Joke!” fairly yelled Hiram. “Yes, the same kind of a joke as that fellow Vernon played on us when he stole the Comet at the Washington aero meet. Or like that partner of his, who dropped a steel hook on the biplane purposely to wreck us.”
Hiram had named the enemy the boys, according to past experience, had most to fear. Dave, however, was not wont to jump at hasty conclusions. He did not do so in the present instance. He put aside unproven suspicion for the time being.
“We had better make an investigation, and find out all we can,” Dave suggested. “You said your name was Borden, I believe?” he observed to the tramp.
“That’s it – Roving Borden, they call me. I was Henry, in my respectable days.”
“Very good, Mr. Borden, now please tell us what you know of this affair,” Dave requested.
“I’m a pretty sound sleeper,” narrated the tramp, “especially in such a famous bunk as you kindly gave me. I’d slept so long, though, that I fancy I was more easily awakened than usual. What I saw was done quickly. Some one must have forced in that shutter yonder. He had just put that thing we discovered under the edge of the balloon. The end of the fuse was spluttering as I woke up. I saw the fellow bolt through the window. Then I sprang up and grabbed the fuse. As I snapped it in two, it sort of exploded. See where it burned me?” and the speaker showed his blackened fingers.
“Lucky for us you were on hand!” broke in Hiram.
“I believe this to be the work of an enemy,” spoke Dave, rather solemnly, after a moment’s deliberation. “Did you have a good look at the fellow you saw go through the window, Mr. Borden?”
“I should say, I did!” exclaimed the tramp. “When a fellow gets waked up suddenly and startled, like I was, everything hits his brain as if it were a photograph camera. Say,” and the speaker half closed his eyes, “I can see that rascal just as plain as day now. By the way, too, if I’m not mistaken I saw the very same individual hanging around the outside of the grounds when I sneaked in last night.”
“Dave, I call this serious!” cried Hiram, aroused and indignant. “It’s a queer thing if we can’t have protection from the cowards who steal in on us when we’re not watching, and try to wreck our aircraft! I’ll wager the stuff in that canister would blow a small mountain to pieces!”
“Guess I’d have gone up, too, if it was that bad,” remarked the tramp with a shiver.
Dave went to the window and examined it. The edges of the solid board shutter showed the marks of some chisel, or other tool, used to pry it open. Then the chums went outside. On the way Dave caught up a bundle of waste used in removing oil and grime from the machinery of the air crafts, and a newspaper.
The others watched him in silence as he carefully wound up what was left of the fuse, and placed it and the canister, to which it was attached, in the waste then, wrapping all in the newspaper, he said to Hiram:
“I’m going down to the manager’s office.”
“Going to find out if that’s a real explosive; aren’t you?” inquired Hiram.
“Yes, that’s my purpose. If we find that it is, we can make up our minds that the people we have had trouble with before are still on our trail. I fancied we’d beaten them off so many times they had now gotten sick of such doings.”
“Oh, if it’s Vernon, or any of his crowd, they’re the kind that will keep on pestering us to the last,” declared Hiram. “Be back soon, Dave. I’m all rattled, and anxious.”
The young birdman proceeded on his way. Hiram turned to the tramp, who had manifested a decided interest in all that had taken place.
“We didn’t wake you up when we went down to the restaurant for breakfast,” said Hiram. “You were sleeping so soundly it seemed a pity to disturb you.”
“You’re very good, both of you, to think of an old derelict like me,” was the reply, given with feeling.
“Why, you’ve done us a big turn,” responded Hiram, “so I guess you’ve squared things. I brought some eatables up from the café, and if you’re hungry – ”
“Say, friend,” interrupted Borden in a serio-comic way – “I’m always hungry!”
“Then start with what there is,” directed Hiram, always glad to make others comfortable, as he spread the food out upon the bench near by. He watched their guest devour the viands with a relish that made him almost wish for a second breakfast himself. The tramp bolted the last morsel, and breathed a sigh of genuine content.
“That fills a mighty hollow spot,” he observed. “Say, about the fellow that tried to blow you up here – got a piece of chalk?”
“Why, no,” answered Hiram, noting that the speaker was viewing the smooth side of the hangar as might an artist a blank canvas. “I suppose you want to draw something,” guessed Hiram, recalling the artistic efforts of the evening previous.
“That’s it,” assented Borden. “It might sort of satisfy your curiosity, and maybe give you a hint, if I can furnish you with an idea of how that blowing-up rascal looked.”
“Why, that’s a great idea!” cried Hiram. “Do it!”
“I want to get at it while the picture of the fellow is fresh in my mind,” went on Borden. “Here’s the very thing,” and he picked up the paper that had held the morning lunch. “If I only had a black crayon now, instead of my fine pencil – ”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a carpenter’s pencil in our tool box,” suggested Hiram.
“Good! Get it, and a few brads, or tacks. Just the thing,” he added, as Hiram, after a search in the hangar, brought out the articles named.
Borden proceeded to attach the sheet of manilla paper to the side of the hanger. He smoothed its surface with his hand, rubbed the broad end of the big pencil to a point on a brick he discovered, and rolled up one ragged sleeve with a certain affected, artistic twirl that set Hiram laughing.
“That’s all right,” nodded the tramp indulgently. “I don’t look much like a cartoonist, but all the same I once traveled as a lightning caricaturist. Heads are my specialty, and here goes for the fellow who came so near to blowing out the lights for a budding genius!”
Hiram watched eagerly, from that moment, for the space of a quarter of an hour. The faces Borden had quickly and crudely drawn on some cards, to amuse Dave and himself, and show off his accomplishments, the evening previous, had awakened the interest and admiration of the two lads. Now, however, Borden began to create, line by line, and curve by curve, as perfect a human face as Hiram had even seen done by an expert crayon artist.
“That’s him,” announced the artist, with a last touch of the pencil, and drawing back from the impromptu easel with a satisfied air.
He viewed his clever handiwork with a critical but gratified eye.
“Yes, it’s him,” went on Borden. “Thin, peaked chin, one wall eye. There you are! Just as good as if you’d got his picture from the rogues’ gallery – where he belongs, if I don’t miss my guess.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed his audience of one, in so decidedly a disappointed way, that the amateur artist knit his brows, and
