CHAPTER I. A LETTER—AND A SURPRISE.

“For its size, pard, I reckon this is about the biggest town on the map. We’ve been here five days, and the traffic squad has been some busy with our bubble-wagon, but if there’s any part of this burg we haven’t seen, now’s the time to get out a search warrant, and go after it. What’s on for to-day?”

Joe McGlory was the speaker. He and his chum, Matt King, known far and wide as Motor Matt, were in the lobby of the big hotel in which they had established themselves when they first arrived in New York. In a couple of “sleepy-hollow” chairs they were watching the endless tide of humanity, as it ebbed and flowed through the great rotunda.

For five days the gasoline motor had whirled the boys in every direction, an automobile rushing them around the city, with side trips to Coney Island, north as far as Tarrytown, and across the river as far as Fort Lee, while a power boat had given them a view of the bay and the sound. Out of these five days, too, they had spent one afternoon fishing near City Island, and had given up several hours to watching the oystermen off Sound Beach.

Matt, having lived in the Berkshires, and having put in some time working for a motor manufactory in Albany, had visited the metropolis many times. He was able, therefore, to act as pilot for his cowboy pard.

“I thought,” he remarked, “that it’s about time we coupled a little business with this random knocking around. There’s a man in the Flatiron Building who is interested in aviation—I heard of him through Cameron, up at Fort Totten—and I believe we’ll call and have a little talk. It might lead to something, you know.”

“Aviation!” muttered the cowboy. “That’s a brand-new one. Tell me what it’s about, pard.”

“Aviation,” and Matt coughed impressively, “is the science of flight on a heavier-than-air machine. When we used that Traquair aëroplane, Joe, we were aviators.”

“Much obliged, professor,” grinned the cowboy. “When we scooted through the air we were aviating, eh? Well, between you and me and the brindle maverick, I’d rather aviate than do anything else. All we lack, now, is a bird’s-eye view of the met-ro-po-lus. Let’s get a flying machine from this man in the Flatiron Building, and ‘do’ the town from overhead. We can roost on top of the Statue of Liberty, see how Grant’s Tomb looks from the clouds, scrape the top of the Singer Building, give the Metropolitan——”

“That’s a dream,” laughed Matt. “It will be a long time before there’s much flying done over the city of New York. I’m going to see if we have any mail. After that, we’ll get a car and start for downtown.”

McGlory sat back in his chair and waited while his chum disappeared in the crowd. When Matt got back, he showed his comrade a letter.

“Who’s it from?” inquired McGlory.

“Not being a mind reader, Joe,” Matt replied, “I’ll have to pass,” and he handed the letter to the cowboy.

“For me?” cried McGlory.

[2]

“Your name’s on the envelope. The letter, as you see, has been forwarded from Catskill.”

“Speak to me about this! I haven’t had a letter since you and I left ’Frisco. Who in the wide world is writing to me, and what for?”

McGlory opened the letter and pulled out two folded sheets. His amazement grew as he read. Presently his surprise gave way to a look of delight, and he chuckled jubilantly.

“This is from the colonel,” said he.

“Who’s the colonel?” asked Matt.

“Why, Colonel Mark Antony Billings, of Tucson, Arizona. Everybody in the Southwest knows the colonel. He’s in the mining business, the colonel is, and he tells me that I’m on the ragged edge of dropping into a fortune.”

A man of forty, rather “loudly” dressed, was seated behind the boys, smoking and reading a newspaper. He was not so deeply interested in the paper as he pretended to be, for he got up suddenly, stepped to a marble column near Matt’s chair, and leaned there, still with the cigar between his lips, and the paper in front of his eyes. But he was not smoking, and neither was he reading. He was listening.

“Bully!” exclaimed the overjoyed Matt, all agog with interest. “I’d like to see you come into a whole lot of money, Joe.”

“Well, I haven’t got this yet, pard. There’s a string to it. The colonel’s got one end of the string, ’way off there in Tucson, and the other end is here in New York with a baited hook tied to it. This long-distance fishing is mighty uncertain.”

“What is it? A mining deal?”

