CHAPTER XIV.
A “BIG LEAGUE” REPORTER.
The next morning nobody was astir on the submarine till long after the sun had risen and was shining brightly down on the sparkling waters of Sound and harbor. When Ned and Herc climbed out of the conning tower for a look about them, the beach about the yard, however, was already dotted with curious sight-seers, some of them armed with field glasses, the better to see what was going forward on the submarine.
The launching of the Lockyer had furnished the biggest excitement that Grayport had known for a long time. The early train had brought into town several staff correspondents from New York evening papers, the local men at Grayport having all telegraphed in “stories” the night before.
As Ned and Herc stood gazing shoreward, they saw a gasoline launch, which plied for hire, put out from one of the wharves. Several passengers could be seen on board her, some of whom carried square black boxes and other paraphernalia.
“Good gracious,” laughed Ned, “here comes the first enemy we have encountered since we have been in commission.”
“Who is that?” inquired Herc, not unnaturally puzzled by Ned’s remark.
“The reporters and photographers from the New York papers,” laughed Ned. “Look yonder, there’s a whole boatload of them on their way out.”
“Thunder and turtles, and I forgot to part my auburn hair!” gasped Herc, hastily diving below. He was followed more leisurely by Ned. By this time the rest of the party was up and about, and in the galley Tom Merlin was setting about his preparations for breakfast, aided by Sim, who had been pressed into service as “first deputy assistant cook and bottle washer in ordinary,” as Tom described it.
“How about letting the reporters on board?” asked Lieutenant Parry, as soon as Ned had apprised him of the imminent invasion of the boarding party from shore.
“Of course, it will be impossible to allow them the run of the craft,” rejoined Mr. Lockyer. “I think, however, that we can extend them all the courtesies in our power, provided, of course, that it will not conflict with the navy regulations.”
“I don’t think that it will do any harm to let them have a few pictures of the boat from the outside, and a general description,” was the reply. “I’m pretty sure that if we ask them not to mention certain things about the boat, they won’t. Reporters are a mighty decent class of fellows, as a rule, and if they promise you not to do a thing, they won’t break their words. Besides, it would be too bad if they had all this trip down here for nothing.”
So it was arranged that the press was to be allowed a view of the outside of the boat and to be permitted to snapshot her exterior to their heart’s content. But the interior of the novel craft and her wonderful machinery and devices were, as yet, to remain a sealed book to the public.
“Good morning, gentlemen, can we come aboard?” hailed a tall, young fellow in the bow of the press boat, as she drew alongside and her occupants shot keen, interested glances at the odd-looking craft.
“By all means,” was the rejoinder from the inventor, who, with Lieutenant Parry, Midshipman Stark, and the others, now stood on the deck; “but before you set foot on board I want you to promise not to pry into anything that we ask you not to, nor to print anything but the facts we will tell you.”
“All right, sir; we’ll promise,” came back from another reporter. “I suppose you’ll show us all over the craft?”
“From stem to stern?” put in a nautically inclined pressman.
“I’m afraid not,” rejoined the inventor, with a smile, as the eager horde hung on his words. “You see, there are several secrets about the boat that we can’t give out to the public, as yet.”
“We’ll have to be content with what we can get, then,” was the rejoinder. “But can our photographers get a snap of you gentlemen as you stand on deck?”
“Go ahead,” laughed Lieutenant Parry, with the air of a man resigned to the inevitable.
Click! Click! Click!
A perfect fusillade of photographic shutters snapped, and then the photographers begged for “just one more.” With great good nature this was given, the submarine party grouping themselves as directed. While this was going on, the shore boat had run in quite close to the submarine and, unnoticed in the excitement, a man had jumped from her upon the steel deck of the diving craft. He was a stout, fleshy man, of middle age, who, despite his weight, had displayed this alertness. His eyes, which were keen and shifty, glanced about him eagerly, as he set foot on the Lockyer’s deck.
For a minute he was not noticed, but presently the inventor spied him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, stepping up to him, “but I shall have to ask you gentlemen to come on board in a party or not at all. You will understand me when I say that we wish to keep you under our eyes.”
He spoke with a laugh that removed any of the sting the words might otherwise have had.
A chorus of:
“That’s all right, sir.” “We’re agreeable,” and so on, greeted his words.
“That being the case, I shall have to ask you to step back into the press boat,” said Mr. Lockyer firmly to the fleshy man, who showed no disposition to move.
“And who are you, may I ask?” shot out the intruder in an offensive tone.
