“Four of ’em,” Pant chuckled. “Fine chance we’d have had against ’em!”
“They’re waving at us,” said Johnny, after a glance over his shoulder.
“Let ’em wave. Think we’re green, I guess. Expect us to come right back and play things into their hands. Be a car or something along here to-day or to-morrow, sure. Won’t hurt ’em to eat dust awhile. That’s the job they meant to give us, all right.”
Ten miles farther on they stopped for lunch. As Johnny drew the lunch-box from beneath the back seat, he noticed a long, slim leather case lying on the floor of the car. As he picked it up, he was astonished at the weight of it.
“What’s this, Pant?” he asked in a surprised tone.
“That? Why that”—Pant seemed unduly excited—“that’s a little emergency case I always carry with me.”
He put out his hand for it, and having it, at once fastened it to his belt beneath his jacket.
“Emergency case?” thought Johnny. “I wonder what kind.” But as usual he asked no questions.
He was destined to remember that case and the unusual circumstances of the burning car many days later.
The long, dark corridors of the vast automobile and airplane factory were silent. The same old ponderous machines loomed here and there, while smaller ones stood sentry everywhere. At the end of one long alleyway a small light gleamed. Flickering first to the right, then to the left, it cast gigantic shadows against the walls.
Two boys were working over a “mule.” A mule in a factory, as you will remember, is one of those hard-working, snub-nosed little motors that drag trucks about from department to department. The boys were working over the motor of this mule. There came now and then the metallic clink of a wrench, or the tap tap of a hammer, followed by a grunt of satisfaction or disgust.
“There!” Johnny Thompson straightened up and stretched his cramped muscles. “I guess she’s about ready to move.”
The trip across-continent and the return had been accomplished. Aside from the stirring adventure on the desert, they had met with no unusual experiences. The connecting-rods, struck from the steel of mysterious composition, had performed wonderfully well. When measured by instruments that were exact to the ten-thousandth part of an inch, it had been found that they had worn down only thirty-four ten thousandths of an inch, while connecting-rods of the best known commercial steel would have worn one hundred and forty-two ten thousandths of an inch in making the same mileage. Small figures, but in the history of steel they promised to mark an epoch.