UNDER A CLOUD.
It was early the next morning. The paper had been put to bed. Billy,
with the satisfied feeling that came to him with the knowledge that he
had written a good introduction and account of the _Planet’s_ great
offer, was slipping into his coat preparatory to going home, when Mr.
Stowe, his face purple with anger, called to him in a sharp voice from
the door of the editorial sanctum.
“Come here, Barnes, I want to see you,” he said brusquely.
“Hullo, something’s up with the chief,” thought Billy to himself; but he
answered cheerily: “All right, sir,” with an inward feeling that
something was all wrong.
“Look here, Barnes,” exclaimed Mr. Stowe, angrily flourishing a first
edition of the _Planet’s_ rival, the _Despatch_, “there has been
treachery somewhere. How about this?”
Billy, with an unaccountable sinking of the heart, took the paper the
other flourished so furiously. It was still moist and warm as it had
been run off the press. The sickly, sweet odor of printer’s ink hung
about it. But these details did not attract Billy’s attention. And for
an excellent reason. Staring him in the face in big black letters he
read:
THE “DESPATCH” OFFERS FIFTY THOUSAND
DOLLARS FOR A TRANSCONTINENTAL
FLIGHT.
Below—and every letter of the article burned itself into Billy’s brain,
was a long story eulogizing the enterprise of the _Despatch_ in making
the offer and giving a list of the noted aviators who would be sure—so
the _Despatch_ thought—to enter the contest.
It was a cold steal of the _Planet’s_ idea.
Almost word for word the conditions were the same as those Mr. Stowe had
detailed to Billy that afternoon.
“Well,” remarked the managing editor in a harsh tone, in which Billy
recognized the steely ring that always presaged a storm from that august
quarter.
“Well,” floundered Billy helplessly, “I cannot account for it.”
“You cannot,” echoed the other in a flinty tone.
“Why no,” rejoined the lad, lifting his eyes to Stowe’s, “can you?”
“Yes I can.”
“You can, sir?”
“We have been sold out.”
“Sold out?”
“Precisely. And there are only three people in the office who could have
had any knowledge of the secret. One is the owner of the paper, the
other myself and the third is you.”
Mr. Stowe joined his hands magisterially and looked straight at Billy,
in whose mind a horrid suspicion had begun to dawn.
The managing editor was practically accusing him of selling the story.
Preposterous as the idea was, Billy realized that to a prejudiced mind,
such as the managing editor’s, there would be no way of explaining
matters. His thoughts were suddenly broken in on by Mr. Stowe’s harsh
voice.
“Is there any one else, Barnes?”
Like a flash the recollection of his encounter with Reade at the very
door of the managing editor’s room, the latter’s strange and defiant
manner, and the unaccountable publishing by the _Despatch_ of a rival
offer, came into Billy’s mind. He was about to mention Reade’s name when
he checked himself.
What proof had he?
Then, too, he saw that Stowe’s mind was made up. He did not wish to
appear in the position of trying to throw the blame on a man whom he
realized the managing editor would not believe could by any possibility
have any knowledge of the _Planet’s_ plans.
“I am waiting for your answer,” came the cold, incisive voice again.
“I can think of none, sir,” rejoined the young reporter with a feeling
that he had put the rope about his neck with a vengeance now.
“Hum! In that case, by a process of elimination, we have only one person
who could have done it, and that——” He paused. “I hate to have to say
it, Barnes, but it looks bad for you.”
“Great Heavens, Mr. Stowe!” gasped Billy, who, while he had seen what
the managing editor was leading up to, was struck by a rude shock of
surprise at the actual placing into words of the accusation, “do you
mean to say you think that I would do such a thing?”
“I don’t know what to think, Barnes,” was the discouraging answer. “I am
more sorry than I can say to have had to speak as I have. However, until
you can clear yourself of the cloud of a suspicion that must rest on you
because of this affair we shall have to part company.”
Billy went white.
His superior then really believed him guilty of the worst crime a
newspaper man can commit—a breach of faith to his paper.
“Do you really believe what you are saying, sir?” he demanded.
“As I said before, I don’t know what to think, Barnes. However, what I
might say will make little difference. In a short time the proprietor
will hear of this, and I should have to discharge you whether I wished
to or no. If you wish to act now, you may resign.”
“Very well, then, Mr. Stowe, I will make out my formal resignation,”
exclaimed Billy, his cheeks burning crimson with anger and shame.
“I’m sorry, Barnes,” said Mr. Stowe, as the lad, scarcely knowing where
he was going, left the room. “I have no other course, you know.”
Fifteen minutes later Billy Barnes was no longer a member of the
_Planet_ staff, and his resignation, neatly typewritten, lay on the
managing editor’s desk. To do Mr. Stowe justice, he had acted against
his own beliefs, but he was only an inferior officer in the direction of
the paper. Its owner, he well knew, was a man of violent temper and
fixed convictions. When he saw the _Despatch_ Mr. Stowe knew that the
vials of his wrath would be emptied and that Billy would have had to
leave in any event. And so subsequent events proved, for the next day,
when Billy’s immediate discharge was angrily demanded by the _Planet’s_
owner, he was informed by his managing editor that the boy had left of
his own free will.
“He resigned last night rather than have any suspicion directed toward
him,” said Mr. Stowe; “but, you mark my words, the boy will right
himself.”
