Читать книгу The Lone Eagle of the Border, or Ted Scott and the Diamond Smugglers - J. W. Duffield - Страница 5

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Ted Scott whirled about, his eyes blazing. He strode up to Hardwick.

“Were you, by any chance, referring to me?” asked Ted, controlling himself with difficulty.

Hardwick seemed as though he were going to make an insolent retort. But he looked into Ted’s eyes and then at his clenched fists and his courage wilted.

“Nothing of the kind,” he muttered thickly. “Was talking about a fellow that I’m going to race against in Texas about a month from now.”

Ted stared at him, and before that glance of steady contempt Hardwick’s eyes fell.

“Oh,” said Ted politely. “Pardon me. My mistake.”

He turned and went back to his work. Hardwick glanced after him, seemed about to shout a surly defiance, but thought better of it and sullenly drifted away, followed by his cronies.

Ted’s anger subsided as he became more absorbed in his work, and in a little while he had almost forgotten the incident.

He would, however, have regarded it as of more importance if he had been an unseen listener at a conversation that had taken place recently between Hardwick and Brewster Gale, the latter the proprietor of the Hotel Excelsior, where Hardwick had taken up his quarters while preparing for the endurance contest.

Little was known of Gale’s life before he settled in Bromville, but from time to time stories of the shady way in which he had accumulated his money leaked out. He was regarded as a man who would stop at nothing to achieve his ends. Hardwick, before he entered the field of aviation, had known Gale intimately and had even been used as a tool by the older man in the prosecution of some of his swindling schemes. They were birds of a feather and neither had any illusions concerning the character of the other. It was entirely natural that when Hardwick came to Bromville he should put up at Gale’s hotel.

“Hello Jack!” Gale greeted him. “Glad to see you again. So you’re going to take part in the endurance contest, are you? Here’s hoping that you win.”

“That’s good of you, Brew,” answered Hardwick, as the pair shook hands. “Thanks.”

“Not only for your own sake,” went on Gale, “but because if you do win, it’ll mean that you’ve licked Ted Scott. Gee, how I hate that fellow!”

“I haven’t any use for him myself,” answered Hardwick. “It gives me a pain in the neck to see how everybody bows before the fellow. But I didn’t expect to hear you talk that way. I thought that everybody in Bromville thought that he was the greatest thing that ever happened.”

“I hate him!” burst out Gale viciously, as he bit off the end of a cigar. “The happiest day I’ll ever know will be when I learn that he has broken his neck.”

Hardwick was startled by the malignity of the words and the tone in which they were spoken.

“Gee, but you’re hot under the collar!” he exclaimed. “What has he done to rile your naturally sweet disposition? Tell it to papa. Spill it.”

Gale frowned at the attempt at levity.

“It’s no joking matter,” he snapped. “That fellow has cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. Blast him!”

Hardwick sat up with a jerk.

“That sounds serious!” he exclaimed. “How could he put over anything like that on the slick article I know you to be? If it were the other way round, I could understand it. Any one has got to be good to get the best of you in a money deal. Tell me all about it. We understand each other. There’s no need of any secrecy between us. Each of us knows enough about the other to put him in jail,” he added, with a shameless grin.

“It was this way,” said Gale, who seemed to find a certain relief for his feelings in talking over things that he had to keep secret from most people, but could speak freely of to one of his own kind. “You see this property of mine—the hotel and the golf course. Anything the matter with it?”

“I should say not,” replied Hardwick, as he took in the rich surroundings. “Some swell joint, if you ask me. Nothing finer than this in any part of the country, except in some of the big cities.”

“Right you are!” agreed Gale. “I got the ground for a mere song. Got it from an old mossback here, the fellow that runs the shebang he calls the Bromville House. Everything was O. K. and I was sitting pretty when along comes this fellow Scott and upsets the beans.”

“How was that?” asked Hardwick, with quickened interest.

“Got to looking up the matter of the deal I’d made with old Browning,” replied Gale. “Went around saying that the thing wasn’t on the up and up, that there was something crooked in it.”

“And of course there wasn’t,” remarked Hardwick with a sly wink.

Gale caught the wink and smiled sourly.

“Well, I was looking of course after my own interests,” he admitted. “If old Browning was a fool, that wasn’t my fault. What are sheep for, if not to be shorn? I had good lawyers who knew how to manage those matters. The old man didn’t have a cent to hire lawyers with, but that wasn’t my concern.”

“Of course not,” agreed Hardwick. “Go on. I’m anxious to know where Scott came in.”

“He was a brat that Browning adopted,” snarled Gale. “Someway or other, he got friendly with a rich fellow, chap named Hapworth, and put him wise to the deal with Browning. That started Hapworth to looking up the matter of the golf course in which he and a fellow named Monet had a good deal of money invested and which I was managing. They said I’d been juggling with the books and fattening my bank account at their expense. They made such a fuss about it that I had to give up a lot of money to keep them from yapping to the police.”

“Mighty unreasonable of them,” observed Hardwick sardonically.

