Chapter VIII: Midnight Prowlers

“WELL, Mary,” remarked Mr. Nestor as he looked at the clock. “Tom is a bit late, isn’t he?”

“Oh, he’ll be here,” said the girl, with a smile. “He said he was coming to take me for a little ride in the electric runabout before he has to go to New York to-morrow to sign up in the world race. Tom will be here.”

“Yes, I never knew him to fail an engagement,” went on Mr. Nestor with another look at the clock. “Yet he’s a bit late. I’m going out and smoke a cigar. If I see him coming——”

“Now, Daddy!” laughed Mary, “you don’t need to tell Tom to hurry. He isn’t a child. What if he is late?”

“Oh, well, nothing. But I just thought I’d mention it,” and with that Mr. Nestor went out.

Though Mary would not admit to her father that Tom was later than usual, she was more honest with herself. And when nine o’clock came and Tom had not appeared, she became uneasy.

“If anything in the way of business had detained him he would have telephoned,” said the girl. “I wonder if anything could have happened? Highfield Lane is lonesome after dark, and he would come that way.”

She waited a bit longer, growing more nervous all the while, and then she came to a decision.

“I’m going to walk along toward the Lane and see if he’s coming,” she said.

Mary expected to see her father out in front, also peering down through the darkness for the approach of Tom’s headlights, for the young inventor and Mr. Nestor were firm friends. But the glow of two cigars on a side porch and the murmur of voices there told Mary that her father had met Mr. Goodrich, from next door, and the two were visiting.

“Where are you going, Mary?” her father called to her as he heard her go out the front gate.

“To look for Tom. He’ll be along pretty soon.”

Though the girl peered sharply all along the quarter of a mile that lay between her house and Highfield Lane, she did not see her lover. Then she turned into the lane proper and caught sight of the glowing lights of a car she knew, because of their peculiar position, to be on the runabout.

“Here he comes now!” Mary exclaimed. A moment later she was aware that the lights were not moving. The car was standing still. “He must have had a break down,” thought Mary. She knew, from often having ridden in it, that the car lights were hooked up to a separate battery from the powerful ones that operated the motor.

When the girl, wondering what had happened, hurried toward the machine, she stumbled over Tom’s body, prone on the ground. She recognized him by the light from the car lamps.

“Oh, Tom! what has happened?” she cried.

There was no answer, and when Mary put her hands to his head she felt a dampness that told of blood. But she was a girl of grit and spunk, and, exerting all her strength, she managed to half drag, half lift Tom into the machine. Mary knew how to operate the runabout, but when she turned on the current there was no response and she realized that the batteries were useless.

She hardly knew what to do, but was about to shout and summon help. Should this fail to bring assistance, she planned to hurry to the nearest house. But just as she was about to call she became aware of an approaching car.

For a moment she feared that it was Tom’s assailant returning to finish the cruel work, for that Tom had been attacked Mary at once guessed. But the car proved to contain a man whom Mary knew, and when he had stopped in response to her frantic hail he helped her lift the unconscious form into his car and took Tom to the Nestor home.

“Nothing but a nasty crack on the skull,” said Dr. Blake, who was hastily summoned, and he soon restored Tom to consciousness, after which the young inventor looked around him curiously and murmured a question as to what had happened and how he got where he was.

Mary told of having stumbled over his unconscious body, and then Tom remembered.

“It’s a plot!” he exclaimed. “They want to get me out of the world race!”

“Who would do such a thing, Tom?” asked Mr. Nestor.

“There are several who would have an object in keeping the _Air Monarch_ out of the contest. The Red Arrow people for one.”

Tom did not mention the name of Hussy, but it was this scoundrel whom he had in mind as the author of his misfortune. He had not seen, and had only faintly heard the noise of the man emerging from the bushes, for Tom had been struck down very suddenly. But he strongly suspected the man who had been caught in the wooden trap.

Tom’s strong constitution and his robust health enabled him to recover quickly from the blow, which had been a glancing one, and by midnight he was able to proceed back home. Mary insisted that she and her father accompany him in a taxi, and Tom was glad of the company.

Before he went to bed he sent Koku and a mechanic back to tow in the stalled runabout, and the next day, though suffering from a severe headache, the inventor examined the motors and batteries of his machine, finding that both had been tampered with.