“Listen, pard. About a year ago I had a notion I’d like to get rich out of this mining game. Riding range was my long suit, but gold mines seemed to offer better prospects. I had five hundred saved up and to my credit in the Tucson bank. The colonel got next to it, and he told me about the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ claim, which needed only a fifty-foot shaft to make it show up a bonanza. I gave the colonel my five hundred, and he got a lot more fellows to chip in. Then the colonel went ahead, built a ten-stamp mill, and started digging the shaft. When that shaft got down fifty feet, ore indications had petered out complete; and when it got down a hundred feet, there wasn’t even a limestone stringer—nothing but country rock, with no more yellow metal than you’d find in the sand at Far Rockaway. I bade an affectionate farewell to my five hundred, and asked my friends to rope-down and tie me, and snake me over to the nearest asylum for the feeble-minded if I ever dropped so much as a two-bit piece into another hole in the ground. After that, I forgot

about the colonel and the ‘Pauper’s Dream.’ But things have been happening since I’ve been away from Tucson. Read the letter for yourself, pard. It will explain the whole situation to you. After you read it, tell me what you think. You might go over it out loud, while I sit back here, drink in your words, and try to imagine myself the big high boy with a brownstone front on Easy Street.”

Matt took the sheet which McGlory handed to him, and read aloud, as follows:

“My Dear Young Friend: I knew the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ was all right, and I said all along it was the goods, although there were some who doubted me. Within the last three months we have picked up a vein of free milling ore which assays one thousand dollars to the ton—and there’s a mountain of it. Your stock, just on this three months’ showing, is worth, at a conservative estimate, five hundred dollars a share—and you paid only five dollars a share for it! You’re worth fifty thousand now, but you’ll be worth ten times that if the deal I have on with certain New York parties goes through. “Now, from an item I read in the papers, I find you are at Catskill, New York, with that young motor wonder, Matt King, so I am hustling this letter right off to you. By express, to-day, I am sending, consigned to the Merchants’ & Miners’ National Bank, for you, two gold bars which weigh-up five thousand dollars each. Inclosed herewith you will find an order on the bank to deliver the bars to you. On Wednesday evening, the twenty-fourth, there will be a meeting of the proposed

Eastern Syndicate in the offices of Random & Griggs, No. — Liberty Street. You can help the deal along by taking the bullion to these capitalists, along with my affidavit—which is with the bars—stating that the gold came out of a week’s run at the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ with our little ten-stamp mill. That will do the business. Random & Griggs have had an expert here looking over the mine. After you show the bullion at the syndicate’s meeting, return it to the bank. “I am not sure that this letter will reach you. If it doesn’t, I shall have to get some one else to take the gold to the meeting. Would come myself, but am head over heels in work here, and can’t leave the ‘Dream’ for a minute. Wire me as soon as you get this letter. I hope that you are in a position to attend to this matter, my lad, because there is no one else I could trust as I could you, with ten thousand dollars’ worth of gold bullion. “Catskill is only a little way from New York City, and you can run down there and attend to this. Let me know at once if you will. “Sincerely yours,

“M. A. Billings.”

“Fine!” cried Matt heartily, grabbing his chum’s hand as he returned the letter.

“It sounds like a yarn from the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’” returned the cowboy, “and I’m not going to call myself Gotrox until the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ is sold, and the fortune is in the bank, subject to Joe McGlory’s check.”

“This is Monday,” went on Matt, “and the meeting of the syndicate is called for Wednesday evening.”

“Plenty of time,” said McGlory. “I’m not going to let the prospect of wealth keep me from enjoying the sights for the next three days.”

“Well,” returned Matt, “there’s one thing you’ve got to do, and at least two more it would be wise for you to do, without delay.”

“The thing I’ve got to do, Matt, is to wire the colonel that I’m on deck and ready to look after the bullion. What are the two things it would be wise for me to do?”

“Why, call at the bank and see whether the bullion is there.”

“I don’t want to load up with it before Wednesday afternoon.”

“Of course not, but find out whether it has arrived in New York. Then I’d call on Random & Griggs, introduce[3] yourself, and tell them you’ll be around Wednesday evening.”

“Keno! You’ll go with me, won’t you?”

“I don’t think it will be necessary, Joe. While you’re attending to this, I’ll make my call at the Flatiron Building.”

“I’ll have to hunt up Random & Griggs, and I haven’t the least notion where to find the Merchants’ & Miners’ National Bank.”

“We’ll get all that out of the directory.”

“Then where am I to cross trails with you again?”