“They tried at the same time to make me come across with the money they said I owed Browning, but I stood pat there because they couldn’t actually prove anything,” went on Gale. “Then what does this Ted Scott do but hunt up a missing witness when he was working down South during the Mississippi flood and bring him North with him. The fat was in the fire then. It was a matter of ponying up or going to jail, and I chose to settle.”

“Hard luck, old man,” condoled Hardwick.

“You said it!” Gale agreed. “But there was worse than that to come. You’ve heard of course about Greg and Duck?” He referred to his twin sons, Gregory and Duckworth.

“Yes,” replied Hardwick, a little reluctant to refer to so delicate a subject, “I heard that they’d been jailed, but I don’t recall just now what it was for.”

“Oh, they got into a little trouble down at the Bromville House,” said Gale hesitatingly. He forbore to mention that the “little trouble” was an attempt by the rascals to rob Eben Browning’s safe, in the course of which they had clubbed the old man and his wife into insensibility. “Just a matter of boyish high spirits more than anything else. Anyway, they thought it was better to leave town till the thing blew over. Then Ted Scott came across them in Porto Rico, captured them, handed them over to the police, had them brought back and tried and sent to prison. Do you wonder that I hate that fellow worse than poison?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Hardwick. “It’s natural you should want to get even with him.”

“That’s why I’m so keen that you should beat him in this endurance contest,” Gale declared. “I want to see him beaten, humiliated, made to look and feel cheap right here in the town where the fools have put him on a pedestal. I’d sure give ten years of my life to have it happen.”

“You sure are a good hater,” remarked Hardwick. “I haven’t any use for the fellow myself. He’s hogging the limelight, and you’d think to hear some people talk that there isn’t any other aviator in the United States that amounts to a hill of beans. I’m going to do my best to down him. Still, he has an awful amount of luck and it will take a lot to beat him.”

“There’s more than one way to kill a cat,” suggested Gale, with a significant glance at his old-time confederate.

“Meaning?” said Hardwick, in a tone of inquiry.

“Meaning just what you want to put into it,” replied Gale. “I’m not an aviator. But there are tricks in every trade and you ought to know some in yours. The point is to beat him, no matter how you do it.”

“H-m!” said Hardwick musingly. “I get you, Brew. There are some little things I know, but it would be taking a big risk to pull off any raw stuff in this town. I’d be lynched, if folks got next to it.”

“Take a chance,” urged Gale. “If you get away with it, I’ll give you a cool thousand dollars.”

Hardwick considered for a moment.

“Make it two thousand,” he said, “and I’ll talk turkey with you.”

“Two it is,” replied Gale without a moment’s hesitation. “Now, tell me what you have in mind.”

While the precious pair of rascals are plotting their nefarious scheme, it may be well, for the benefit of those who have not read the preceding volumes of this series, to tell who Ted Scott was and what had been his adventures up to the time this story opens.

Ted could not remember anything about his parents. When he was old enough to know anything he found himself in the care of James and Miranda Wilson, who had adopted him and brought him with them from New England to Bromville, a thriving town in the Middle West. They were in humble circumstances, but they cared tenderly for the little waif, sent him to school and did all for him that their slender means permitted. They died within a few months of each other when Ted was about ten years old, leaving no means for the maintenance of the child.

His forlorn condition attracted the notice of a childless couple, Eben and Charity Browning, and they took the little fellow into their hearts and home. Eben Browning, a kindly, genial man, was the proprietor of the Bromville House, which at that time was the leading hotel of the town. Traveling men liked to stop there because of the homely comfort of the place and there was a considerable clientage of anglers who came to fish in the Rappock River.

A new impetus was given to Bromville when the Devally-Hipson Aero Corporation established a mammoth airplane plant there. Hundreds of workmen and officers and executives became residents of the place. Other industries were established and the town began to boom. New hotels sprang up almost over night, and Eben found himself facing stiff competition. His own hotel had become rather shabby and run down, and the new ones were equipped with up-to-date facilities.

The greatest blow to his tottering fortunes was the building of the Hotel Excelsior by Brewster Gale. It far outshone all others and was indeed almost palatial. Eben’s chagrin was heightened by the way he was swindled by Gale, as has been already narrated.

Ted Scott did all that he could to help his foster parents, whom he loved devotedly, working about the place, besides earning what money he could by doing odd jobs. When the airplane plant came he secured work there, turning over practically all his earnings to Eben and Charity. He was industrious and ingenious and was rapidly advanced in positions until he found himself in the assembling department. He loved his work. He had always been fascinated by airplanes and the great ambition of his life was to become a flier.

To the plant one morning came Walter Hapworth, an expert golfer who was taking part in a tournament. He was a young and wealthy business man, interested in airplanes. Ted was assigned to show the visitor about the works. The boy showed himself so familiar with everything concerning airplanes, could answer so readily and intelligently any question about them, that Mr. Hapworth was impressed. He learned of the lad’s ambition to be an airman and offered to give Ted money enough to go to a flying school and also to make up for his wages while he was away. Ted was astonished and delighted. He finally accepted the offer, but as a loan which he afterward repaid.

