Joe Strong and his wings of steel or, A young acrobat in the clouds
wonder if he could have gotten this ready on purpose for me?” But the
lad soon decided against that idea.
It was evident that without other tools Joe could not break his way
through the door. There remained only the window. “Unless I can chop
my way through a plaster wall,” Joe reasoned. “They’d hardly have
steel-lined walls.”
It was easy enough to knock off some of the plaster, making a hole
that disclosed the lath. But when Joe broke some of these off he
discovered that the walls were like the door--they had an inner sheet
of steel.
“A regular safety-deposit vault,” said the youth. “I’ve got to try
the window.”
He looked about for something of which to make a ladder. Somehow he
felt strangely ill and dizzy. There was a queer odor in the air. It
had been slowly increasing, and was now very perceptible.
“It smelled--smelled just that way when I was in the hospital,” the
boy remarked, half aloud. “It’s--it’s--Why, it’s ether!” he cried.
“He’s forcing ether in here somehow to make me insensible. If I can
find out how it’s coming in I can stop it.”
But Joe could not find the place where the volatile odor entered. And
every moment he felt weaker. He felt that his senses were leaving
him. Desperately he tried to put together some of the pieces of the
machinery so that he could reach the window. If he could open that
and let in fresh air, even though he could not get out, he might keep
himself from becoming senseless.
But before he could complete the improvised ladder Joe fell over
insensible. And there he lay on the floor, in the midst of the queer
jumble of machinery, the prisoner of a madman who seemed to have
vanished.
* * * * *
Supper time was approaching. Helen was waiting for Joe to come back,
for he and she generally sat at table together, with Benny Turton and
Bill Watson.
“Has Joe come back yet?” asked Helen of Benny.
“I didn’t know he’d gone away,” was the reply.
“Yes, he went off with a Mr. Clark. I was in the dressing tent when
this stranger came in and introduced himself to Joe. I could not help
hearing what was said. It was about Joe’s flying machine. Mr. Clark
said he had a new kind of storage battery he wanted to show Joe, and
Joe went off to his house with him.”
“Oh, well, he’ll be back soon,” said Benny. “There’s half an hour
before supper will be served.”
But Helen, somehow or other, was nervous. She “felt as though
something were going to happen,” she said afterward.
“I don’t see what keeps Joe,” she remarked to Bill Watson.
“Where did he go?” he asked.
“Off with a Mr. Clark, some sort of an inventor.”
“Not old Sam Clark; was it?” cried the clown in such evident
excitement that Helen said:
“Why, yes, I believe that was his name,” and she detailed what she
had heard.
“Well, if it’s old Sam Clark, then Joe has gone off with a dangerous
crank,” said the clown. “I heard of him when we played here once
before. He’s an old resident of this place and has lots of money, but
he’s crazy. Everybody here knows he’s insane. He’s been in the asylum
more than once.”
“Oh, what can we do?” cried Helen, in distress.
“We’ve got to go to Joe’s rescue, that’s all!” declared Bill with
emphasis. “Of course nothing may have happened, and Clark may only
think he can interest Joe in some crazy invention. But it’s best to
be on the safe side. We’ll find out where they went.”
“Are you going alone?” asked Helen, as the clown started off.
“No, I’ll take Benny Turton with me. No use making too much
excitement over the affair, for, after all, it may amount to nothing.”
“Couldn’t I come with you?” pleaded Helen eagerly.
Bill thought for a moment.
“Come on!” he said. “We’ll go to Joe’s rescue.”
CHAPTER XX
SUSPICIONS
Bill Watson was quite familiar with the plan of the city in which the
circus was then playing. He had been there before with the show, and
had once spent a week there, having been taken ill, and unable to go
on. So this accounted for his knowledge of the eccentric Mr. Clark.
“What sort of man is he?” asked Benny, as, with Helen, he hurried on
with the fun-maker.
“Well, I never heard that he was really dangerous,” answered Bill.
“But he may be, for all that.”
An exclamation came from Helen--a cry of alarm.
“Oh, that doesn’t go to show that he’d harm Joe,” said Bill quickly,
realizing that he had made a mistake. “Besides, Joe is quick and
clever, and he’s got powerful fists. I guess he’d leave Clark at the
first suspicious sign. If trouble did start Joe could take care of
himself.”
“Of course!” confirmed Benny, for he saw Bill winking at him behind
Helen’s back, and the human fish guessed this was what Bill wanted
him to do.
“Well, I hope he’s all right,” observed the girl, with a sigh. “Let’s
hurry on. Where are we going, Bill?”
“First to the old Clark mansion. It’s most likely that he’d get Joe
to go with him there, if anywhere.”
“Yes, I think I heard them say something about going to Mr. Clark’s
house,” averred Helen. She was nervous and excited, but tried not to
show it as they hastened on.
“Is it far away?” asked Ben.
“It’s quite a way out,” Bill said. “I guess we’d better take a
carriage--a closed one if we can get it.”
He had a double object in this. One was to gain time, and the other
was to have a conveyance at hand in case anything had happened to
Joe. They found a hack at the depot and were soon speeding on toward
the outskirts of the city. The driver looked rather queerly at Bill
when he gave their destination.
“’Tisn’t very often I get an order to go out there,” he said. “Folks
don’t generally call on that crank.”
