CHAPTER XIX
A DANGEROUS PLIGHT
Joe Strong was so startled, astonished and altogether taken by surprise that he did not feel capable of moving for several seconds. Then he threw himself against the door, but it opened inward, and he only bruised himself.
“Ha-ha!” laughed the old man on the other side. “You can’t get out that way. I’ll teach you to take my invention and go flying all over the country with it. I’ll teach you!”
“Say, are you crazy?” cried Joe, a suspicion that such was the case entering his mind.
“Crazy? Me? No, I’m not crazy!” was the quick retort. “But most of the other folks in the world are. You are crazy to try to steal my invention and think I would not find it out. Now you’ll never do it again. You’ll die in there.”
Joe knew that he must be cool and keep his head. He had evidently been made a prisoner by a madman, and perhaps by humoring him he could get out without using force. He looked around the room and saw it contained only one window, high up, and that was small and guarded by iron bars.
“I think you are making a mistake, Mr. Clark,” said Joe as calmly as he could. “I never stole any of your inventions. In fact I never saw you before to-day.”
“That makes no difference,” was the retort. “You stole my invention just the same. Look in that corner and you’ll see a flying machine like yours. I made it years ago, and you found out about it and made one like it. You have secured a lot of money by exhibiting yourself in a machine made from my stolen invention, but this is the end. I have you where I want you now.”
That was evident enough. But it was a place Joe did not want to be in, even though the crazy inventor wanted him there.
“That was the meaning of all those looks on the part of persons in the street,” thought Joe. “They knew he was crazy and they were probably wondering why he was allowed to be at liberty. I wish I had not come here.”
But it was too late to wish that now, and the youth had to do the next best thing—try to get out.
“Why do you say I stole your invention?” he asked, thinking to get the man to open the door and come in, in which case Joe would have a fighting chance.
“Because I know you stole it,” was the answer.
“How do you make that out?” demanded Joe. “Isn’t yours just the same as mine? And didn’t I make mine first?”
“That may be,” Joe admitted. “There is a slight resemblance between my Bat and your machine in here. But if you’ll come in I can point out where there’s a whole lot of difference. The only place where they are similar is the wings, and even there mine are somewhat different from yours. Come in and I’ll make it clear to you.”
“No, I’ll not come in!” was the answer with a sly laugh. “You are young and strong. You want to injure me.”
“I promise you I won’t,” Joe said. He only wanted the door opened so he could flee from the house of mystery.
“I’ll not come in,” said the old man with a chuckle. “I’ll talk to you from this side of the door.”
Joe was almost in despair. Still he might be able to break his way out of the room. He resolved to try another appeal.
“Mr. Clark!” he called, “I think you are entirely mistaken in your idea, and if you’ll let me out, or come in here, I can prove it. I never had an idea that there was another machine even as little like mine as yours is. Now I’m willing to bring my machine here, set it up side by side with yours, and allow any committee of mechanics or electricians you want to pick out settle the matter. If they decide that I have taken any of your ideas I’ll pay you for them.”
“Money can’t pay me for what I have lost,” was the snarling answer. “Besides, I have money enough.”
“Then what do you want?” asked Joe.
“I want revenge!” was the cry of the madman. “I want to pay you back for what you did!”
“But I did nothing,” Joe insisted.
There was no reply to this.
“Come!” cried Joe, trying to make his voice sound casual. “I must get out soon to go back to the circus.”
“You’ll never play in the circus again!” cried Mr. Clark. “You have made your last flight—unless you try to fly in my machine, and there isn’t room in there.”
Joe looked around the apartment in which he had been made a prisoner. It was small, and was cluttered up with machinery and, as far as the boy could judge, useless inventions. A second look at the machine which slightly resembled his told him that it never would be able to raise itself from the ground, to say nothing of carrying a passenger.
He resolved to try one more appeal before planning to use force to free himself.
“Mr. Clark!” he called.
“Well?” answered the voice, from a distance it seemed.
“Have you been able to fly in your machine?” asked Joe.
“No,” was the reply. “But I will soon be able to. It needs only a few changes. I would have had it done now only I heard about your stealing my invention, and I had to plan to catch you. Now I have you, I’m going to work on my machine again—after I dispose of you.”
“But if you’ll come in now,” cried Joe, “I’ll show you several things that are wrong. I’ll show you how to make it like mine. I have no patent on mine. I don’t care who makes one like it—or as many as they want. Come in and we’ll talk it over!”
“Not much I won’t!” was the cry. Then Joe heard retreating footsteps and knew that he must depend on himself to escape.
His first care was to examine the door. It was of heavy oak, and without a key or a tool something like a burglar’s jimmy it could not be forced.
