STROUP’S INSTRUCTIONS.
“How comes it that Jimmie and Kit are lost in the air?” asked Havens,
as, accompanied by the sheriff and the forest ranger, Gilmore, the boys
walked away from the jail.
“It’s the most unaccountable thing!” Ben exclaimed almost impatiently.
“We left Jimmie to watch the machines while we slept, and the first
thing we knew he was up in the air, and Kit with him.”
“He may have returned to the camp by this time,” suggested Havens.
“If he has, I hope he’ll guard the _Louise_ better than we guarded the
_Bertha_!” Carl put in.
“What happened to the _Bertha_?” the millionaire asked.
Then Ben told the story of the visit of the Chinaman who had wasted
their gasoline and eaten their provisions so ravenously. He also told
the story of the landing on the summit, and of the visit of the two Japs
in the _Ann_. Havens looked grave.
“Those Japs,” he exclaimed, “must have come directly on from New York to
Monterey. They are well-known East Side crooks, and are using their old
tactics here.”
“Well, they probably went away after Phillips and Mendoza in that
limping old machine,” Carl said. “They can’t go far.”
Gilmore and Sheriff Chase, who had listened intently to the
conversation, now began asking questions.
“You spoke of a Chinaman coming to your tent,” Gilmore began, “as if Mr.
Havens already knew of the existence of such a party. What about that?
When and where did you first see this Chinaman?” he added turning to
Ben. “Tell me all about it.”
At this time the little party was directly in front of the hotel where
Stroup had exhibited his muscular ability. As Ben explained about the
first stopping-place, the two beacons, the schooner, the caves, and the
swarm of Celestials, Gilmore drew him into the hotel and into the
smoking room. Here he seated the entire party notwithstanding the frowns
of the clerk, and closed and locked the door.
“Do you know,” he asked, after a moment’s thought, “that you boys have
made a discovery which is likely to bring you a large amount of money?”
“I guess they can use it, all right,” laughed Havens. “They want a new
flying machine every time they see a new model!”
“Tell us about it?” asked Ben eagerly.
“Well,” Gilmore went on, “we have been after those Chink smugglers a
long time. The beacons have been observed night after night, and
schooners have long been known to visit Monterey bay during the dark
hours, but,” he went on, “we have searched the coast for a hundred miles
and never found anything like the canyon you blundered into the first
night of your arrival.”
“And we found it in the dark!” laughed Carl.
“Cheer up!” exclaimed Gilmore. “My men couldn’t find it in the
day-time.”
“Well, you know where to get the Chinks now!” the sheriff broke in.
“But how about this Chink we were talking about?” asked Ben. “We found
him tied up like a side roast of beef. We turned him loose, of course,
and then he comes and serves us a dirty trick like that!”
Gilmore sat back in his chair and laughed heartily.
“That Chinaman,” he said after a time, “is not a Chinaman at all! That’s
Sloan, the Washington secret service man!”
“But he looks like a Chink!” insisted Carl.
“Certainly,” answered Gilmore. “That’s why he has been assigned to this
class of work.”
“Can he talk like a Chink?” asked Ben.
“As natural as life!” was the reply.
“Well, he don’t know much English,” grinned Ben, “if you leave it to me.
All he said was ‘Savvy you, alle same’ and ‘No can do!’”
Again Gilmore broke into a roar of laughter.
“That’s one of his old tricks,” he said. “He’s so stuck on his make-up
and his pidgin English that he seeks to keep up the deception when
there’s no need of it.”
“Then we ought to know why they tied him up!” Ben declared.
“It’s easy enough to guess,” Gilmore answered. “He tried to play in with
the crowd of smugglers and Chinks, and was detected and tied up.”
This from the sheriff, who was making notes in a memorandum book as the
talk went on:
“It’s a wonder they didn’t kill him!”
“They probably would have killed him in a very short time,” Gilmore
replied to the sheriff, “if the boys hadn’t put in an appearance.”
“Then we saved one life, anyway!” laughed Carl.
“But why did he come and waste our gasoline?” demanded Ben.
“I can’t answer that,” replied Gilmore. “You probably will see him
before you get out of the country, and then you can get the explanation
from him. He’ll tell you, easy enough.”
“I think I can give a pretty good guess at it right now,” the sheriff
broke in. “Sloan possibly had his own idea as to what the boys were here
for, and that idea was undoubtedly incorrect.”
“I’ve got it now!” cried Carl. “I know all about it!”
“You’re the wise boy!” laughed Ben. “Go on and tell it.”
