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CHAPTER III.
JIMMIE’S DARING FEAT

In ten minutes all doubts as to the identity of the aviator were dissipated by a signal from the sky which the boys all understood. Besides informing the boys of his presence, the signal also conveyed the intelligence that he was in need of assistance.

“I wish I had a ladder long enough to reach him!” Jimmie grumbled.

“We’ve got a ladder long enough to reach him!” insisted Carl.

Almost before the words were out of his chum’s mouth, Jimmie was whirling the wheels of the Louise down the valley so as to get a good running ground, the machine having been drawn close to the fire after lighting. Understanding the boy’s purpose, Carl lent a hand, and the aeroplane was soon facing a clear field.

“What are you boys going to do?” asked Ben.

“We’re going up in the Louise to see what we can do for Mr. Havens!” Jimmie answered. “Didn’t he say he needed help?”

“You can’t help him after you get up there!” declared Ben.

“We can tell better about that after we get to him.”

“All right, go it!” replied the other. “I’ll remain here and watch the Bertha and the camp while you’re gone. But look here,” he continued, “if Mr. Havens is in bad shape, don’t either one of you boys try to shift over to the Ann. If you do, you’ll break your neck.”

The next moment the Louise was in the air, her lights burning brilliantly. The Ann was still approaching, but staggering as if the aviator had lost all control. Below the boys saw Ben piling dry pine on the fire so as to provide a broadly-lighted landing-place for the oncoming machine.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do when we get up there,” Jimmie shouted in Carl’s ear, “but there’s one thing sure, and that is that if we don’t do something Mr. Havens will soon go crashing to the ground!”

The boys were now obliged to give over conversation, for the motors were in swift motion and the roar of an express train could hardly have been heard above the sparking.

When at last they came close to the Ann and swung about so as to move with her, they saw Mr. Havens sitting limply in the aviator’s seat. His chin was lowered upon his breast, and he appeared to be too weak or too dazed in mind to look up as the Louise swept past him, whirled and moved along directly above him.

The boys saw that the great machine was rapidly getting beyond his control. Had he understood the nature of the ground below, he might have shut off his motors and volplaned down, but they understood, of course, that the dark surface below was unknown territory to him.

For some reason, probably because the disabled aviator had realized that he was fast reaching his objective point and shut the motors down to half power, the Ann was not making good speed. The Louise slowed down so as to keep exact step with her and Jimmie bent over in his seat and looked past the edge of the upper plane to the framework and propeller of the Ann. Directly he sent the Louise faster for a second and looked under the edge of the Ann’s upper wing to the vacant seat at the left of the aviator.

“Do you think,” he shrilled into Carl’s ear, “that I could get down into that seat?”

“Of course you can’t!” answered Carl.

“I could if I had a rope!” insisted Jimmie.

“There’s a rope in the box under your seat,” Carl replied, “but there’s no need of your attempting suicide!”

“Now, look here!” Jimmie argued, speaking very slowly and shouting to the full capacity of his lungs in order to make his chum hear his words, “if you can hold this machine steadily above the Ann, without varying half an inch in her pace, I can drop past the upper plane of the lower machine, light on the framework, and climb into that seat.”

“No one ever heard of such a thing being done!” declared Carl.

Before the words were out of Carl’s mouth, Jimmie had the rope in his hands. He fastened it securely to the framework of the Louise and dropped one end down.

“Now,” he called to Carl, “unless you hold the Louise exactly right, you’ll get the rope tangled in the Ann’s propeller, and then it will be all up with all of us!”

The boy’s face was pale as death as, motioning Carl to shift his weight as much as possible so as to prevent the Louise swaying when he changed his position, the boy took hold of the rope and lowered himself.

In a second he felt his body brushing against the framework of the Ann’s top wing. Then the rope began twisting and untwisting under his weight, and he whirled round and round like a top, until he became possessed by a feeling of dizziness.

