nothing has been seen of him up forward.”

“Great Scott!”

The boys faced each other with the fear of a great calamity on their faces. If Ned was not on board he must have fallen from the Electric Monarch while she was in mid-air. In such a case there was no need to debate over the fate of the young comrade they had grown to love.

“I can’t leave the wheel, Tom, you must do what you can,” said Jack, his voice trembling in spite of himself.

Tom stammered some reply and left the pilot house. He summoned young Dill.

“Come aft with me,” he ordered. “We’re afraid an accident has happened.”

“An accidend! vot sort of an accidend?” blurted out the German youth.

“We’re afraid that Ned Nevins has fallen overboard.”

“Donnervetter!”

“You must keep a cool head, Dill, and do what I tell you.”

“I am as cool as a whole barrel of cucumbers,” was the reply.

“Then come with me. There’s one chance in ten thousand that he may be on board and alive.”

Silently the two made their way aft along the heaving, swaying bridge, a dreadful fear gnawing at their hearts.

[CHAPTER XIX.]
THE DISGRUNTLED CRONIES.

To say that the departure of the Electric Monarch from High Towers had caused a sensation in Nestorville would be putting it mildly. The town simply went wild.

School was dismissed, business came to a standstill, and the streets were thronged from end to end with excited townspeople.

“What’s the trouble?” demanded Hank Nevins, as the waitress dropped the plate of ham and eggs she was about to bring him and his worthy companion, Miles Sharkey, and regardless of the crash and the spatter, dashed into the street.

“Hark, what’s that they’re calling out?” cried Hank suddenly.

“Listen!”

Miles put down his knife and fork which he had grasped expectantly and pricked up his ears. In another minute the cry,—which had grown to a roar,—came to their ears with the distinctness of a thunder clap and with much the same effect.

“Airship!—Airship!”

The cry reverberated through the village like a call to arms. Men shouted and women screamed while small boys went charging up and down with their heads in the air regardless of whom they bumped into.

“Great Juniper!” gasped out Hank, spilling his coffee in his agitation, “do you suppose——?”

“I don’t suppose anything. Let’s make sure,” cried Miles.

Hatless they rushed into the street but nobody paid any attention to their agitation. Everybody was equally excited. It was indeed a thrilling sight. Far above the heads of the gaping crowd an immense scarlet and silver shape was skimming on wings that shimmered in the bright sunlight.

“Hurrah!” yelled a man, and a hundred took up the cry half hysterically.

“It’s flying!” cried out an old lady, as if there was any doubt about it.

“What is it?” asked somebody.

“It’s an airship,” was the reply.

“Wa’al, it ain’t like any I’ve ever saw,” came the response. “It looks as big as a house. It’s got cabins on it, too.”

“Must be some more of the work of them boys up at High Towers,” hazarded Schultz, the blacksmith, who sometimes did odd jobs for the boys.

“Like as not it is,” agreed somebody else. “Them boys ’ull break their necks some day, sure.”

“You mean they’ll make Nestorville famous,” spoke up Schultz in the capacity of the boys’ champion. “They’re the brainiest kids in America to-day.”

“Oh, they don’t amount to very much,” came a sneering voice behind the sturdy blacksmith.

He faced round instantly. The remark had come from Hank who, with Miles at his side, was watching the successful flight with what feelings may be imagined.

Schultz looked angry and was not afraid to let his irritation show. Hank began to wish he’d kept quiet.

“What was that you said, mister?” asked the blacksmith.

“I just said anybody could do that who had the time,” said Hank, modifying his speech somewhat.

“Well, you couldn’t do it, mister; it takes brains to do anything like that. That lets you out.”

The crowd in the vicinity began to titter. Hank hated being laughed at, and his anger made him imprudent.

“That’s a stolen idea, anyhow,” he roared out at the top of his voice. “The plans from which that airship was made belong to me.”

“Hush! Are you crazy?” exclaimed Miles, jerking Hank’s sleeve.