“Come to the Flatiron Building in two hours; that,” and Matt flashed a look at a clock, “will bring us together at ten. You’ll find me on the walk, at the point of the Flatiron Building, at ten o’clock.”

“Correct.” McGlory put the folded papers back into the envelope, and stowed the envelope in his pocket. “I reckon I won’t get lost, strayed, or stolen while I’m attending to this business of the colonel’s, but from the time I take that bullion out of the bank, Wednesday afternoon, until I get it into some safe place again, you’ve got to hang onto me.”

“I’ll be with you, then, of course,” Matt laughed. “Now, let’s get the street addresses of the bank and the firm of Random & Griggs, and then our trails will divide for a couple of hours.”

The boys got up and moved away. The man by the marble column stared after them for a moment, a gleam of growing resolution showing in his black eyes. Turning suddenly, he dropped his newspaper into one of the vacant chairs and bolted for the street.

His mind had evolved a plan, and it was aimed at the motor boys.

CHAPTER II. STARTLING NEWS.

Matt and McGlory decided that they would not use an automobile for their morning’s work. The cowboy would go downtown by the subway and Matt would use a surface car. They separated, McGlory rather dazed and skeptical about his prospective fortune, and Matt more confident and highly delighted over his chum’s unexpected good luck.

It chanced that Matt had spent some time in Arizona, and he knew, from near-at-hand observation, how suddenly the wheel of fortune changes for better or for worse in mining affairs.

One of Matt’s best friends, “Chub” McReady, had leaped from poverty to wealth by such a turn of the wheel, and Matt was prepared to believe that the same dazzling luck could come McGlory’s way.

Within half an hour after leaving his chum, the young motorist was in the Flatiron Building, asking the man on duty at the elevators where he could find Mr. James Arthur Lafitte, the gentleman whom Cameron had mentioned as being interested in the problem of aëronautics. Lafitte, Cameron had told Matt, was a member of the Aëro Club, had owned a balloon of his own, and had made many ascensions from the town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts—which was near Matt’s old home in the Berkshire Hills; but, Cameron had also said, Lafitte had given up plain ballooning for dirigibles, and, finally, had turned his back on dirigibles for heavier-than-air machines. He was a civil engineer of an inventive turn, and with an adventurous nature—just the sort of person Matt would like to meet.

Having learned the number of Lafitte’s suite of rooms, Matt stepped aboard the elevator and was whisked skyward. Getting out under the roof, he made his way to the door bearing Lafitte’s name, and passed inside.

A young man, in his shirt sleeves, was working at a drawing table. Matt asked for Mr. Lafitte, and was informed, much to his disappointment, that he was at his workshop on Long Island, and would probably not be in the city for two or three days.

Matt introduced himself to the young man, who was a draughtsman for Lafitte, and who immediately laid aside his compasses and pencil, and climbed down from his high stool to grasp the caller’s hand.

“Mr. Lafitte has heard a good deal about you,” said he, “and has followed your work pretty closely. He’ll be sorry not to have seen you, Motor Matt. Can’t you come in again? Better still, can’t you run out to his workshop and see him?”

“I don’t know,” Matt answered. “I’m in the city with a friend, and he has a little business to attend to which will probably take up some of our time.”

“I think,” went on the other, “that you won’t regret taking the time to talk with Mr. Lafitte. He’s working on something, out there at his Long Island place, which is going to make a big stir, one of these days.”

“Something on the aëroplane order?”

The draughtsman looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Suppose,” said he, “that something was discovered which had fifty times the buoyancy of hydrogen gas, that the buoyancy could be regulated at will by electrically heated platinum wires—would that revolutionize this flying proposition?”

Matt was struck at once with the far-reaching influence of the novel proposition.

“It would, certainly,” he declared. “Is that what——”

“I’m not saying any more than that, Motor Matt,” broke in the young man; “in fact, I can’t say anything more, but you take the trouble to talk with Mr. Lafitte. It may be worth something to you.”

Matt lingered in the office for a few minutes longer, then went away. The spell cast over him by the clerk’s words went with him. He had often thought and dreamed along the lines of the subject the draughtsman had mentioned.

