AN AERIAL APPEAL.
While Ding-dong was sending his wireless appeal flashing and crackling
into the ether, Dr. Chalmers turned to Professor Jenkins again.
“You have not yet told us what connection this man Sartorius has with
the case?” he hinted.
“Sartorius is no more his name than it is mine,” was the rejoinder. “His
right name is Miles Minory, and he was dismissed from the University
shortly before I left for being engaged in some shady financial
transactions. He had worked as my assistant once, and in some way
learned of my secret researches. Of a singularly acute mind, he
perceived at once the financial possibilities of the device. After
approaching some capitalists, he came to me with a proposition to sell
out, he, of course, to get a large reward from the capitalists for
persuading me to do so. I refused, and told him that I would market my
wireless torpedo, when completed, in my own way. Not long after, my
rooms were broken into in my absence and my papers tampered with; but,
luckily, long before this I had removed the important ones to a place of
safety, knowing Minory’s character and that he was likely to adopt
crooked methods when others failed to gain his end.
“From time to time I became unpleasantly aware that I was being watched.
The secret surveillance got on my nerves, but I persisted with my work
until I perfected it. I carried out my last experiments in a remote
coast town on the north shore of Long Island. One night I was attacked
on my way from my experiment station to my home. Minory did not appear
in this outrage, but I knew he instigated it. As in his other efforts to
obtain my papers, he failed in this also.
“But it decided me that the vicinity of New York was too dangerous a
place for me to carry on my work. I was not sure even that my life was
safe if I persisted in holding out against the ring that wanted to seize
my invention. In this dilemma I turned to a friend who owns a small
ranch in Mexico, not far from Mazatlan. He offered me freely the use of
this secluded spot for as long a time as I wished to use it, and I
jumped at the offer. Without loss of time I booked passage for San
Francisco through a third party, in order to throw my enemies off my
trail. When I embarked on the _Iroquois_ it was with a light heart, but,
as I told you, I was not long left undisturbed in my fancied security.
Although that beard Minory wears is as false as the name he traveled
under, I knew him even in the disguise he had adopted. I was on guard,
but—well, the rest you know.”
During the recital of this remarkable story they had listened without a
word of interruption. Now, however, everyone had questions to ask, all
of which Mr. Jenkins readily answered. We shall not detail the
conversation here, as Professor Jenkins’ narrative as already set down
appears fully to cover it. In the midst of the talk, and while Joe was
fixing up the best breakfast he could on the hut stove, Ding-dong, his
face red with excitement, came running in.
“I’ve sent out a full description of the m-m-man and the two b-b-boats
to all coast stations within reach,” he exclaimed. “But tell me one
thing, professor, could this Sus-ar-Sartorius run a mum-mum-motor boat?”
“I don’t know,” was the rejoinder, “but one thing I can tell you, he is
a slick enough customer to be able to do almost anything.”
“From the way he fixed that carburetor and those plugs it certainly
appears that way,” commented Joe, looking up from the frying pan; “why
do you suppose he wanted to delay the _Nomad_, anyhow?”
“To mum-mum-make a further sus-sus-search through the Professor’s
trunks, I guess,” was Ding-dong’s reply.
“What! He was looking in my trunks?” cried Mr. Jenkins.
“Yes, sir; Ding-dong caught him at it,” put in Joe.
“The cunning scoundrel! He is cleverer than even I thought,” cried the
professor. “In one of my trunks was a working model of the wireless
torpedo. If he secured that it would be of invaluable aid to whoever had
the plans. In fact, without it as a key they would have some difficulty
in following out my calculations and designs.”
“So that was the reason he was so anxious to come ashore with us!” cried
Nat, a light breaking in on him; for it would have appeared more
reasonable to suppose that, having rifled the professor of his papers,
the thief would desire to keep on the high seas. “I see it all now. He
knew that your trunks would be shipped ashore with you, Professor, and
in some way he also knew that they held what he hadn’t yet obtained, the
working model. He must have calculated that on the way between the
_Iroquois_ and the shore he would have time to ransack your baggage and
get hold of it.”
“And his desire to lay hands on it gave him nerve enough to tamper with
the engine and endanger his own life as well as ours in that gale,”
supplemented Joe.
“It is all as clear as day now,” cried Nat; and then in a chagrined
voice he muttered, “What a pack of boneheads we’ve been! Just think, we
had him right in our power and he’s slipped through our fingers like so
much water!”
“Never mind,” consoled Dr. Chalmers, “you couldn’t very well have acted
on what knowledge you had up to the time that Professor Jenkins
recovered consciousness. I think, in fact, that——Hark!”
It was Ding-dong’s “wireless alarm” clanging out the call for Goat
Island.
“On the jump! Run like a jack-rabbit now, Ding!” cried Nat excitedly.
“This may be news of the rascal!”