“Why, don’t you see,” Carl went on, “Sloan suspected us of coming here
to butt in on his game with the smugglers? He saw us in the cavern, and
of course believed that we were there working for the immense rewards
offered for the criminals. He wanted to head us off!”
“That may be right,” replied Gilmore. “The fellow is mercenary enough,
when it comes down to cases. Well,” the forest ranger went on, “what
else could the fellow think? He saw you there in the cave, and knew that
you knew the use it was being put to. The only way that he could figure
it out was that you were there to interfere with a game which he had
almost won by playing a lone hand.”
“And so he dumped our gasoline to keep us from flying back to the canyon
or flying over to Monterey to tell what we’d discovered!” suggested
Carl.
“That is undoubtedly correct,” Gilmore admitted, “and if the _Louise_
had been there, he doubtless would have crippled her, too.”
“And now,” laughed Havens, “that you have the whole thing settled,
without Sloan knowing anything about it, perhaps we’d better go
somewhere and have dinner, or supper, or whatever you may call it.”
“We probably can’t get anything here at this time of day,” the sheriff
interposed, “but I know of a restaurant down the street where we can get
anything from a lobster to an elephant’s ear.”
“I don’t care about spending any money in this place, anyway,” said
Havens. “Say, Sheriff,” he went on, “I want to leave with you a little
present for your new deputy Stroup. Will you deliver it to him just as I
hand it to you without one word of explanation?”
“Surely,” replied the official.
Havens took a note-book from his pocket, tore out a blank leaf, wrote
three words on it and signed his name. Then he took a bank-note of the
denomination of one thousand dollars from his pocket, folded it up in
the paper, stuffed the whole into a hotel envelope which he sealed and
passed it over to the sheriff, who took it with evident amazement.
“You don’t do things by halves,” the official observed.
“I try to do things according to my means,” replied Havens. “I should
have missed a lot of satisfaction this morning if Stroup hadn’t shown up
with his capable fists!”
“What did you write on the sheet of paper?” asked Carl.
Havens looked at the sheriff and the forest ranger with a smile.
“You won’t arrest me for inciting a riot, will you?” he asked.
“You’ve already paid too many fines in this town,” laughed the sheriff.
“Well, under promise of immunity, then,” Havens went on, “the words were
‘Hit him again.’ How does that strike you?”
“If you had showed the paper to me before you sealed it up,” the sheriff
laughed, “I would have added my name to yours at the bottom of the
instructions.”
“Do you really think he will hit him again?” asked Carl.
“Hit him again?” repeated the sheriff, “He’ll hit the clerk, and the
ex-deputy, and the house detective, until he drives them out of town,
and pay his fine out of the thousand dollars.”
“Don’t you let him do that,” advised Havens. “If he just gives each of
them a good licking once, that’ll be sufficient. There are too many
fresh hotel clerks and deputy sheriffs in the world, also house
detectives, and if he reduced the list by three, that’ll be enough.”
“Holy Smoke!” shouted Carl rising to his feet and making for the door.
“Are we going to talk here all day without anything to eat?”
“I’m so empty right now,” Ben decided, “that you could hold a Salvation
Army meeting in my system. Where’s this restaurant where you can get an
elephant’s ear?”
“I’ll lead you to it,” laughed the sheriff, “and while we’re eating, we
can lay plans for the capture of that gang of smugglers.”
“We didn’t come here after smugglers,” suggested Ben.
“Not so you could notice it,” Carl went on. “We came here to find the
burglars of the Buyers’ Bank in New York. We haven’t found them yet.”
“But we know pretty well where they are,” Ben insisted. “Kit saw
Phillips in the woods this morning, dressed in a ranger’s uniform.”
The story of the bear was new to Havens and the officers, and they
enjoyed its relation immensely. Both boys smacked their lips at thought
of the bear steak they didn’t get.
“We can get the outlaws with little trouble now,” Gilmore said, after a
moment’s reflection. “I’ve got men enough in this vicinity to put a line
all around the hills. So long as we know they are here, we are all
right.”
“After we eat dinner,” Ben suggested, “perhaps we’d better go back to
the green bowl and look up Jimmie and Kit. There’s no knowing what they
may have discovered during the day.”
“That’s the idea!” exclaimed Havens. “And now for a good feed.”
Before the meal at the restaurant was finished an interruption which
materially changed the plans of the whole party, took place. It was
Sloan, the secret service man, who blundered into the party with a
broken head who sidetracked the old plans.