explained the old man. “Yes, Fred Reade has acted for Barr in many matters that I know of.”
“A sort of agent of his,” said Billy.
“More than that,” rejoined old Eben Joyce; “there is some mysterious tie between them. I think Reade knows something about Luther Barr that the other is afraid will come out.”
“How is that?” asked Frank.
“I don’t know, but such is my impression. At the time of the negotiation for the Buzzard Reade treated Barr as an equal more than if he were employed by him.”
It had grown dusk by this time and Eben Joyce’s daughter lit the lamp and set it down on the cottage table. As she did so there came a loud roar of an approaching motor car down the quiet street and the next moment through the gathering gloom a big auto approached the cottage. As it neared it it slowed down. They all went out on the porch to see who could be driving a car down that little frequented street. It was not very light, but as the car drew nearer Frank recognized it.
“That’s Fred Reade’s auto,” he cried.
But if the boys imagined that they were to get any solution of the car’s mysterious appearance they were mistaken. As it neared the house, and the group on the porch must have been plainly visible to its occupants, the big car suddenly leaped forward and shot away into the darkness.
“What did they do that for?” asked Billy.
“I guess they saw so many if us here that they thought it would be more prudent to stay away,” suggested Frank.
“What can they be after?” wondered Harry.
“The blue prints of my gyroscopic attachment and possibly my experimental machine itself,” declared the inventor, “though if they had the blue prints they could easily manufacture them themselves. Reade has been after me to sell them.”
“That is so,” mused Frank; “undoubtedly such prints would be of great value to them.”
“Will you do something for me?” inquired old Eben Joyce, suddenly.
“Of course,” rejoined Frank; “what is it?”
“Will you take charge of my blue prints for me. It is lonely here and I am old and my daughter unprotected. In case they attacked us in the night we should have little opportunity to keep the prints from them. I would feel quite secure if you had them in your possession, however.”
Frank readily agreed to this, adding that he would place them in a safe deposit vault.
“I shall rest much easier if you would,” said the old inventor. “Bad as they are, I don’t think the men would hurt us; all they are after is the plans and I really dare not have them about here another night.”
It was an hour later when, with the plans safely tucked away in an inside pocket of Frank’s coat, the boys started back for town.
“If you feel at all nervous we will telephone home and stay here with you,” Frank offered before they left.
“Oh, not at all,” exclaimed old Joyce, who was already busy figuring a new problem. “I have a revolver and I will communicate with the police about my fears. I shall be all right.”
With hearty good nights the boys’ car swung off, its headlights glowing brightly. They sped along through the outskirts of Jersey City and were about to leave the lonely, badly-lighted section through which they had been passing when suddenly a figure stepped full into the path of light cast ahead of them.
The sudden apparition of the night was waving a red lantern.
“Stop! there’s danger ahead!” it shouted.
“Danger, what sort of danger?” asked Frank, nevertheless bringing the car to a stop.
“Why, there’s an excavation ahead. Ah! that’s right, you’ve stopped. Now then, young gentlemen, just step out of the petroleum phaeton and fork over the contents of your pockets.”
“What, you rascal, are you holding us up?” cried Billy indignantly, as the man pointed a revolver at them.
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” grinned the other. “Come on now, shell out and hurry up.”
As he spoke three other figures glided from the shadows of an untenanted house near by and silently took up their positions a short distance beyond him. They were out of the path of the auto’s lights and their faces could not be seen. The light glinted on something that each held in his hand, however, and which were clearly enough revolvers. Things looked pretty blue for the Boy Aviators.
The sudden turn events had taken almost bereft Frank of his wits for a minute, but suddenly it flashed across him that the man who had waved the lantern did not talk like an ordinary robber and that it was remarkable that the others took so much trouble to keep out of the light. The next instant his suspicions were confirmed by hearing the voice of the first comer snap out:
“Which one of you has got them gyroscope plans?”
Frank’s reply was startling. Without uttering a word he suddenly drove the machine full speed ahead.
It leaped forward like a frightened wild thing.
As it dashed ahead it bowled over the would-be robber, but that he was not seriously hurt the boys judged by the volley of bad language he sent after them. As for the others, as the car made its leap they had stepped nimbly aside.
“Look out for the excavation. Frank; we’ll be in it!” shouted Billy in an alarmed voice as the car rushed forward.
“Why, there’s no excavation, Billy,” rejoined Frank, bending over the steering wheel. “That was just a bluff on the part of those men, of whom, if I am not much mistaken, Fred Reade was one.”
CHAPTER V.
THE BOYS DECIDE
Their strange experience of the preceding night was naturally the topic of the day with the boys the next morning. That Fred Reade was concerned in it there seemed no reason to doubt, though just what part he had played was more shadowy. A perusal of the two newspapers, the Planet and the Despatch, the next day, however, gave the boys an inkling of one of his motives for his desperate attempt – if, indeed, it had been engineered by him – to gain possession of the Joyce gyroscope. This was the announcement that the two papers had agreed to start their contestants off in a spirit of rivalry by naming the same day for the start and imposing exactly the same conditions, the prizes to be lumped. Among other things in the Despatch’s article the boys read that Slade, the noted aviator, was an entrant.
“Mr. Reade,” the paper stated, “will accompany Mr. Slade as the correspondent of this newspaper. He will ride in an automobile which will carry supplies and emergency tools and equipment. Every step of the trip will be chronicled by him.”
There was more to the same effect, but the boys had no eyes for it after their sight lighted on the following paragraph:
“Those remarkable and precocious youths, the Boy Aviators, are, of course, not equipped for such a contest as this, requiring, as it does, an excess of skill and knowledge of aviation. A noted aviator of this city, in speaking of the fact that they have not entered their names, remarked that boys are not calculated to
