the two talked together a watchman from the office building approached and informed Havens that a lady was waiting there to see him.
“That, probably,” suggested Bolt, “is the night matron from the hospital. She was making investigations when I left, and promised to come here at once on the discovery of anything new in the case.”
Havens hastened to the office building and there, as the surgeon had predicted, found the night matron waiting for him.
“I can’t understand,” she said addressing the millionaire abruptly, without waiting for him to speak, “what is going on at the hospital to-night! Immediately after the departure of Doctor Bolt I sent word for every person, man or woman, connected with my service to appear in the reception room. In five minutes’ time I discovered that two men employed only three days ago were not present.
“After waiting a few moments for their appearance, I sent a messenger to their rooms. They were not there! Their beds had not been slept in, and every article of wearing apparel belonging to them had been taken from their closets.”
“One question,” Doctor Bolt said, addressing the matron. “Was any one on watch outside the door of the room in which I was so mysteriously put to sleep?”
“There was no one on watch there,” was the reply.
“Then,” declared Bolt, “the two attendants who have disappeared injected the anesthetic I have already referred to through the keyhole of the door. After I became unconscious they entered and removed the prisoner. It is all the fault of the hospital!”
The night matron turned up her nose at the surgeon.
CHAPTER IV
The two flying machines, the Louise, with Jimmie and Carl on board, and the Bertha, with Ben in charge, flew swiftly over the great city, lying before them with its lights stretching out like strings of beads, crossed the North river with its fleets of vessels, and passed on over New Jersey, heading directly for the west.
At first Jimmie and Carl tried to carry on a conversation, but the snapping of the motors and the rush of the wind in their faces effectually prevented anything of the kind. The moon was well down in the west, yet its light lay over the landscape below in a silvery radiance.
Now and then as they swept over a city or a cluster of houses far out on a country road, lights flashed about, and voices were heard calling from below. Ignoring all invitations to descend and explain their presence there, the boys swept on steadily until the moon disappeared under the rim of the sky.
At first there was the light of the stars, but this was soon shut out by a bank of clouds moving in from the ocean. By this time the boys were perhaps two hundred miles from New York. They were anxious to be on their way, yet the country was entirely new to them, and they knew that a chain of hills extended across the interior farther on, so at last Ben, who was in the lead, decided to drop down and make inquiries as to the country to the west.
Of course the boys might have lifted their machines higher into the air and proceeded on their course regardless of any undulations of the surface, but they were still comparatively new in the business of handling machines, and did not care to take high risks in the darkness.
Jimmie followed Ben’s lead, and the two machines groped their way along a tolerably smooth country road and finally came to a stop only a few feet from a rough and weather-beaten barn which stood close to the side of the road.
The clatter of the motors almost immediately brought two husky farmers into the illumination caused by the aeroplane lamps.
“What you doing here?” one of the men asked.
“Came down to rest our wings,” Jimmie replied, saucily.
“Where you from?” asked the other farmer.
“New York,” answered Jimmie.
“We’re carrying government despatches to Japan,” Carl added, with a grin. “We’re in the secret service!”
Ben gave the two boys a jab in the back, warning them to be more civil, and, stepping forward, began asking questions of the farmer regarding the country to the west. The two men looked at each other suspiciously.
“Is this him?” one of them asked.
The other shook his head.
“Might be, though!” insisted the first speaker.
“No,” replied the other, “this is not the man!”
Ben looked at his chums significantly for a moment. He was thinking that the farmers might be referring to an aviator who had passed that way not long before. He was thinking, too, that that aviator might be the identical one who had started out to beat the Louise and the Bertha to the Pacific coast.
“When did you boys leave New York?” one of the men asked, in a moment.
“About midnight,” was the reply.
“And you’ve come two hundred miles in three hours?” asked the man, incredulously. “I don’t believe it!”
“Our machines,” Ben answered, very civilly indeed, “are capable of making the distance in two hours.”
“Well,” the farmer went on, “the other fellow said he left New York about dark, and he didn’t get here until something like an hour ago. He lit right about where you are now.”
“Where is he now?” asked Ben.
“Why, he went on just as soon as he tinkered up his machine.”
The boys glanced at each other significantly, and then Ben asked:
“What kind of a looking man was he?”
“He looked like a pickpocket!” burst out the farmer, “with his little black face, and big ears, and hunched up shoulders. And he was, I guess,” he continued, “for we heard him sneaking around the barn before we came out of the house.”
“What did he say for himself?” asked Ben, now satisfied that the man described was the one who had pursued the Louise on the previous afternoon.
The two farmers looked at each other a moment and broke into hearty laughter. The boys regarded them in wonder.
“He said,” one of the men explained, in a moment, “that he was a messenger of the government, taking despatches to the Pacific coast. If he didn’t say almost the same thing you said, you may have my head for a pumpkin.”
“And that,” added the other man, “is what makes us suspect that you chaps are in cahoots. Mighty funny about you fellows both landing down here by our barn, and both telling the same story! I’m a constable,” he went on, “and I’ve a good mind to arrest you all and take you before the squire as suspicious persons. I really ought to.”
“What are we doing that looks suspicious?” demanded Jimmie.
“You’re wandering about in the night time in them consarned contraptions!” declared the other. “That looks suspicious!”
Daylight was now showing in the east, and the sun would be up in a little more
