As the two chums glided away toward the more thickly settled part of South Chicago, they could look back and see Brady assisting the disgruntled Pete to an erect position. The barrel had been smashed, and Brady was scraping the mud off Pete with one of the staves.
"How you like dot, hey?" gloried Carl, standing up in the automobile and shaking his fist. "You vill know pedder der next time dan to make some foolishness mit Modor Matt und his bard. Yah, yah, yah!"
Carl wanted to be as tantalizing as he could, but the automobile was getting too far away. Sinking down in the seat beside Matt, the Dutch boy chuckled blithely.
"Dis has peen a pooty fine leedle trip, Matt," he observed, "und has peen full oop mit oxcidement oof a nofel kindt, yah, so helup me. Dot's vat I like. I'll bed my life dose fellers t'ink dey vas fell on mit a brick house. Vat's der madder mit Prady, anyvays?"
"There's something queer about that air-ship affair," answered Matt, thoughtfully. "The two men who rode past us in that buggy said the pair in the car were thieves, but Brady didn't know anything about the Hawk's being stolen. Brady said, too, that there ought to have been three men in the car instead of two. The one who was missing may have been the driver. That would account for the poor work the other two were making with the engine."
"Ve can make some guesses," said Carl, shaking his head, "aber ve don'd know nodding. Dot roll oof bapers don'd pelong to Prady. Vell, oof dot's der gase, whose bapers vas dey?"
"I've been thinking of that, and I believe I'll talk with Mr. Harkrider before I do anything more. He'll tell us just what to do, and I'm sure his advice will be good. You see, Carl, we're not entitled to the papers any more than Brady is, when you come to figure the thing down to a fine point. If the fellow who lost them out of the car turned up and claimed them, we'd have to give them to him."
Mr. Harkrider was superintendent for the Lestrange Manufacturing Company, the Eastern representatives of the Jarrot Automobile Company of St. Louis. Following the Borden cup race, in Kansas, Matt had entered the services of the Jarrot people, and they had sent him to Chicago to take part in the five-day race at the Coliseum. While waiting for the race to start, Matt and Carl had had the use of any machine they wanted in the Lestrange garage, so they had put in their time riding around the city and out into the suburbs. That is how they happened to be on the road beyond South Chicago at the time the Hawk was running away with the two aeronauts.