Читать книгу The Boy Aviators on Secret Service; Or, Working with Wireless - Goldfrap John Henry - Страница 2

As the boys hurried from the office of the Secretary of the Navy they almost collided with a plump faced, spectacled young man in an aggressively loud suit of light summer clothes who was just rushing in.

“I say, look out where you are coming, can’t you?” he was beginning when he broke off with a cry of delight.

The next minute the boys were wringing the hand of Billy Barnes the youthful newspaper reporter who had been with them in Nicaragua and whose life they had saved when he was a captive among the Nicaraguans. Boy fashion the three slapped each other on the back and went through a continuous pump-handle performance at this unexpected meeting.

“What on earth are you doing here?” asked Harry when the first enthusiasm of the greetings had worn off.

“Working,” replied Billy briefly. “I’m on the Washington Post.”

“But I thought you were going to take a holiday after you had realized your money on the sale of your share of the rubies we found in the Toltec cave;” said Frank wonderingly.

“Well,” rejoined Billy, “of course the money I got for my two rubies looked good and it feels pretty nifty to have a check-book in your inside pocket; but I guess I can’t be happy unless I’m working. I bought my mother up the state a pretty little place in Brooklyn and tried to settle down to be a young gentleman of leisure but it wouldn’t do. I wasn’t happy. Every time I saw the fire-engines go by or read a good thrilling story in the paper I wanted to be back on the job, so I just got out and hustled about for one and here I am.”

“But what are you doing at the office of the Secretary of the Navy,” demanded the boys.

“Ah, that’s just it,” rejoined Billy mysteriously, “I’m on the track of the biggest story of my career and I think it’s a scoop. Can you fellows keep a secret?”

“We can do better than that,” laughed Frank, “we can tell you one. What would you say if we could tell you your errand here?”

“That you are pretty good mind-readers,” retorted Billy promptly. “I can guess yours though. You are here to try to sell the government an air-ship.”

“Wrong,” shouted Frank triumphantly. “But you – William Barnes – ” he went on, making a mysterious pass at the other boy’s head, “you are here to find out about Lieutenant Chapin.”

“How on earth did you know that?” gasped Billy, “you are right though. Do you know anything about it?” he inquired anxiously.

“Everything,” replied Frank.

“Oh, come off, Frank,” retorted Billy, “that’s too much. How on earth can you – ?”

“That matters not, my young reporter – we do,” struck in Harry.

“Give me the story then, will you?” begged Billy.

“No, we can’t do that,” replied Frank in a graver tone.

“Oh, of course I wasn’t trying to worm it out of you,” said Billy abashed somewhat.

“We know that, Billy,” said Harry kindly. The reporter looked at him gratefully.

“I just thought you might have something to give out,” went on Billy. “I see that you are in the confidence of the naval department.”

“No, Billy,” continued Frank, “we can’t give you anything for publication. But we can do better than that, we can tell you we are about to start on what may prove the most exciting trip we have ever undertaken.”

“What do you mean?” questioned Billy seeing clearly by Frank’s manner that something very unusual was in the wind.

“That we are going to try to find Lieutenant Chapin and the men who kidnapped him,” replied Frank; “but come along, Billy, we’ve just an hour before train time and if you feel like having a bite of lunch come with us and we can talk it over as we go along.”

The young reporter gladly assented and, linked arm in arm, the three boys passed out onto the sunny avenue which was glowing in the bright light of a late May day.

Frank rapidly detailed to Billy the gist of their conversation with the Secretary of the Navy, having first called up that official on the telephone and secured his permission to enlist Billy as a member of the expedition. For Frank had made up his mind that the reporter was to come along almost as soon as the boys encountered him.

The young journalist could hardly keep from giving a “whoop,” which would have sadly startled the sedate lunchers at the Willard, as Frank talked. He resisted the temptation, however, and simply asked eagerly:

“When do you start?”

The boys told him. They could see the eager question framing itself on Billy’s lips.

“Say, Frank, couldn’t you take me along?”

Frank feigned an elaborate indifference.

“Well, I don’t know,” he replied, winking at Harry as Billy’s face fell at this apparent refusal, “we might, of course, but really I think we shall have to go ‘without a chronicler.’”

The boys might have kept the jest up but Billy’s face grew so lugubrious that they had not the heart to keep him in suspense any longer.

“If you would care to come we were sort of thinking of taking you,” laughed Harry.

“If I would care to come?” gasped Billy, “Jimminy crickets! If I’d care to come! Say, just wait a minute while I go to ’phone my resignation.”

“What an impetuous chap you are,” laughed Frank, “we don’t start for three weeks yet and here you are in a hurry to throw up your job to-day.”

“Well,” replied Billy somewhat abashed, “I was a bit previous. But it’s so white of you chaps to take me along that I hardly know what I’m doing. How I’m to wait three weeks I don’t know.”

“How would you like to help us build the Golden Eagle II?” asked Frank suddenly.

