Hike and the aeroplane

Two boys lay a-bed till the disgracefully late hour of ten, in twin beds, at the New Willard Hotel, Washington. They didn’t feel like great aviators, not they; but like lazy youngsters.

Poodle, having waked up first, had Hike in his power, for he had crawled on Hike’s chest and was keeping Hike powerless by pitilessly tickling him under the chin.

When Hike was finally sufficiently awake to throw him off, Poodle discreetly barricaded himself behind an armchair, and, brandishing a pillow, shouted, “Come on, base caitiffs, I defy ye.... Say, Hike, let’s pretend we’re Boy Aviators, and that we’ve just come from the Pacific Coast in an aeroplane, and that a Brigadier General has been kow-towing to us.”

“Gee, cut it out, Poodle, you make me dizzy.”

As Hike held up his hands in a prayer for mercy, Poodle let fly the pillow, which—driven as well as the Hustle ever had been—took Hike in the face. Hike dived across the armchair. He was busy drawing stars and crosses on Poodle’s face with a lead pencil, while Poodle was dexterously kicking him, when there was a knock.

The knocker was a grinning bell-boy, about Hike’s age and build, who seemed much delighted to see the hotel’s most famous guests in much disarrayed pajamas, and acting (almost!) as though they were—well, were boys!

“Say, there’s a reporter guy downstairs that wants to interview youse. He’s a fresh un—I know him. He t’inks he’s a winner ’cause he can put down on a paper wot a guy ain’t said and draw him like he don’t look, both to once.”

“Oh, gee, I don’t want to get interviewed,” wailed Hike. “Say, can’t he interview Darby, here? Gwan, Pood’, please tell him I’ve got combobulus of the elevating planes, and my chassis is awf’ly rheumatic and generally Mr. G. J. H. Griffin begs will he please beat it.”

“Aw, Hike, I don’t want to get interviewed, neither,” blushed Poodle, pulling a magnificent new purple dressing-gown about him, and making signs of a desire to jump out of the windows.

“Say, Dr. Bell-Boy, why don’t you have him interview you, instead?” requested Hike.

The bell-boy grinned, “Oh, youse guys just wait. There’ll be a million and a half reporters here, right away. Associated Press and United Press and all the Washington papers and all the guys wot writes up what they t’ink Congress oughta be doin’, for the Kalamazoo Avalanche and the South Sauk Centre Hoop-la. Oh, dere’ll be a hot time for youse!”

“Oh, let me die,” mourned Hike, and stood on his head on a pillow, as though he were trying to choke himself.

“Say, SAY!” suggested the great Poodle, excitedly, “that’s a peach of an idea of yours, Hike. Why not have the reporter chap interview Dr. Bell-Boy for you? Say, Doctor, you said you knew this reporter, but does he know you?”

“Naw. Dat’s where a bell-hop gets next. He keeps behind the keyhole and never says nawthin’ to nobody no time, and knows everything dat’s going on.”

“Say,” urged Poodle, “you strip off your clothes, and put on Hike’s pajamas, and get in bed, and let Hike sneak under the bed here, and we’ll have one splendiferous time with Mr. Reporter, Esquire.”

Grinning, the bell-boy obeyed, and while Hike crawled under his bed, with a pillow and a cup of cocoa, the bell-boy became a very sleepy but rather dignified young aviator. Another boy admitted the clever young reporter. Poodle sat by the window, magnificent in his dressing-gown, and listened.

The reporter was a young, young man. He stumbled into the room in a way that made Poodle remark to himself that he “sort of pushed his eye-glasses ahead of him as though he was going to grab something with ’em, and smole real nice—only he just kept that smile for interviews and slapped it on like a hair-puff.”

Bowing to Poodle, the reporter said, “Is this Mr. Griffin?”

Poodle shrugged his shoulders, pointed to the bed where the bell-boy lay, and turned back to look out of the window, with great dignity. (This last was spoiled, dreadfully, for Hike found a carpet-tack that was wandering around idly beneath the bed, and shied it out at Poodle, who squeaked and then looked silently foolish.)

Began the reporter: “Good morning, Mr. Griffin. I wished—You saw my account of your second flight, in this morning’s Crier, I hope.”

“Yuh. I seen it,” growled the bell-boy. “And I been wanting to tell you how it was wrong what you put in the paper. You said how the tehedrum was invented by Bell, the guy what made the telephone, first, and then Priest, he took it up. That ain’t right. I made it up, outa my own head.”

“You did?” feverishly inquired the reporter, writing a couple of words on one sheet of paper, and beginning to sketch the bell-boy on another sheet.

