CHAPTER IV.—THE AEROPLANE IN DANGER.
A strong wind came out of the Western Sea at ten o’clock that night and swept the lofty plateau as a woman might have swept it with a new broom. Ned and Frank, pursuing their investigations in the cavern, knew nothing of what was going on at the camp, but Jack and Pat were not long in ignorance of the danger of the situation.
With the first strong rush of wind the boys were on their feet, steadying the aeroplane, driving stakes wherever the nature of the ground permitted, and running bracing cords. The shelter tents went down instantly and were blown against the rocks of the east, where they waved canvas arms in the tearing breeze like sheeted ghosts.
The black clouds which swarmed up from the valley brought no rain, but fitful flashes of lightning and deep-toned thunder made a threatening sky. The roaring of the swirling trees in the cañon and on the slopes came up to the ears of the boys like the boom of a strong surf.
After persistent efforts the boys succeeded in bracing the aeroplane so that there was little danger of its being swept away, though they still remained with their backs to the wind, holding on. As time passed, they crept close together in order that the situation might be discussed.
“Lucky thing we remained here,” Pat said, tugging with all his might to steady the monster machine against a particularly vicious dash of wind.
“It would have gone sure, if we hadn’t,” Jack screamed back. “I wish Ned and Frank would come and help. My back is creaking like a shaft that needs oiling with the strain on it.”
“A little help wouldn’t go amiss,” Pat admitted, shouting at the top of his lungs in order that he might be heard above the whistling of the storm.
“I wonder if we’ll ever be able to put the tents up again?” Jack shouted. “They are flapping and snapping like musketry out there on the rocks. I hope they won’t blow away entirely.”
Pat gazed anxiously in the direction indicated, but could only see pieces of canvas bellying up in the wind, mounting upward like balloons at times, then falling back to earth when a short lull came in the storm.
“Why,” he cried, in a moment, “where’s Jimmie? I thought I saw him here a moment ago. Have you seen him?”
“Not since the storm,” panted Jack.
“He may have been smothered in his tent,” Pat shouted. “You hold on here while I go and look him up.”
“Be sure that you keep close to the ground,” warned Jack. “If you don’t you’ll be blown away.”
It was not at all difficult for the lad to reach the flapping tents, for the wind generously assisted him in the journey. Only that he crept on his hands and knees he would have been tossed against the wall where the tents lay.
Struggling with the tearing canvas, bracing himself against the face of the cliff, the boy looked over the ruined tents but found no indication of the presence of the boy he sought, either dead or alive. Then he felt along the angle of the foot of the rise with no better success.
“He’s not there,” he reported, crawling back to Jack, now braced tenaciously with his toes and elbows digging into the soil above the rock.
“Did you find his clothes?” asked Jack.
“Not a thing belonging to his outfit,” was the reply.
“Well, he went to bed, didn’t he?” asked Jack, a sudden suspicion entering his mind.
“He went into his tent,” was the reply, “but I did not see him undress.”
Then Pat, much to his astonishment, heard Jack laughing as if mightily pleased over something that had taken place.
“You’ve got your nerve!” he exclaimed. “Laughing at a time like this. I’ll bet the kid has been blown off the plateau.”
There was now a little lull in the drive of the wind and Jack nudged his companion with his elbow, turning an amused face as he did so.
“Blown off nothing!” he said. “You saw how he acted when Ned went off without him—how sulky he was?”
“I noticed something of the sort.”
“Well, Jimmie ducked after him!”
“Why, he was told to remain here.”
“He has been told that before,” Jack said, “and he’s never obeyed orders. He followed Ned from Manila to Yokohama, not long ago, and made a hit in doing it, too. Oh, it is a sure thing that Jimmie is not far from Ned at this minute.”
“The little scamp!” grinned Pat.
“He seems to think that Ned can’t get along without his constant presence and his pranks,” Jack continued. “He generally stirs something up in his immediate vicinity, but he’s a pretty good scout at that.”
“I hope he is with Ned,” Pat said.
The wind now died down a bit, so that it was no longer necessary to hold the aeroplane, and the boys, after seeing that the rope still held, began the work of repairing the tents.
The clouds drifted away and the moon looked down as bravely as if it had not just hidden its face from sight at the threats of the wind! The electric flashlights with which the boys were well provided seemed inadequate and Pat started in to build a fire.
“I don’t know about that,” Jack said. “If there had been a fire here when that wind came up it would have been roaring in the cañon now. The storm would have swept it down on the trees there, and the whole gully would soon have become a roaring furnace. Better cut out the fire.”
“I guess you are right,” Pat said, reluctantly laying his dry faggots aside.
While the boys worked, trying to restore the shelter tents to something like form, the wind came up once more and reached out for the aeroplane. Pat and Jack renewed their holding efforts, and thanked their stars that no fire had been built on the plateau, for the forest about was dry as tinder.
Presently a voice which neither recognized came out of the shadows cast by a mass of clouds just then occupying the sky where the moon should have been.
“Hello!” the voice said.
The boys looked at each other in perplexity for a moment and then Jack answered back.
“Hello!” he said.
“Are you all safe up here, safe and sound?” the voice asked, and then the figure of a tall man, roughly dressed, but bearing the manner, as faintly observed in the darkness, of a gentleman, advanced toward the aeroplane, to which the lads were still devoting their whole attention.
“Safe and sound!” repeated Pat.
The stranger sat down by Jack’s side and laid hold of the aeroplane.
“Pulls hard, doesn’t it?” he asked, as the machine, forced by the wind, drew stoutly on the ropes and the muscles of the boys.
“Pulls like a horse,” Jack replied.
“I’m Greer, of the forest service,” the stranger said, in a moment. “I saw a fire up here this afternoon, and I was afraid harm might come from it during the gale. One blazing brand down in that cañon, and millions of feet of timber would be destroyed.”
“As you see,” Jack said, “we have no fire.”
“This, I presume,” Greer said, still pulling at the machine, “is the aeroplane your friends came in this evening?”
“The same,” replied Pat shortly.
The lad was annoyed to think that the forester, as he called himself, had been watching them. If he had taken so much interest in their movements, Pat thought, why hadn’t he shown himself before?