The drawback, in the matter of dirigible balloons, lay in the fact that the huge bag, necessary to keep them aloft, made them the sport of every wind that blew. If the volume of gas could be reduced, then, naturally, the smaller the gas bag, the more practicable the dirigible would become. With the volume of gas reduced fifty times, a field opened for power-driven balloons which fairly took Matt’s breath away. And this lifting power of Lafitte’s was under control! This seemed to offer realization of another of Matt’s dreams—of an automobile flying machine, a surface and air craft which could fly along the roads as well as leap aloft and sail through the atmosphere above him.

Carried away by his thoughts, Matt suddenly came back to his sober senses and found himself staring blankly into a window filled with pipes and tobacco at the V-shaped point of the Flatiron Building. He laughed under his breath as he dismissed his wild visions.

“I won’t take any stock in this new gas,” he muttered,[4] “until I can see it demonstrated. Just now I’m more interested in Joe and his good luck than in anything else.”

He looked at his watch. It was only half-past nine, and it would be half an hour, at least, before he could expect his chum. Matt had suddenly remembered, too, that it would probably be ten o’clock before Joe could finish his business at the bank, and that would delay his arrival at the Flatiron Building until after the appointed time.

Crossing over into Madison Square, Matt idled away his time, roaming around and building air castles for McGlory. The cowboy was a fine fellow, a lad of sterling worth, and fortune could not have visited her favors upon one more deserving.

By ten o’clock Matt was back at the Flatiron Building. As he came around on the Fifth Avenue side, a taxicab drew up at the curb, the door opened, and a lad sprang out. The youth was well dressed and carried a small tin box.

Matt supposed the lad was some one who had business inside the building, and merely gave him a casual glance as he strolled on. Matt had not gone far, however, before he felt a hand on his shoulder. He whirled around, thinking it was McGlory, and was a little surprised to observe the youth who had got out of the taxicab.

“Are you Motor Matt?” came a low voice.

“That’s my name,” answered Matt.

“And you’re waiting here for your friend, Joe McGlory?”

“He was to meet me here at ten,” said Matt, his surprise growing.

“Well,” went on the lad, a tinge of color coming into his face, “he—he won’t be able to meet you.”

“Won’t be able to meet me?” echoed Matt. “Is business keeping him?”

“That’s it. I’m from the office of Random & Griggs, and Mr. McGlory wants you in a hurry.”

“What does he want me for?”

“That’s more than I know. You see, I’m only a messenger in the brokers’ office.”

He was a well-dressed young fellow, for a messenger, but Matt knew that some of the messengers, from the Wall Street section, spend a good share of their salary on clothes, and, in fact, are required to dress well.

“I can’t imagine what Joe wants me for,” said the wondering Matt, “but I’ll go with you to Liberty Street and find out.”

“He’s not at the office, now,” went on the messenger, “but started into the country with Mr. Random just as I left the office to come after you.”

“What in the world is Joe going into the country for?”

“That’s too many for me. All he told me to tell you was that it had something to do with the ‘Pauper’s Dream.’ He said you’d understand.”

This was startling news for Matt, inasmuch as it seemed to indicate that McGlory had encountered a snag of some kind in the matter of the mine.

“We’d better hurry,” urged the messenger, as Matt stood reflecting upon the odd twist the “Pauper’s Dream” matter was taking.

“All right,” said Motor Matt.

Accompanying the young fellow to the taxicab, Matt climbed inside and the messenger followed and closed the door. The driver, it appeared, already had his instructions, and the machine was off the moment the door had closed.

“My name is Granger, Motor Matt,” observed the messenger, “Harold Granger.”

“You don’t look much like a granger,” laughed Matt, taking in the messenger’s trim, up-to-date garments.

Harold Granger joined in the laugh.

“What’s in a name, anyhow?” he asked.

“That’s so,” answered Matt good-naturedly. “I’d give a good deal to know what’s gone crossways with McGlory. I suppose you haven’t any idea?”

“There are not many leaks to Mr. Random’s private room,” answered Harold, “and I can’t even guess what’s going on. Mr. Random seemed excited, though, and it takes a lot to make him show his nerves.”

“Where are we going?”

“To Rye, a small place beyond Mamaroneck.”

“Great spark-plugs!” exclaimed Matt, watching the figures jump up in the dial, recording the distance they were covering in dollars and cents. “What’s the use of using a taxicab for a trip like that? You ought to have hired a touring car by the hour.”

“Oh, this was the only car handy, and Mr. Random never stops at expense.”