He could see the ground, red with firelight, where the tents were and nothing else. He sensed that both machines were passing over the camp. At last, after what seemed to him an eternity, the twisting rope brought him face to the vacant seat and to the disabled aviator, whose hands were limply touching the levers.

When at last the boy’s feet touched the framework and he let go of the rope to cling to the edge of the plane, it seemed that the swaying of the machine must certainly throw him to the ground. However, he steadied himself for an instant, lowered himself at the knees and half fell forward clutching the seat when his outstretched hands came to it.

For a moment it did not seem possible that he was ever to recover his faculties again. Everything was in a whirl. The stars in the sky, the red light of the camp-fire on the cliff to the east, the dark bulk of the mountains farther away, all seemed mixed in a great jumble, in which nothing was distinct and everything seemed to be mixed with everything else.

When his mind cleared he saw that Mr. Havens’ hands were dropping from the levers. Another instant of indecision or inactivity would have brought death to them both. He seized the levers, and the Ann swung upward again, steady as the hands on the dial under his confident touch.

The rope which he had used still hung down from the Louise and, reaching forward, he gave it several quick jerks to indicate that he was safe. Then he saw the Louise shoot ahead, and knew that Carl was looking back toward him. The rope had been drawn up as soon as his signals had been received. The warning against permitting it to become entangled in the propellers of the Ann had been remembered by Carl.

Both machines were now some distance west of the camp-fire, but the boys came slowly around and dropped. During the last few yards of the slanting journey through the dark air, Jimmie was obliged to steady Mr. Havens in his seat. When at last the strain was over and the great flying machines lay on the rich grass below, the millionaire aviator fairly fell from his seat.

When Carl and Ben came forward to greet Jimmie, their faces were as white as snow. Their hands trembled as they extended them to the boy.

“He would do it!” Carl exclaimed. “I tried to get him not to!”

“Some one had to do it!” declared Jimmie, pointing significantly to the huddled figure on the ground by the side of the Ann.

“It’s a wonder you didn’t kill yourself and Mr. Havens and Carl also,” exclaimed Ben. “Why, look here, boys,” he went on with a trembling voice, “if that rope had swung out a few inches farther, you would have been ground to pieces in the propellers, and the Ann would have dropped to the ground like a stone! The rope you held would have drawn the Louise down with you! It was an awful risk to take!”

“If I hadn’t taken it,” Jimmie answered, “Mr. Havens would have fallen from his seat. His hands were dropping from the levers when I reached his side. Five seconds more and he would have gone down.”

“In all the history of aviation,” Ben declared, “nothing of that kind was ever done before! The wildest imagination cannot conceive of a person leaving one machine and taking a position on another while in the air! It is an unheard-of thing.”

“Well, it’s been done once!” declared Jimmie. “And it may be done again. And now, if you’ve got all the kinks out of your system, perhaps you’d better help me take Mr. Havens into one of the tents.”

“I can’t lift a pound!” declared Carl. “I thought for a second that Jimmie had been obliged to let go of the rope and drop!”

Ben and Jimmie lifted the millionaire aviator, now almost unconscious, and carried him into one of the shelter-tents. His face was very pale and his breathing was uncertain.

“I don’t see what’s the matter with him,” Jimmie exclaimed after examining the man’s head and breast. “There is no wound here that I can find!”

Then Ben pointed to the aviator’s feet.

“Strange we didn’t notice those before!” he said.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Jimmie with a shudder. “Have his feet been cut off?”

The aviator wore no shoes, and his feet were closely wrapped in bandages which had evidently been made from one of the blankets carried in the store-box of the Ann. The bandages were stiff with congealed blood.

Ben began to remove the cords which held the bandages in place, but Jimmie motioned him away.

“We’ll have to get hot water before we can get those off!” the boy said. “We’ll need plenty of hot water, anyway, so you’d better go and tell Carl to put on the big kettle.”

While Ben was gone, Mr. Havens opened his eyes. He glanced around the tent and smiled when his eyes encountered those of his companions.

