CHAPTER XIV.

A NOVEL S. O. S.

It was a silent sun-drenched street. Down at the bull ring they were just then watching Estramadura in the act of despatching his second bull, with ahead of them the prospect of Juan Salento playing a return engagement, making the fourth and final fight of the afternoon. No well-regulated bull fight at Nueva Laredo would pretend to be worthy of consideration without four encounters. Estramadura had been followed by his Mexican rival, who had successfully defended his reputation and had performed even more thrillingly than his fellow matador from Spain. Practically all Nueva Laredo was down there making holiday, and so not a soul appeared in sight on the sun-filled Calle Libertad except Captain Cornell.

Reconnoitering from the corner, Bob watched the departing back of his companion, enviously at first. Just his luck, he thought somewhat bitterly, to be left out of the fun. He recalled his words earlier uttered to Frank and Jack to the effect that no adventures ever were going to happen to him again. Well, wasn’t this proving the truth of his prophecy, he argued? Here he was, led up to a possible adventure, and then left standing safely, out of all possibility of becoming involved in it himself.

Then he grinned to himself as he noticed Captain Cornell swinging farther along the silent, deserted street. Probably, after all, nothing was going to happen to him, either. It certainly looked as if that house of mystery, with the midnight blue car at the door, was incapable of producing adventure. Captain Cornell would have his walk for nothing. He’d just swing around the block and come back to where Bob was standing, and have his pains for nothing.

Bob grinned as he shifted weight on the other foot, and sought a new resting place for his shoulder against the ’dobe wall of the little house against which he was leaning. It was a sour grin. After coming this far, after running off with somebody else’s car, Bob wanted something to happen. Nevertheless, nothing was going to happen. Of that now he became convinced. It took Captain Cornell an interminably long time to reach the house of mystery. But now at last he was abreast of it. Bob peering forth contracted his brows in a frown of disappointment. He didn’t want any harm to come to his companion, of course. Just the same, he did have the feeling of having been cheated by fate. There was Captain Cornell sauntering leisurely by the house into which Ramirez had disappeared, glancing casually at the car of midnight blue and pausing a moment to examine it.

Bob paid due tribute to that bit of acting. “Just what a fellow strolling by might be expected to do,” he told himself. “Naturally, when he sees a handsome car like that, all by itself, out here in the ‘Sticks,’ he’ll give it a glance.”

Then two men came out of the house. The figure of one was unfamiliar. The other, however, Bob made sure, despite the distance intervening, was Ramirez. Captain Cornell straightened up at the sound of footsteps behind him.

Bob held his breath. No, they were merely going to climb into the car, it appeared. And the doughty flyer was saying something to them. Doubtless, a word of apology for examining the car. All three stood in a little group. Ramirez and Captain Cornell seemed to be engaged in conversation.

Suddenly, so swiftly that for the moment Bob was left stunned and breathless, the other of the precious pair who was slightly in the rear of the American flyer hit him on the head with some small object. Captain Cornell did not even scream. Instead, he fell forward stricken into the waiting arms of Ramirez, and the latter and his companion started dragging him up the steps.

At that Bob’s wits returned in a measure and, darting away from the corner as if hurled from a bow, he shot forward at arrow-like speed. He uttered no sound, his feet made no noise on the dirt sidewalk that could be heard far down the block. And Ramirez and his companion did not look toward him.

But before he had gone a hundred feet, the two men dragging the insensible form of the American flyer disappeared within the house.

Bob groaned and pulled up short. To dash on and beat at the doors of that sinister house, unarmed and alone, would be nothing less than madness. It was the thing which he felt like doing, but good sense warned against it.

No, he must think of some other way of rescuing his companion. And now, as standing there in the street, the knowledge of what depended upon him alone came to him, he was filled with anxiety lest already he might have attracted unwelcome attention to his presence. He looked around quickly to see if he was observed, but the street was as blank, as deserted, as before Captain Cornell had started strolling down its length.

Yet tragedy had struck in those few brief minutes! Bob shivered, not with physical fear, but in the uncanny feeling that everywhere there were eyes watching his every move. He couldn’t see anybody, yet the feeling persisted. Putting it down to taut nerves, and deciding that the best thing for him to do was to get back around the corner and out of sight Bob turned and ran back to his former vantage point. There he paused for another look down the Calle Libertad. What irony, he thought! Liberty Street!