“Well, we have a little business with him,” Bill answered,
noncommittally.
Bidding the driver of the hack to wait for them, Bill, Helen and
Benny went up the weed-lined front path. A knock on the door brought
no answer, and a pull at the bell handle disclosed the fact that it
was not connected with anything that would produce a ring.
“I guess we’ve got to break our way in if we can’t find an open
window,” Bill remarked. “It’s going contrary to law to break into a
man’s house, but I guess the circumstances justify us in this case.”
“Here’s a window with some panes of glass out,” called Benny, who had
gone around to the side of the house.
“Can you reach in and turn the catch?” the clown asked.
“Yes,” answered Benny. A moment later he had leaped into the house,
from which came no sound. And no sooner had Benny entered than he
called out:
“Hurry, Bill! There’s something queer been going on here. I can smell
ether or chloroform. Come on.”
Bill scrambled in after the human fish. Helen called to them in
alarm to know what had happened, but the clown told her to stay
outside--that they would soon be back.
Calling Joe’s name, Bill and Benny rushed through the rooms on the
lower floor. There was no answer to their hails, and no one appeared
to question their right to enter.
“Up-stairs!” cried Bill. “He must be there if he isn’t down in the
cellar--that is, if he’s here at all.”
“I think he is,” Benny said.
Up the stairs, partly chopped away, they hastened, using such care as
was necessary, and their first sight was of a closed door with a key
in the lock.
“The smell is stronger here,” Benny said. “I believe this is where he
is.”
It was the work of but a moment to turn the key and open the door,
and there the rescuers, somewhat overpowered by the strong and
sickening odor, saw Joe lying in a heap on the floor.
“Out with him! Quick! To the fresh air!” cried Bill. He and Benny
carried the unconscious lad down a rear stairway which was in better
shape than the front one. They opened the front door, which was
fastened with a spring lock, and lay Joe down on the front porch.
“Is he--is he----” began Helen, but she could not frame the sentence.
“He’s breathing,” said Bill. “I guess he’ll come around all right.
But I can’t understand what happened.”
“Maybe we’d better get him to a doctor,” suggested Benny.
“Yes, I guess so,” agreed Bill. “No, wait--he’s opening his eyes. If
we had some water it might revive him.”
“I’ll see if I can find any!” Helen cried, eager to help.
She darted into the house and made her way to the kitchen, whence she
presently emerged with a pitcher of water she had drawn from the sink
faucet.
Some of this sprinkled on Joe’s face, and a little given him to
drink, helped wonderfully in the work of revivification the fresh air
had commenced. The lad managed to rise to a sitting position, but
there was a dazed look on his face.
“How did I get here?” he asked slowly. “How did you get here?”
“We don’t know much, except that we came to get you,” said Bill. “Are
you hurt? Do you think you’re coming around all right, or shall we
get a doctor?”
“I--I guess I’m all right,” Joe answered. “I’m not hurt, that’s sure.
I was just overcome by some gas or ether.”
He drank some more of the water and then, at Bill’s suggestion, he
walked around a bit to start his blood to circulating. In a little
while some color came into the boy’s pale cheeks, and in a few
minutes he declared he felt almost like himself again.
“But it was a queer experience,” he declared. “I can’t understand it
at all. Did you see anything of that madman?”
“Clark, you mean?” asked Bill. “No, he seems to have run away. He is
just what you say--a madman.”
“A dangerous lunatic,” agreed Joe. “He ought to be in an asylum. The
idea of thinking I stole his flying machine invention!”
“Let’s get back to the show,” proposed Bill. “You can tell us the
story on the way back in the carriage. Are you sure you don’t need a
doctor?”
“Sure!” Joe answered, his strength of voice showing that he was
rapidly improving.
The hack driver looked closely at his fares as he drove them back,
but they did not satisfy his curiosity, for they did not want the
story to be made public--at least not at present.
Joe told the story from the beginning. Helen sat near him in the
carriage, and he reached out occasionally and touched her hand.
“And when I felt myself keeling over in a sort of faint,” Joe
concluded, “I didn’t know what to make of it. The overpowering
odor, whatever it was, seemed to come from some hidden pipe. It’s a
mystery.”
“We’ll have it looked into by the proper authorities,” said Bill. “It
isn’t safe to allow that lunatic at large.”
“How did you know where I was?” Joe asked.
“It was Helen,” said Benny; and when he told how the rescue had been
brought about Joe indicated part of his thanks to the girl by an
eloquent look and a warm pressure on her hand.
“It was just by chance that I overheard you say where you were
going,” put in Helen.
“But what gets me,” said Joe, “is why he had that queer room in his
house--a room like a prison vault.”
They learned the reason for that a little later, when Bill laid the
facts before the police authorities. Then the whole story was told,
but no public complaint was made against the lunatic, as Joe and the
other circus folk had no time to stay to press the charge.
But the police said they would have the madman taken into custody
and sent to an asylum as soon as they could find him, though for the
present he seemed to have disappeared.
The story of the unfortunate Mr. Clark was this: He was a wealthy
man, as he said, and he had invented several machines. But he lost
his reason, and at that time his family, disliking to send him to an
institution, had had a strong room fitted up in the old homestead.