The astonishing meeting in the remote wilds of the African forest with a man they instinctively mistrusted bereft the lads of words for an interval.
Frank was the first to find his voice:
"Why, Mr. Barr, what are you doing here?" he exclaimed amazedly.
But if the boys seemed astonished Mr. Barr retained his usual icicle-like attitude. Except that he was dressed in tropical white and wore a huge pith helmet which set above his ill-favored features "like a mushroom over a toad," as Billy described it later, he might have just stepped out of his office on Wall Street, instead of from a wheezy launch on a steaming subequatorial river.
"Good-evening, boys, a little late for dinner, I see, but I daresay you can cook me something. After dinner I want to talk to you. I have come a long way for the purpose so you can guess my business is of importance."
"Of importance? I should say so;" sputtered the irrepressible Billy. "Pray did you come by air-ship, Mr. Barr?"
"No, sir, I came in my yacht the Brigand. She is almost as fast as a liner and as I came direct to this port I didn't take more than half the time occupied by you boys on the voyage."
"You had a good trip?" asked Frank as Mr. Barr sat down and began eating the hastily prepared meal which Ben served him.
"Yes, splendid;" said Mr. Barr, "we had one misfortune though. When we were two days out my captain—a splendid man, boys—slipped on the wet foredeck as the yacht was plowing through a heavy sea and struck on his head on a stanchion."
"I hope he was not badly hurt," said Frank.
"He is dead," said Mr. Barr, calmly stuffing half a sweet potato into his capacious mouth.
The boys gave an exclamation of concern.
"Yes, it was very annoying," commented Mr. Barr.
"You see I have had to trust since to the navigation of my mate, and while he is a careful fellow he is not much good as a navigator, and in addition to that he is a drinking man. I am afraid that he may be ashore now in my absence and indulging his taste for strong drink."
"I should have thought you would have forbidden him shore leave," commented Harry.
"No good, my dear boy, that fellow would swim ashore even if the harbor were swarming with sharks, to gratify his disgusting taste."
"But now," he continued with a change of tone, "to business. You have got the ivory?
"We have," replied Frank.
"Where?"
"We have it here," was the quiet rejoinder.
"What!" an amazed tone.
"What I tell you is true," and Frank-foolishly as he admitted afterward-led the way to the cache in the forest; "it is buried here so as to be safe from marauders."
Mr. Barr seemed lost in thought for a few minutes then he suggested a return to the camp-fire. Once there he drew out a paper from his pocket-book.
"Many things have happened since you left New York, boys," he said quietly, through a feverish gleam in his deep, crafty eyes belied his outward calm.
"This paper," he continued, holding it out, "is signed by Mr. Beasley, it resigns to me all claim in the ivory and I am here to take it."'
"Let me look at that paper."
It was Lathrop who spoke.
The boy's cheeks were angrily flushed and his eyes bad a dangerous flash.
"That is not my father's signature!"
"What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I say—that this writing which purports to be my father's was never penned by him."
"You are making a rash assertion."
"I am fully prepared to prove it when we get back to New York."
"And in the meantime the Boy Aviators retain their claim on the ivory that we fought so hard to get," put in Frank.
Old Mr. Barr turned on him with a wolfish fury.
Indeed in his rage he resembled nothing so much as a long, lean, timber wolf deprived of his expected prey.
"We will see all about that!" he raged. "There is a law in Fort Assini though there may not be here. I have this paper here which in the eyes of the law is a legal transfer to me of Beasley's claim on the ivory. It is mine now and I mean to have it."
Frank's heart sank. He did not know much about law and it looked as if old man Barr held the upper hand.
"But that is not my father's signature or writing," cried Lathrop.
"That will be a matter for the American courts to decide," was the frigid reply.
"I shall lay the whole matter before M. Desplaines—the consular agent of our government," cried Frank at last.
"It is too late to do that," retorted Mr. Barr, "anticipating that there would be some trouble I have already engaged a lawyer and M. Desplaines will keep his hands off this affair."
"Why did you anticipate trouble?" shot out Frank, "was it because you knew that signature was false?"
For a fragment of a second the old man's pale face grew paler—or rather turned a sickly yellow.
"Bah," he said the next minute, "this is a business matter and not one for boys to enter into. I will see that you are well paid for your part of the work. If you like I will write you a check now."
He drew out an ever-ready check-book and fountain pen.
"I would rather have fair play than money," was Frank's stinging retort.
"And so say we all of us," chorused Harry, Billy and Lathrop.
Mr. Barr was plainly irritated. In a snappish tone he said at length:
"If you can show me where I am to sleep I think I will go to bed. I am very tired. We will discuss this matter further to-morrow."
Ben Stubbs, with a very ill grace, made up a bed for the New Yorker at some distance from the others.
"I'd like to stuff it full of barb-wire," he confided to Frank afterward.
As for Sikaso, he eyed old Mr. Barr from time to time, and then eyed his axe in a way that made it very plain that the two were connected in his mind in a manner that would have made it very uncomfortable for the old financier.
