what are you doing at the office of the Secretary of the Navy,” demanded the boys.
“Ah, that’s just it,” rejoined Billy mysteriously, “I’m on the track of the biggest story of my career and I think it’s a scoop. Can you fellows keep a secret?”
“We can do better than that,” laughed Frank, “we can tell you one. What would you say if we could tell you your errand here?”
“That you are pretty good mind-readers,” retorted Billy promptly. “I can guess yours though. You are here to try to sell the government an air-ship.”
“Wrong,” shouted Frank triumphantly. “But you – William Barnes – ” he went on, making a mysterious pass at the other boy’s head, “you are here to find out about Lieutenant Chapin.”
“How on earth did you know that?” gasped Billy, “you are right though. Do you know anything about it?” he inquired anxiously.
“Everything,” replied Frank.
“Oh, come off, Frank,” retorted Billy, “that’s too much. How on earth can you – ?”
“That matters not, my young reporter – we do,” struck in Harry.
“Give me the story then, will you?” begged Billy.
“No, we can’t do that,” replied Frank in a graver tone.
“Oh, of course I wasn’t trying to worm it out of you,” said Billy abashed somewhat.
“We know that, Billy,” said Harry kindly. The reporter looked at him gratefully.
“I just thought you might have something to give out,” went on Billy. “I see that you are in the confidence of the naval department.”
“No, Billy,” continued Frank, “we can’t give you anything for publication. But we can do better than that, we can tell you we are about to start on what may prove the most exciting trip we have ever undertaken.”
“What do you mean?” questioned Billy seeing clearly by Frank’s manner that something very unusual was in the wind.
“That we are going to try to find Lieutenant Chapin and the men who kidnapped him,” replied Frank; “but come along, Billy, we’ve just an hour before train time and if you feel like having a bite of lunch come with us and we can talk it over as we go along.”
The young reporter gladly assented and, linked arm in arm, the three boys passed out onto the sunny avenue which was glowing in the bright light of a late May day.
Frank rapidly detailed to Billy the gist of their conversation with the Secretary of the Navy, having first called up that official on the telephone and secured his permission to enlist Billy as a member of the expedition. For Frank had made up his mind that the reporter was to come along almost as soon as the boys encountered him.
The young journalist could hardly keep from giving a “whoop,” which would have sadly startled the sedate lunchers at the Willard, as Frank talked. He resisted the temptation, however, and simply asked eagerly:
“When do you start?”
The boys told him. They could see the eager question framing itself on Billy’s lips.
“Say, Frank, couldn’t you take me along?”
Frank feigned an elaborate indifference.
“Well, I don’t know,” he replied, winking at Harry as Billy’s face fell at this apparent refusal, “we might, of course, but really I think we shall have to go ‘without a chronicler.’”
The boys might have kept the jest up but Billy’s face grew so lugubrious that they had not the heart to keep him in suspense any longer.
“If you would care to come we were sort of thinking of taking you,” laughed Harry.
“If I would care to come?” gasped Billy, “Jimminy crickets! If I’d care to come! Say, just wait a minute while I go to ’phone my resignation.”
“What an impetuous chap you are,” laughed Frank, “we don’t start for three weeks yet and here you are in a hurry to throw up your job to-day.”
“Well,” replied Billy somewhat abashed, “I was a bit previous. But it’s so white of you chaps to take me along that I hardly know what I’m doing. How I’m to wait three weeks I don’t know.”
“How would you like to help us build the Golden Eagle II?” asked Frank suddenly.
“Say, Frank,” burst out Billy earnestly, “you are a trump. That was just the very thing I longed to do but I didn’t have the nerve to ask you after you were so decent about taking me with you to Florida. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“It won’t be all a picnic,” laughed Frank. “We’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of us and we’ll all have to pitch in and take a hand, share and share alike.”
“You can count on me,” exclaimed the reporter eagerly.
“I know we can,” replied Frank, “or we would not have asked you to accompany us.”
“What are your plans?” asked Billy eagerly.
“At present so far as I have thought them out,” replied Frank, “we shall sail from New York for Miami about the middle of June. I think it will be best to go by steamer as we can keep a better watch on any suspicious fellow passengers in that way than if we went by train. The key on which the Mist was wrecked is on the opposite coast from there, I understand, and the men who kidnapped Chapin and stole the plans must have entered the Everglades by one of the numerous small rivers that lead back from the coast at the Ten Thousand Island Archipelago.
“My idea, then, is to establish a permanent camp from which we can work, the location of course to depend entirely on circumstances, that may arise after we reach our destination. We are going into this thing practically blindfold you see, and so we shall have to leave the arrangement of a host of minor details till we arrive there.”
“You mean to strike right back into the wilderness?” asked Billy.
“As soon as possible after our arrival at Miami,” was the businesslike rejoinder. “Every minute of our time will be precious. Oh, there’s heaps to be done,” broke off Frank.
All the boys had to laugh heartily at the wave of the hands with which Frank accompanied his last words. But their merriment was cut short by a sharp exclamation from Billy.
“I say, Frank,” whispered the young reporter, “have you noticed that fellow at the next table?” He indicated a short dark sallow-faced man sitting at a table a few feet from them and to whom most of their conversation must have been audible.
“He’s not a beauty,” remarked Harry in the same low tone; “what about him, Billy?”
“Well,” said the reporter seriously, “I may be wrong and I may not – and I rather think I’m not, – but if he hasn’t been listening with all his ears to what we’ve been saying I’m very much mistaken.”
Frank bit his lip with vexation. In their enthusiasm the youthful adventurers had been
