A FINE CURTAIN-RAISER.
The sun was rising over the mountains when the flying machines and the
motor-car reached the field where the boys had landed the night before.
After the escape of Doran, the aeroplanes had searched the hills and
gorges for the fugitive, but had found no trace of him observable from
the sky.
After seeing that the machines were placed in charge of capable and
loyal officers, the boys entered the car with Mellen and were driven to
the hotel. When they reached the entrance they found a little crowd
assembled in the lobby.
Messengers from the telegraph office were passing out and in, and the
clerk seemed to be answering a good many questions by ’phone. Mellen
stopped at the office counter while the boys took the elevator for their
rooms unobserved by the clerk in the office.
“There’s something strange going on here!” the clerk exclaimed, as Mr.
Mellen stepped up. “We have a sheaf of telegrams for you, and a lot more
for those boys who came here last night.”
“Well,” smiled the manager, “you may as well deliver them.”
“Deliver them?” repeated the clerk. “How are we going to deliver them?
You can receipt now for the ones which belong to you,” he went on, “but
what are we going to do with those directed to the boys?”
“Why, deliver them!” answered Mellen.
“But the boys left the hotel last night!” replied the clerk angrily.
“Without paying their bills!”
“But they are in their rooms now,” Mellen assured the clerk.
“And they stole woolen blankets off the bed, too!” the clerk almost
shouted. “I ought to have them all arrested!”
As the clerk uttered the words in a loud tone a slender, black-eyed man
who seemed to Mellen to move about the corridor with the sinuous
undulations of a snake, stepped up to the desk.
“So the fugitives have returned?” he asked. “Shall I arrest them at
once? You have made the charge, you know!”
“You will find the blankets in the boys’ room,” advised Mellen. “They
took them because they had a long, cold ride before them.”
“It is policy to restore stolen goods after discovery!” snarled the man
who had asked instructions of the clerk, and who occupied the very
honorable position of house detective.
“Look here, Gomez!” exclaimed Mellen. “You keep out of this! The boys
had a right to use the blankets outside of the hotel as well as inside.”
“I shall do as the clerk says!” snarled the detective.
“Oh, I suppose we’ll have to let it go if they’ve brought the blankets
back!” replied the clerk, reluctantly.
Gomez turned away with a sullen frown on his face, and Mellen saw that
he had made an enemy of the fellow.
“These boys are your friends?” asked the clerk of Mellen.
“I never saw them until last night,” was the reply, “but I know that
they belong to the party of which Louis Havens, the millionaire aviator,
is the head. I presume the telegrams waiting for me here are from Mr.
Havens, who expects to be here within twenty-four hours.”
“Not Louis Havens, the great explorer?” asked the clerk.
“The same,” answered Mellen, “and if you’ve anything more to say about
the boys, say it to him.”
Taking the telegrams from the clerk, Mellen went back to the machine
and, after leaving the prisoner with the police, hastened to Ben’s room,
where the other boys were assembled. As he had supposed, the messages
were all from Mr. Havens, and all were repetitions of the warning which
had been sent the previous night.
“I don’t understand what it means!” Ben said after the messages had been
read and discussed. “But it is a sure thing that Mr. Havens knows what
he is talking about.”
“I think we’d all better go and get a square meal and go to bed!” Jimmie
observed, rubbing his eyes. “The next time I get up in the night to take
a twenty-mile ride in the air, I won’t.”
“That’s very good sense,” Mellen agreed. “These telegrams, as you see,
state that Mr. Havens cannot possibly reach Quito until some time
to-night.”
“Then we can have a good sleep!” Carl agreed. “And sit up all night
again if we want to.”
“It hasn’t been such a bad night!” Ben observed. “If we had only kept
Doran, everything would be in pretty good shape now.”
“What did the chief of police say when you turned the other gink over to
him?” asked Carl. “He locked him up, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he locked him up!” answered Mellen. “But, before I left the
station, I saw the fellow at the ’phone and I presume he is out on bail
by this time. The police have no recourse if bail is offered.”
“Then I’ll tell you what you do!” advised Ben. “If he is admitted to
bail, you hire a private detective and have him watched. He is sure to
meet with Doran before very long. He may go to the hills to consult with
him, or Doran may come to the city, but the two fellows are certain to
come together! Then Doran can be arrested.”
“That’s a good idea,” Mellen answered, “and I’ll attend to the matter as
soon as I get back to my office. Now, we’ll all go down to a restaurant
and have breakfast. I’m hungry myself just now.”
“What’s the matter with the hotel?” asked Ben.
Mellen did not care to explain to the boys exactly what had taken place
down stairs, but he felt that they would be treated with suspicion as
long as they remained there, so he decided to ask them to change their
quarters as soon as they returned from breakfast.
Making the reply that the morning _table d’hote_ at the hotel was not
suitable for hungry boys who had been up all night, Mellen went with the
lads to a first-class restaurant. After breakfast he suggested a change
of hotels, saying only that they had already attracted too much
attention at the one where they were stopping, and the boys agreed
without argument. It took only a short time to locate in the new
quarters, and the boys were soon sound asleep.
When Ben awoke, some one was knocking at his door, and directly he heard
a low chuckle which betrayed the presence of Jimmie in the corridor.
“Get a move on!” the latter shouted.
“What’s up?” asked Ben.
“Time’s up!” replied Jimmie.
“Open up!” almost yelled Carl.