At the school he showed such an aptitude for flying, such nerve, skill, resource, and quick thinking that all agreed that a remarkable career lay before him.

Following his graduation, he applied for and received a position in the Air Mail Service. His route lay between Chicago and St. Louis and he soon became known as the finest flier in his division.

About that time the whole country was agog with interest over the offer of twenty-five thousand dollars to the airman who should first make a non-stop flight from New York to Paris. Ted was intensely anxious to take part in the competition, but his lack of the many thousands of dollars required to purchase a plane and provide for other necessary expenses seemed to put him out of the running. But Walter Hapworth learned of his desire and offered to provide the requisite backing.

Ted obtained leave of absence from the Air Service and went out to the Pacific Coast, where he had a plane built under his own personal supervision. He named it the Hapworth in honor of his benefactor. When it was ready he stepped into it for the trip from San Francisco to New York.

He left San Francisco and whizzed over the Rockies to St. Louis in a single jump in the fastest time that had ever been made by a man flying alone.

Instantly the newspapers took notice. This young aviator out of the West caught the imagination. And when in one more jump Ted took off from St. Louis and came down the next day at Curtiss Field in New York, his name was on every tongue.

Reporters swarmed around him. Crowds followed him wherever he went. But unspoiled by the popular acclaim, Ted Scott went calmly on with his work of preparation. Then on one misty morning he soared into the skies and set the nose of his plane toward the Atlantic.

What perils of fog and sleet and storm he met and mastered, with what superb skill and nerve he guided his plane over the yeasty surges, how he reached France and swooped down on the field at Le Bourget near Paris, winning the prize and setting the world aflame with admiration, is told in the first volume of this series, entitled: “Over the Ocean to Paris.”

Soon after his return to his own country, the great tragedy of a Mississippi flood stirred the heart of the nation, and Ted enlisted in the aviation section of the Red Cross. Here he did magnificent work in rescuing and succoring the distressed people and won once more the gratitude of the country.

Later on, Ted resumed his work in the Air Mail Service, although this time he chose the Rocky Mountain Division because it was the most dangerous and appealed to his spirit of adventure. On one occasion when his plane crashed he became lost in the wilderness, and it was only by a hair’s breadth that he saved his life and again reached civilization.

Shortly afterward he was attracted by the contest to fly across the Pacific from San Francisco to Honolulu, and here he again won fresh laurels as the winner. It was at about this time also that he got a clue to the mystery of his parentage. His father had been falsely accused of murder and had died in prison before his innocence could be established. Ted set out to vindicate his father’s memory.

Still later, Ted’s friends, Paul Monet and Tom Ralston, made a trip to the West Indies in search of hidden treasure. When no news came of the adventurers Ted became worried and set out after them. He had exciting adventures with outlaws, and barely escaped with his life in a terrific hurricane.

He had scarcely returned home when he was called upon by Walter Hapworth to make a trip with him to Mexico. Here Ted was entrusted with a secret mission to a rebel chief that involved him in a series of dangerous adventures, so dangerous that at one time a rope was around his neck and he was about to be strung up by his enemies when rescue arrived in the nick of time.

Later, when again employed in the Air Mail Service, Ted had his coffee drugged just before he started on a flying trip. He was forced to bring his plane to earth and, while he was unconscious, the plane was robbed of its valuable mail. How Ted sought out the robbers, how later he embarked on a perilous non-stop flight from America to Australia with a passenger who later became a maniac and battled with him while above the ocean, these and a host of other thrilling adventures are narrated in the preceding volume of this series entitled: “Across the Pacific; or, Ted Scott’s Hop to Australia.”

Now to return to Ted, as, all unknowing of the plot that had been framed against him by Gale and Hardwick behind closed doors, he bent busily over his plane, grooming it for the great endurance flight on the morrow.

That flight was to be held under unusual conditions. Ordinarily two men were in each machine, one to relieve the other while each took a few hours sleep. But on the present occasion each plane was to hold only one man, the pilot. He must keep awake or, failing this, give up the contest. So it was to be more than a test of planes. It was to be a test also of the stamina and vitality and determination of the individual contestant.

As the existing record was more than sixty-five hours, this meant over two days and a half would be required for staying in the air, if the record was to be broken. It was bound to be a gruelling experience.

But Ted Scott did not fear the test. If the plane itself behaved all right, he was confident that his superb physical condition would bring him out the winner. More than once he had gone without sleep for long periods. Besides, he knew that he could set his plane in such a course and under such perfect control that he could catch occasional catnaps that, even if momentary, would serve to relieve the tension.

“Here she is, Jackson,” he said to one of the mechanics as he delivered the Browning into his keeping. “She’s fit to fly for a man’s life. Keep strict watch over her and don’t let any one come near her till the starting time for the race comes.”

“I’m on,” replied Jackson. “If any one gets near this beauty, it will be over my dead body.”