“Did I fall?” he asked faintly.

“I should say not!” was the reply. “I guess if you’d had a tumble out of the air, you wouldn’t be lying here in this tent, able to talk, would you? You’d be all smashed up on the rocks!”

“I felt myself falling!” insisted the aviator.

“That was after the machine landed,” Jimmie explained.

“Did some one get into the seat with me?” the voice went on weakly.

“Why, sure!” replied Jimmie. “I dropped over into the seat and we came down together. Don’t you remember that?”

“I do not!” smiled the aviator.

“We saw something was the matter with you,” Jimmie went on, “and so Carl and I went up to see what caused the Ann to reel along like a drunken sailor. We got there just in time!”

“I was weak from loss of blood,” replied Mr. Havens. “I camped last night in a valley occupied by hosts of yellow-haired porcupines.”

“I’ve heard of ’em,” Jimmie grinned.

“In the night,” the injured man went on, “I got out of my sleeping bag to mend the fire and stepped on a whole host of the fellows, cutting my feet into ribbons, almost.”

“Wouldn’t they get out of the way?” asked the boy.

“They never get out of the way!” was the answer. “Instead, they will walk in a man’s path, like a pet kitten, and refuse to turn aside.”

“Did you get the quills all out of your feet?”

“I don’t know whether I did or not. They bled terribly, and I am now in great pain with them. You boys will have to find out about that later on! I’m too tired now to talk.”

Ben now brought a kettle of blood-warm water while Carl appeared with a cup of strong coffee. After the aviator had swallowed the coffee, the bandages were removed and his feet carefully examined. There were many quills still in the flesh, they having worked in instead of out, as is usual in such cases. These had caused the bleeding to continue, and this in a measure accounted for Mr. Havens’ weakened condition.

By midnight the aviator was able to sit up and listen to the story of the two visitors.

“I quite agree with you,” he said, after Ben had concluded the recital, “there is no doubt in my mind that the men are simply mountain bums. And I’m afraid that we’ll have trouble with them in future. These machines must be guarded night and day!”

“How long are we going to stay in this blooming old valley?” asked Jimmie. “I’d rather be sailing over the mountains!”

“You can go sailing over the mountains to-night if you want to,” Carl chuckled, pointing, “there seems to be a beacon fire waiting for you!”

CHAPTER IV.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF COLLETON

“I’m glad the fellows took the trouble of building a fire of their own instead of wanting to lounge around ours all night,” Jimmie observed, as the boys looked at the leaping flames toward the north end of the slope. “I should think they’d freeze up there!”

“I hope they do!” cried Carl.

“I wish we had some way of finding out what they are doing here,” Ben said. “They don’t look like mountain men to me.”

“There are probably a great many such characters in the mountains,” Mr. Havens explained. “Perhaps they’ll let us alone if we let them alone.”

“Is there any chance of their being here to interfere with our work?” asked Carl. “It really seems that way to me.”

“I don’t think so,” the millionaire aviator replied.

“What did you learn at Denver?” asked Ben. “Was there any indication in the messages received from Washington that the mail-order frauds were turning their attention to the west?”

“Not a word!” replied Mr. Havens. “We have a clear field here, and all we’ve got to do is to locate this Larry Colleton. I shall probably be laid up with sore feet for a number of days, but that won’t prevent you boys flying over the country in the machines looking for camps.”

“Huh!” grinned Jimmie. “They won’t keep Colleton in no camp! They’ll keep him in some damp old hole in the ground.”

“I presume that’s right, too,” Mr. Havens replied. “But you boys mustn’t look for camps entirely. Whenever you see people moving about, it’s up to you to investigate, find out who they are and where they are stopping. You’ll find that all this will keep you busy.”

“We’re likely to be kept busy if there are a lot of tramps in the hills!” Ben answered, “for the reason that it may take two or three days to chase down each party we discover.”

