Read Ebook: Around the World in Ten Days by Fraser Chelsea Curtis

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THIS PAPER ACCEPTS THE "CLARION'S" CHALLENGE

It is quite unnecessary to say that Paul and John Ross read the foregoing article with the keenest pleasure the night they reached home from the hangar and found their mother just finishing its perusal. Naturally Mrs. Ross felt all of the average mother's anxiety at the thought that her sons would be exposed to the perils such a long journey would invite, but on the other hand she was very proud to think their talents had placed them in such an honored position. It had only been an evening or two before that Mr. Giddings, in company with his son Robert, had called at the Ross homestead, and after a long conference with the boys as to the suitability of the new Sky-Bird II for making a world cruise, had taken his departure with his mind fully made up as to how he should meet the rival paper's challenge.

A few days subsequently, Bob Giddings found, upon reaching home for lunch, that his motorcycle, which he was in the habit of riding back and forth to work, so that he could rush into town on short notice and get emergency materials for the airplane, had a flat tire. As he could not fix the tire then, he decided to walk back to the fair-grounds.

As he emerged from the big front yard of his home, he chanced to look toward town, and observed an orange-colored taxicab standing near the first crossing. This would not have especially attracted Bob's attention, except for the fact that a man sitting on the front seat was just at that moment pointing his index finger toward the Giddings' place, and a slender-looking man just descending from the cab was looking that way and nodding his head.

It seemed to Bob that he had seen the passenger before, but a second look made him think he must be mistaken; at least he could not place him.

"It's probably somebody to see dad. If so, he'll get disappointed, as dad won't get back from the city before evening."

Dismissing the incident from his mind with this thought. Bob hurried down the road, eager to reach the hangar and get to work again on the new airplane.

A few moments after he had passed the home of a youth he knew, he heard a familiar salutation, and turned around to wave his hand in a greeting to this friend, who had come to the front door. As he turned, his eye fell on a slender figure some distance behind, a figure which stepped behind a tree and stopped.

"Humph! that's funny," mused Bob. "It looks a lot like that fellow who got out of the taxi back there by our house; I wonder what he's up to, anyhow?"

He continued his way, but as he reached the fair-grounds gate and got out his key to unlock it, the whim to look back again seized him. As he turned, his gaze once more rested on the slender form of the wayfarer, who had crossed to the opposite side of the road, and who now, finding himself observed once more, promptly stopped and began to fuss with his shoe-lace.

"Say now, this is funny!" ejaculated Bob under his breath, vainly trying again to recall the identity of the lean figure and dark complexion. "I believe that chap is trying to shadow me. I wonder what in the dickens he really is up to?"

It was the second time Bob had asked that question of himself, but as he was a poor source of information just then, he was forced to pass into the fair-grounds and relock the gate in as mystified a state of mind as before he put the query.

A little later, when he reached the big hangar he whirled about again, as if half expecting to see the stranger still skulking behind him in the grounds. To his relief he did not detect this situation exactly, but he did see a dark face, which had been peering over the top of the highboard fence near the gate, drop down from view on the other side.

Bob gave a grunt as he passed into the hangar and took off his coat. "As I live, I believe he's up to some sort of mischief," growled the boy. And when, shortly afterward, John and Paul Ross appeared he told of his experience and repeated his suspicions.

"That is funny," asserted John; "Paul and I saw nothing of any such man when we came along, and we passed down the same road. Perhaps he mistook you for somebody else."

"I hope so, but I don't like his actions a little bit," declared Bob stoutly.

With that he picked up a try-square and pencil and began laying out some work for Paul to cut on the circular saw, while John busied himself at the boring-machine in putting a hole through the center of the big twelve-foot balsa-wood propeller which a little later would be reinforced with a thin jacket of a new metal called "salinamum," which was made chiefly from salt but whose fused components made it as light as aluminum and stronger than tool steel.

Soon the queer actions of the stranger were quite forgotten in the deep interest of the three young men in their work. With the prospect of a world tour before them if the Sky-Bird turned out well, they now had more incentive than at the beginning to build the machine with the utmost skill and attention to every detail. Some changes, calculated to make the craft better adapted to the peculiar conditions she would be likely to meet in such a varied temperature were put into effect, but on the whole they found their original plans so well laid that no important features seemed to require modification or abandonment.