“Nonsense, Stowe, he sold us out,” said the owner bitterly; “sold us out
cold and nothing will ever make me alter my conviction.”
“Except Billy Barnes himself,” said Stowe softly, and lit a cigar, which
he puffed at with great energy.
When he had learned that Reade was doing aviation for the _Despatch_ the
managing editor’s mind was crossed for a brief minute with suspicion
that here might be the traitor. But he dismissed it—was compelled to,
in fact. To his mind it would have been an impossibility for Reade to
have heard the conversation in which the offer was discussed.
In the meantime both papers continued to work up their $50,000 offers,
until there was actually developed a keen and bitter rivalry between
them. One morning the _Despatch_ would announce the entry of some
prominent aviator in its cross-country contest, and the next the
_Planet_ would be out with its announcement of a new contestant added to
its ranks. The public appetite was whetted to a keen pitch by the
various moves.
Crawford, the man who had taken Billy Barnes’ place on the _Planet_, was
a skilled writer, and an excellent man to work up such a story as the
cross-continental challenge. It was he who first broached to Stowe the
idea of flinging down the gauntlet to the _Despatch_ and inviting that
paper to start its contestants on the same day as those of the _Planet_,
the winner to take the prizes of both papers. This would give the
struggle tremendous added interest, and attract worldwide attention, he
argued.
While events were thus shaping themselves with the _Planet_ and the
_Despatch_, Billy Barnes had visited his friends, the Boy Aviators, and
told them, with a rueful face, of his misfortune.
His manner of so doing was characteristic. A few days after he had left
the newspaper he called on them at their work shop. To his surprise he
found there old Eben Joyce, the inventor whom Luther Barr had treated so
shabbily in the matter of the _Buzzard_ aeroplane of which Joyce was the
creator—as told in The Boy Aviators’ Treasure Quest; or, The Golden
Galleon.
Joyce and the two boys were busied over the _Golden Eagle_ when Billy
arrived, adjusting a strange-looking mechanism to it, consisting of a
boxed flywheel of glittering brass encased in a framework of the same
metal. It seemed quite a heavy bit of apparatus, withal so delicately
balanced, that it adjusted itself to every movement of its frame. A
second glance showed Billy that it was a gyroscope.
The boys and the aged inventor were so deeply interested in examining
the bit of machinery that they did not hear Billy come in, and it was
not till he hailed them with a cheery:
“Come down from the clouds, you fellows!” that they turned with a shout
of recognition.
“Why, hullo, Billy Barnes!” they cried, “what are you after now? If you
want an aeroplane story here’s a good one—a new adjustable gyroscopic
appliance for attachment to aeroplanes which renders them stable in any
shifting wind currents.”
“It’s a jim-dandy,” enthusiastically cried Harry.
“But it’s a story you can’t use,” added Frank, “because the appliance,
which is the invention of Mr. Joyce—has not yet been fully patented. He
has been good enough to let us try it out.”
“It looks fine,” said Billy, who knew about as much about gyroscopes as
a cat knows of the solar system; “but you needn’t worry about my
printing anything about it, Frank. You see, I’m fired,” he added simply.
“Fired?” cried Frank.
“Well, about the same thing—I resigned, as a matter of fact,” explained
Billy ruefully; “but it all amounts to the same in the long run.”
“Sit down and tell us about it,” commanded Frank, genuinely concerned at
his friend’s evident dejection.
Seated on an upturned box, which had contained batteries, Billy related
his story, omitting nothing. On his suspicions of Reade, however, he
touched lightly.
“You see, I’ve got nothing on the fellow,” he explained, “and although
I’m convinced that he gave our plan away to the _Despatch_, yet I’ve got
nothing to base it on.”
“That’s so,” Frank and Harry were compelled to admit.
The three friends spent an hour or so chatting, and then Mr. Joyce, who
had been tinkering with his aeroplane attachment quite oblivious to
their talk, announced that he would have to be going home. He had some
work to do on another invention that evening, he explained.
“Well, say, as we’ve been stuffing in here almost all day and it’s warm
enough to be mighty uncomfortable, what do you say if we take a little
spin out in the auto. We can give Mr. Joyce a ride home,” exclaimed
Frank.
“The very thing,” agreed Harry.
Old Mr. Joyce was nothing loath to be spared the long ride in a train to
his home in the outskirts of Jersey City. As for Billy Barnes, he was
delighted at the idea.
Accordingly, half an hour later the Chester boys’ auto rolled on board
one of the ferryboats which ply across the North River to Jersey City.
The boat had hardly reached midstream before they were aware of another
car almost opposite to them in the space set apart for autos in the
centre of the boat. Before five minutes had passed they also noticed
that they were the object of close scrutiny on the part of one of the
occupants of the machine. He was a tall youth with dark hair and eyes,
and as soon as he observed that he was attracting their attention he at
once withdrew his gaze.
Billy Barnes, who had been “stretching his legs” by a stroll on the
stern deck of the ferryboat as she made her way across the river,
rejoined the others just as the boat was pulling into her slip.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed as the autos rolled over the apron and onto the
wharf, “there’s Fred Reade.”
He indicated the occupant of the other car, who seemed to have taken so
much interest in the Chester boys and Eben Joyce, their aged companion.