“I haven’t told you much about the case yet,” Mr. Havens continued, “and I may as well do so now. About six months ago, letters began coming to the post-office department at Washington complaining that a certain patent medicine concern which was advertising an alleged remedy, Kuro, was defrauding its customers by sending about one cent’s worth of quinine and water in return for two dollars in money.”

“Keen, level-headed business men!” exclaimed Jimmie.

“Larry Colleton, one of the best inspectors in the department, was given the case. For a long time, after the investigation began, this Kuro company manufactured a remedy which really worked some of the cures described in the advertising. This was expensive, however, and at times the shipments fell back to the one-cent bottle of quinine water.”

“More thrift!” laughed Ben.

“Another fraud-charge was that the Kuro company often failed to make any shipment whatever in return for money received. Colleton bought hundreds of bottles of their remedy, but the difficult point was to establish the fact that the company was not at the time of the investigation manufacturing the honest medicine. The officers of the company claimed that they were perfecting their medicine every day, and admitted that some of the bottles sent out at first were not what they should have been.”

“Why didn’t he pinch the whole bunch?” demanded Jimmie.

“He did!” answered Mr. Havens. “But time after time they escaped punishment by being discharged on examination by United States district court commissioners, or by having their cases flatly turned down by men employed in the laboratories at Washington.”

Mr. Havens was about to continue when Ben motioned him to look in the direction of the blaze, still showing on a shelf of the slope to the north. The fire was burning green.

“What does that mean?” the boy asked.

“It means that they are talking to some person on the other side of the valley or in the valley,” Mr. Havens answered. “It struck me, when the fire was first pointed out, that no man in his right mind would be apt to set up a camp in that exposed position.”

“Just before I called your attention to the fire,” Ben remarked, “it was showing red. There, you see,” he added, in a moment, “it is turning red right now! Of course the lights mean something to some one.”

“That busts your theory about the fellows being mountain tramps!” exclaimed Jimmie. “Such wouldn’t be carrying red and green fire and rifles with Maxim silencers!”

“They may be mounted policemen after all!” suggested Mr. Havens.

“Not on your whiskers!” exclaimed Carl. “Do you think mounted policemen wouldn’t know how to skin a bear, or know how to broil a bear steak? You just bet your life these fellows know more about riding on the elevated or in the subway than they do about traveling on horseback!”

“Well,” Mr. Havens went on, “one of you boys watch the lights and the others listen to the story of how the crooks got Colleton. It may be necessary in the future that you should know exactly how the trick was turned. After a long investigation, and after bribing several men in the factory where the alleged remedy was manufactured, Mr. Colleton secured the exact formula in use during the current week. He also secured a long list of names of persons to whom the bogus remedy manufactured that week had been shipped.”

“Then, why didn’t he drop down on the concern?” asked Carl.

“He did!” was the answer. “He arrested the officers of the company and subpœnaed scores of witnesses. He also secured proof that men in the employ of the government had been bribed by the Kuro concern to retard the work of the inspector and to assist in the destruction of any proof submitted to the commissioner by him.”

“Why didn’t you say that before?” asked Jimmie. “If you’d just said that Colleton was fighting the department at Washington as well as the patent medicine concern, we would have understood what kind of a case we were getting into.”

“Well, you know it now!” laughed Mr. Havens. “At last,” he continued, “Colleton had his case ready for the grand jury, the district commissioner having placed the respondents under heavy bail to await such action.”

“And what happened then?” asked Carl.

“He lost his proof and he lost himself,” smiled the aviator. “Colleton expected a long fight before the grand jury, a fight in the district court, a fight in the circuit court, a fight in the court of appeals, and a final fight before the United States Supreme court, for he knew that the Kuro people had plenty of money and the kind of influence which counts in an emergency.”

“And then what happened?”

“Colleton knew that he had a legal fight on his hands, but he never suspected that he had a personal fight. One day he disappeared from his office in the post-office department at Washington, and his proof disappeared with him. He has never been seen by his friends since that day.”