But if the man who had followed Bob dropped out of their minds the rest of that day, he was soon to occupy a prominent place in their thoughts. For the very next morning, when Paul and John arrived at the hangar, they were met at the door by a very agitated Bob Giddings.

"Fellows, what do you think has happened?" cried Bob, clearly very much excited. Without giving his friends time to answer the question he blurted out: "Somebody got in here last night and stole our plans!"

"Stole our plans!" reiterated Paul and John in the same gasp.

"That's it," said Bob,--"stole the set of blue-prints we have been working from. What's more, they must have seen the airplane before they got out. I went to take the plans out of the bench drawer here where we have kept them locked up, and there was the drawer wide open, the lock picked, and the drawings gone. I'll bet a herring we can thank my dark-skinned shadow of yesterday for this little visit!"

"It does look as if he might have had something to do with this," agreed John soberly. "I wonder how the rascal, whoever he is, could have gotten in the building. There's a heavy Yale lock on the doors."

"The doors were locked all right when I came this morning," vouched Bob. "I don't see myself how--"

"Here you are, gentlemen!" called Paul, who had stepped to a good-sized window near the head of the workbench. "Here's the fellow's private entrance!" And he pointed to where a heavy nail locking the lower sash had been forced aside, also to a series of indentations in the outer sill, where some prying tool had obviously been recently at work.

"It's a clear case of theft, that's sure," observed John; "and since its only our plans that have been taken, it goes to show that this chap is very much concerned about this new airplane."

"Perhaps he wishes to beat us out in getting the patent rights," Bob hinted darkly.

"No, I don't think it's that," differed Paul; "our application was sent in to Washington some weeks ago, and you know the first one to apply for a certain patent gets the attention."

"Well, then, he could use our plans and make and sell airplanes of their pattern, couldn't he?" asked Bob, whose ideas of patent laws were still a little vague.

"Not at all; if he did we could sue him for infringement," was Paul's answer. "The only way he could profit by this theft, so far as I can see, would be to construct a machine for his own private use, or to give to another person. We could not touch him for that."

"And that would be bad enough for us--if such a machine were used against us in this proposed race around the world, wouldn't it?" demanded Bob Giddings.

Paul and John Ross looked at him in dismayed astonishment. They had not thought of this contingency before.

WHO'S AT THE WINDOW?

The making of a big airplane is a good-sized job. Especially is this the case with the first airplane made up from new plans. And when the job has to be done by no more than three young men, it becomes an unusually formidable task.

The loss of the blue-prints did not hold up the progress of our friends in the least, as it was only the matter of fifteen or twenty minutes' work for Paul to make a new set from the tracings he had at home; but there were unexpected difficulties met here and there in the constructive work, as is always the case in large mechanical undertakings of an original nature, besides which the young builders ran into the usual delays caused by slow deliveries of parts and materials from distant dealers and manufacturers; and sometimes the railroads were tardy in transporting shipments.

All in all, the summer slipped away only too quickly, and it came time for Paul and Bob to go back to school again with Sky-Bird II not more than half finished. It is true that the long fuselage of the craft was done, with its graceful curves and splendid, roomy, enclosed cabin, accommodating five persons; but all concerned were a little disappointed that more progress had not been made. Mr. Giddings had been quite a frequent visitor at the fair-grounds all through the summer, lending a voice of encouragement throughout the operations. He looked really concerned, however, when Paul and Bob had to return to Clark Polytechnic Institute for the new term of study.

"This is rather hard on us, isn't it, boys?" he observed, with a light laugh in which he unsuccessfully tried to conceal his anxiety. "Here we are with a half-completed airplane, a race staring us in the face for next summer, and two of our workmen snatched away for the whole winter by the inexorable demands of school life, leaving only one lone fellow to finish the job."

"We'll be able to work Saturdays, dad," ventured Bob, trying to wedge a little bit of cheer into the gloomy prospect.