Jack’s thoughts seemed to be running in the same direction. In fact, both boys were suspicious of this soft-spoken stranger who had come to them out of the storm with questions on his lips.
“Where are your friends?” Greer asked, in a moment. “I hope they are not out in the forest thinking of starting a fire?”
“They’ve gone to the lake after fish,” Jack said, accounting for the absence of the others with the first words that came to his lips.
Greer gave a quick start and leaned over to look into Jack’s face.
“Down at the lake?” he repeated. “Not out in a boat in a storm like this?”
“No,” replied Jack, gruffly, so gruffly, in fact, that the stranger caught the hostile note and turned away.
“I’m always afraid of fire on a night like this,” Greer continued in a moment, “and rarely sleep until morning. My cabin is back on the mountain a short distance, some distance above this plateau. That’s how I happened to see what was going on here.”
“Rather a lonely life,” Pat said, resolved to keep the fellow talking if he could. “Because,” he reasoned, “you can tell what’s in a man’s head if he keeps his mouth open and his tongue moving, but no one can tell the secret locked up behind closed lips.”
“Yes, it is rather lonely,” Greer replied. “I’m glad you boys are here. Going to remain long?”
“Only a few weeks—just to hunt and fish,” was Jack’s reply.
“If you don’t mind,” Greer went on, “I’ll come down and visit you now and then.”
The statement almost took the form of a question, and Jack gave a grudging answer that the visits would be a pleasure, though he believed that the man was arranging a way of watching their movements.
“I wish this wind would go down,” Greer said, presently. “As I said before, I’m always afraid of fire on nights like this. See! The wind blows straight off the distant ocean strong and steady, and a fire started out there to the west would run over this plateau and over the mountain like a wash of tide.”
“There’s nothing to burn on the plateau,” Jack said, glad of an opportunity to contradict the stranger.
“Nothing to burn!” Greer repeated. “I reckon you don’t know much about forest fires, young man! Why, it would burn the soil down to bed rock, even evaporate the water in the rock itself and crumble it down to ashes. A forest fire is no joking matter.”
The boys remained silent, looking cautiously into each other’s faces and both wondering how a forester, a man marooned in a great wilderness should be so exact in his speech, should wear such a shirt—actually a dress shirt—as they saw under his rough coat when the wind blew it aside.
“I rather think there’s more company coming,” Greer continued, seeing that the boys were not inclined to comment on his warnings. “A moment ago I saw a flash of light at the foot of the rise to the west.”
The wind was still blowing fiercely, but both boys turned and looked down the incline. There was a faint light there now, glimmering among the trees.
“It looks like a lantern,” Greer said. “And the fellow seems about to climb the hill. Good luck to him, in this gale.”
“It seems to me,” Pat said, “that the light we see is running along on the ground. If that should be a forest fire, there would be the dickens to pay to-night—and nothing to pay with!”
“That is not the way forest fires start,” Greer said, turning indolently in the direction of the divide. “That is a man with a lantern.”
The boys watched the glimmer below with interest. The man with the lantern, if there was a man and a lantern, seemed to be moving with the wind. Then, again, he seemed to divide himself, as the lower orders of life at the bottom of the seas divide themselves, appearing on both sides of a dark space at the same moment.
They were satisfied that something unusual was going on, but were for the moment lulled into a half-sense of security by the positive assertions of the alleged forester. Presently they turned away from the scene below and fixed their eyes on the stranger.
He was standing straight up, his tall figure braced against the wind, peering down into the cañon. Notwithstanding the steady wind, the sky was now comparatively free of clouds, and they saw him lift a hand with something bright shining in it.
It appeared to the lads that he was signaling to some one in the cañon. They turned away instantly so that Greer did not note their observation of him, and again fixed their gaze on the slope to the west.
The lantern, if there was a lantern, was growing larger! It was showing itself in half a dozen places now, and was tracing lights far up in the crotches of dead trees. Then the penetrating odor of burning wood and grass came up the slope.
Filled with a fear which could hardly be expressed in words, the boys faced Greer again. He still stood facing the cañon to the south, but his hands were not lifted now. There was no need for that, the boys thought, for the previous signal seemed to have sufficed.
Among the dry faggots on the ground at the bottom of the cañon there was another man with a lantern. He, too, if there was such a man, was moving about among the trees and dividing himself into sections, as the rudimental creatures of the world multiply themselves. Pat sprang to Greer’s side and shook him roughly by the arm.
“There’s a fire down there!” he cried.
In the uncertain moonlight the boy saw the stranger’s face harden.
“You are mistaken,” he said, turning away toward the lake.
“Smell the smoke!” Jack shouted. “I tell you the forest is on fire on two sides of us.”
“Then your friends have set the fires!” Greer shouted, against the wind. “I have been suspicious of you all along—ever since you failed to satisfactorily account for the absence of your friends. It is all very well for you to come here in an aeroplane and start a conflagration! But how do you think that we, who are not so well provided with means of getting away, are to escape death?”
Pat drew back his hand, as if to strike the fellow, but Jack restrained him.
“You set the fires!” Pat shouted, then. “You set it through your fellow conspirators! I saw you signaling to the cañon!”
“You’re no more a forester than I am!” Jack added. “You’re a scoundrel, and ought to be sent to prison for life.”
There was no more talk for a time. Greer stood defiantly against the wall of rock to the east, as if fearful of an attack from behind, his right hand in his bulging pocket. The boys knew that he had a weapon there, and their own hands were not empty.
The aeroplane drew and shivered in the rising gale, but now little attention was paid to it. Pat and Jack were listening for some indication of the return of Ned and Frank. No farther fable of a man with a lantern was necessary, for fire was racing up the western slope, heading directly for the plateau and the priceless aeroplane. Down in the cañon the flames were leaping from tree to tree. A stifling smoke filled the air, always in swift motion, but stifling still.
CHAPTER V.—THE REVELATION OF A TRAGEDY.
“Smugglers!” Frank exclaimed, dropping an armful of unopened opium tins on the floor of the cavern. “Smugglers, all right, all right!”
