A MIDNIGHT FLIGHT.
“Then you know more about the case than the detectives at Washington!”
smiled Mr. Havens. “When do you think he left his room?”
“I don’t think, I know!”
“Well, get it out of your system!” exclaimed Jimmie.
“He left his room,” Ben chuckled, “about one second before those two men
appeared in the corridor outside his door!”
“I suppose you happened to be coming out of another office, just across
the corridor, and happened to see him coming out, didn’t you?” jeered
Carl. “You always were the wise little boy!”
“Now, look here,” Ben said, more seriously, “me for the Brainy Bowers
act in this little play. In time the truth of the matter will be known,
and when that time comes you just remember your Uncle Dudley’s
forecast.”
“You haven’t made any forecast yet!”
“I’ll make a guess then,” Ben answered. “I’ll just call it a guess. I’ll
guess that Colleton came out of his room with the big man, and that he
was doped stiff, and that he had the proofs in his inside pocket, and
that the big man got him away under the eyes of a dozen clerks, and
probably passed a score of detectives before he got out of the
building.”
“But look here,” Mr. Havens began.
“Please, Mr. Havens,” Jimmie broke in, “don’t wake him up. Let him go on
dreaming! He’ll feel all the better for it in the morning!”
“I don’t care what you say!” Ben argued. “The big man took Colleton out
of his room. If you want to know whom to look for in this case, just you
look for the big man. And if you want to get a sure case against him,
find some one of the clerks who can identify him as the man who stood at
Colleton’s door that afternoon.”
“I half believe you are right!” Havens declared.
“It listens good to me,” Jimmie agreed.
“I want to withdraw everything I said against the theory,” Carl cut in.
“Look here!” Ben said rather excitedly. “Those fellows who claimed to be
mounted policemen are both big men, and they both wear full beards. Now
it seems to me that the man who took Colleton out of his office would be
the man to keep him under duress until the excitement of the case dies
down.”
“For the love of Mike!” Jimmie exclaimed. “Don’t go to materializing the
man with the alfalfa on his face right here in the mountains.”
“That’s the man we’re looking for,” suggested Ben.
“Well, let’s don’t find him until we’ve had a little more fun flying
over British Columbia!”
“Say, Mr. Havens,” Ben proposed. “You ought to send word to Washington
to have one or two of the most intelligent of those clerks sent out
here. When we get the man with the full beard we’ll want some one to
tell us whether we’re right or not.”
“I’ll do that the first time I reach a telegraph office,” the aviator
replied. “That ought to have been thought of long ago.”
“It strikes me that you won’t get to a telegraph office very soon!”
laughed Jimmie. “You’ll have a mess of feet that look like bread dough
by morning! Those porcupine quills often poison as well as wound.”
“Well, you boys can send the message then,” returned Mr. Havens.
“And you can watch camp!” laughed Carl.
“I’m afraid that’s what I’ll have to do.”
“What has been done with the case against the Kuro company?” Ben asked
after a short silence.
“Still pending in the courts. Of course, the government can’t proceed to
trial in the absence of inspector Colleton.”
“Then if Colleton should be murdered, the case might never be tried?”
“It certainly never would be tried!”
“Then we’ve got to get a move on!” cried Jimmie. “If these fellows know
that special effort is being made to locate him, they won’t take any
chances. The nearer we get to Colleton, the nearer he will be to his
death. At least that’s the way I look at it.”
“That’s the way it looks to me, too,” Ben agreed.
Carl now caught Jimmie by the arm and pointed to the fire burning on the
mountain to the north.
“It burns green now,” he said.
While they looked the flame turned red again.
“I wouldn’t mind going over there to-night!” Jimmie declared.
“Then let’s go,” advised Carl.
“Huh! I didn’t say anything about your going!”
“You know very well you always have to have me with you,” Carl chuckled.
“You get into trouble when you go alone.”
“Here,” Ben called from the tent where Mr. Havens lay, “what are you
boys planning now? No one leaves the camp to-night, understand!”
“Of course not,” grinned Jimmie.
“I should say not!” echoed Carl.
“Now, this is on the level,” Ben argued. “If you boys are planning
anything for to-night, you want to quit it, right now! If those fellows
around that other fire are watching us, you couldn’t do a thing that
would please them more than to wander off in the darkness.”
“Who said anything about wandering off in the darkness?” demanded
Jimmie. “You’re always seeing things that are not present.”
“Anyway,” Carl said with a yawn, “it’s time we were all in bed!”
“I’ll watch to-night,” Ben proposed, with a significant glance in the
direction of the aviator.
“And look here,” Jimmie suggested, “suppose you keep a record of the
changes of color over on the mountain. I believe those people are saying
something with those green and red lights!”
“All right,” Ben replied, “I’ll do that.”
“I don’t suppose I’ll sleep very much to-night, anyway,” Mr. Havens
said, after a pause, “so you may as well go to bed, every one of you,
and I’ll wake you if anything unusual occurs.”
“I think I’d better keep awake,” Ben insisted.