“Sure did I. I told Priest how to make it. You don’t believe me, heh? Say, you young slab-sided, four-eyed, grinning, big-toothed, yellow-fingered lump of mud, don’t you t’ink that Priest guy’d ’a’ brought his blooming old tehedrum hisself, if he—”

“Uh, ‘tetrahedral,’ you mean, of course, Mr. Griffin,” smiled the reporter, very politely.

“Aw, you pen-pushers gimme a pain in de apoplexy! ‘Tehedrum’—dat’s wot all us aviators calls it, see? you bunch o’ grins.”

“Ahem!” gently protested Poodle, by the window.

“Cheese it!” gently murmured Hike, under the bed, trying to kick the bell-boy through the mattress, without being seen.

“Huk kuh!” gently coughed the reporter, then smiled again. “Your language is very interesting, Mr. Griffin—quite racy. Oh, please don’t think I don’t admire it. I was just contrasting it with the weak-kneed way in which most boys—uh, most young men of your age talk.”

“Say, youse. ’F youse don’t like de way me talk-trap works, youse kin put a’ egg in your shoe and beat it, see? Tell you how it was. You see, me dad—he’s a Colonel, his antcisters was dukes and t’ings in England—he didn’t want me to grow up like a collidge professor or any o’ them softies, so he makes me work in a mine, an’ I was to sea, as a cabin-boy (I was wrecked, twict, and I fit with Chink pirates—one of ’em gives me a blob on the head, like to kill me), and I’ve bummed it—reg’lar hobo, and I was a newsboy in N’ Yawk, and a bell-hop in Denver (I licked two reporters dere, one time; one of ’em looked an awful lot like you; Smith, his name was; gee! how I did slam dat guy!), and I worked in a machine-shop, carrying left-hand monkey-wrenches to the straw-boss—dat’s where I learned about machines.”

“Well, well,” delightedly chuckled the reporter, making notes of these remarkable adventures. “Splendid story,” he was thinking, “splendid.” He was very respectful. He was ready to believe almost anything about the boy who had made the greatest aeroplane-flight in history.

“After dat, you kin bet I wasn’t no mollycoddle. I could aviate without gettin’ cold feet. Me dad, he was a wise guy, all right. Now what else d’ yuh want to know?”

“I’d like to know your plans for the immediate future, Mr. Griffin. Will you be making any more aeroplane exhibitions?—With the, uh, the, uh—”

“Don’t let it choke you. Be an orful shame to lose a smart young feller like you.”

“You know what I mean. Oh, of course—the tehedrum?”

“Say, you willy-boy, wot d’ yuh t’ink? T’ink I’m going to rent you me plans, furnished? I’m going to do wot I’m going to do, that’s what, see? That SWAT! Ketch the idee? You’d be a smart young man if your feet’d track. Just put that down in your paper, will yuh?” Peeking from under the bed, Hike saw the reporter rise, looking very angry. But the bell-boy was continuing, “And be sure and spell me name right—with a ‘x,’ y’know. Say, I don’ mind telling you I’m thinking of setting me tehedrum to fighting with a battleship.”

As the reporter prepared for a crushing reply, the real Mr. Hike Griffin, somewhat dusty, but highly dignified in his bath robe, crawled from under the bed, and said, “Say, I’m awf’ly sorry I let this joke go so far. I’m Griffin. This is a hotel bell-boy. I felt tired, and didn’t want to talk, and I thought maybe— Anyway, I apologize. I’ll see if I can give you a real interview if you’ll wait for me down in the lobby—I’ll see about it after breakfast. Really, I’m awf’ly sorry, old man.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said the reporter, in his most sprightly manner, much relieved to find the real Griffin was not so terrible. “I shall be glad to wait in the lobby.”

He departed, with young Hike bowing a most courteous and gracious farewell. As the door closed, Poodle looked up from a chair by the window, looked at the bell-boy, grinning on the bed, then at Hike, then began slowly to smile. Hike, at first rather angry, tried to keep sober, then suddenly the three of them were rolling on the bed, kicking and shrieking with joy, till finally Hike gasped:

“Mr. Torrington Darby, we are vulgar.”

“Mr. Gerald Griffin, we are vulgar!” Poodle solemnly assured him; while, as for the bell-boy, he merely stated:

“Chee! I t’ought I’d die!”

Hike and Poodle had breakfast in their room. As they were fondly contemplating the last crumbs of the toasted-rolls-with-marmalade (lots of marmalade!) the bell-boy returned, to announce, “Say, there’s about thirty reporters waiting to talk t’ youse, downstairs.”

“Well, we’ll have to face ’em,” said Poodle, bravely.