But it was not; however, it was news of a still more astonishing nature,
and, so far as the boys were concerned, almost as gratifying, dearly as
they would have loved to catch Sartorius—or Minory, as we must now call
him. Nat and Joe, who had followed Ding-dong to the wireless shed, bent
over him while he answered the call and then switched to his receiving
instruments.
“It’s the fishing steamer, _Hattie and Jane_,” he explained hastily.
“You know, Capt. Eli Thompson’s boat, the one that collects fish from
the fleet. She carries wireless so that she can get quotations and
instructions from her owners even at sea.”
He broke off, and as the dots and dashes began to beat into his ears
from the _Hattie and_ _Jane_, he wrote swiftly with nervous, flying
fingers.
As they bent over him with open mouths and wide eyes, Nat and Joe burst
into a joyous “whoop!” of delight as they read the message Joe’s pencil
transcribed on the pad.
“_Your motor boat_, Nomad, _found drifting. No one on board. Are you all
right?—Thompson_, S. S. Hattie and Jane.”
“Gee! I’ll bet the captain thought we were all murdered or something!”
cried Joe, gripping Nat’s shoulder, while Ding-dong sent back a
reassuring message.
“Hush!” cried Nat. “Here’s more coming.”
“_Hawser has been cut. How can you explain?_”
“The hawser cut?” shouted Nat. “Cracky! I see it all now. That fellow
couldn’t run the _Nomad_ himself and means to row ashore. He figured,
though, that we might swim out to her and start in pursuit, so he cut
the mooring rope and set her adrift.”
“Oh, for five minutes alone with him!” panted Joe.
“What’ll I say?” asked Ding-dong, half turning.
“Say that we will explain when we see him. Ask him if he will bring the
_Nomad_ to Goat Island. Tell him we are marooned here and will pay him
well for the job.”
Ding-dong obediently rapped out the message and then switched to the
receiving set again. They saw him give a reassuring nod as he wrote down
on his pad:
“_Will be at Goat Island within three hours. Catch light, and can spare
the time. Is fifty dollars too much?_”
“The old rascal!” grinned Nat, too delighted to be angry at this
somewhat steep figure. “He knows he’s got us under his thumb and sees a
chance to make a good wad of salvage. Tell him ‘all right,’ Ding-dong,
there’s nothing else for it.”
“_Satisfactory. Make all haste you can_,” was flashed back, and then
came “_Good-byes_.”
As soon as Ding-dong had grounded his instruments and taken off his head
receivers there was a scene of wild jubilation in the wireless hut. The
boys whooped and cheered like Indians and joined in a wild war dance.
“Whoopee!” yelled Joe, “there may be a chance of catching that old
fake-whiskered cuss, after all. He’s got a good long start, but what
with our wireless warnings and with the long row ahead of him, we have a
fighting chance of overhauling him.”
“And I reckon he won’t be in a desperate hurry, because he’ll never
figure that we could have such blind luck as to have the _Nomad_ picked
up by about the only wireless craft along the coast that knew her and
her owners and could notify them at once of the recovery,” cried Nat.
“Boys, it’s one chance in a thousand, but it looks as if luck was
beginning to run our way again after all our set-backs.”
Within a very few minutes those at the living hut were apprised of the
state of affairs. The effect on every one’s spirits was wonderful. Even
Dr. Chalmers and his friend became infected with the excitement of the
chase after a man who had proved himself as consummate a rascal as could
be found on earth.
But in the midst of the jubilation, Joe propounded a sudden question
that came like a dash of cold water on their hopes.
“Suppose before he cut the _Nomad_ adrift he rifled the trunks and got
the model?” he exclaimed.
It was a possibility that, strange to say, in the general excitement,
had not yet occurred to any one of them.
“In that case, if we don’t find him I am in as bad a fix as ever,”
declared the professor blankly. “With the model it wouldn’t take a
clever fellow like Minory more than a few days to understand the
principles of my invention, rush patent papers to Washington and reap
his reward from the unscrupulous capitalists employing him. You see I
was so afraid of possible leaks that I was waiting till I had every
detail complete before I filed application for a patent. With nobody in
my confidence concerning my work, I have absolutely no proof nor
witnesses that the wireless torpedo is the product of my brain. Minory,
on the other hand, has the backing of almost unlimited money and
influence.”
“Humph!” grunted Nat, in a low aside to Joe, “we may be euchered after
all, then.”
“_We!_” rejoined Joe in a rather astonished tone.
“Yes,” was the sturdy reply. “I like this professor and I hate to see
such a rascal as Minory getting away with a thing to which a man has
devoted the best efforts of his life. We, Joe—I said _we_—are going to
help him in every way in our power.”
“Bully for you, Nat. I’m with you to a crisp!” cried Joe, while he gave
Nat a slap on the back that almost drove the breath out of the young
leader’s body.