"And evenings. I'd be willing to work after supper every night for a couple of hours," proposed Paul.

"You won't do any such thing," came the firm answer. "While you are at school you two fellows need your evenings for rest and study, and your Saturdays for the school-team sports. Only when there isn't a game on in which you are a contestant will I allow you to help John on the machine--even if it isn't finished for five years. I have been thinking this situation over for some time, for I have seen it coming," went on the great publisher after a moment's pause; "and I have come to the conclusion that the best thing I can do to hustle our ship along is to call in another workman on the job, some chap we can trust and who knows how to handle tools. In fact, if he were a regular airplane mechanic it would be all the better."

John Ross spoke up at once. "Mr. Giddings," he said, "I think you have the right idea. Bob and Paul can't help me much from now on, and if we take that trip around the world next summer this machine must be done some weeks ahead, so that we can have a chance to test her out and tune her up. Now, it happens that Paul and I have a cousin--Tom Meeks--who is about my age and who flew in the same squadron with me over on the French front during the war. I will vouch for Tom's ability as a mechanic and flyer, also as to his trustworthiness. It happens my mother just received a letter from Tom's folks in Illinois the other day in which she said the factory had closed down in which he was working and he was out of a job."

"And you think this Tom Meeks would be willing to come up here, then, and help you this winter for the salary I am paying you?" questioned Mr. Giddings with interest.

"I think he would, sir."

"Then write to him immediately, and tell him to come right on."

In less than a week a strapping big young man, suitcase in hand, got off the train at the Yonkers depot, and was warmly greeted by his cousins, Paul and John Ross, who then introduced him to Bob Giddings. Bob had been so eager to see the new helper on the airplane that he could not wait for a later meeting with him. He took instant liking to the jolly newcomer, who seemed to be ever smiling, and after a short exchange of conversation with him hurried home to tell his father what a splendid fellow Tom Meeks was.

Tom was domiciled in the Ross home, to which he had been a visitor in other years, and of course for the rest of that evening was kept busy visiting with Mrs. Ross and looking at the numerous miniature airplanes of Paul's. His praise of the little Sky-Bird, and particularly of the drawings of Sky-Bird II was very strong, and when he went to the fair-grounds the following morning with John and actually saw what a fine-looking ship the big craft was, he was stumped for words to express his full admiration.

Then while John and Tom went industriously to work, Paul and Bob rode away to Clark Polytechnic in New York with Mr. Giddings. Just before starting into the city that morning, the newspaper man had met Tom, and there was little doubt that he was well pleased with this addition to his force of workers. Of course Paul and Bob were sorry to have to interrupt their labors on Sky-Bird II, but there was no help for it, and there was some consolation in the thought that undoubtedly their instructors would let them work on some of the airplane's smaller parts as a portion of their school mechanical practice. This supposition indeed proved correct, and as the fall days passed they found the two student chums not only partaking with full spirit in the sports of their comrades, but also contributing in no small measure to the progress of the work on the new airplane.

As a rule, Paul and Bob managed to stop in each Saturday for at least an hour or so to lend some assistance to John and Tom, and when there were no school contests on, they spent practically the entire holiday in the hangar.

The cool days of November soon compelled the boys to install a couple of heating stoves in the big building, and after that the place was warm and cheery throughout the working day, no matter how blustery and nippy the weather. At night the coals were carefully banked with ashes, to keep up a fair degree of warmth until the following morning.

Up to this time nothing had been seen of any suspicious person lurking around the premises, but one afternoon late in the month, when Tom Meeks was working alone in the hangar and John had gone to town after some bolts, Tom thought he heard a strange sound at one of the two windows near the workbench.

Turning quickly from the wing-strut which he had been setting in place, Tom faced the window just in time to see a swarthy-looking countenance, adorned with a toothbrush-like mustache, pulled out of range. The mechanic had been informed of Bob's experience with the man who had evidently followed him to the grounds during the summer, also of the blue-prints which had been stolen, and now as he observed the similarity in looks between this eavesdropper and the reported shadow of Bob, he became quite excited.

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