Hike agreed, and they started down in the elevator. But as Hike stepped out into the lobby, and saw the eager crowd of newspapermen, the courage of the boy who had dared two hundred miles an hour, and armed moonshiners, quite disappeared. Dragging Poodle after him, Hike darted into another elevator, which was just going up. The grill closed in the face of the reporters, who followed the boys up in a third cage, only to find Hike’s door locked, and no attention paid to knocks.

Within, Hike was grunting, in reply to Poodle’s suggestions that he might as well get the job of being interviewed over, “Aw, I don’t want to, Pood’. I ain’t done anything—just flown the Hustle, and it minds like a pet cat, anyway. It’d make me feel awf’ly foolish to read about what I’ve done—and what I haven’t. The fellows at school’ll kid us enough anyway—”

“Gee, they sure will. We’ll look like the man that invented butting-in, to them Dignified Seniors. They always think it’s fresh for a Sophomore to do anything.”

“There you are, you see. And if they read anything we’ve said to reporters in the papers, they’ll never let us rest. I ain’t afraid of rushing the speed limit, but I don’t want the whole San Dinero football team grinning at me like a bunch of hyenas, next Thanksgiving.”

“I s’pose you think you’ll be the whole School Team, next fall,” complained Poodle.

Hike continued, “Say, I’ve got a good idea. Why can’t we escape ’em in the tetrahedral; have Jack Adeler bring it around; and then hang out in some place where the reporters won’t find us—say some place in the suburbs—till it’s time to go back home in the Hustle with Jack.”

Hike rushed to the telephone, and, after some moments, got Lieutenant Adeler, though meanwhile the exchange boy downstairs was breaking in with the news that a number of reporters wished to speak with Mr. Griffin on the telephone. Jack Adeler promised to bring the tetrahedral around.

When the Lieutenant sailed slowly over the New Willard, the boys were waiting on the roof. Catching the mounting chains, they climbed up to the Hustle, safe from interviews for a while.

It would be a couple of days before the Army Board of Aviation decided just what it wanted to do—whether or not they wanted to spend all of their appropriation on Priest Tetrahedrals. For that time, the Lieutenant arranged that the boys were to stay at the house of a family friend, out in Georgetown,—a suburb of Washington.

Lieutenant Adeler and Poodle were walking out to Poodle’s new residence, that evening. Hike had gone home earlier, after a day’s sightseeing.

The Lieutenant noticed a quiet, strongly built man, with a slouch hat pulled low, following them out P street, but made nothing of it, taking the man for a reporter. But as he and Poodle crossed the Rock Creek bridge, the man ran up at them.

Poodle dropped behind. Out from a shabby house across the bridge two tough-looking negroes dashed. One of them held a revolver at the Lieutenant’s head, while the other sprang after Poodle.

Poodle sprang to the rail of the bridge and dropped down into the Rock Creek gully. As he did so, the man who had been following them fired down into the gully, twice.

Poodle crawled into weeds at the side of the creek. He hastened along on hands and knees. Dashing up from the hollow, he ran down Florida Avenue, looking for a policeman.

He found one peacefully strolling along his post, swinging his night-stick.

“Hold-up—army lieutenant held up—bridge!” Poodle gasped, pointing; and followed the policeman who, with drawn revolver, started running.

They found the Lieutenant seated on the rail, swinging his feet calmly and waiting.

“Hullo,” he sang out cheerfully. “Get away!”

“Robbed, sir!” bawled the policeman.

“Nope—think they took me for somebody else. They searched me and looked over my letters, but they left my watch and money alone. Looking for papers of some kind, I guess.”

By the policeman’s request, Poodle and the Lieutenant described the men, as well as they could, at a police station, and strolled on toward Hike’s place. Poodle felt distinctly nervous, and this was not at all lessened when, on reaching Hike’s room, he found that youngster absent.

They waited for ten minutes, then made inquiries of the Lieutenant’s friend who was the boys’ host.

“Why,” said the owner of the house, “General Thorne sent a carriage for young Mr. Griffin, about an hour ago. Mr. Griffin told me so. And he got in and was driven off.”

The Lieutenant was satisfied with that, but Poodle was uneasy. He believed that Hike would have sent him word if he were going away for quite a time. Finally, he persuaded the Lieutenant to telephone.

General Thorne, on the ’phone, said that he had not seen Hike since that noon—when the three of them had lunched with him. “Why, no. Surely not,” said the General. He had not sent a carriage for Hike. He had not sent for him at all. He had no idea where he was.

Jack Adeler turned from the telephone to Poodle.

“And those men that held us up seemed to be after papers,” was all he said.

Half that night they spent in telephoning, and in searching about the shed where the Hustle had been taken. But even at dawn, they found no trace of where Hike was, or of where he had been since he left the house in the carriage that had not been sent by the General.