Ned looked the tins over carefully. They were well covered with Chinese characters, and were dirty, as if they had been hidden away in the earth for a long time.
“Who would have suspected it?” Frank continued. “We are close to the British frontier, but, all the same, this seems to me to be an awkward place to land and store the dope stuff.”
“Where did you find it?” asked Ned.
“There is a false back to that cupboard in the north wall,” Frank replied. “When I knocked on the boards they gave forth a hollow sound, and so I tore one away. Hence the opium. And there are pipes there, too—just such pipes as one sees in the joints on Pell street, in little old New York.”
“You remember what Jimmie said?” asked Ned.
“I remember a good many things the little rascal has said,” was the laughing reply. “He’s always saying something.”
“Well,” Ned continued, “the boy was right when he expressed his opinion of the heelless footprints in one word.”
“Chinks!” grinned Frank. “Of course!”
The boys now went over to the cupboard in the niche and began tearing away the boards. After a few had been displaced Ned stopped and began experimenting in fitting them in position again.
“What’s doing now?” demanded Frank.
“We must remove them so as to be able to return them as we found them before we leave,” Ned replied. “It is important that the inhabitants of this robber den do not know that we have discovered it.”
“Don’t you ever think they don’t know it right now,” Frank said. “We haven’t seen any of them since they rowed around the point, but they’re stirring about, just the same. We may see more of them before we get out of this cavern.”
“Well,” Ned said, “we must take all the precautions needful, and if they are of no avail we shall not be to blame for what takes place. Even if they know that we have found the cavern, they need not know that we have penetrated into the office chamber. Now, draw that last board away carefully, and we’ll see what there is behind the false bottom.”
Frank drew the board away and was confronted by a long, low tunnel—an uncanny, narrow tunnel which had evidently been enlarged from a fault in the rock, and which appeared to penetrate far into the bulk of the mountain.
“See!” he cried. “The cupboard was built at the mouth of a cross fault in the rock, and there is no knowing what is behind it. Hold your flashlight higher and I’ll crawl in and look about.”
“Be careful,” Ned warned. “I have seen great holes at the bottom of tunnels like that. Don’t break your neck, or tumble down so far that I can’t fish you out.”
Frank grinned and crept through the opening made by the removal of the back of the closet. The place was not high enough for him to stand upright, and so he proceeded on hands and knees.
“This is a bedroom,” he shouted back to Ned. “There’s lots of ticks and blankets here.”
There was silence for a moment, and then the boy’s voice came from farther in the tunnel. “And here’s kegs of whisky,” he cried. “It smells like a Bowery saloon. Come on in!”
“I think one of us would better remain outside,” Ned replied. “I wouldn’t like to be surprised while in there and fastened in with rocks.”
Frank went on down the tunnel for some distance, calling back, now and then, to report his discoveries. There were weapons stored there, barrels of gasoline, packages of dynamite.
Then, for several long minutes, there came no voice from the interior, and Ned put his head inside and called out softly:
“Frank!”
There was no reply, and Ned was about to advance into the opening when the sound of a footstep came on the rocky floor of the chamber just behind him. The footstep was a stealthy one, halting, as if some person were listening between the steps. Ned’s first act was to shut the light off from his electric candle.
Then he moved away from the niche in the wall where the cupboard had been built in and waited. His greatest fear was that Frank would turn about and show his light, and so expose them both to danger. While he listened, almost holding his breath, the steps came nearer to the cupboard and halted.
But the halt was only for an instant, for the unseen figure moved on again, this time back toward the entrance. Directly the footsteps were heard no more, and then the crash of falling rocks reached the boy’s ears. He did not have to think long in order to understand what that sound portended.
He knew that they had been observed by some of the outlaws who made the cavern their home and their storehouse as well, had been followed into the inner chamber, and were now to be fastened into the cavern, probably left there to starve, with tons of rock bulking before the entrance to the third chamber. It was not a pleasant situation.
While he studied the peril over in as optimistic a mood as was possible under the circumstances, he heard Frank calling to him from the narrow tunnel behind the cupboard. The boy was evidently excited, for his voice rang high.
“Ned!” he cried. “Come on in!”
The noise of falling, rolling rocks stopped at the sound of Frank’s voice, and Ned thought he heard a half-suppressed chuckle in the darkness.
“Hurry!” came Frank’s voice once more. “There’s something in here that takes the nerve out of me.”
There was a low exclamation of rage at the entrance, where the stones were piling up, and then the grind of falling rocks was continued. Ned had, of course, no idea as to how many persons were engaged in building up the wall which threatened to shut him in until life was extinct, or exactly how it was being done, but he knew that the correct thing for him to do was to prevent the completion of the work.
If only one man had arrived at the cavern he might be frightened and driven away by a little shooting. With bullets whizzing through what was left of the opening, the man who was building the crude wall would not be likely to present his body before the space still uncovered. This reasoning brought the boy to a consideration of the matter of ammunition, but he decided that, with the cartridges carried by Frank, they could defend the place for a long time.
But another question intervened. The rocks which, though unseen, he knew to be blocking the space where the rug had hung were undoubtedly falling from a distance. They might have been stored above the natural doorway for the very purpose to which they were now being put.
If this were true, then the building of the trap would continue, regardless of his bullets. While he studied over this problem, slowly making up his mind to put it to the test, Frank’s voice came from the tunnel again.
“What’s doing out there?” the boy asked. “Why don’t you come in here?”
“Shut off your light!” ordered Ned, as a glimmer showed inside.
“Not me,” replied Frank. “I need all the light I can get in here!”
“What have you found?” asked Ned anxiously.
Frank did not reply instantly, and Ned heard the rattle of stones while he waited for his answer. The task of piling up the wall was progressing rapidly, and it seemed to the boy that the stones were all falling from a distance.
“Shut off your light and come out,” Ned said, impatient at the hesitation.
“I wouldn’t stay here in the dark for a thousand dollars a second,” Frank replied, “but I’ll come out. Why don’t you show a light?”
“I’m not looking for any chance bullets,” Ned replied, coolly. “We’re caught, my boy, and it is up to us to move cautiously. Why don’t you turn off your light?” he added, half angrily.
