CHAPTER XXI

LIQUID AIR—ALMOST

In the wing of the airplane, sailing high above the western prairies, Goggles was in a tight place. He had never been in a tighter one and never expected to be in the future, if indeed there was to be a future.

Just what had he expected when he crawled into that narrow place? Certainly not this. Perhaps he had hoped that someone would unlock the trap door after they landed. Then he would catch him. But now, as he thought all this, and his head went into a whirl, the little dark man looked up and saw him. For one full minute he did not speak or move; only his beady eyes bored into the boy’s very soul.

“So you’re here!” he said at last. “Don’t you think I did a good enough job messing things up? Well then, you and the Big Shot are agreed. But what’s he want?”

“I don’t know.” Goggles spoke slowly. He was thinking hard. He was, as we have said, in a tight enough place surely. Securely sealed up in a duramen tube a half mile in air with no means of communicating with his friends and with this enemy staring him in the face, his situation was anything but pleasant.

“Why do you want to spoil things for us?” he asked in as quiet a tone as he could command.

“I—why, now I don’t.” The little man laughed mirthlessly. “I’m paid to do it. I do what I’m paid to do.”

All this time the boy was thinking, “I’ve got to get the better of him. I must do it. But how?”

He moved a little. Something poked into his side. What was that? Oh yes, he remembered. A bottle! A sudden desperate plan came to him.

“Well,” he spoke slowly, “as long as we’re here, we may as well talk about something. Let’s make it liquid air.”

“Air ain’t no liquid,” the little man protested.

“Sometimes it is.” Goggles’ courage was growing. “You can make it liquid by putting it under very high pressure and getting it down to 216 degrees below zero. When it gets into liquid form you may keep it in a bottle for three or four days.” At this point he pulled the flat bottle from his pocket. It was half filled with a pale liquid. The little man stared at the bottle. “Liquid air is strange stuff,” Goggles went on. “It’s cold, colder than the North Pole. Put a fresh rose in it for a second, take it out and you can pinch it into a powder. Put a steel clock spring in it, take it out and it will snap like glass. Stick your finger in a bottle of it and I’ll break it off like an icicle.” He thrust the bottle out before him. The little man seemed to shrink back.

The boy’s tone did not change. He might have been a professor lecturing to a class. “Yes, liquid air is strange. I could pour it over my hand, or even put it in my mouth and, providing I got rid of it at once, it would not harm me. One minute of holding a spoonful in my mouth would mean death.

“If I were to pour even a small amount down your neck—” (he drew himself forward ever so little), “which I could—I’m strong. Much stronger than you think. I have strong fingers and arms. If I poured a quarter of a bottle down your back you would die. No one would guess what killed you. The liquid air would turn to gas and there you’d be. You—”

A strange look of terror came into the little man’s eyes as he cried in a shrill high-pitched voice, “You let me be! Don’t touch me! I’ll leave at the next stop, and you’ll never see me again. So help me, you won’t!”

Goggles settled back in his place. As he did so, his right hand was closed about the bottle, carefully concealing a printed label.

After that the big bi-motored plane with its flying baseball team in its cabin and that curious cargo in its wings sped across the land. Not once did Goggles relinquish his hold on that magic bottle. From time to time the little dark man spoke. His words were always in the nature of a confession. He had been hired by Big Bill Tyson to break up this trip. He had not been told why—he had only been paid to do it. He knew about locks. Locks had always been easy for him. He had a key to the lock on the door to this place. How? Well, that did not matter. He hadn’t succeeded in breaking up the cruise. Now he was going to quit.

“Yes,” he said, rolling his eyes horribly as he took one more look at the magic bottle, “yes, I’m going to quit! Just let me out of this place and you’ll never see me again.”

“If he only knew!” Goggles thought with an inward shudder. “If he knew, I wonder what would happen?”

Ah, well, he had this little dark fellow within his power, that was enough. So the plane sped on.

Never in all his life had the boy experienced such a sense of relief as, after the plane had bumped on some landing field, then gone gliding along to a stop, he saw the little dark man slip like a snake through the small door and disappear.

He grinned a broad grin as he dropped the flat bottle back into his pocket. “Lucky break!” he murmured. “Wonder if Sheeley missed it?”

“Old Irons O will do his full duty at this place,” he assured Doug as he came out to meet him.

“Are you sure of that?” Doug was still in doubt.

“Sure as anything. But just to make it a cinch, ask one of the boys to watch this plane while I go for a cup of coffee. I’m starved.”

The guard was arranged for at once. As the two boys hurried away, Goggles pulled a bottle out of his pocket. “Just read the label on that, will you?” he said. “I packed my glasses in my bag by mistake.”

