THE MARKED BILL.
Some two days after the events narrated in our last chapter, Lieut.
Bradbury, sitting in the library of the New York Aero Club, on West
Fifty-fourth Street, received a telegram from Eugene Mortlake. He was
considerably astonished, when on tearing it open, he read as follows:
"Must see you at once. Have positive proof that young Prescott is about to
sell out his secrets to foreign government."
"Phew!" whistled the young officer. "This is a serious charge. If it is
proved, it will bar Prescott from bidding for the United States government
contract. But I can hardly believe it. There must be some mistake.
However, it is my duty to investigate. Let's see--three o'clock. I can
get a train to Sandy Beach at four. Too bad! Too bad!"
The young officer shook his head. He had come to have a sincere regard for
Roy and his pretty sister, as well as admiration for their resourcefulness
and pluck.
When it is explained that during the time elapsing between his lucky lift
in the Prescott machine and the reception of the note, that Lieut.
Bradbury had notified Roy that he would be expected to report at the
Brooklyn Navy Yard, his feelings on learning that there was suspicion
directed against his young protegé, may be imagined. Mortlake, too, had
received a notice that his machines were eligible for a test, so that
there would have seemed to be no object for his acting treacherously.
Otherwise, the young officer might have been suspicious. What he had seen
of Mortlake had not particularly elevated that gentleman in his opinion.
But if he had desired to wrong the Prescotts, reasoned the officer, such a
resourceful man as he had adjudged Mortlake to be, would have sought a
deeper and more subtle way of going about it.
"And I'd have staked my word on that boy's loyalty; aye, and on his
sister's too," muttered the officer, as he made ready for his hasty trip
to Long Island.
By this it will be seen that Lieut. Bradbury was by no means proof against
the rather common failing of inclining to believe the first evil report we
hear. It is a phase of human nature that is not combatted as it should be.
In the meantime, Roy and Peggy had sustained a surprise, likewise. The day
before that on which Lieut. Bradbury received the disturbing dispatch, an
automobile had whizzed up to their gate and stopped. Roy, Peggy and Jess
and Jimsy were at a game of tennis, when a rather imperious voice summoned
them, from the tonneau of the machine.
They looked up, to see a remarkably pretty young girl, who could scarcely
have been more than eighteen years old. Her eyes were black as sloes, and
flashed like smoldering fires. A great mass of hair of the same color was
piled on the top of her head in grown-up fashion, and her gown, of a
magenta hue, which set off her dark beauty to perfection, was cut in the
most recent--too recent, in fact--style.
"Can you direct me to Mr. Mortlake's aeroplane factory?" she demanded in
an imperious tone. Evidently the flushed, healthy-looking young people,
who had been playing tennis so hard, were very despicable in her eyes.
"There it is, down the road there," volunteered Roy. "It's that barn-like
place."
The appellation was unfortunate. The girl's eyes flashed angrily.
"My name is Regina Mortlake," she said angrily. "I am Mr. Mortlake's
daughter. He is not in the habit of putting up barns, I can assure you."
"I beg your pardon----" began Roy, quite taken aback by the extraordinary
energy with which the reproof to his harmless remark had been given. But
the dark-eyed beauty in the automobile had given a quick order to the
chauffeur, and the car skimmed on down the road.
Later that day the _Silver Cobweb_ ascended for a flight. It had nothing
more the matter with it on the day of the break-down than the heated
cylinders, which, as Mortlake had prophesied, soon cooled. But Mortlake
himself did not take up the silvery aeroplane on this occasion. A new
figure was at the wheel, clad in dainty dark aviation togs and bonnet,
with a fluttering, flowing veil of the same color, which streamed out like
a flag of defiance.
The new driver was Miss Regina Mortlake.
They learned later that the girl had taken frequent flights in the South,
where her father had, for a time, entered into the business of giving
aeroplane flights for money at county fairs and the like. His daughter had
taken naturally to the sport, and was an accomplished air woman. She knew
no fear, and her imperious, ambitious spirit made her a formidable rival
even to the foreign flying women who competed at various international
aviation meets.
While his daughter spun through the air, Eugene Mortlake sat in his little
glass-enclosed office in one corner of the noisy aeroplane plant. Four
finished machines were now ready, and he would have felt capable of facing
any tests with them had it not been for his uneasy fear of the Prescott
aeroplane. But he had evolved a scheme by which he thought he would
succeed in putting Peggy and Roy out of the race altogether. It was in the
making that afternoon in the little office.