“Oh,” Frank replied, “you’re getting it out there, too, are you? Well, I was trying to save you a shock. There’s a dead man in here, and I’m going to keep my light going until I’m out of the hole. I did shut it off once, and felt the grasp of a hand on my neck—and there wasn’t any hand there either.”
“A dead man?” repeated Ned.
“Sure,” Frank replied. “And he’s not been dead very long, at that.”
Again the boy heard that vicious chuckle at the entrance. Then a voice came out of the mouldy darkness:
“How are you getting on in the Secret Service, Ned Nestor?” the voice asked.
“Finely!” Ned called back, but it seemed to him that his voice shook with the peril of the situation. He was known, his mission there was no secret, the enemies of the government were already on the ground, ready to combat him in his work. Just how far their hostility would extend was evidenced by the fall of rocks outside. It seemed to the boy that the struggle would be to the death.
“Who are you talking to?” Frank asked.
Ned did not reply to the question, for there came the sound of a scuffle outside, then a shot, a cry of pain, and the cavern was still as a grave.
In the silence Frank’s movements were heard, and Ned knew that he was backing out of the tunnel, with his light still burning. Entirely at a loss to account for the fracas outside, Ned awaited his approach with a fast-beating heart. When at last he shut off his electric searchlight and dropped from the tunnel through the old cupboard Ned seized his hand and drew him away.
“Did you fire that shot?” Frank whispered.
“No,” was the reply. “There’s fighting outside, and the shot was fired there. Now, I had a notion of sending a stream of bullets through the doorway, but the persons who are fighting the man who came upon us here may be our friends, so we must be careful what we do. Here. Take my flashlight. Open the two at the same instant and turn the rays on the doorway. I’ll be ready with my gun.”
But before this movement could be carried out a voice the boys knew came out of the darkness.
“Wonder you wouldn’t give a fellow a lift,” Jimmie said, in a panting tone. “I’ve got to the limit with this big stiff.”
The lights were on instantly, with Ned and Frank bounding toward the opening. The way was narrow, for many rocks had been dropped down from a broad ledge just above, but they managed to crawl through. But before Ned could reach the struggling pair on the floor the under figure wiggled away, staggered for an instant, and then made for the outer air at good speed.
Jimmie sat upon the stone floor with a disgusted look on his freckled face.
“Now see what you’ve been an’ gone an’ done!” he cried. “You’ve let me pirate get away! But he took a bullet with him,” he added.
“How many were here?” asked Ned, shutting off his light and telling Frank to do the same. “How many men did you see?”
“Just that one,” Jimmie replied, sorrowfully, “an’ he got away!”
Ned advanced to the entrance and listened. At first he heard the sound of limping footsteps, then the sweep of oars. He ran down to the beach and swept his light over the waters of the lake. A slender boat was speeding far to the north, and a solitary rower was bending to his work.
Now, for the first time, Ned noted that a fierce gale was blowing from the west, and his thoughts went back to the plateau where the aeroplane lay exposed to the storm. He ran back to the cavern, barely escaping being blown off his feet on the way, and called to the boys.
“There’s a stiff wind blowing,” he said, “and I’m afraid for the aeroplane. We must get back to the camp immediately.”
“The wind was on when I came in,” Jimmie said, “an’ it near blew me into the lake, even if I did hold on to the trees. We can never make the hill in the storm.”
“We’ve got to,” Ned insisted.
“Besides,” Jimmie continued, “we want to find out about the dead man Frank has been telling me about. We can’t take him with us, an’ he will not be here when we come back. Whatever we learn about him, an’ the cause of his death, must be learned now.”
“Sometimes, Jimmie,” Frank burst out, “you exhibit signs of almost human intelligence!”
“The boy is right,” Ned observed. “I’m so rattled that I hardly know what I’m about. We ought to be in pursuit of that rascal who is rowing on the lake, we ought to be on the plateau, looking after the aeroplane, and we ought to be here, finding out if a murder has been committed.”
“It is a murder, all right,” Frank said, “for the floor in the tunnel is sticky with blood.”
“I’m goin’ in there!” Jimmie exclaimed.
“Go if you want to,” Frank grunted.
Ned laid a hand on Jimmie’s arm as he started away.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d much rather you remained on guard. You have keen eyes, and may be of great service here.”
“All right!” the boy said. “I’ll do anything you ask me to if you don’t leave me out of the game.”
“No danger of your getting into the dust heap,” Frank laughed. “How long have you been prowling about here?”
“Just a short time,” was the reply. “I remained in the tent until I thought Pat an’ Jack were asleep an’ then cut my lucky. Say, but the wind was blowin’ when I slid down the slope toward the lake.”
“It must be fierce up on the plateau,” Frank admitted. “Say,” he added, turning to Ned, “if you don’t mind, I’ll go on up the hill and help the boys with the aeroplane. It would be a tragedy if it should be destroyed now.”
“All right,” Ned said. “Get up there as soon as possible. The boys may be having trouble with the ’plane. And Jimmie,” he added, “suppose you keep an eye on the plateau? The lads may signal.”
“Too dark for that,” the boy replied, “but I’ll keep a sharp lookout, just the same. Go on and look over the man Frank found under the mountain.”
Frank moved on up the hill, clinging to trees as he advanced, and stooping low, even then, to escape the force of the wind, while Jimmie stationed himself in the opening and looked out on the lake. Ned disappeared in the cavern, and the boy saw his torch grow fainter as he climbed through the narrow opening left in the rock which had been thrown over the natural doorway.
It was getting late and the boy was sleepy, but he struggled manfully to keep his eyes open. Directly, however, he had no trouble in this regard, for he started up with a strange, acrid odor in his nostrils. The low-lying sky was aflame.
CHAPTER VI.—ABOVE THE CLOUDS AT NIGHT.
The wind gained strength as the heat of the forest fires increased. The roaring of the gale and the heavy undertone of the racing flames effectually drowned the voice of the forester, and it was only by the motion of his lips that the boys knew that he was trying to talk to them.
Presently he threw his hands high above his head, weaponless, then lowered one and beckoned to them. Still keeping grasp on their revolvers, the boys approached him. His face was deadly pale, save for the glow of the fire which shone unnaturally on the wall behind him.