“My name is Channing Lockyer. I’m the owner and builder of this boat,” was the quiet reply.
“Oh, you are, are you,” rejoined the other, with a harsh laugh. “Well, when do you expect to submerge her?”
“I can’t answer that question,” replied the inventor good-naturedly. “That is one of the things I warned you gentlemen about asking.”
“Seems to me you’re pretty well stuck up for a poverty-stricken inventor with a gim-crack boat,” returned the other, coolly drawing out a cigar and lighting it with an easy manner, but betraying not the slightest haste to leave the boat.
By this time the attention of the other reporters had been drawn to this argument and their voices began to rise in protest at the stout man’s behavior.
“Say, cut it out there, will you?”
“Why don’t you do as we agreed to?”
“Yes, do what Mr. Lockyer says.”
“That fellow must think he’s a big league reporter,” muttered Herc savagely.
Sullenly the fleshy man obeyed the chorus of protest and withdrew, stepping back on board the press boat.
“Say, who is that fellow?” whispered one of the reporters to another. “Ever see him before?”
“No, I never did,” was the answer. “I’ll ask Brown.”
But Brown had never seen the stranger, either. Nor, it transpired, had any of the other reporters, all of whom were known to each other.
“Better ask him his name,” suggested Brown. “He’s pretty fresh and may offend these submarine fellows.”
“No, leave him alone. He may be some magazine chap,” put in another. “There’s no knowing how they’ll behave. They think they own the earth.”
And so the fleshy, offensive stranger boarded the craft with the rest when the time came, without being questioned. While Lieutenant Parry and Midshipman Stark were showing the rest of the newspaper men about the deck and explaining such harmless things as the periscope and the torpedo tubes to them, this stranger sought out Channing Lockyer.
“I guess I owe you an apology Mr. Lockyer,” he said, “for my brusqueness. I’m sorry. Will you accept my apology?”
“Of course, of course,” said Mr. Lockyer pleasantly enough, but turning away. Somehow he felt an instinctive repulsion to this person.
But the fleshy man pressed after him.
“Have a cigar, won’t you?” he urged, drawing out a case of the weeds.
“Thank you, I don’t smoke,” was the rejoinder.
“Is that so,” remarked the other; “well, you don’t know what you’re missing. But while the others are nosing about, I’ve got a bit of information that may interest you, Mr. Lockyer. Do you know a man named Gradbarr?”
The inventor, who had been trying to think of some excuse to get away from the fleshy man, became interested at once.
“Yes,” he rejoined, “I do. What of him?”
“He is a rascal, I gather,” went on the other coolly. “I assume this both from your manner of speaking of him and from a conversation I had with him myself this morning.”
“You had a conversation with him?” gasped Mr. Lockyer, genuinely interested now. “Where?”
“Right here in Grayport,” was the response.
“But I thought he had left town.”
“That’s where you are wrong. He is living in some well-concealed place on the outskirts of the town, or so I gathered. But that is not the point. What I wanted to tell you was that he came to me this morning and, after some beating about the bush, requested me to furnish him with some detailed drawings of what I saw on the completed submarine, and also with any other information concerning her I could gather.”
“Did he say what he wanted this for?” asked Mr. Lockyer, in great astonishment.
“No. But, as he offered me a big price for the information, I gathered he was in the employ of persons who are interested in obtaining the information.”
“And did you make an appointment with him?” asked Mr. Lockyer, with keen interest.
“You appear anxious to know if I did or not,” parried the other. “May I ask why, outside, of course, of your natural interest in learning if I acceded to his wishes?”
“Why,” burst out the inventor, whose strong point was not worldly wisdom, “if I knew where he was I’d have the scoundrel arrested. He attempted to destroy my craft before she was launched, and—but never mind that. I would feel deeply grateful to you, however, if you could tell me where I could lay my hands on him.”
“I don’t know myself,” replied the other, “but I tell you what, Mr. Lockyer, I won’t be going back to the city to-night. Suppose this afternoon I try to get track of him. If I succeed I’ll make an appointment with you this evening, and we’ll get the local police and run him down.”
“The very thing!” exclaimed the inventor warmly. “I really don’t know how to thank you, Mr.—Mr.——”
“Armstrong—James Armstrong, of the United Magazines Association,” was the glib reply. “Mind you, I don’t know if I will be able to succeed in finding the man again, but if I do, be assured I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you, Mr. Armstrong,” warmly replied the inventor. “It’s very good of you.”