Seeing no signs of life behind him, he started to retrace his steps toward the commandeered flivver, over the route which he and Captain Cornell had so recently covered. There was only one thing to do, and that was to act as Captain Cornell had directed. Get into that flivver, race madly for the Bridge, abandon the car out of sight of the Bridge police, and then get a taxi to the American side and there telephone Captain Murray at the flying field.

“He’ll know what to do,” Captain Cornell had declared.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” was beating in Bob’s brain. He began to run.

“Senor, Senor,” a voice called. Bob turned his head. It was the Mexican lad with whom he had been talking only a short time before. “Senor,” said the boy, coming to the fence as Bob slowed his pace, “are you not going to inspect my radio?” There was entreaty in his voice. But it was not the lad’s pleading which caused Bob to pale as if smitten. Great Scott, why hadn’t he thought of this before? Why, he could radio the American flying field from this station, and while rescuers were on their way, could keep the house into which his friend had been dragged, under surveillance.

“Look here,” said he, swinging up to the fence, and leaning across with his hands gripping the pickets, “my friend is in trouble. Will you help me?”

“Senor, what do you mean? How can I help?”

“Let me use your radio to call for assistance for him.”

Bob’s eyes bored into the lad. How far dared he trust him?

A shrewd look crossed the Mexican youth’s features. He looked up at Bob, towering above him.

“Is it something about the house of the Japanese?”

“Yes, it is.”

Bob leaped the fence. If the lad gave him permission to use the radio, well and good. If he didn’t, well—Bob’s lips set into a grim line. Now that he saw this way out of his dilemma, he intended to use it whether the youngster objected or not. But, instead of objecting or of showing fear, the boy, on the contrary, was all eagerness to help.

To him this was the call to adventure. He sensed the presence of a mystery, and he was all a-quiver to have a hand in it. Seizing Bob by a sleeve, he turned and sped toward the open door of the little house.

“Come, come, Senor,” he cried. “If my radio can be of service, use it.”

In two steps they were across the threshold and in a spotlessly neat room sparsely furnished, with a shining array of instruments along one side wall, upon which Bob’s eye instantly fell. But before making for the radio table, Bob turned to the boy and asked: “Your mother?”

“She visits her sister. I am alone.”

Ignoring everything else in the room Bob crossed the intervening space in two great strides and flinging himself into the waiting chair began hastily running his eye over the instrument board in front of him. His host was at his shoulder, explaining in quick prideful phrases. Impatiently Bob stopped his flow of words with upraised hand. He was trying to think.

“What street is this?”

“Senor, but—” The boy’s thoughts did not follow so readily. “Oh, the Street of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“Huh. And that street back there”—pointing—“the one where you said was this secret passage into the Japanese house?”

“The Avenue of the Presidents.”

“Good enough,” said Bob. “Thanks.” And he swung the transmitter toward him. “Say, you know the calls of the stations around here?”

“Senor, there are none except my own.”

The boy swelled out his chest like a pouter pigeon, and Bob had hard work cloaking a grin.

“I mean across the Border. What’s the call of the American flying field?”

“Senor, it doesn’t broadcast. I do not know. But is it the flyers you would call? Are you an aviator? Is your companion an aviator? What has happened? You have not told me.”

“Hold your horses,” said Bob, at this flood of questions, lapsing into English. “Thou shalt be told,” he added hastily in the youth’s own speech. “All in good time. Meantime, there is a man to be aided.”

“And do you call a Doctor?”

“Yes,” said Bob, grimly. “A couple of them.”

And at that a plan of procedure which his mind had been busy upon all the time that he had been answering the boy’s questions took shape and, picking up a hammer and a metal bar, he began striking them together in front of the broadcaster.

“Clang, clang,” rang the strokes in the little room, until it sounded like a smithy. The boy stood with open mouth. It was hot, and the perspiration poured down Bob’s face in runlets. But still he hammered on. Once he paused to pick up the headpiece from the table and clap the phones to his ears. Then he resumed operations. For a moment or two he would bang away, then wait, listening; then he would start banging again.

At last the boy could not restrain himself any more. He plucked Bob by a sleeve.

“Senor, what is it?”

“Morse,” flung out Bob. “Keep quiet a minute. Think I’ve got ’em.”

He listened, and a triumphant grin overspread his features. Then, rapidly, with hammer and metal bar, he again resumed telegraphing. Finally, laying his makeshift key aside, he spoke rapidly into the transmitter. “I’ll be waiting,” he said, “speed up.”