“This is no time for accusations,” he shouted. “We must do something to check the fire.”
“What is to be done?” Jack demanded, half won over by the apparent distress of the fellow.
“The blaze will burn itself out against the mountains,” was the reply, shouted at the top of the speaker’s lungs, “but the fire in the cañon must be checked by going on ahead and felling trees.”
“Won’t it burn itself out there, too?” asked Pat.
“I’m afraid not,” was the shrill reply. “There is an opening from the top of the cañon to a valley in a fold of the hills. The fire will do incalculable damage if it passes through that.”
“What do you suppose we can do against a fire like that?” demanded Pat. “An army could not stop the blaze now.”
“You are mistaken!” shrilled the other. “Three choppers can clear a space which the fire will not cross.”
“We’ll get our axes and try,” Jack said, reluctantly.
“Then make haste!” Greer shouted. “At all events we must leave this place, for the fire will soon be here. Come!”
When the boys turned to verify this statement they saw that the planes of the aeroplane were red with the reflection of the blaze below, and that the creeping fire was already showing at the lip of the plateau.
“The aeroplane is doomed, I guess,” wailed Jack, and Pat thought he saw a look of satisfaction in Greer’s face as the words reached his ears.
The smoke was now rolling over the plateau in great clouds, but through it Pat thought he saw figures moving from the south slope toward the aeroplane. Calling out to Jack, he sprang toward the machine, the suspicion in his mind that these were confederates of the alleged forester, and that the machine was, after all, the main point of attack.
Greer saw the movement and darted toward the boy as if to block his way, but Pat struck out viciously and turned him back. Then a bit of flame sprang up in the cloud of smoke which was sweeping over the plateau. It seemed to Pat that an attempt to burn the machine in advance of the arrival of the forest fire was being made.
When he darted forward again Greer caught him by the shoulder and hurled him away.
“Get your axes!” he shouted. “There is no time to waste here.”
Then the smoke lifted for an instant and Pat saw three figures rise above the rim of the northern slope and hasten toward the aeroplane. Their arrival there was followed by shots and calls for assistance. Then the smoke shut down again, and the roaring of the flames drowned all other sounds.
Greer stood for an instant, braced against the wind, shielding his face from the hot blasts scorching the grass of the plateau, then turned and ran. Then both boys heard a call from the direction of the machine.
“The way is clear to the cavern!” were the words they heard. “Remain there until we return!”
“That’s Ned,” shouted Pat. “Just in time to save the aeroplane.”
Almost before the words were out of his mouth there came a lull in the wind and the great machine ran forward a few yards, then swung into the air. At that moment Frank came running toward the two astonished boys.
“We’ve got to leg it!” Frank shouted, his mouth close to Jack’s ear. “Drop low on the ground so as to get fresh air and run!”
Jack, although he had heard Ned’s voice giving directions, and although he knew that Frank was by his side, could hardly sense the situation, or all that had taken place. The action had been so swift that he could not yet realize that Ned had snatched the aeroplane away from certain destruction and lifted it into the stormy sky in so short a time.
However, he did not stop then to place the events in neat order in his mind, for the fire was working across the scant vegetation of the plateau and the air was hot and stifling. It was all like a page out of the Arabian Nights, but he put the wonder of it away, grasped Frank’s hand, and, crouching, ran toward the incline leading to the lake. There was safety there, at least.
Now and then, in their swift flight, the boys stopped and looked upward, hoping to learn something of the fate of the aeroplane, but the great machine was not in sight.
“Ned never can make it live in this gale!” Jack almost sobbed, when, at last, they all came to a halt at the margin of the lake. “The whole shebang will go to pieces and the boys will be killed.”
“Aw, forget it!” grunted Pat. “I’m not in love with airships, but I know that Ned wouldn’t have gone up unless he knew that he could handle the machine. He’ll lift above the divide and drive straight before the wind. The good Lord only knows how far the gale will take him, but I’m betting my head against turnips that he’ll come back by morning, asking why breakfast isn’t ready!”
“How did you get wise to the trouble up here?” Jack asked of Frank.
“Why, I don’t exactly know,” the boy replied. “Ned sent me on ahead to look out for the aeroplane. He said he wanted to remain in the cavern and investigate. I was making slow progress up the hill when Ned and Jimmie came running after me. I had noticed long before that the sky looked like fires were burning somewhere.”
“I should say so,” Pat cut in. “The clouds looked like they had been soaked in red paint.”
“When Ned came up to me, running like a racehorse,” Frank went on, “he said he was going to take the aeroplane out, wind or no wind. I didn’t have much chance to talk with him, but I understood that he was going to do just what Pat has suggested—run before the wind and swing back whenever he could.”
“I presume Jimmie is good and scared by this time!” Jack commented.
“When we got to the machine,” Frank went on, “we found two men there with some sort of torches in their hands, trying to set the machine on fire. We caught them unawares and left them lying there. I hope they didn’t get burned to death.”
There was a short cessation of speech while the boys listened to the roaring of the flames and watched the fire mounting into the sky. It was a wild scene—one calculated to bring terror to the breast of any human being. The wind was dying down a little, but the clouds were still driving fast before it, their edges tinged with flame so that they resembled golden masses floating across an eternity of space clothed in smoke.
While the boys watched the great display Frank pointed to a wall of flame rounding the corner of the plateau.
“The fire will burn this slope,” he said, “and we’ve either got to get into the cave or out on the lake. Which shall It be?”
“The cave for mine!” Jack cried.
“And mine,” echoed Pat. “Who knows what the fire will do to the lake?”
But Frank had had previous experience in the cavern. He was thinking of the still figure he had found lying there, and of the dark stains on the floor.
“If we could find a boat,” he said, without mentioning his real reason for objecting to the cave, “we might get along very well on the lake. We don’t know what stifling air we shall find in the cave, and, besides, the men we have just had a fracas with may return at any time. It wouldn’t be nice to be locked up in that hole in the ground.”
