CHAPTER V
RATHER DUBIOUS
"Hello! What's wrong?" cried Mr. Craige, hurrying over to his friend. "Is he——"
He looked in alarm at the physician.
"Merely a faint from the shock, I think," pronounced Dr. Brown. "I had better get him to my house as soon as I can, though."
"Take him in the wagon," suggested the farmer whom Joe had summoned.
Mr. Strailey opened his eyes, after some ammonia stimulant had been given him, and he tried to assure his companion that there was really nothing the matter.
"Just keep quiet, please," advised the physician. "We'll look after you."
The injured man was placed in the wagon on some blankets, and driven slowly to the farmhouse.
"I'll have to get help in righting this car," said Mr. Craige. "I wonder where there's a garage around here?"
"I passed one about two miles back," Joe said. "If you like I'll go there and tell them to send some men."
"Well, I don't like to put you to so much trouble," said Mr. Craige. "You've done us a lot of favors already."
"I'm only too glad to do more," Joe said. "I can make a quick trip on my motor-cycle. It's too late for me to get to where I was going to-night in time to attend to my business."
"Well, I'm awfully sorry for that!" exclaimed Mr. Craige. "If we hadn't been in such a hurry to get on, this wouldn't have happened."
"Oh, it doesn't make much difference to me," Joe explained. "I can just as well attend to my matters to-morrow. I'll go to the garage for you."
"Well, I'm a thousand times obliged to you, my dear young fellow—I should say Mr. Strong. When you come back I'll have a word or two with you. Just now I'm so upset over what has happened that I hardly know which end I am standing on. We went into that beastly hole so suddenly. It's awfully good of you. I'll see you when you come back," and, with a wave of his hand, he hurried after the wagon containing his injured friend.
"Too much upset, he said he was," mused Joe. "If he hadn't been an Englishman he'd have seen the pun he made. The automobile was upset as well as he. I wonder why he seemed to take such a strange interest in me. Could he have known my father? I'll ask him when I come back."
Joe found the garage without any trouble, and the proprietor at once agreed to send some men to get the automobile out of the creek. And then the series of accidents that started when Joe knocked the plank from the bridge involved our hero himself.
For as Joe started to ride back to the scene of the overturning of the automobile, intending to dismount when he reached the shaky bridge and wheel his machine over as he had done before, something snapped on his machine and, looking down, he discovered a broken sprocket wheel.
"Well, if this isn't the limit!" Joe cried. "Now I am laid up for fair!"
The garage man came out to see what the trouble was.
"Can you mend it?" Joe asked.
"Not to-day," was the reply. "I'll have to send for a new wheel, as I don't carry them in stock. I can telegraph for it, though, and have it here on the first train in the morning. It won't take long to put it on, once I get it."
"Then I wish you'd do it," said Joe. "I'll have to lay over here all night, I suppose. Is there a hotel about?"
"Yes, a good one in the village, about half a mile away. You can leave your motor-cycle here."
This Joe did, walking the distance to the hotel while the garage man and his helpers went in a car to the scene of the accident. The men invited Joe to ride with them, but he was tired, and there was nothing novel in seeing an automobile hauled out of a stream. Joe had seen elephants pull mired circus wagons out too often to be interested in what was now about to be done.
"But some one ought to put up a danger sign at the bridge," said Joe to the automobile men.
"I'll look after that," the garage owner promised.
"I suppose I might have gone back with them," mused Joe, "and asked Mr. Craige why he was so interested in my name. But I'll see him in the morning, so it will do as well."
But destiny, fate, luck, or whatever one calls it, had other plans in store for Joe Strong.
He passed a comfortable night at the country hotel, and early the next morning went to the garage to see about the repairs to his motor-cycle.
The new sprocket wheel had not yet arrived, but the train would soon be in. While waiting, Joe asked the garage man about the overturned car.
"Oh, we got it out all right, just before dark," was the answer. "It wasn't really damaged to speak of, though it was pretty well muddied up inside, and the men went off in it."
"Went off in it!" cried Joe in surprise. "Why, I thought that Mr. Strailey was too badly hurt to travel."
"He wasn't as badly off as it seemed, according to what they tell me, and when Dr. Brown fixed him up, and when we got the car out and across the creek and found she would run, the men insisted on going on."
"Where did they go?" Joe inquired.
"That I couldn't tell you," answered the garage man.
"Did they leave any address?"
"And I can't tell you that, either, I'm sorry to say. I was so busy getting the car out that I didn't ask them. They paid me well for my trouble, and I came back with my men. We put some red lanterns up at the bridge, and left warning signs. I also notified the chairman of the township committee, and he's going to have the bridge strengthened right away."
"I should think he would!" declared Joe. "Humph," he mused, "I guess I won't have a chance to question Mr. Craige after all. But he may have left his address with Dr. Brown. I'll ask him, and if I get it I'll write."
One of the assistants at the garage who had gone to the express office to meet the early morning train, now came in with the sprocket wheel for Joe's motor-cycle. The broken one had a flaw in it, it developed on examination. The new one was soon adjusted, and Joe was ready to ride off again.
