“I guess you’re surprised to see me,” rejoined the other.
“I certainly am,” replied Frank.
“Why don’t you ask me to come in,” went on the other, “you’re a hospitable sort of fellow – not.”
“I beg your pardon, Lathrop,” apologized Frank, “won’t you come over to the house and sit down awhile?”
An unpleasant sort of smile broke on the other’s face.
“Oh, so you’re afraid to let me see your aeroplane are you? Well, I don’t know that I care so much to anyway. Since you fellows left New York I have been made president of the Junior Aero Club and have designed a ’plane that can beat anything you ever saw into a cocked hat,” he exclaimed.
Frank smiled. He was used to Lathrop’s boasting ways and at the Agassiz High School which they had both attended had frequently seen the other humbled. Now when Lathrop said that he didn’t care about seeing the Golden Eagle II, of course he was not telling the truth. He would have given a great deal to have even caught a glimpse of her. In fact, when that morning he had heard that the boys’ aerodrome was once more occupied, he had determined to walk over from his home, which was a splendid mansion standing on a hill-top not far away, and take a look at her for himself. That Frank should have objected to showing him the craft was an obstacle that never entered his head.
“Oh, come, Frank,” he went on, changing his tone, “let me take a look at her, I won’t tell anyone about it. What are you so secretive for?”
“I myself should be glad to let you see the successor to the Golden Eagle that we are building,” replied Frank, “but my employers might not like it.”
Lathrop pricked up his ears at this. He was an ambitious boy and had designed several air-ships and planes but he had never been able to speak of his “employer.” The word must mean that Frank was building the craft for some rich man. Although Lathrop had plenty of it the idea that Frank and Harry were making money out of their enterprise roused him to a sullen sort of anger.
“Oh your employers mightn’t like it,” sneered Lathrop, “I tell you what it is, Frank, I don’t believe you have any ‘employers’ as you call it, and that all this about a new air-ship is a bluff.”
This was a move intended to irritate Frank and make him offer to show the air-ship as proof positive that he was really at work on such a craft, but if Lathrop had meant it in this way it was a failure. Frank was quite unruffled.
“You are welcome to believe what you like, Lathrop,” he rejoined, “and now, as we are very busy, I shall have to ask you to excuse me. I’ve got too much work to do to stand talking here.”
“That’s just like you, Frank Chester,” burst out the other boy angrily, his temper quite gone now that he saw that there was to be no opportunity of his seeing the air-ship.
“Maybe you’ll be sorry that you wouldn’t show me the ship – and before very long too.”
As Frank, not caring to listen to more of this sort of talk, re-entered the aerodrome the Beasley boy, almost beside himself with anger, shouted after him.
“I’ll remember this, Frank Chester, so look out.”
He strode angrily off through the woods making a short cut for home. Lathrop was not a bad boy at heart, but he was an intensely jealous one, and the idea that the Boy Aviators were constructing an air-ship that they refused to let him see irritated him almost past bearing. When he shouted at Frank his last words they were dictated by his anger, more than by any real intention of carrying out any plan of revenge for the fancied slight; but, as he strode along through the woods, he suddenly heard voices that, after a few minutes of listening, convinced him that he was not the only person in the world who even momentarily wished harm to the Chester boys.
“We’ll wreck the aerodrome to-night;” were the words, – coming from within a clump of bushes that grew to one side of the trail, – that attracted his attention. The boy halted in his tracks as they were uttered and then crept cautiously through the undergrowth till he reached a spot from which he could both see and hear without being seen. The man who had uttered the threat that had brought him to a standstill was a person bearing every evidence of being of the genus – tramp, that is so far as his clothes went. But his white hands and carefully kept nails showed that he had assumed the rags he wore as a disguise. His companion was a man of very different appearance. He was in fact the natty person whom the boys had seen at the Hotel Willard, and who had since been on their track, as Frank had guessed when Billy had spied his escaping figure in White Plains the day before. With a beating heart the concealed boy listened as the two plotters went on.
“Do you think they have the machine finished yet?” asked the better dressed of the two.
“Confound them, they were too sharp to let me go to work for them or I might have had the plans of it by this time,” rejoined the other. “I think, though,” he resumed, “that it must be so far advanced that if we can wreck it now we will delay their departure for Florida till we have been able to destroy the plant and escape.”
“I owe them a debt of gratitude for the loud way they talked at the Hotel Willard,” said the other. “Thank goodness we are now in possession of their plans at any event. Don’t you think we might head them off without destroying the aerodrome? It’s risky, and means jail for us if we are caught.”
The other gave a short laugh.
“No, we’ll hit them a body blow,” he said. “If I could blow them up along with their air-ship I’d gladly do it. I’d like to treat them as we mean to do with that white-livered Lieutenant when we get through with his services.”
“Are they going to kill him?” demanded the other with something like awe in his tones.
“No,” replied the man in the tramp’s rags, “not unless he gives too much trouble. They are going to put him to work in the sulphur mines of Ojahyama and let him slave for his living.”
Even from where he was the concealed boy could see the other shudder.
“It is a terrible place,” he said.
“It is the best place for men of his caliber,” retorted the other.
“Perhaps it would be as happy a fate for him as being compelled to slave for Foyashi.”
“I hear that he would not have anything to do with their schemes and defied them to kill him before he would aid them to manufacture his explosive until he was influenced by Foyashi,” said the first speaker.
“I guess you’re right,” replied the other worthy, “but he’s passive enough now, I fancy.”
They both laughed and arose to go. As for Lathrop he lay almost paralyzed with fear. Of course much of what he had heard had been meaningless to him, but he did understand that a plan was on foot to blow up the boys’ aerodrome, destroy their ship and possibly injure themselves. As the men’s footsteps died out, as they walked off down the path through the woods, the boy, who a minute before had been seriously pondering some sort of harm to Frank and Harry felt conscience-stricken.
What he had just heard had changed him from a possible enemy into a fellow-schoolmate and he determined to warn the boys of their peril. With this end in view he was hurrying down the path, retracing his steps towards the aerodrome, when he was seized roughly from behind and whirled about. The man who had seized him was the one who had assumed the costume of a tramp. His eyes blazed with rage. He had hurried back to get his knife, – which had dropped from his pocket as he sat talking, – a few seconds after Lathrop had left his place of concealment. As luck would have it, in pushing through the bushes he had discovered the depression in the grass where the boy had lain. A brief investigation showed him that it had been recently occupied and that whoever had crouched there must have heard every word they said. Calling his comrade the two had set out at full speed in pursuit of Lathrop.
As