The wind was dying down to a steady breeze, and the fires seemed to burn lower. The clouds above were dark and threatening, save where gilded by the reflection from below, and seemed to be massing. Frank held up a hand and shouted.
“Rain!” he cried. “Rain!”
It was no gentle spring shower that opened upon the earth then. The fountains of the great deep seemed to have opened wide. The water fell in sheets, and in an instant the boys were wet to the skin.
“Better than fire!” Jack suggested.
The rain pelted down upon the forest fires viciously, and the hissing protests of the angry embers rose in the air. Through the thick veil of the rain clouds of steam could be seen rolling over the lake and along the threatened incline. In ten minutes water was pouring down the steep hill in sheets and the fires were leaping no more.
Pleased as the boys were at the opportune arrival of the rain-bearing clouds, they could not help wondering if the freak of chance which had preserved the forests of northern Montana had not brought Ned and Jimmie sudden death.
“They never can handle the machine in such an air-ocean,” Jack declared, but the more optimistic Pat asserted that Ned must have been a mile above the rain clouds before a drop of water fell.
“I guess the fire brought this rain on,” Frank said, wiggling about in his wet garments, “but it’s just as wet as if brought about by some other means. What are we going to do now?”
“Why not go to the cave until the rain stops?” asked Pat.
“It is colder in there than it is here,” Frank said, still thinking of the silent figure in the narrow tunnel back of the cupboard.
“We can’t get any more water in our clothes and hides than we have now,” Jack observed, “so we may as well stay outside and watch for Ned and the aeroplane. I don’t believe any other person ever took an aeroplane up in such a storm. I’m afraid Ned was smashed against the divide.”
“Ned’s all right,” insisted Frank. “Suppose we go back to the plateau and see if there’s anything left of our tents.”
“I’m game for that,” Pat said, “but,” he added, turning a keen gaze on Frank, “I’d like to know why you object to going to the cave. Jack and I would like to see it.”
“Well,” Frank replied, not without some hesitation at bringing the scene in the tunnel back to his mind in form for expression in words, “there’s a crime been committed in the cave, and it’s uncanny.”
“A crime!” repeated Pat, all excitement at the suggestion of another adventure, “what kind of a crime?”
“A murder,” replied Frank, with a shiver.
“Let’s go in and see,” Pat said.
“Frank’s afraid,” Jack put in.
“Of course I’m afraid,” Frank admitted. “You go in there, and crawl on your knees through the thick air of a narrow tunnel, and put your hand on a dead man’s face, and feel your other hand slipping in the blood on the floor, and you’ll be afraid, too. I’m not going back there.”
“We can stand here in the rain all night, if you want to,” Pat said, with scorn in his voice. “Rainwater is said to be good for the complexion.”
The wind was slowing down and the rainfall was not so heavy as before. The boys, Pat and Jack, joking Frank about his terror for the cave, and Frank just a little angry, began the ascent of the slope leading to the plateau.
“The rain saved the trees next to the mountain,” Pat said, presently, “and if it checked the fire on the plateau at the same line our tents are all right. Say,” he added, “who ever heard of such a downpour as that. I reckon the rain swept in from the ocean in heavy clouds which were broken open by the mountains.”
“Much you know about it!” laughed Jack. “You talk as if you could cut a cloud with a knife.”
“Anyway,” persisted Pat, “the water tumbled out and checked the fires. Wonder what became of the man who said his name was Greer? He was standing in with the men who were trying to burn the aeroplane, all right enough, and I believe the whole circus was started just to destroy the airship and bring Ned’s investigations to a close.”
“We always do get into the thick of it at the first jump,” Frank said, remembering the bomb under the cottage in the Canal Zone and the raid on the nipa hut in the Philippines. “Whenever we’ve got anything coming to us, we get it by lightning express.”
“You bet we do!” Jack exclaimed. “Now we’re getting a clear sky,” he added, pointing upward, “and we’re getting it short order time, too!”
The heavy clouds were gone, the moon was smiling down on the drenched earth, the stars were winking significantly toward a spot on the plateau where two unrecognizable figures, half burned away, were lying. When the boys reached the top of the climb and advanced to the spot where the aeroplane had stood they turned sick with the horror of the thing.
“I almost wish we had let them destroy the aeroplane,” sighed Frank. “I don’t like to think that these men came to their death through us. It is awful!”
“Did you shoot them?” asked Pat.
Frank shook his head.
“They shot at us,” he said. “They fired as soon as we got to the rim of the dip, but missed because of the smoke and the wind. Then we rushed them, and they went down—to escape punishment, I thought—and so Ned got the aeroplane away.”
“Then you had nothing to do with their death,” consoled Pat. “They came here to commit a crime and were overcome by the smoke and heat.”
Frank would gladly have accepted this version of what had taken place, but he could not bring his mind to do so at once. The horror of what he had found in the cave was still upon him.
Leaving the spot where what remained of the outlaws lay, the boys hastened to the wall of rock which terminated the plateau on the east. The rain had indeed saved the tents from destruction. The canvas was huddled against the wall, stained with smoke and heavy with rain, but in fairly good condition.
“We’ll have to remain here, or about here, until Ned comes,” Pat said, “so we may as well put the tents up. I wonder if it isn’t most morning?”
“Does that mean that you are getting hungry?” grinned Jack.
“You bet it does!” was the reply. “Anyway, I’m going to see if I can find dry wood enough for a fire. If I can I’ll make some hot coffee. Ned will see the fire, and know we are not in the cave.”
Then an exclamation from Frank called the speaker’s attention to the clear sky over the divide. The upper strata of clouds were drifting westward on a high current of air—what few clouds there were—and far up in the blue, the moonlight trimming the planes with silver, rode the aeroplane, seemingly intact, and working back on the high current toward the Pacific coast.
CHAPTER VII.—A KEY WITH A BROKEN STEM.
The lights were burning low in a bachelor flat on a noisy street corner in the city of San Francisco, and a man of perhaps thirty lay on a couch with his eyes closed. There were in this sitting room, which faced one of the noisy streets, a grand piano, a costly music cabinet, a walnut bookcase filled with expensively bound volumes, numerous lazy chairs of leather, and the rug on the polished floor was rich and soft. The occupant of the flat evidently enjoyed luxurious things and had the money to pay for them.
