Chapter 7

A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

"Wake up, Bob, you old sleepyhead."

Bob stirred under vigorous shaking, opened his eyes sleepily, and saw Frank bending over him. His chum had thrown a bathrobe over his pajamas. The door between their connecting rooms stood open. The early morning sunlight of a bright June day streamed in the open windows.

"Whazzamatter?" grunted Bob, and closing his eyes he turned over and prepared to snatch an extra forty winks. But Frank shook him again.

"Come on," said he. "Stir your stumps. We can slip out before anybody else awakes, grab something to eat in the pantry, and go down to the shed and tinker on the plane. Come on, Bob, we can get in a couple of hours work before going to church."

Bob was wide awake by now, and pleased at the prospect held out by his chum. Tumbling out of bed, he headed for the shower in the bathroom which the boys used in common, but Frank restrained him.

"Make too much noise," said Frank. "Anyhow, we can take a plunge down at the beach before going to the shed. Come on, get into some old duds and let's hurry."

The boys were dressed in short order. In the pantry, to which they tiptoed, they found cold tongue and ham, bread and butter, with which they hurriedly made several sandwiches apiece. It was not much of a breakfast, but their appetites were those of youth and they enjoyed it. Letting themselves out of the back door of the sleeping house, they started on a trot for the little private beach, a good half mile away. The last few yards were made with the boys shedding garments as they ran. Then with a shout they plunged naked into the rollers coming in from the open Atlantic.

It was great sport. For twenty minutes they crashed through breakers, wrestled, ducked each other, shrieked aloud secure in the knowledge there was nobody within hearing distance, and in general had a glorious time of it. At the end of that period they rubbed down briskly with rough towels until their bodies were in a healthy glow, then dressed and set out for the airplane shed.

This was located some distance back from the beach where a long, level stretch of sandy soil, unbroken by tree or bush, made an ideal landing field. The "shed," as the boys termed it, was, in reality, a substantial structure of corrugated iron, well-anchored to resist the severe Atlantic coastal storms. It stood to one side of the route followed by the boys in going from the house to the beach, with the rear to them, and was midway between the two points and concealed from the house by a clump of trees.

When the matter of buying a plane was up for discussion more than a year before, after the boys and Jack Hampton, their absent chum, as well as Mr. Temple--himself an enthusiast about flying--all had become licensed pilots by taking a course at the Mineola flying fields, the question had been whether to buy a hydroplane.

That question finally had been solved by the purchase of a light, all-metal plane capable of carrying two passengers besides the pilot and able to alight on water and land. It was not a stock model but was built after a special design. All three boys had flown it, as well as Mr. Temple, and none had ever had an accident. Equipped with a radiophone head set, to which had been added recently a detector designed by Bob and Frank to increase the receiving radius, this plane was the boys' especial pride.

What was their dismay, therefore, when they rounded the shed from the rear and found the great doors which they had left padlocked several days before standing open and the interior empty. For several moments they stood as if rooted to the ground, staring in stupefaction. Then Bob groaned, and Frank echoed him.

"Gone."

"Gone."

Frank was the first to recover from his dismay and ran forward to look at the broken padlock, dangling from one leaf of the great folding doors. "Cut through with a file," he called excitedly to his chum. "And this set of big bar locks above and below the padlock were cut the same way."

"I always said we should have had one of those rolling iron screens, fitting solidly into the ends of the side walls and rolling up into the roof," groaned Bob, passing on into the interior. "But what's the use locking the barn after the horse is stolen." Disconsolately he moved around the interior of the shed, as if expecting to find concealed somewhere the airplane which he could not yet bring himself to believe had been stolen.

Suddenly he let out a whoop. "Frank, look at this."

"Great Scott, an Iron Cross," cried Frank, seizing the object held out. A German Iron Cross it was. "And here you can see how this ribbon frayed through and parted from the clasp," added Frank.

"Turn it over," said Bob. "If it's a real one given by the Kaiser it will have the recipient's name on it."

Sure enough, there it was:

"Ober-Lieutenant Frederik von Arnheim."

And beneath was inscribed:

"Pour le merite."

"Great Scott, Bob," said Frank. "What do you make of this?"

"Some Hun officer stole our airplane," said Bob. "That's what I make of it."

"But the war is over," protested Frank.

"Maybe it is," said Bob darkly. "But if that bird doesn't fly back with our airplane I'll make war on Germany myself."

Despite his gloom, Frank grinned. He slapped big Bob on the back. "Come on, old boy," he said. "No use hanging around here. We may as well go back to the house and report the latest mystery."

"I wonder," said Bob, as they set out, "whether there is any connection between the two--between this theft of our airplane and that stuff yesterday."

It was Mr. Temple who was able to provide an answer to that question. The boys found him up and dressed when they reached home, and himself considerably excited over a telephone call from New York City. He, too, was dismayed when told of the theft of the airplane. But when the boys showed him the German Iron Cross he hit the desk before him a resounding blow with his fist. Their conversation took place in the library.

"That fits right into the puzzle," said he. "Boys, while you were out of the house I had a long distance telephone call from New York City. The man who called said he was a chauffeur who had driven two men down here yesterday, that he thought they were on legitimate business, but that when Bob tried to stop them he saw they were bad ones, as he put it. Later, when they made him drive them over to the radiophone station and he heard Tom rout them with his pistol shots, he said he drove off as they ran for his car and left them. He inquired in the village and learned my name, and so called me up to clear himself in case I intended starting a pursuit.

"And he said," added Mr. Temple, leaning forward and speaking impressively, "that he was pretty certain one man was a Greaser and the other a Hun. Those were his own words. Of course, he meant one was a Mexican and the other a German."

"So when this chauffeur abandoned them they stole our airplane to get away," cried Frank excitedly.

"Exactly."

"Maybe," said Bob, "I copped every cent they had in pulling that Mexican's coat off his back, and they were without carfare back to the city."

"Oh, I suppose the German had money," said his father. "The German probably was an aviator. And they stole the airplane in order to escape from here quickly before we could get in pursuit of them. I imagine they'll land in some deserted spot--plenty of them in the sandy reaches along the New Jersey coast, for instance--make their way to a railroad, after abandoning the plane, and go----"

"To the Southwest," said Frank, emphatically, interrupting Mr. Temple.

"What do you mean?" asked Bob.

"Weren't there a bunch of German spies in Mexico, stirring things up there against us, during the war? Well, I'll bet there are some of the same breed there now making all this trouble for Mr. Hampton," said Frank.

"A good idea," said Mr. Temple, approvingly. "Well, boys, there will be no church for us today. This matter has got to be attended to."