Chapter 26

THE LOST PLANS

"Well, there's a chance that the boy didn't translate the code message," George argued. "Anyway, we ought not to worry about that part of the case. Time enough to fret when real trouble comes."

By this time the boys had reached the cabin, after an exhausting journey over the moraine. They found Tommy and Sandy standing just inside the screened doorway, waiting impatiently for their arrival.

"Where did you find this one?" asked Tommy with a grin.

"Did he drop down out of the sky?" Sandy questioned.

Frank stood back for a moment, eyeing the two critically.

"I know you two kids," he said. "You're Tommy and Sandy. I've read about you in the Chicago newspapers, but I never expected to meet you out in Alaska. You seem to be getting plenty to eat, judging from your condition. And that brings back to my mind the condition of my own stomach."

"Boys," Will exclaimed, "this is Frank Disbrow. He started for our cabin in company with Bert Calking, the boy we found on the floor last night. The two were bringing a code despatch to me, and they became separated early yesterday morning."

"A code message, was it?" Tommy asked.

"Yes, a code message," Will answered, "but the bearer of the despatch may, for all we know, have been forced to translate the message for the benefit of the man who robbed him of it."

In a moment Frank was by the side of his chum, gazing down into a white and haggard face. He turned away in a moment with a little shiver of anxiety. His face, too, was pale.

"I'm afraid that's a serious wound!" he said.

"If we only had a surgeon," Sandy suggested.

"I'll go get one," offered Tommy. "I can cut across to Katalla in no time and bring back the best doctor there is in the country."

"I'll go with you," offered Sandy.

"Now, wait a minute, boys!" Will said in a moment. "Let's think this matter over. If you go to Cordova instead of Katalla, you can communicate with Frank's father at Chicago, and so get in touch with Mr. Horton. In this way, we can learn the contents of the code despatch. There surely was some strong reason for sending it, and it seems as if we ought to know its contents."

"That's a good idea, too," exclaimed Tommy. "We'll go to Katalla, and perhaps we can find a boat about ready to sail for Cordova. In that case we ought to get up to the wireless station and back in a couple of days. The distance isn't great, but it's rough traveling."

"I wish we could take Bert with us," suggested Frank.

"Are you thinking of going?" asked Will.

"Yes," was the reply, "if I could take Bert out."

"Bert is in no condition to be taken out," Will answered, "and even if he were it would take so long to make the journey that we could get a surgeon out here before we could land him in a hospital."

"I think," Frank said, "that I ought to go with the boy who is sent out after a surgeon. It is not certain that father will communicate by wireless save to his son. Anyway, I can find out a great deal more by talking with him than could any one else."

"I guess that's right!" Will replied.

"Then I'll go with him!" Tommy shouted. "I want to see what's going on in the world of fashion, anyway!"

"All right," Will said. "Pack up your provisions and get ready to move. Of course you'll need provisions."

"I usually do!" grinned Tommy.

The lads packed up the good supply of sandwiches and started off towards Katalla. It was somewhere near noon when they left the cabin, and they expected to reach the town on the coast before twilight fell, the distance being not more than fourteen miles.

"If you don't get to town when night falls," Will warned, "don't try to camp out in the open, but keep going until you find some human habitation. You remember what happened to Bert!"

"Any one who comes within a half a mile of me in a lonely place," Tommy put in, "will scrape the acquaintance of a bullet."

"And here's another thing," Will advised, "don't travel without a wet cloth or a bunch of green leaves inside your hat. It'll be ninety in the shade before the afternoon is over!"

"Yes, and a hundred in the sun!" declared Sandy.

"That's a nice weather for the Arctic regions, isn't it?" asked Frank.

"We have to take it just as we find it!" replied Will.

The boys started away on a brisk walk, and were accompanied by their chums some distance down the faint trail which led to the coast. At one time in the history of the country one large glacier had completely covered that section. But now, thousands of subordinate canyons and hollows on the mountains were filled with independent masses of ice.

All that section of Alaska, from smoking Wrangell to the Pacific coast, shows volcanic peaks. There are many dead craters, and some which are not so dead! There are still peaks of fire as well as rivers of ice.

After the departure of the two boys, Will and the others devoted considerable attention to the wounded lad. They did their best with the simple means at hand, but never, for an instant, did the boy regain consciousness.

"I don't think we can do anything for him until the surgeon comes," Will said as he threw himself disconsolately into a chair.

"If we only knew whether he was forced to translate the code message for the benefit of the man who robbed him," Sandy suggested, "there wouldn't be so much doubt as to what course we ought to take."

"The code message," Will argued, "may change the whole scheme."

"Yes," Sandy complained, "and we won't know what to do until Frank comes back with the duplicate."

"We won't know what to do then unless Will loosens up!" laughed George.

"Referring, of course," Sandy laughed, "to the prospective story of the mark of the human thumb. Will was about to tell us all about it when we saw the signals sent up by Frank."

"That's a fact," Will replied. "I didn't get any further than the mention of the human thumb, did I?"

"We're waiting to hear the rest of it now!" declared Sandy.

"Well," Will began, "there was a safe robbed in Chicago one night, and two men were accused of the crime. The accused men were in the employ of the manufacturing concern whose safe was entered. They admit that they were in the private office of the firm during the night, but they deny that they opened the safe."

"Of course!" laughed George.

"Now don't form any hasty conclusions," Will went on. "There was a third person in the office that night, according to the stories told by the two men who are accused, but this third person says he wasn't there!"

"Then this third person may be the one who opened the safe."

"That is the theory of the defense," Will explained.

"But what's all this got to do with the mark of a man's right thumb?" asked George.

"I'm coming to that," Will went on. "The three men who were in the office that night--we are supposing for the sake of the argument that there were three men there, and that the man who says he wasn't there is lying about it--were looking over a set of plans for a new machine which the company was arranging to manufacture."

"I've got you now!" laughed Sandy. "The thumb print of the third man was left on the drawings!"

"That's the idea," admitted Will. "The two men say that they were not a little annoyed during the course of the evening because this man, Babcock, persisted in pawing over the plans with dirty hands. They declare that the marks of both thumbs are to be seen on drawings, not in plain dust and grime, but in ink."

"He must have spilled the ink," suggested George.

"That's what they say," Will replied.

"Well, go on!" urged George.

"The statement is made by the two accused men that they worked over the plans until after midnight, and that they left this man Babcock at the office when they went to their homes. Babcock denied that he was in the office at all that night."

"Where are the plans?" asked George.

"In Alaska," answered Will.

"But whereabouts in Alaska?"

Will looked at the boy quizzically for a moment before he answered.

"That's just what we're here to find out!" he finally said.

"But why, when, where, how?" began the boy.

"One at a time!" laughed Will. "On the morning following the robbery, the plans having been rejected by the two men who were accused of robbing the safe, were sent to a mining company having an office at Cordova. So far as the defense is concerned, they have never been seen since that time."

"Were they actually sent?" demanded George.

"Yes, they were sent. The manager of the mining company admits having received them. He says they were turned over to a clerk for examination. From the time they passed into the hands of this clerk, no one had seen them. The clerk says he never had them."

"Do the manager and the clerk know what the defense in the robbery case expects to prove by the papers if they can be secured?" asked George.

"They are not supposed to know," Will answered.

"But you think that they may know, for all that?"

"At the time of leaving Chicago, I had no idea that there would be any trouble at all in securing the plans. In fact, until Bert was found lying on our floor last night, I believed that we should discover the papers as soon as we came upon one Len Garman, a miner who has, against the advice of his friends, been prospecting in this district, and who is known to have at one time occupied this cabin."