When a clock in a distant steeple struck midnight there came a knock at the locked door in the main corridor which connected with the private hallway on which the flat opened. A Japanese servant, small, obsequious, keen-eyed, opened the door, after the hesitation of a moment, and peeked out. He would have closed it again instantly, seeing a stranger there, only Ned Nestor, who had anticipated some action of the kind, thrust a shoe into the opening, and, reaching in, unfastened the chain.
“I wish to see Mr. Albert Lemon,” he said.
The Jap tried to force the door back and lock it, but was unsuccessful.
“No savvy!” he cried, as Ned brushed past him and stood in the private hall.
Ned paid no further attention to him, but entered the sitting room and at once advanced to the couch where the man lay. The figure on the couch did not move, but the Jap forced himself in the boy’s way with his cry of “no savvy!”
“Opium?” Ned asked, pointing down to the man.
“No savvy!”
“Hit the pipe?” he asked, putting the question in a new way.
“No savvy! No savvy!”
“Dope, then?” Ned went on. “Tell me if this man has been doping himself into unconsciousness. Dope, eh?”
Ned lifted his voice, half hoping that the man on the couch would show some signs of life, but there was no movement of the eyelids.
“No savvy!” grunted the Jap.
Ned took the servant by his shoulders, pushed him gently out of the room, and closed and locked the door, the key being in the lock on the inside.
“No savvy! No savvy!”
The words came through the thin panel of the door in quick succession for a minute and then silence. Again Ned advanced to the side of the couch and looked down upon the semi-unconscious man.
It was clear to the boy that the fellow sensed what was taking place, but was too well satisfied with the drugged condition in which he lay to disturb his poise of mind by taking note of anything whatever. The figure of the fellow was dressed in expensive clothes of latest cut, but they were soiled, and even torn in places.
The disreputable condition of the garments reminded Ned of a suit in which he had once been hauled through a briar patch and pulled into a pond at the hands, or horns, rather, of a village cow, assisted by a rope. His clothes, it is true, had not been expensive ones at the time of the occurrence, but the looks of the clothes the drugged man wore reminded him of the damage his cheaper ones had sustained.
The face of the man on the couch was deadly pale, with the drawn look about the skin which comes of much familiarity with the drug made of the poppy. It was still an attractive face, even in its degradation, and the forehead was that of a capable man.
Ned drew a chair to the side of the couch and sat down. Even if he should at that time succeed in attracting the attention of the man, the fellow was in no condition to answer the important questions he was there to ask.
Presently the Jap, or some one else, came and rapped lightly on the door, and Ned opened it a trifle and looked out.
“No savvy!” cried the Jap, repeating the words like a parrot, standing in the hall with many signs of fright on his yellow face.
“All right!” Ned said, shutting the door in his face, “you don’t have to.”
“I can’t blame him for thinking this a cheeky invasion,” Ned smiled, as he returned to his chair at the side of the couch. “It isn’t exactly the thing to walk into a man’s private room in this manner.”
Ned had decided to sit by the side of the half conscious man until he returned to his full mentality. Questions now might produce only pipe dreams, for the imagination is rather too active under such circumstances.
Five days before Ned had left the boys in a cup on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, not far from the summit, after explaining to them that he was going to the city to investigate a clue connected with the murder of the man who had been found in the cavern. Leaving the aeroplane safely hidden at Missoula, he had traveled by rail to San Francisco.
In his handbag on this trip were two seemingly unimportant articles—a piece of tape cut from the inner side of the collar of the dead man’s coat, and a small, odd-shaped key with the stem broken off so that it was only about an inch in length. The key had been the only article found in the dead man’s pockets. The strip of tape bore the name of a San Francisco tailor.
The directory had assisted him in finding the tailor, and the tailor had informed him that the coat had been made for one Albert Lemon, whose address he gave. So here he was, in Lemon’s apartment, seeking information concerning the dead man, while Lemon, supposedly Lemon, lay in an opium daze on the couch.
But Ned’s time, waiting for the man to come back to consciousness, was not all wasted. Moving carefully about the room, he found that the broken key fitted a writing desk which stood between two windows. The lock which it fitted, however, was not in good condition, for the bolt had been pried back, damaging the polished edge of the casing which held the socket. The desk contained nothing of importance, and Ned left it as he found it.
Sitting there in the soft light of the room, he did not know whether the man on the couch was Albert Lemon or whether the man who had died in the cavern was Albert Lemon. He believed, however, that the outlaws he had encountered in the mountains, had murdered the man, and felt that the surest way to trace the crime to them was to find out why the man had joined them—why he was there in the tunnel back of the cupboard. This would be likely to bring out a motive for the deed.
He did not, of course, know whether the dead man had stood as an enemy to the outlaws, or whether he had stood as a friend. But that could make no difference with the quest he was on. He believed that the outlaws were the men he had been instructed to hunt down, and knew that proof could be obtained only by an intimate knowledge of their associations, their ways, their motives. The friends of the dead man he thought, would know something about them, perhaps be able to place them in the circle in which they lived when not in the hills.
In work of this kind it is the first task of an investigator to “place” the man he is pursuing. The burglar is as good as taken when he is traced back to those he associates with in his hours of leisure. In the absence of a clue pointing to a person, the investigator busies himself in finding a motive. Ned believed that he now had the personal clue. The motive would place the proof in his hands.
So his Secret Service work for the government was leading him into the investigation of a murder mystery. He smiled as he held up the key and wondered if the facts when discovered would bear out the suspicions in his mind. Again he asked himself the question:
“Is this Albert Lemon, or was the dead man Albert Lemon?”
After a long time the man on the couch opened his eyes and looked about the room. His glance rested for an instant on the figure in the chair at his side, but the fact of its being there did not appear to surprise him in the least.
“Jap!” he called faintly.
There was a sound at the door, but it was still locked, and the servant was unable to obey the summons.
“Bring me a pipe!” were the next words.
The Jap clamored at the door, but did not gain admission. The racket seemed to disturb the man not at all.
“I think,” Ned said, “that you have had all the dope you need to-night. Besides, I want you to answer a few questions.”