“So I’ve got to get a jimmy,” decided Joe.
The door was easier to work at than the window, which was so high that Joe doubted if he could reach it, as there was nothing in the room on which he could stand.
At first glance Joe was afraid there was nothing in the place that he could use for a jimmy, or short lever. It needed to be something powerful, with a thin wedge-like edge that could be inserted in the crack between the door and jamb.
“I’ll have to take apart some of this truck machinery, maybe,” Joe decided. “If I could get a rod out I might use that. But it would be blunt on the end, and I need something sharp. I might hammer a piece of pipe together though.”
He sought for some pipe and finally found it. Then with a chunk of iron for a hammer and another for an anvil, he beat the ends together. He had a rude sort of lever, but when he tried to insert it in the crack of the door he found the aperture too small.
“I’ll have to smash through a panel,” the youth decided. “But I’ll try once more to make him listen to reason. Mr. Clark! Mr. Clark!” he cried. He waited, but there was no answer.
“If you don’t let me out I’ll have to smash this door!” Joe went on.
There was still no reply, and then he began to hammer on the portal with the piece of pipe. A few splinters of wood were knocked off, and then, to his surprise, Joe discovered that there was a middle section of steel in the wooden door.
“Why, this place was made for a regular prison!” he exclaimed. “I wonder if he could have gotten this ready on purpose for me?” But the lad soon decided against that idea.
It was evident that without other tools Joe could not break his way through the door. There remained only the window. “Unless I can chop my way through a plaster wall,” Joe reasoned. “They’d hardly have steel-lined walls.”
It was easy enough to knock off some of the plaster, making a hole that disclosed the lath. But when Joe broke some of these off he discovered that the walls were like the door—they had an inner sheet of steel.
“A regular safety-deposit vault,” said the youth. “I’ve got to try the window.”
He looked about for something of which to make a ladder. Somehow he felt strangely ill and dizzy. There was a queer odor in the air. It had been slowly increasing, and was now very perceptible.
“It smelled—smelled just that way when I was in the hospital,” the boy remarked, half aloud. “It’s—it’s—Why, it’s ether!” he cried. “He’s forcing ether in here somehow to make me insensible. If I can find out how it’s coming in I can stop it.”
But Joe could not find the place where the volatile odor entered. And every moment he felt weaker. He felt that his senses were leaving him. Desperately he tried to put together some of the pieces of the machinery so that he could reach the window. If he could open that and let in fresh air, even though he could not get out, he might keep himself from becoming senseless.
But before he could complete the improvised ladder Joe fell over insensible. And there he lay on the floor, in the midst of the queer jumble of machinery, the prisoner of a madman who seemed to have vanished.
Supper time was approaching. Helen was waiting for Joe to come back, for he and she generally sat at table together, with Benny Turton and Bill Watson.
“Has Joe come back yet?” asked Helen of Benny.
“I didn’t know he’d gone away,” was the reply.
“Yes, he went off with a Mr. Clark. I was in the dressing tent when this stranger came in and introduced himself to Joe. I could not help hearing what was said. It was about Joe’s flying machine. Mr. Clark said he had a new kind of storage battery he wanted to show Joe, and Joe went off to his house with him.”
“Oh, well, he’ll be back soon,” said Benny. “There’s half an hour before supper will be served.”
But Helen, somehow or other, was nervous. She “felt as though something were going to happen,” she said afterward.
“I don’t see what keeps Joe,” she remarked to Bill Watson.
“Where did he go?” he asked.
“Off with a Mr. Clark, some sort of an inventor.”
“Not old Sam Clark; was it?” cried the clown in such evident excitement that Helen said:
“Why, yes, I believe that was his name,” and she detailed what she had heard.
“Well, if it’s old Sam Clark, then Joe has gone off with a dangerous crank,” said the clown. “I heard of him when we played here once before. He’s an old resident of this place and has lots of money, but he’s crazy. Everybody here knows he’s insane. He’s been in the asylum more than once.”
“Oh, what can we do?” cried Helen, in distress.
“We’ve got to go to Joe’s rescue, that’s all!” declared Bill with emphasis. “Of course nothing may have happened, and Clark may only think he can interest Joe in some crazy invention. But it’s best to be on the safe side. We’ll find out where they went.”
“Are you going alone?” asked Helen, as the clown started off.
“No, I’ll take Benny Turton with me. No use making too much excitement over the affair, for, after all, it may amount to nothing.”
“Couldn’t I come with you?” pleaded Helen eagerly.
Bill thought for a moment.
“Come on!” he said. “We’ll go to Joe’s rescue.”