Ben sprang out of bed, half-dressed himself, and opened the door. The
first face he saw was that of Mr. Havens, who looked dusty and tired as
if from a long journey.
As may be imagined, the greetings between the two were very cordial. In
a moment the boys all flocked into Ben’s room, where Mr. Havens was
advised to freshen up in the bath before entering upon the business in
hand.
“You must have had a merry old time with the _Ann_,” laughed Ben.
“Never saw anything like it!” exclaimed Mr. Havens.
“Did she break down?”
“Half a dozen times!”
“Perhaps there was some good reason for it,” suggested Glenn,
significantly.
“Indeed there was!” answered Mr. Havens.
“Couldn’t you catch him?” asked Jimmie.
“I could not!” was the reply.
While the millionaire remained in the bath-room, the boys discussed all
manner of surmises concerning the accidents which had happened to the
_Ann_. They had not yet heard a word of explanation from Mr. Havens
concerning the warnings of trouble which had been received by wire, but
they understood that the interferences to the big aeroplane were only
part of the general trouble scheme which seemed to have broken loose the
night before. Finally they all gave up the problem.
“We don’t know anything about it!” exclaimed Jimmie. “And we won’t know
anything about it until Mr. Havens gets cleaned up and tells us, so we
may as well talk about hens, or white bulldogs, until he gets ready to
open up. By the way,” the boy continued, “where is Sam?”
“Mellen took him down to get him into decent clothes,” Ben answered.
“Is he coming back here?” asked Jimmie. “I rather like that fellow.”
“Of course he’s coming back!” Ben replied. “He’s hasn’t got any other
place to go! He’s flat broke and hungry.”
“I thought perhaps he wouldn’t like to meet Mr. Havens,” Jimmie
commented, with a wink at Carl.
“And why not?” asked Ben, somewhat amazed.
Then the story of Sam Weller’s previous employment at the hangar on Long
Island came out. The boys all declared that they wanted to be present
when Sam met his former employer!
“I don’t care what you say about Sam!” Jimmie declared, after the boys
had finished their discussion of the Long Island incident. “I like him
just the same! There’s a kind of a free and easy impudence about him
that gets me. I hope he’ll stay with us!”
“He might ride with Mr. Havens in the _Ann_!” laughed Carl.
“Well, I don’t believe Mr. Havens would object, at that!” declared
Jimmie.
“Certainly he wouldn’t object!” replied the millionaire, coming out of
the bath-room door with a smile on his face. “And so Sam Weller showed
up here, did he?” he asked as he seated himself. “The boy is a
first-class aviator, but he used to get his little finger up above his
nose too often, so I had to let him go. Did he tell any of you boys how
he happened to drift into this section?”
“He told me,” Jimmie replied, “that he was making a leisurely trip from
the Isthmus of Panama to Cape Horn. He looked the part, too, for I guess
he hadn’t had a square meal for several decades, and his clothes looked
as if they had been collected out of a rag-bag!”
“He’s a resourceful chap!” Mr. Havens continued. “He’s a first-class
aviator, as I said, in every way, except that he is not dependable, and
that of course spoils everything.”
“He’s got the nerve!” Carl observed.
“He certainly has!” agreed Jimmie.
“Well,” Mr. Havens said in a moment, “if you boys like Sam, we’ll take
him along. We have room for one more in the party.”
“And that brings us down to business!” exclaimed Jimmie. “Right here,”
he went on, “is where we want you to turn on the spot light. We’ve had
so many telegrams referring to trouble that we’re beginning to think
that Trouble is our middle name!”
“Perhaps we would better wait until Mellen and Sam return,” suggested
Mr. Havens. “That will save telling the story two or three times.”
“Is Sam Weller really his name?” asked Jimmie.
“I don’t think so,” answered Havens. “I think it is merely a name he
selected out of the Pickwick Papers. While in my employ on Long Island
several people who knew him by another name called to visit with him.
Now and then I questioned these visitors, but secured little
information.”
“Perhaps he’s a Pittsburg Millionaire or a Grand Duke in disguise!”
suggested Carl. “And again,” the boy went on, “he may be merely the
black sheep in some very fine family.”
“There’s something a little strange about the boy,” Mr. Havens agreed,
“but I have never felt myself called upon to examine into his
antecedents.”
“Here he comes now!” cried Carl. “With a new suit of clothes on his back
and a smile lying like a benediction all over his clean shave!”
The boys were glad to see that the millionaire greeted Sam as an old
friend. For his part, Sam extended his hand to his former employer and
answered questions as if he had left his employ with strong personal
letters of recommendation to every crowned head in the world!
“And now for the story,” Mellen said after all were seated.
“And when you speak of trouble,” Jimmie broke in, “always spell it with
a big ‘T’, for that’s the way it opened out on us!”
“I’m going to begin right at the beginning,” Mr. Havens said, with a
smile, “and the beginning begins two years ago.”
“Gee!” exclaimed Jimmie. “That’s a long time for trouble to lie in wait
before jumping out at a fellow!”
“In fact,” Mr. Havens went on, “the case we have now been dumped into,
heels over head, started in New York City two years ago, when Milo
Redfern, cashier of the Invincible Trust Company, left the city with a
half million dollars belonging to the depositors.”
“That’s a good curtain lifter!” exclaimed Carl. “When you open a drama
with a thief and a half million dollars, you’ve started something!”