But if Mr. Barr felt the atmosphere of repugnance to him that pervaded the camp he did not show it.
He rolled up in his blanket as if he had been used to a rough bed all his life and was soon apparently wrapped in deep sleep. The boys, tired out as they were and not a little downcast at the turn events had taken, soon followed him. An hour later the River Camp was as silent as a graveyard with the exception of Ben Stubbs' mighty snores.
It was then that old Mr. Barr, who had seemed so sound asleep, cautiously raised his head from his blankets and peered about him.
After a few minutes of this he slipped into the few clothes he had discarded when he went to bed and tiptoed past the sleeping adventurers down to the river bank and the launch.
There was an evil smile on his face as he went that to those who knew Luther Barr would have said as plain as print "Some mischief is in the wind."
* * * * * * *
When the boys awoke the next morning the sun was streaming down on their sleeping place with a strength that showed that it had been up some time. With a start Frank sat up and looked about him.
What was the matter with him? His eyes felt heavy and his throat was parched. In his ears, too, there was a wild ringing sound and his limbs felt stiff and inert. Shouting to the others, who were gazing about them in a bewildered sort of way, Frank described his symptoms.
They all felt as badly as he did.
"I feel like I'd been boiled in the ship's boiler along with the cook's dish-rags," announced Ben Stubbs.
Even old Sikaso shook his head mournfully and said that he didn't feel at all well.
"I wonder how old man Barr feels?" said the irreverent Billy rubbing his red-rimmed eyes.
The next minute there was a shout of astonishment from them all.
Mr. Barr's blankets were empty and he was nowhere to be seen about the camp!
Forgetting their painful feelings in the shock of this discovery the boys hastened to the river bank to see if by any chance he was down at the steam launch.
The launch, too, was missing!
With a cry of rage Ben Stubbs shook his fist down the river.
"I see it all, boys," he exclaimed. "The old scallywag drugged us—doped us—that's why we feel so badly and—"
"Howling bob-cats! I'll bet he's stolen a march on us and got away with the ivory,"—this was Billy.
There was a rush for the spot in which the precious stuff had been cached.
A few broken tusks lay there.
But of the great hoard that the Boy Aviators had worked so faithfully to salvage not a vestige remained.
"Bilked, by the great hornspoon!" yelled Ben.
"But not beaten yet," was Frank's calm rejoinder. "Come on, boys, we've got to be stirring. Barr's got a long start of us, but we'll get him yet. Ben, you and Sikaso will take one of the Arabs' canoes—the ones they left at the river bank when they started after us—Harry, Billy, Lathrop and I will fly to the coast in the Golden Eagle II. We've just enough gasoline."
"All right, sir," said Ben, touching his forelock with an old sailor trick—a token of respect involuntarily forced from him by Frank's manly promptitude in taking the bull by the horns, "We're with you to the last ditch, the top of the main-top gallant, the bottom of the deep-blue sea, or the ends of the earth."
"That goes for us too, Frank," supplemented Billy.
"And count me in on that," cried Lathrop.
As for Harry, he gripped his brother's hand and the boys at once set about their preparations to outwit their treacherous enemy. In the midst of their bustle an interruption as utterly unexpected as it was for a moment alarming occurred.
The bushes parted and from them there stepped no less a person than Muley-Hassan.
He was followed a minute later by half-a-dozen fatigued-looking followers.
The boys' hands flew to their revolvers and Ben grabbed up a rifle. Sikaso's ever-ready axe was in the air in a second.
But the Arab put up his hand.
"I have not come to fight but to bargain," he said.
"You have beaten me at every point of the game. Diego is dead—"
"Dead," cried Frank.
"He was bitten by an adder as we were vainly searching for the ivory," said the Arab sadly, "he died almost instantly."
Of course the boys felt no sorrow for the death of the treacherous scamp and did not pretend to. They had no great reason to love Muley-Hassan either, so Frank said coldly:
"What is it you want?"
"Permission to take my canoes and leave this cursed country forever."
Frank waved toward the river.
"Your canoes are where you left them the night you made the cowardly attack on our camp. You can have them all but one. That one we need."
"Alas," sighed the Arab, "I do not need as many as I did when I came. Of all my followers these alone remain."
He pointed to the scant six, skinny, fever-stricken wretches who stood behind him.
"Good-by," said the stately Arab, holding out his hand in farewell, "we shall never meet again, but I shall ever remember that you dealt by me far better than I would have dealt by you."
"At all events you have one good deed to look back to in your life," exclaimed the impulsive Billy.
The Arab looked at him questioningly.
"You saved George Desmond's life," said the reporter shortly.
"That was many years ago," said the Arab with a start of recognition at the name of the dead explorer, "I have changed since."
With a wave of the hand he strode to the river's edge and half-an-hour later he and the remnant of his band were out of sight round a bend in the upper river.
At almost the same instant the boys soared aloft in the Golden Eagle II, and the chase for the ivory was on.
Below the flying aeroplane Ben Stubbs and old Sikaso—the latter as silent as ever—paddled down the river in silence.
It was a time for deeds, not talk.
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