“And now we’ve got to find him!” exclaimed Jimmie.

“That’s what we’ve got to do!” echoed Carl.

“But, I don’t understand how they got him out of his own room, and got his proof out of the building without attracting attention!” Ben suggested. “They must have had several operatives at work.”

“They certainly did!” was the reply. “Colleton was sitting in his office at three:fifteen one Monday afternoon. The safe in which his papers were kept was locked. The desk in which his memoranda were stored was also locked. When last seen sitting at his desk, he was making memoranda concerning a case not at all connected with the Kuro matter. These papers were not taken.”

“That was bad editing!” Ben laughed. “They should have taken all the papers in sight in order not to disclose the real object of the robbery. The rascals slipped a cog there!”

“The first error in the whole case,” Mr. Havens went on. “Only for the fact that Kuro papers were taken exclusively, it might have been claimed that the respondents in some of the other criminal cases being handled by Colleton had committed the outrage.”

“Where did Colleton go when he left his office?” asked Ben.

“That’s exactly what we don’t know.”

“Who saw him leave his office?”

“No one.”

“Well, then, who saw any one enter his office?”

“No one.”

“Well,” laughed Ben, “how could Colleton get out of his office without being seen? Perhaps he went out unobserved and took the proof with him! You haven’t said whether the safe and desk were opened.”

“They were opened,” was the reply, “by some one knowing the combination to the safe, and some one having a key to the desk. All the proof collected by Colleton disappeared that day.”

“And the patent medicine men finally got up to his price!” grinned Jimmie. “I guess it’s the old story!”

“That’s what makes it so provoking,” said Mr. Havens, impatiently. “A good many people in Washington are saying the same thing. It is unjust to the inspector and very annoying to his friends.”

“And no one went into his office that afternoon?” asked Carl.

“Not that we know of.”

“And no one went near his office door?” asked Jimmie.

“I didn’t say that!” replied Mr. Havens. “His office door opens on a wide corridor, at that time being used as desk space by an overflow of clerks. At three:ten that afternoon two men stopped at Colleton’s door, but did not enter.”

“How do you know they didn’t enter?” Carl broke in.

“No one saw them enter or come out. No one heard the door open or close. One of the men, a heavily-built, bearded fellow, seemed to be urging the other to enter Colleton’s room. The man who was being urged was younger, thinner, and appeared to be greatly excited.”

“Were they the only men seen at that door about that time?” asked Ben.

“So it is said,” was the reply.

“And Colleton was at his desk just before the men were seen at his door?” asked Jimmie.

“Five minutes before!”

“And the person who entered his room after the two men departed found it vacant?”

“That’s the idea exactly!”

“Did you say the young thin man was excited?”

“Perhaps excited is not the correct word,” was Mr. Havens’ reply. “He seemed to be dazed with fear. The clerk sitting near the door received the idea that the man had nerved himself up to the point of confessing a crime or a dereliction of duty, and had lost his courage when he reached the door of the inspector’s room.”

“Did this young man look like Colleton?” asked Ben.

“Not at all. Colleton wore a light moustache only. This man wore a full beard. Colleton’s eyes are bright, snappy, far-seeing. This man’s eyes looked dull and lifeless under the glasses he wore. Colleton is straight, alert, confident. This man dragged his feet as he walked and his shoulders hunched together.”

“Where did the two men go after they left Colleton’s door?” asked Ben. “Did no one watch them?”

“No further attention was paid to them.”

“Would any of the clerks in the corridor know the big fellow again?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think they paid enough attention to know whether his eyes were blue or black or brown.”

“Then they didn’t notice the other fellow very particularly, did they?”

“No, in fact, except for his dazed and dejected manner and his odd dress they probably wouldn’t have noticed the young man particularly. But why are you asking these questions,” Mr. Havens answered with a laugh. “Are you boys going to solve, off-hand, a mystery over which Washington detectives have been puzzling for many weeks?”

“No,” Ben answered, “but I know when Colleton left his room.”