“Perhaps I have,” the man said, “but, supposing that to be the case, where do you come in? You are a new one on me, and I hope you won’t flop out of a window or go up through the roof, as some of the others have done. I want to have congenial company to-night. Who are you?”
“Ned Nestor,” was the quiet reply.
“So,” said the man on the couch. “I’ve heard of you—read about you and the Canal Zone in the newspapers. But you’re only a kid. What about that?”
“I can’t help being young,” laughed Ned. “Anyway, that is a fault I’ll soon get over. We all have it at first.”
“And get over it too quickly,” said the other, with a sigh. “Well, what do you want here?”
“Are you Albert Lemon?” asked Ned abruptly.
“Yes,” was the reply, “I’m Albert Lemon. What about it?”
The man was gaining mental strength every moment now, and seemed to sense the strange situation.
“Stiles is your tailor?” the boy went on.
“Look here,” said the other, rising to a sitting position and passing a shaking hand across his brow, as if to brush away the fancies of the poppy, “when you convince me that you have a laudable interest in my personal affairs I’ll be glad to answer your questions.”
Ned took the strip of tape from his pocket and held it out to the man on the couch.
“Do you recognize that?” he asked.
Lemon nodded coolly, but a look of wonder and alarm was growing in his bloodshot eyes, and his jaw dropped a trifle.
“I still lack the proof of laudable interest,” he said, with a twisting of the face intended for a smile.
“Answer the question,” Ned replied, “and I’ll inform you of my interest in this article—and in you.”
“Yes, I recognize it as the private mark of Stiles, my tailor,” Lemon answered, in a moment. “Where did you get it? If you insist on asking personal questions I must insist on the right to do the same thing.”
“I cut this private mark,” Ned said, “from the collar of a coat found on the back of a dead man in Montana, somewhere near the main divide of the Rocky Mountains. Do you know how it came there?”
“Yes and no,” was the reply.
“Kindly answer the affirmative proposition first,” Ned said, with a smile.
“Well,” said the other, “about three months ago an old college friend of mine, one Felix Emory, came to me from Boston. He was in bad with his people, and was out of money. I took him in here and tried to brace him up. I couldn’t do it. His moral stamina was gone.”
Lemon paused a moment, and, with a deprecatory smile, pointed to an opium pipe which lay on the rug near the couch.
“I understand,” Ned said.
“I fed him, and clothed him, and introduced him at the club, and gave him every chance in the world to get a brace, but he fought me off. All he cared for was a pipe and a pill and a place to sleep it off.”
“And so you gave him up as a bad proposition?” asked Ned.
“Not exactly. He wanted to go to the mountains on a hunting trip. Well, I thought it would benefit his health, so I rigged up an outfit for his use and let him go. You say the man was dead?”
“Quite dead,” Ned replied.
“Too much poppy, I presume?” Lemon asked with an ashamed smile.
“Too much steel,” Ned answered, sharply.
Lemon stared at the boy for an instant, his eyes more anxious than ever, and arose shakingly to his feet.
“Do you mean that he was murdered?” he asked.
Ned nodded.
“Where?” was the next question.
“I found the body in a cavern on the western slope of the Rockies,” was the reply. “He had been dead only a few hours.”
Albert Lemon maintained a thoughtful silence for a time, during which Ned eyed his changing expression keenly.
“And what do you wish me to do about it?” he then asked.
“A crime has been committed,” Ned replied, “and it seems to me that you ought to do all in your power to assist in bringing the criminal to punishment.”
“Granted, sir. Tell me what to do.”
“First, tell me about the men your friend went away with.”
“That brings me to the negative proposition,” the other answered. “I have told you how Felix came by my coat, but I can’t tell you whether the man the coat was found on was Felix. You must see that for yourself. He might have given the garment away, or he might have sold it in the city to get money for opium. In short, the coat might have been on the body of a man I never saw.”
“Then you can’t tell me who Emory went away with?” asked Ned.
“Certainly not,” was the reply. “I don’t know whether he went away at all or not.”
This was disappointing, but Ned had one more lever with which the man’s indifference might be lifted, he thought. Before speaking again Lemon arose and turned the key in the lock of the door, against which the servant was still pounding. The Jap entered and stood by the door, looking intently at Ned.
“When you gave him the suit of clothes he went away in,” the boy went on, shifting his position so that both men would be under his eyes, “what articles, if any, remained in the pockets?”
“Not a thing,” was the reply. “I looked out for that.”
“Then anything discovered in the pockets of the dead man,” Ned said, taking the key from his pocket and toying carelessly with it, “must have belonged to him?”
Ned saw Lemon give a quick start at sight of the key. The Jap advanced a step as if to get a closer view of it. Then both men turned their eyes for an instant to the broken lock of the writing desk. Ned had gained his point. The men recognized the key.
“Where is the body you speak of?” Lemon asked, presently.
“Buried near the cavern in the mountains,” was the reply.
“Perhaps you can give me a description of the body,” Lemon said. “I might be able to say, then, whether the man was Felix.”
“Look in the mirror,” Ned replied, “and you will see there a fairly good representation of the dead man. About the same in height, in size, and, yes, in feature.”
“Then it must have been Felix,” the other said. “His remarkable resemblance to myself has often been remarked. Poor fellow! I’m sorry that his end should come in so ghastly a form.”
There was a short silence, during which Lemon’s eyes flitted from the key in Ned’s fingers to the writing desk.
“I said a moment ago,” he observed then, “that I searched the pockets of the clothes before I gave them to him, or words to that effect. I remember now that I ordered Jap to do it. Did you obey orders?” he asked, turning to the servant.
Ned saw the Jap give a quick start, then regain control of himself. Lemon, too, looked crestfallen for a moment, then addressed the Jap in another tongue.
“I was talking in English,” he said, “and forgot for the moment that he would not understand me.”
There followed a short conversation between the two, and then Lemon announced that the Jap had forgotten to look in the pockets of the clothes. Ned ignored the explanation and put the key in his pocket. He knew now that the Jap could understand English, and also that the key belonged to Albert Lemon, alive or dead.