"Well, I'm a day late," he mused, "but it doesn't make an awful lot of difference. I'll see Mr. Brader to-day and find out what he thinks of my scheme. I'll also stop and see Dr. Brown. I'd like to get Mr. Craige's address. It sure was queer how interested he seemed when he heard my name. I wonder what sort of mining business they are in. I hope it isn't the kind of fake oil mining that Helen nearly lost her money in," for the trick rider had nearly come to grief in investing some of her money and, only for Joe, would have suffered a serious loss.
The youth approached the shaky bridge cautiously. Already men were at work strengthening it temporarily, and Joe walked across it, pushing his machine, and found that it did not vibrate so much as before. The plank he had accidentally knocked out had been replaced.
But Joe was disappointed about getting the address of Mr. Craige and his companion from Dr. Brown.
"No," said the physician, "they didn't tell me where they were going, and if they mentioned it casually I did not hear it."
"Was Mr. Strailey able to travel?" asked the former circus actor.
"Oh, yes, in a measure. It was the blow in the stomach that knocked him out, and a rest was what he needed. He wasn't able to drive the car though. The other man took the wheel. They had a very narrow escape."
"That's what they did," agreed Joe. "Well, I'll go see that farmer. Maybe he has their address."
But a second disappointment awaited the lad. Mr. Wain knew nothing as to the destination or address of the two Englishmen, as he called them.
"All I know is that they went off after paying me," he said. "My wife got supper for them when they found that the injured man wouldn't have to stay at Dr. Brown's. They paid Doc well, too. They seemed to have plenty of money."
"Yes," agreed Joe. "Their car was an expensive one."
There was nothing more he could do. True, he might ride on after the men, and make inquiries about them. But he hardly liked to do this. Then, too, the destination they had mentioned when he had warned them about the bridge, was not in the direction Joe wished to travel—toward Hertford.
"I'd have to go a long distance out of my way," Joe reflected. "And, after all, probably that Mr. Craige might only have known my father casually. It wouldn't look well for me to be trailing after them when I haven't any better excuse than I have. Maybe he will write to me if it's anything important. He could send the letter in care of Sampson Brothers' Circus and they'd forward it to me."
Joe had mentioned to Mr. Craige that he had lately left the Sampson Brothers' Circus, and he had of course left his address with Jim Tracy, the ring-master, for he intended to remain in Hertford for some little time.
So Joe rode on, and in due time he reached his destination and sought out Mr. Brader, with whom he wanted to talk concerning a matter, important to Joe at least.
Mr. Henry Brader was a manufacturer of circus apparatus, and owned one of the largest concerns of the kind in the country. Many of the performers with the Sampson show bought their trapezes and other paraphernalia from him, and Joe himself was a customer. On one occasion, when he had wanted a special bit of work done between seasons, he had paid a visit to Mr. Brader's factory.
So when our hero had his "big idea" as he termed it, he at once thought of Mr. Brader as the one to go to, not only to have the idea tried to see if it were feasible, but also to have the special apparatus needed made.
Joe found the manufacturer busy in his office, but he nodded kindly to Joe, who had sent in his name, and said:
"Sit down. I'll be with you in a moment. Just have to dictate a few letters."
Joe waited, his mind busy with many thoughts, and finally the manufacturer turned to him, and asked:
"What can I do for you? Do you want a new kind of a fish tank, or a pocket trapeze?"
"Neither one," answered Joe. "In fact I've left the circus."
"Left the circus? Why, I thought you——"
"Oh, I may go back when I get my new act perfected," the lad interposed. "You know a circus is no place to try out new acts. One wants to be perfect when one joins the show."
"That's right," agreed Mr. Brader. "Well, what's your idea?"
"I'm going to ride a motor-cycle on a high wire," said Joe.
Mr. Brader looked at him in astonishment.
"Ride a motor-cycle on a high wire?" he repeated. "It can't be done!"
"Yes, I think it can," said Joe quietly. "Now this is my idea. I'll draw a rough sketch of the apparatus I need."
He used pencil and paper a few minutes, Mr. Brader looking on with interest.
"Here's my scheme," said Joe. "I'm going to take the tires off the motor-cycle wheels, and if the rims won't fit the wire I'll have them moulded to the right shape. You can do that, can't you?"
"Maybe," conceded the manufacturer.
"Then I want two high supports made," Joe went on. "They are like the things the life-savers use for the breeches buoy—shears, I believe they call them."
"That's right," said Mr. Brader.
"I'll stretch my wire over the shears," Joe went on, "and pull it tight with pulleys at either end, as we do now in the circus for the tight-rope and wire-walkers."
The manufacturer nodded comprehendingly.
"There'll be a platform at either end of the high wire," went on Joe, "big enough for me to get a start on with my machine. And when I get started I'll ride across space on the high wire. What do you think of that?"
"I think," said Mr. Brader, "that it's a rather dubious proceeding, Joe Strong. And I think, if you try it, you'll fall and kill yourself! It can't be done!"