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Updated: June 11, 2025
A voice Smitty's or Mike's or Elmer's answering its call. Then, echoing through the grey, vaulted spaces of the big garage: "Nick! Oh, Ni-ick!" From the other side of the great cement-floored enclosure, or in muffled tones from beneath a car: "Whatcha want?" "Dame on the wire." "I ain't in." The obliging voice again, dutifully repeating the message: "He ain't in.... Well, it's hard to say.
Elmer's rifle made quick reply, but, to the boy's surprise, Buck failed to fire in return. The scout had disappeared from his companion's side. Before Elmer could call out he heard a rush at the end of the barricade, and then two explosions almost together and not ten feet away. He could not describe the sound that followed, but he knew that it meant the convulsions of human beings in agony.
To-day the hot little room was empty except for Nick, shaving before the cracked mirror on the wall, and old Elmer, reading a scrap of yesterday's newspaper as he lounged his noon hour away. Old Elmer was thirty-seven, and Nicky regarded him as an octogenarian. Also, old Elmer's conversation bored Nick to the point of almost sullen resentment. Old Elmer was a family man.
Not that Grossmann had directly attacked that treatise; he had made no kind of reference to it in his own book; but his irrefutable statements had been quoted by every reviewer of "Eugenics" who chanced to have come across the English translation of "Heredity and Human Development," to the confounding of Elmer's somewhat too optimistic prophecies concerning the possibility of breeding a race that should approximate to a physical and intellectual perfection.
He had long ago received official authority from Boy Scout Headquarters to act as a deputy or assistant scout master, whenever the regular overseer, young Mr. Roderic Garrabrant, could not be present. Elmer filled the position in such a clever fashion that no one ever questioned his ability to play the part of guide. Then there was Mark Anthony Cummings, who was looked upon as Elmer's chum.
From the way in which he worked, and the care with which he conserved every smallest particle of ice, Elmer's motto seemed to be: "Haste not, waste not." But he did not appear to derive any great satisfaction from his task, let alone joy. In fact, Elmer seemed to be a joyless individual; one who habitually looked forward to the worst.
This was to be removed last. As the boys meant to stay close by their valuable outfit, they planned to load Elmer's caravan early the next morning and to see it start on its trying and dangerous trip. Then they intended to remove the hydrogen cask to the corral and take up their own abode in the same place.
"If," thought Elmer, "Holden is Armstrong's brother, he has a right to stay; if not, he has at least saved Faith's life, as she says herself, and he knows after all, a 'hawk from a hand-saw. Young Holden, too, is a sensible fellow, and I think I may trust them." In some such way thronged the thoughts through Elmer's mind.
No, not at them; only at one of them the fair-haired girl, almost a woman, who sat at the head of the table, on Mr. Elmer's right hand, and on whose face the light shone full and strong. Then a cry rang through the hall, a cry almost of agony, and it was "Margaret! Margaret! my wife Margaret! Am I dreaming, or can the dead come to life?" As the startled guests looked towards the door Mr.
A volley of shots rang out below, but they were too late. The balloon had saved Elmer's life, and even before the lad had made his way up the swaying ladder into the cabin it was a thousand feet in the air. It seemed too wonderful to be true. But words were proof enough that Ned Napier and Alan Hope had found a new use for dirigible balloons.
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