“With your permission, I will place three days’ provisions under my belt and be on my way.”
“Not three days’ supplies all at once?” questioned Jimmie.
The two boys consulted together for a moment, and then Jimmie said:
“If you’ll help us pack the tents and provisions on the machine, we’ll take you back to Quito with us. That is, if the _Louise_ will carry so much weight. I think she will, but ain’t sure.”
“It surely will be a treat to ride in the air again!” declared the tramp. “It has been a long time since Louis Havens kicked me out of his hangar on Long Island for getting intoxicated and filling one of the tanks with beer instead of gasoline.”
The boys smiled at each other significantly, for they well remembered Mr. Havens’ story of the tramp’s rather humorous experience at the Long Island establishment. However, they said nothing to Sam of this.
“And, in the meantime,” the tramp said, pointing upward, “we may as well wait here until we ascertain what that other machine is doing in the air at this time of night!”
Shortly after midnight Ben was awakened by a noise which seemed to come from the door of his room. Half asleep as he was, it came to his consciousness like the sparkling of a motor. There was the same sharp tick, tick, tick, with regular pauses between.
As he sat up in bed and listened, however, the sounds resolved themselves into the rattle of one metal against another. In a minute he knew that some one unfamiliar with the lock of his door was moving the stem of a key against the metal plate which surrounded the key-hole.
Then he heard the bolt shoot back and the door opened. There was an electric switch on the wall within reach of his hand, and in a second the room was flooded with light. The person who stood in the center of the floor, halfway between the doorway and the bed, was an entire stranger to the boy. He was dressed in clothing which would not have been rejected by the head waiter of one of the lobster palaces on Broadway, and his manner was pleasing and friendly.
He smiled and dropped into a chair, holding out both hands when he saw Ben’s eyes traveling from himself to an automatic revolver which lay on a stand at the head of the bed.
“Of course,” he said, then, as Ben sat down on the edge of the bed, “you want to know what I’m doing here.”
