"How do you suppose that happens?" asked Lawrence, his eyes fixed in the distance.
"That's what I dunno," said O'Brien. "But the joke is that I don't think it happens at all. There is something funny about that. Dang funny!"
"Where do you suppose the people were?" asked Lawrence.
"Off amusin' themselves, or up to some mischief," answered O'Brien. "They have such a good hidin' place that they don't bother to guard their cars at all, at all."
They landed, O'Brien still sputtering. But Lawrence was silent. He quizzed O'Brien about the locality and learned that it was not far from the railroad. Then finding that O'Brien had an engagement for the evening, he went quietly away. He first went to his rooms, took some money from the trunk, and put on a dark suit. Then he hurried down town, and reaching the Union station, boarded a train and was soon out of the city. He had dinner on the train, and at about nine o'clock reached the little station of Linden, where he dropped off and not waiting for the train to pull out, slipped across the track and was swallowed up by the shadows.
For all his athletics, Lawrence hated walking, as most aviators do, and he groaned in spirit as he trudged over the country in what he hoped was the direction of the mysterious aviation field. It had not occurred to him to ask anyone how to reach it. Instinctively he knew that the mysterious cars had not been heralded to the country at large.
He lost time, and several times had to turn aside and almost retrace his steps, but at last he knew from the lay of the country that he was in the right neighborhood. The moon had risen and was full. It cast the densest shadows and Lawrence slipped from one patch of blackness to another. He felt silly. He was not sure that this was not a wild goose chase. The cars might be the property of some eccentric man who wished to keep them in seclusion, and possibly he was trespassing on private ground. He plodded on, however, urged by an impulse he could not understand.
At last he emerged suddenly on the very aviation field itself; and on the other side he saw the big bulk that was the hangar. Once more plunging into the underbrush, he skirted the field and circled it until he found himself at the back of the hangar. There was a small door here, half open, and from within he heard voices.