Opposite to Mortlake sat two men whom we have seen before. But in the
cheap, but neat suits they now wore, and with their faces clean-shaven of
the growth of stubby beard that had formerly covered them, it would have
been somewhat difficult to recognize the two ill-favored tramps who had
been routed by Peggy in such a plucky manner. But, nevertheless, they were
the men.
"You thoroughly understand your instructions now?" questioned Mortlake, as
he concluded speaking.
The fellow who had been addressed by his companion as Joey, at the time
they encountered Mortlake and Harding on the road to the Galloway farm,
nodded.
"We understand, guv'ner," he rasped out in a hoarse voice; "Slim, here,
and me don't take long ter catch on, eh, Slim?"
"No dubious manner of doubt about that," responded Slim. "An' although I'm
a tramp now, guv'ner, I wasn't allers one. I've held my head as high as
the rest of the good folks of the world. I can play the gentleman to
perfection. Don't you worry."
This Slim--or to give him his correct name--Frederick Palmer, was, as he
declared with such emphasis, a man who had indeed "seen better days," as
the phrase is. Now that he was invested in fair-looking clothes, and was
graced with a clean collar and a smooth-shaven face, he actually might
have passed for a person in fairly well-to-do circumstances. For the part
Mortlake wished him to play, he could not have picked out a better man.
Utterly unscrupulous, and with the best of his life behind him, "Slim"--as
the tramp fraternity knew him--was prepared to do anything that there was
money in. His companion possessed no such saving graces of appearance.
Short, coarse, and utterly lacking in every element of refinement, Joey
Eccles was a typical hobo. But Mortlake's shrewd mind had seen where he
could make use of him, too, in the diabolical plan he was concocting, and
the details of which he had just finished confiding to his unsavory
lieutenants.
"But say, guv'ner," struck in Joey Eccles, his little pig-like eyes agleam
with cupidity, "we've got to have a bit more of the brass, you know--a
little more money--eh?"
He ended in an insinuating whine, the cringing plea of the professional
beggar.
Mortlake made a gesture of impatience.
"I gave you fellows a twenty-dollar-bill a few days ago," he said, "in
addition to that, you've been provided with clothes and lodging. What more
do you want?"
"We've got to have some more coin, that's flat," announced Slim decidedly;
"come on, fork over, guv'ner. You've gone too far into this now to pull
out."
Mortlake's florid face went white. As if he heard it for the first time,
the words struck home. He had indeed "gone too far," as the tramp sitting
opposite to him had said. He was, in fact, completely in the power of
these two unscrupulous mendicants. Making a resolve to get rid of them as
speedily as possible, he dived into his breast pocket and drew from it a
roll of bills that made Slim's and Joey's eyes stick out of their heads.
He peeled off a twenty-dollar-bill, and flung it with no good grace down
upon the table.
"There," he said, "that's the last you'll get till the trick is done."
"Thankee, guv'ner; I knowed you'd see sense. A man of your intelligous
intellect, and----"
"That will do," snapped Mortlake. "Do you think I've got nothing to do but
talk to you fellows all day? You thoroughly understand, now, to-morrow
night on the road to Galloway's farm?"
"Yus, and we've got a nice little deserted farm house all picked out,
where we can keep the young rooster on ice," grinned Joey.
"Well, well," shot out Mortlake, "that will be your task. I've nothing to
do with that. Do you understand," he rapped the table nervously, "I know
nothing about it."
"All right, all right; we're wise," Slim assured him confidently. "Don't
you worry. Come on, Joey. Got the money?"
"Have I? Oh, no; I'm goin' ter leave it right here," grinned Joey,
enjoying his own irony hugely.
Still chuckling, he arose and shuffled out, followed by the unsavory
Slim.
Outside, and on the road to the village, Slim began to be obsessed by
doubts.
"Some way, I don't jes' trust that Mortlake," he said. "You're sure that
bill is all right, Joey?"
"Sure? Well, you jes' bet I am. Here, look at it yourself. All right,
ain't it?"
He drew out the bill and handed it to Slim for his inspection.
"And the best of it is," he chuckled, while Slim inspected the bill
carefully, "the best of it is, that I wasn't conformin' to the exact truth
when I told Mortlake that we'd spent all the other coin. I've got the best
part of it left."
"Good," grunted Slim, turning the twenty-dollar-bill over and examining
the reverse side, "that being the case--hullo!"
"What's up?" asked Joey.
For reply Slim handed the bill to Joey, pointing with a grimy first finger
at something on the reverse side.
It was an "O," scrawled in dull red ink.
"That would be an easy bill to identify," commented Palmer, uneasily,
"wonder if this can be a trap?"
"Well, keep your suspicions to yourself for a while," counseled Joey; "we
don't need to break it till we make sure."