“I didn’t aid nor abet nothin’,” shrieked out Hank despairingly, “it was Miles done it all, your honor.”
“Shut up, you fool,” hissed Miles, but it was too late. Hank had let the cat out of the bag with a vengeance. The commitments were made out and in due course of time both Miles and Hank paid the penalty of their rascality in the form of prison sentences. Hank, however, received a light punishment, as it was clear that Miles Sharkey, who had hoped to reap big profits from the Mellville concern, had been the ring leader in the plot.
We have no space here to relate how the Electric Monarch acquitted herself at the big aëro carnival. But suffice it to say that she won every event for which she was entered, and at the conclusion of the meet Ned was approached by the representative of an aëro-craft manufacturing concern with an offer to build ships of the Electric Monarch type, paying him a handsome bonus and a royalty.
On their return to High Towers, the boys found Prof. Chadwick very much better, almost in his usual health, in fact, although Dr. Goodenough laughingly said that he was “booked for a long vacation.”
One day, not long after their return to their home, which, by the way, was now also Ned Nevins’, the gentleman who had tried to make negotiations with Ned at the carnival paid a visit to High Towers to try to close a deal with the young inventor.
Professor Chadwick and Dr. Goodenough were called into consultation, and after a long conference, it was decided that it would be to Ned’s advantage to accept the firm’s offer, more especially as he would, under their terms, retain an interest in the Electric Monarch type of hydroaeroplane.
When these arrangements had been concluded, Professor Chadwick reached into a drawer of his desk, at which he was seated, in order to produce blotting paper to sign the contracts. But as he opened the drawer he suddenly paused, turned deathly pale, and pressed his hand to his forehead.
“What is the matter, are you ill?” cried the doctor in a concerned voice.
The boys, full of anxiety and alarm, repeated the question. But Professor Chadwick waved them aside.
“No, not ill,” he exclaimed in a strange voice. “Wait--wait! It is coming back to me now!”