Jimmie and Carl stepped to one side, ostensibly in search of dry pine
for use during the night, but really to discuss this unexpected
opposition to the excursion they had planned.
“We can’t go if they make such a noise about it!” Carl complained.
“Sure we can!” returned Jimmie.
“I don’t know how!” Carl grumbled.
“I can fix up a scheme to get away in the machine with the advice and
consent of the multitude,” laughed the other.
“In your mind!” returned Carl.
“Watch me!” advised Jimmie.
The boys went back to the camp-fire and stood for some moments watching
the changing lights on the mountain.
“I’d like to know if some one is really talking back to that fellow,”
Jimmie said, turning to Mr. Havens.
“I presume some one is answering the signals,” the millionaire answered,
“only we can’t see the answers given.”
“Perhaps we could learn what they’re saying if we could see the answers.
They may be talking in a code we could get next to.”
“Well, you don’t see anything that looks like a return signal, do you?”
asked Ben. “They’ll take good care that we don’t see both ends of the
conversation.”
“Look here,” proposed Jimmie, “why don’t we send Ben up in a machine to
look over the landscape. The return signals may come from some point not
to be seen from this end of the valley.”
“That’s the idea!” exclaimed Carl, understanding in a minute why his
chum had suggested that Ben make the midnight flight.
“Not for me!” answered Ben. “I don’t care about going up into the sky
refrigerator this time of night!”
“Then you go, Carl,” Jimmie said turning to the other.
“Not so you could notice it!” Carl declared.
“All right!” Jimmie said with an injured air. “I made one exhausting
flight to-night and I suppose I could make another. We certainly ought
to know whether those people are signaling to others in the mountains.
Don’t you think so, Mr. Havens?” he added turning to the millionaire.
“It would enable us to understand the situation better,” was the reply.
“Then I’ll go,” Jimmie said, putting on an unwilling manner. “I’ll go up
far enough to see what’s doing and come right back. While I’m gone you
fellows get up a supper. It’s most daylight and we haven’t had anything
to eat since last night.”
“You had only two suppers last night!” Ben laughed.
“I don’t care if I had nine,” Jimmie answered, “I’m hungry just the
same, and when I come back from my little trip, I’ll be about famished!”
“I guess I’ll go with you,” suggested Carl.
“No, you don’t,” declared Jimmie, with a sly wink. “You wouldn’t go when
I wanted you to, and now you can’t go with me!”
“Do you think they ought to go, Mr. Havens?” asked Ben.
“If they can go without getting into any scrape, yes!”
“But they’ll be sure to get into trouble,” Ben complained.
“Trouble yourself!” cried Jimmie. “I guess we can swing around this
little old valley without it being necessary for you to send out a
relief expedition! You act like I never saw a flying machine before!”
“Perhaps they’ll be good to-night,” Mr. Havens laughed.
The millionaire saw how set the boys were on taking the trip in the
aeroplane. He rather suspected that Jimmie had mapped out the exact
course to be pursued in getting permission, and laughed at the tact
displayed by the little fellow. He remembered, however, the great risk
the boy had taken in order to be of service to him that very night, and
so decided in his favor.
“Do I go?” demanded Carl.
“Well, come along if you want to,” Jimmie answered, with apparent
reluctance. “If you break your neck, don’t blame me!”
The boys passed out of the circle of light about the fire and drew the
_Louise_ out to level ground. Jimmie could hear his chum chuckling
softly as they pushed and pulled together.
“Didn’t I tell you I could fix it up all right?” the boy asked.
“You’re the foxy little kid!” exclaimed Carl. “What are we going to do
when we get up in the air?” he continued.
“We’re going to circle the valley,” Jimmie answered, “and see if we can
catch sight of another camp-fire. Then we’re going to climb up until we
can look over the ridges in this vicinity. If there is a collection of
mail-order pirates anywhere in this country we want to know it
to-night.”
“Then we want to put on lots of warm clothing,” Carl suggested, “and
take automatics and searchlights with us.”
“Of course!” answered Jimmie. “We want to go prepared for zero weather.
It’s always cold up on the top of the Continental Divide!”
“And that’s all you’re going to do?” asked Carl. “Just fly around the
camp and locate the other camp-fires and then go to bed?”
“Well, of course,” Jimmie said hesitatingly, “if we find a camp that
looks in any way suspicious, we ought to investigate it a little. We
can’t get very close with the motors, you know, without attracting a
whole lot of attention, so we may have to land and sneak up to find out
what’s going on. We can’t learn much by sailing a thousand feet over a
camp!”
“That’s just what I thought!” laughed Carl. “Just as quick as you get
away in a machine you want to take a lot of risks that no one else would
think of taking.”
Jimmie’s only reply was a confident chuckle, and the boys were soon in
the air. As the pneumatic tires left the ground Ben waved them
“Good-bye” and shouted for them to be careful if they couldn’t be good.
In ten minutes the _Louise_ was over the camp-fire, which had been
observed all night. Nothing was to be seen but the springing flames.
There was no human being in sight.
“Well,” Jimmie said, as they circled the spot for the second time and
darted away to the east, “we’ll have to light and creep up!”