“Say, Frank,” burst out Billy earnestly, “you are a trump. That was just the very thing I longed to do but I didn’t have the nerve to ask you after you were so decent about taking me with you to Florida. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“It won’t be all a picnic,” laughed Frank. “We’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of us and we’ll all have to pitch in and take a hand, share and share alike.”

“You can count on me,” exclaimed the reporter eagerly.

“I know we can,” replied Frank, “or we would not have asked you to accompany us.”

“What are your plans?” asked Billy eagerly.

“At present so far as I have thought them out,” replied Frank, “we shall sail from New York for Miami about the middle of June. I think it will be best to go by steamer as we can keep a better watch on any suspicious fellow passengers in that way than if we went by train. The key on which the Mist was wrecked is on the opposite coast from there, I understand, and the men who kidnapped Chapin and stole the plans must have entered the Everglades by one of the numerous small rivers that lead back from the coast at the Ten Thousand Island Archipelago.

“My idea, then, is to establish a permanent camp from which we can work, the location of course to depend entirely on circumstances, that may arise after we reach our destination. We are going into this thing practically blindfold you see, and so we shall have to leave the arrangement of a host of minor details till we arrive there.”

“You mean to strike right back into the wilderness?” asked Billy.

“As soon as possible after our arrival at Miami,” was the businesslike rejoinder. “Every minute of our time will be precious. Oh, there’s heaps to be done,” broke off Frank.

All the boys had to laugh heartily at the wave of the hands with which Frank accompanied his last words. But their merriment was cut short by a sharp exclamation from Billy.

“I say, Frank,” whispered the young reporter, “have you noticed that fellow at the next table?” He indicated a short dark sallow-faced man sitting at a table a few feet from them and to whom most of their conversation must have been audible.

“He’s not a beauty,” remarked Harry in the same low tone; “what about him, Billy?”

“Well,” said the reporter seriously, “I may be wrong and I may not – and I rather think I’m not, – but if he hasn’t been listening with all his ears to what we’ve been saying I’m very much mistaken.”

Frank bit his lip with vexation. In their enthusiasm the youthful adventurers had been foolishly discussing their plans in tones which any one sitting near could have overheard without much difficulty. The boys realized this and also that if the man really turned out to have been an eavesdropper that they had involuntarily furnished him with much important information about their plans.

The object of their suspicion apparently saw that they had observed him, for as they resumed their talk in lowered tones he called for his bill and having paid it with a hand that flashed with diamonds, he left the dining-room.

“Have you seen him before?” asked Frank of Billy.

“I was trying to think,” replied the reporter. “It seems to me that I have. I am almost certain of it in fact. But I can’t think where.”

“Try to think,” said Frank, “it may be very important.”

Billy cudgeled his brains for a few minutes and then snapped his fingers in triumph.

“I’ve got it,” he exclaimed joyously. “I’ve seen him hanging around the Far Eastern embassy. I was up there the other day to report a reception and this fellow was wandering around as if he hadn’t got a friend in the world.”

“He might have had an object in that,” said Frank gravely. “There is no doubt that he was listening to what we were talking about.”

“And not much question that he heard every word of it,” put in Harry.

“Well, it can’t be helped,” said Frank in an annoyed tone, “we shall have to be more cautious in the future. I see that the secretary was right, this place is swarming with spies.”

“I should say it is,” replied Billy, “Washington is more full of eavesdroppers and secret-service men of various kinds than any other city in the world.”

If the boys had seen the bediamonded man hasten from the hotel direct to a Western Union telegraph office where he filed a long telegram, they would have been even more worried than they were. If in addition they had seen the contents of the message they would have been tempted, it is likely, to have abandoned the expedition or at least their present plans, for the message, which was addressed to “Mr. Job Scudder, Miami, To Be Called For,” and signed Nego, gave about as complete an account of what they intended to do as even Billy Barnes with his trained ear for catching and marshaling facts could have framed. There was a very amiable smile on Mr. Nego’s face as he left the telegraph office and drew on a pair of light chamois gloves that gave a finishing touch of fashion to his light gray spring clothes, whose every line bore evidence to the fact that they had come from one of the best tailors in Washington. He had done a good morning’s work.

The boys of course had no means of knowing that, even as they hurried to their train, the wires were rushing to Florida the news of their coming three weeks before they planned to start and even if they had been aware of it they could not then have stopped it. With Billy Barnes they dashed up to the Pennsylvania depot in a taxi-cab just as the big locomotive of the Congressional Limited was being backed up to the long train of vestibuled coaches. They had their return tickets so that there was no delay at the ticket window and they passed directly into the depot, and having found their chair car deposited themselves and their hand-baggage in it. Billy stayed chatting with them till the conductor cried “all aboard.” As the reporter rose to leave he gave a very perceptible start. He had just time to cry to Frank:

“Look behind you,” when the wheels began to revolve and Billy only avoided being carried off by making a dash for the door almost upsetting the colored porter in his haste.

As the train gathered speed Frank glanced round as if in search of somebody. He almost started, as had Billy, as his eyes encountered the direct gaze of the very black orbs of the man whom they were certain had overheard their conversation at lunch and who had signed the telegram “Nego.”