“Hussy, or whoever it was, left just enough juice for me to get to the lane,” reasoned Tom. “He knew I’d stall there and he was waiting for me. But this means I am still being spied upon. I’ve got to take more precautions.”

As Tom was expected in New York that day to sign final papers in the contest, he left Ned in charge of the works, with Eradicate and Koku to help guard them.

“Dey ain’t nobody gwine to git in even to smell dat _Air Monarch_ while I’s heah!” declared the colored man.

“Me—I sit on um when um come in!” stated Koku, in his own peculiar way.

In due time Tom was in the _Illustrated Star_ office. There he met a number of the other contestants. The young inventor knew some of them as men who had made reputations piloting fast automobiles, aeroplanes, or speed boats.

“Well, Kimball, what’s your game?” asked Tom of a man with whom he had several times raced at county fairs in autos.

“Tom, I’ve got ’em all beat, including you!” declared Jed Kimball, with a good-natured smile. “I’ve got an air hydroplane that’s a wonder. If I don’t circle the globe in fifteen days I won’t take a cent of the hundred thousand dollars.”

“Yes, you won’t!” Tom chuckled.

He turned to Bob Denman, a rich and sporty young fellow who had been in several balloon and aeroplane accidents. He loved sport for the sport of it.

“Well, Bob,” asked Tom, as he shook hands with him, “are you going in for it?”

“I sure am.”

“Balloon or skyplane?”

“Neither, Tom. I’m going by special trains and steamers. I’ll be back on the starting field waiting for the rest of you fellows to come and have lunch with me after I win that hundred thousand. You can boast all you like about fast motors, speed boats, and aeroplanes, but I’m going to go by regular lanes of travel. I’ve chartered five steamers and ten special trains to take me around the world. There won’t be a minute of delay, and I’ll finish as fresh as a daisy.”

“If you finish at all!” laughed Tom. “Who’s that?” he asked, pointing to an eccentric man who was nervously pacing the office while waiting for the newspaper officials to get the papers ready for final signing.

“Some Professor Modby,” was the millionaire sport’s answer. “He’s going in a new dirigible that uses a gas he claims he can make out of burning weeds, rotten potatoes or apples and, on a pinch, from green grass.”

“He must be crazy,” murmured Tom.

“Well, he’s got a queer looking machine,” stated Bob. “He showed me some photographs of it. Looks like a combination of one of your Airline Expresses and the _Los Angeles_.”

“Guess I haven’t much to fear from him,” thought Tom, for he knew how the big dirigibles suffer in stormy weather.

In a room opening out of the main one where the various contestants were gathered a self-important sounding voice was saying:

“Yes, I agreed to all your terms, and I want to add one of my own. That part of the prize money be devoted to charity. The concern I represent doesn’t need the cash. It is only going in to encourage others. So I would stipulate that part of the prize, which we expect to win, must go to charity.”

“If you win the hundred thousand, Mr. Kilborn,” stated Mr. Elliot, the managing editor of the _Illustrated Star_, “you may give it all to charity if you wish. But we cannot now, at this late hour, stipulate that. The prize will be paid in cash to the winner, and he may do as he pleases with it. Now if you will come out with the others we will sign the final papers.”

“Kilborn!” muttered Tom to Bob Denman. “Is that Dan Kilborn of the Red Arrow concern?”

“That’s the bird,” assented Bob. “He’s been fussing around here all morning, telling what a wonderful new hydroplane he has. Named after the company—_Red Arrow_. He says he’s going to burn up distance with it.”

“Let him try,” returned Tom, and then he caught a nod from the boastful Kilborn, whom he knew slightly.

“I’d like to ask him how much his tool Hussy told after his midnight visit to my shop,” thought Tom. But he did not want to start any unpleasant altercations in the newspaper office.

Dan Kilborn was an ace of the World War and had done well in France and had proved himself a brave man. After the end of the conflict he had gone into air racing, and since affiliating himself with the Red Arrow concern there were ugly stories going around that he was not fair to other contestants in sky races. Several other pilots had more or less openly accused Kilborn of banking so close to them as to endanger their planes. But Kilborn only laughed this off.

“If he tries any trick with me,” muttered Tom, “I’ll show him where he can get off, and I won’t provide a parachute, either!”

