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.