“You bet we can do it!” declared Jimmie.
“And when you need provisions,” Havens advised, “get one of the machines out at night and proceed to Monterey, but don’t take the aeroplanes into the town; don’t attract any attention if you can avoid it.”
“Where’re you going to meet us?” asked Ben.
“Probably at St. Louis,” was the reply. “At the post-office. Look for me there when you arrive.”
In a moment the purr of the motors cut the air. The machines ran swiftly, steadily, down the field and swept upward. Havens stood watching them for a long time. The planes glistened like silver in the moonlight, and the song of the motors came to his ears like sweet music. The millionaire loved a flying machine as track-men love a swift and beautiful horse. He finally turned away to find a uniformed messenger boy standing by his side, presenting a yellow envelope.
“What is it, kid?” he asked.
“Message from the hospital,” was the answer.
“Who sent it?” asked the millionaire, taking the envelope into his hands and tearing off the end.
“The night matron,” was the reply. “She said I had to hump myself.”
“That’s wrong!” laughed Havens. “She shouldn’t expect a messenger boy to hump himself! In fact,” he went on, whimsically, “the only time a messenger boy is permitted to make haste is when he is on his way to a baseball game. That’s right, sonny!” he continued.
The boy grinned and made trenches in the smooth earth of the field with the toe of a broken shoe.
Havens glanced casually at the message at first, thinking that perhaps the surgeon might have taken it into his head to report progress in the case of the man so recently placed in his charge. He knew very well that the surgeon would manage to prevent the escape of the prisoner should he regain consciousness, so he had put that phase of the case entirely from his mind. However, his eyes widened and an exclamation of astonishment came from his lips as he read the note which had been written by the night matron, and not by the surgeon at all.
“Mason, the injured man recently sent here on your order,” the note read, “has most mysteriously disappeared from the hospital. Doctor Bolt, the surgeon detailed, at your request, to take charge of the case, decided to watch the man for the night, and so my attendants were withdrawn. The surgeon must have fallen asleep, for in half an hour’s time he came running to my door shouting that Mason had escaped. As soon as possible I visited the room from which the man had disappeared and found the window sash raised.
“There were many footprints in the soft earth under the window—the footprints of men in coarse shoes—and a smear of blood on the window casing disclosed the fact that the injured man had been drawn through the opening. It is quite evident to me, therefore, that the man was carried from the room by some one interested in the case, to which Doctor Bolt only indirectly referred when talking with me. Your presence at the hospital is earnestly requested.”
The note was signed, as stated, by the night matron. Scarcely had Havens finished the reading of it when he heard some one stumbling through the darkness, and the next moment Surgeon Bolt, looking crestfallen and excited, stood before him, like a schoolboy anticipating censure.
“Well?” asked Havens rather angrily.
“It’s the strangest thing I ever saw!” exclaimed the surgeon. “Mindful of your interest in the man, I decided not to trust him to the care of any of the hospital attendants to-night. After doing what I could for him, I sat down by the side of his bed to read and smoke. My mind was never clearer or farther from drowsiness than it was at that time.”
“Yes,” Havens said, in a sarcastic tone, “the result seems to indicate that you were wide awake!”
“I tell you,” almost shouted Bolt, “that I was stupefied by the injection of chloroform or some other anesthetic into the room!”
“How could that be possible?” demanded Havens.
“I don’t know!” wailed Bolt. “I certainly do not know! The window was closed when I looked at it last, just before I became unconscious. When I came to my senses to find the bed empty, a cold wind was blowing on my face. That is undoubtedly what awakened me. Only for that I might have slept myself to death!”
While the two talked together a watchman from the office building approached and informed Havens that a lady was waiting there to see him.
“That, probably,” suggested Bolt, “is the night matron from the hospital. She was making investigations when I left, and promised to come here at once on the discovery of anything new in the case.”
Havens hastened to the office building and there, as the surgeon had predicted, found the night matron waiting for him.
“I can’t understand,” she said addressing the millionaire abruptly, without waiting for him to speak, “what is going on at the hospital to-night! Immediately after the departure of Doctor Bolt I sent word for every person, man or woman, connected with my service to appear in the reception room. In five minutes’ time I discovered that two men employed only three days ago were not present.
“After waiting a few moments for their appearance, I sent a messenger to their rooms. They were not there! Their beds had not been slept in, and every article of wearing apparel belonging to them had been taken from their closets.”
“One question,” Doctor Bolt said, addressing the matron. “Was any one on watch outside the door of the room in which I was so mysteriously put to sleep?”
“There was no one on watch there,” was the reply.
“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.
CHAPTER IV
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