The terms of the contest were explained by Mr. Elliot, all present agreed to them and the final signatures were affixed. The start was to be made that day a week, from a large field in Long Island, whence all must start at once. From that field the air machines would take off, and those who were to cover the first leg of their journey in water craft must leave the field in autos which would convey them to the docks where their boats or hydroplanes were moored.

“Time will be counted as soon as the cannon is fired on the starting field,” said Mr. Elliot. “Contestants can travel in any way they choose, and the one back on the field in the shortest actual time, with proof that he has really circled the globe, will win. Now then, gentlemen, I wish you all the best of luck.”

Tom hurried back to Shopton. There were still some things to do on and about his craft, but a few days later all would be in readiness for the start. In order to get a chance to tune his craft up a day or so in advance of the actual start from Long Island, Tom planned to fly there and wait until the signal cannon was fired.

“But who are going to be the others of your crew?” asked Ned the day before the start for Long Island. “You said there would be five, but you, Peltok and I are only three. Is Mr. Damon going?”

“Bless my parachute, I wish I was!” exclaimed the eccentric man. “I’m going to put a big bet down on you, Tom, but I can’t go with you.”

“Why not?” asked Ned.

“My wife won’t let me. She says it’s too dangerous for an old man. Good night! I’m not old!” asserted Mr. Damon. He certainly was not, in spirit at least.

“I’ve got two young fellows who will form the others of the crew,” Tom said as Mary Nestor came to where he and Ned were standing. For there was to be a christening ceremony and Mary was to break a bottle of ginger ale on the sharp nose of the _Air Monarch_. “There they are now,” he added, as two figures approached.

“Why, Tom!” exclaimed Mary as she saw them, “those look like the two men who rescued you and me when the plane almost took a nose dive into the cranberry bog.”

“They not only _look_ like them but they _are_ those lads,” chuckled Tom as he introduced Joe Hartman and Bill Brinkley to Ned.

They nodded and smiled at Mary. After the rescue Tom had made some inquiries about these automobile mechanics and, learning that Hartman had been an efficient flying man in France while Brinkley had managed one of the big tanks, Tom concluded they were just the men he wanted.

Accordingly, he had engaged them, much to their delight, and they were now ready to set off on the trip around the world. They went into raptures over the mechanical perfection of Tom’s latest machine.

“Well, Mary, I guess it’s up to you,” said Tom a little later when the invited guests had all assembled. “Do your stuff!”

“What do you mean, Tom?”

“I mean christen my bus.”

“Are you going to make a speech?”

“I am not!” was his hasty reply. “I’ve got enough else to do to get ready for the take-off to-morrow morning. Come on now, my dear, make it snappy!”

Mary made it snappy by cracking the bottle of ginger ale on the prow of the shining craft and murmuring:

“I christen you _Air Monarch_!”

“And long may she sail!” cried Ned.

After this the workmen and guests gave three cheers and the informal ceremony was over.

“Bless my fountain pen,” murmured Mr. Damon, a bit sadly as he looked at the beautiful machine, “I wish I was going!”

Tom, with the help of Ned, Peltok, and the two mechanics, spent the remainder of the day putting the finishing touches on the _Air Monarch_. Stores were taken aboard, together with a supply of a new form of gasoline Tom had perfected in spite of having been nearly blown up by it. There was not enough of this for the entire trip, and it was impossible to provide any at various stopping places or stations around the world. So what had been made was to be reserved for special occasions where great power or speed was needed.

“Well, I guess everything is ready for the hop-off to-morrow morning,” said Tom to Ned that night as they made a last inspection of the _Air Monarch_ in her hangar, which stood in a field not far from Tom’s house. “I hope everything will be all right.”

“It won’t be your fault if it isn’t,” stated Ned. “But if any little thing wrong develops you’ll have time to tinker with it on the Long Island field, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes! But I don’t like these last-minute repairs. I’m hoping I sha'n’t have to make any.”

“Same here,” murmured Ned.

Tom and Ned were sleeping in adjoining rooms, and it must have been some time after midnight that they were awakened by hearing a commotion in the hangar where the _Air Monarch_ was kept. Several shots were fired, and Koku’s booming voice could be heard saying:

“Master! Master! Come! Bad man try to break in!”

“They’re after my machine!” yelled Tom, leaping from his bed and taking an automatic pistol that lay ready to his hand. Ned, too, leaped after his friend to do battle with the midnight prowlers.