Frank Walton - The Flying Machine Boys on Duty

“Then,” declared Bolt, “the two attendants who have disappeared injected the anesthetic I have already referred to through the keyhole of the door. After I became unconscious they entered and removed the prisoner. It is all the fault of the hospital!”

The night matron turned up her nose at the surgeon.

The two flying machines, the Louise , with Jimmie and Carl on board, and the Bertha , with Ben in charge, flew swiftly over the great city, lying before them with its lights stretching out like strings of beads, crossed the North river with its fleets of vessels, and passed on over New Jersey, heading directly for the west.

At first Jimmie and Carl tried to carry on a conversation, but the snapping of the motors and the rush of the wind in their faces effectually prevented anything of the kind. The moon was well down in the west, yet its light lay over the landscape below in a silvery radiance.

Now and then as they swept over a city or a cluster of houses far out on a country road, lights flashed about, and voices were heard calling from below. Ignoring all invitations to descend and explain their presence there, the boys swept on steadily until the moon disappeared under the rim of the sky.

At first there was the light of the stars, but this was soon shut out by a bank of clouds moving in from the ocean. By this time the boys were perhaps two hundred miles from New York. They were anxious to be on their way, yet the country was entirely new to them, and they knew that a chain of hills extended across the interior farther on, so at last Ben, who was in the lead, decided to drop down and make inquiries as to the country to the west.

Of course the boys might have lifted their machines higher into the air and proceeded on their course regardless of any undulations of the surface, but they were still comparatively new in the business of handling machines, and did not care to take high risks in the darkness.

Jimmie followed Ben’s lead, and the two machines groped their way along a tolerably smooth country road and finally came to a stop only a few feet from a rough and weather-beaten barn which stood close to the side of the road.

The clatter of the motors almost immediately brought two husky farmers into the illumination caused by the aeroplane lamps.

“What you doing here?” one of the men asked.

“Came down to rest our wings,” Jimmie replied, saucily.

“Where you from?” asked the other farmer.

“New York,” answered Jimmie.

“We’re carrying government despatches to Japan,” Carl added, with a grin. “We’re in the secret service!”

Ben gave the two boys a jab in the back, warning them to be more civil, and, stepping forward, began asking questions of the farmer regarding the country to the west. The two men looked at each other suspiciously.

“Is this him?” one of them asked.

The other shook his head.

“Might be, though!” insisted the first speaker.

“No,” replied the other, “this is not the man!”

Ben looked at his chums significantly for a moment. He was thinking that the farmers might be referring to an aviator who had passed that way not long before. He was thinking, too, that that aviator might be the identical one who had started out to beat the Louise and the Bertha to the Pacific coast.

“When did you boys leave New York?” one of the men asked, in a moment.

“About midnight,” was the reply.

“And you’ve come two hundred miles in three hours?” asked the man, incredulously. “I don’t believe it!”

“Our machines,” Ben answered, very civilly indeed, “are capable of making the distance in two hours.”

“Well,” the farmer went on, “the other fellow said he left New York about dark, and he didn’t get here until something like an hour ago. He lit right about where you are now.”

“Where is he now?” asked Ben.

“Why, he went on just as soon as he tinkered up his machine.”

The boys glanced at each other significantly, and then Ben asked:

“What kind of a looking man was he?”

“He looked like a pickpocket!” burst out the farmer, “with his little black face, and big ears, and hunched up shoulders. And he was, I guess,” he continued, “for we heard him sneaking around the barn before we came out of the house.”

“What did he say for himself?” asked Ben, now satisfied that the man described was the one who had pursued the Louise on the previous afternoon.

The two farmers looked at each other a moment and broke into hearty laughter. The boys regarded them in wonder.

“He said,” one of the men explained, in a moment, “that he was a messenger of the government, taking despatches to the Pacific coast. If he didn’t say almost the same thing you said, you may have my head for a pumpkin.”

“And that,” added the other man, “is what makes us suspect that you chaps are in cahoots. Mighty funny about you fellows both landing down here by our barn, and both telling the same story! I’m a constable,” he went on, “and I’ve a good mind to arrest you all and take you before the squire as suspicious persons. I really ought to.”

“What are we doing that looks suspicious?” demanded Jimmie.

“You’re wandering about in the night time in them consarned contraptions!” declared the other. “That looks suspicious!”

Daylight was now showing in the east, and the sun would be up in a little more than an hour. The boys were positive, from information received from the farmer, that the aviator who had made his appearance on New York bay the previous afternoon was only an hour or so in advance of them. By following on at once they might be able to pass him.

It was their intention now to wheel farther to the south, and so keep out of the path taken by the other. It was their idea to reach the coast, if possible, without the man who was winging his way toward the murderers knowing anything about it.

Of course the fellow would suspect. There was no doubt that he fully understood that the Louise and the Bertha were to be used in a race to the Pacific. Had he been entirely ignorant regarding the plans of the boys, he would never have found it necessary to follow the Louise over New York bay and Manhattan island for the purpose of ascertaining her capability as a flier.

“Well,” Jimmie said, after a moment, “We may as well be on our way. We stopped here because we were afraid of butting into some wrinkle in the old earth if we proceeded in the darkness.”

“I don’t know about letting you go on!” broke in the constable.

There was greed in the man’s eyes. There was also an assumption of official severity as he glanced over the three youngsters. The machines were standing in the middle of a fairly smooth road running directly east and west.

To the right of the thoroughfare stood the shabby barns referred to before. To the left ran a ditch which had been cut through a bit of swamp lying on the other side of the road. As the farmer concluded his threatening sentence, Jimmie and Carl sprang to the Louise and pressed the button which set the motors in motion. For a moment the farmers were too dazed to do more than follow the swiftly departing machine with their eyes.

When they did recover their understanding of the situation, they both sprang at Ben in order to prevent his departure. This, doubtless, on the theory that one boy was better than none. If they couldn’t get three prisoners, they did not intend to lose the opportunity of taking one.

In carrying out this resolve, the men made a serious mistake in not seizing the machine. Had they thrown their muscular arms across the planes at one end it would have been impossible for the machine to have proceeded down the road in a straight course.