“Sure!” Doug took the bottle. “It says, ‘Dr. Jordan’s Face Lotion. Good for sun-burned and chapped skin.’”

“It’s good for more than that—sometimes,” Goggles chuckled.

“What do you mean by that?” Doug demanded.

“Tell you sometime,” Goggles chuckled again. “Belongs to Sheeley, that bottle does. He left it in his room by mistake. I brought it along, and I—I’m glad I did.

“Do you know,” he said after a while, “it pays to know a little about a great many things. If you get sort of—well sort of shut off from the world with someone else, you’ve always got something to talk about. Take liquid air for instance. There’s a grand little topic for conversation.”

“Huh? Yes, I suppose so,” Doug grunted. He was already lost to the world in his contemplation of that day’s game.

He need have had no fear for that ball game. Never had Irons O performed so well as on this day. Not only did he pitch a big league type of game, allowing only seven hits and no runs, but he kept the crowd in an uproar of laughter with his bobbing head, his ludicrous grimaces, and his wild-cat screams at the umpire.

“A perfect day!” was Goggles’ enthusiastic comment when it was over. “And the little dark man kept his word. He was not about.”

He had not, however, seen the last of the little dark man—not quite. As, hopeful of receiving a letter from his mother, he hurried into the post-office, he ran squarely into him. “See here!” he exclaimed, “I thought—”

Ignoring his thoughts, the little dark man waved a telegram in his face. “From the Big Shot!” he exclaimed. “You know, him that’s paid me. He says for me to quit! He says that! Can you beat it?” At that, he darted from the door and was lost to the boy’s sight forever—or at least for a very, very long time.

“Big Bill’s called him off,” Goggles thought. “That’s sure good news. But I wonder why?” He was to wonder this many times in the days that were to come and then, in the end, was to know the answer.

Who can describe the joy of those days? Seeing the world from an airplane—Salt Lake City, Spokane with her magnificent falls, the green timbered Cascade Mountains, and then Seattle and the Pacific—all this came to them. To play ball with the finest sort of fellows from ranches, saw mills, canning factories, all entertained and amused by the perfectly behaved Irons O—all this was joy indeed. But to know that this joyous excursion was fast driving away clouds of doubt and fear, to know that the big payment on the home ball grounds was fast being collected—this indeed brought deep, satisfying and lasting joy to the weary boys.

One day, after a long drive with his grandfather, Johnny Thompson wandered down to the deserted baseball field to sit in the bleachers in the sun. Meggy spied him from afar, and came tripping down to take a place beside him.

“They’ll be back soon,” Meggy said.

“Yes,” Johnny agreed dreamily. “Their trip has been a success. The ball ground is safe. What’s better still, old Professor George told me this morning that Big Bill Tyson had turned over a new leaf. He’s going to give us a deed for the land as soon as the four thousand dollars is paid.”

“Johnny! That’s wonderful!” Meggy cried. “But Johnny! What made him change?”

“Don’t know,” Johnny replied. “Guess each man in the world has just so much capacity for meanness, same as a barrel will hold only so much water. Bill must have reached his limit.”

“Johnny—” Meggy suddenly changed the subject. “Did they ever find that little Chinaman and the thought-camera?”

“Tao Sing?” Johnny said soberly. “No, not yet I guess. But then,” he added, “you couldn’t very well prove he took that camera and the think-o-graphs. What I figure is that someone heard us talking there in the heart of the pines that day, then came and got ’em that night.”

For a time after that, there was silence. It was Meggy who spoke at last:

“The boys will have to be back soon. The last big game is next Saturday—the final battle for the pennant. Johnny, do you think the ‘Prince’ will pitch?”

“Your thought is as good as mine,” Johnny smiled.

“Isn’t he mysterious!” Meggy thrilled as of old.

“You don’t know the half of it, Meg.” Johnny chuckled. “Know what?” he exploded in a sudden burst of confidence, “That fellow isn’t brown! He never came from India. He’s as white as you or I!”

“Whi—white? How could he be?”

“His face and arms are dyed. I saw him pull up his sock, back there in the laboratories. You just wait and see!”

“Mystery—sweet mystery,” Meggy whispered after a time.

A moment more, and she was off on another tack. “Johnny, do you think those two terrible men will come back to bother the—the ‘Prince’ if he does pitch?”

“If they do—” Johnny stood up. “If they dare, we—we’ll give them plenty! We—”

“Listen!” Meggy sprang to her feet. “An airplane! And see! Over there. A big silver ship! The boys are coming home!” She dragged at Johnny’s arm. They were away like a flash, ready to celebrate the heroes’ return.