“Not at all, not at all,” was the hasty response. “In this case, as the copy-books used to say, ‘Virtue is its own reward.’”
With this he strolled off and mingled with the other news-getters.
“Now just see how one can be mistaken in a man,” thought the inventor to himself. “I had quite a prejudice against that fellow, and yet it turns out that he may be able to do me a good turn, after all. I’d give a lot to get my hands on Gradbarr, for, since I have been thinking it over, it seems to me that there was more behind that gas explosion than appeared on the surface. And then coupling his attempt to destroy the Lockyer with the previous attempt, it looks very much as if he were the agent for somebody else. Somebody powerful and wealthy, who wishes to harm me—those Atlas people, like as not, though I hate to suspect anybody of such dirty work. If he can be arrested, we may solve the mystery and at the same time put a rascal where he belongs.”
At this point of his meditations, the inventor was besieged by requests for an interview. But he was firm on that point.
“Write all you like about what you have seen of the boat, gentlemen,” he said, “but please leave me out of it.”
“We can’t very well do that, Mr. Lockyer, since she is your creation,” said a reporter. “But we’ll let you down as easy as we can.”
“Thanks. The less said about me, the better,” was the reply.
Soon after, the reporters left, having warmly thanked the submarine party for their courtesies. Thanks to Lieutenant Parry and Midshipman Stark, they had obtained good stories, with just enough of a dash of mystery in them to make them all the better reading. As Mr. Armstrong went over the side, he took occasion to speak to Mr. Lockyer in a low voice.
“I must ask you to keep quiet about this,” he said. “It would get me in a lot of trouble with the paper if they knew I was spending my time in any one else’s interests. But I like you, and I don’t want to see such a rascal as Gradbarr get off scot free.”
The inventor could only thank this disinterested benefactor once more. That afternoon, while work was actively going on on board the submarine—for after her trial trip there was quite a lot of overhauling and setting to rights to be done—a boat from the shore came alongside. Ned was on deck at the time and answered the heavily-bearded oarsman’s hail.
“Note for Mr. Lockyer,” said the boatman, coming alongside and handing Ned a missive. “From the gent at the hotel,” he added, “and will you ask Mr. Lockyer what time I’m to come off for him?”
Ned hastened below and handed the note to the inventor. He took it and scanned the missive eagerly. It was from Armstrong, and read:
“Know where Gradbarr can be found. Meet me ashore at the old Banta House at eight p. m. Police will be there. Yours for justice, Armstrong.”
The inventor hastily scribbled an answer in reply and handed it to Ned. The Dreadnought Boy hastened back on deck with it and found the bearded boatman resting easily on his oars, idly regarding the submarine’s structure.
“Here’s the answer,” said Ned, handing the note to him.
“Is he going to come?” asked the man, with a sudden flash of eagerness. The next instant, at Ned’s start of surprise, he checked himself, evidently realizing he had made a mistake.
“I mean what time am I to come for him?” he asked.
“How do I know,” rejoined Ned, but Mr. Lockyer, who had come on deck unnoticed, answered for him.
“Be here at seven-thirty, my man,” he said. “By the way, how far is it to the Banta House?”
“Why,” exclaimed Ned, in some surprise, “the Banta House is that old hotel away up the beach. They built it for a big summer resort, but it never paid. Too lonesome, I guess. Herc and I walked out there one day to see it. It’s a curious sight to see that fine building all going to rack and ruin in the woods.”
The bearded man in the boat had been eyeing Ned with great disfavor while he volunteered these details, and he now struck in in a gruff voice.
“It ain’t so lonesome,” he said. “I’ve bin there many a time. I’ll be here for you at seven-thirty, then, sir?”
“Yes, my man,” said Mr. Lockyer. As the boat was rowed off, the inventor turned to Ned.
“Then you think the Banta House is a queer place for a man to make an appointment?”
“Unless it’s on some secret sort of business, sir, I do,” answered Ned frankly. “If I were going to meet any one there, I’d want to know what kind of folks they were.”
“Well, as you may have gathered, I have an appointment there this evening myself,” rejoined the inventor. “I’m not at liberty to tell what it is, but it may have very important results.”
Ned nodded. But his thoughts were elsewhere. Something about the heavily bearded man in the boat seemed familiar to him. He had met him or seen him before, he was certain. But where? He could not think. A short time later he drew Herc off in a corner and described the man fully to him, imitating his manner as well as he could, but Herc could come no nearer to placing him than could Ned.