Goldfrap John Henry - The Boy Aviators in Nicaragua; or, In League with the Insurgents стр 2.

Yes, but Frank, think, protested Harry, we shall have a chance to see a real skirmish if only they keep at it long enough. Confound it though, he added with an expression of keen regret, the paper says its another comic opera revolution.

I wouldnt be too sure of that, Harry, replied Frank, seriously. When father was north last he told us, if you recollect, that a Central American revolution was not by any means a picnic. In the battle in which the United States of Colombia drove the Venezuelans from their territory, for instance, there were ten thousand dead left on the field.

Frank halted under one of the wire-screened lights screwed into the bulkhead beside which they had been pacing to let the light of the incandescent stream brighter upon his paper. He scanned the page with rapid eye and suddenly looked up with an exclamation that made Harry cry:

Whats the trouble, Frank?

Well, it looks as if on the day we are sailing for Nicaragua that that country is monopolizing the news to the exclusion of the important fact that The Boy Aviators he broke off with a laugh.

Hear! hear, exclaimed Harry, striking a pose.

I say, continued Frank, that it seems as we havent a look in any more. The country for which we are bound has the floor. Listen

Holding the paper high beneath the light, Frank read the following item which under a great wood-type scare-head occupied most of the front page space not given over to the announcement of the revolution.

NICARAGUAN MYSTERIOUSLY STRANGLED.

ROBBERY NOT MOTIVE; BUT ROOM IN HOTEL IS RANSACKED BY HIS SLAYERS.

Almost as big a head as they gave us when we won the prize, laughed Harry. Newspaper head I mean.

I wish youd be serious, Harry, said Frank, though he couldnt help smiling at his brothers high flow of spirits. This is really very interesting. Listen:

The body of a man about forty-five or possibly fifty years old was discovered this afternoon in an upper floor bedroom of the M Hotel on West Fourteenth Street. A brief scrutiny established that the man, who had registered at the hotel a few hours before as Dr. Ramon Moneague of Rivas, Nicaragua, had been strangled to death with exceptional brutality. He had been dead only about an hour when the body was discovered by a chambermaid who found the door unlocked.

Whatever may have been the object of the murder it was not robbery, as, although the dead mans trunk and suit-case had been ransacked and money lay scattered about the room, his watch and valuable diamond pin and rings had not been disturbed.

Whoever strangled Dr. Moneague to death he was no weakling. Both Coroners, Physician Schenck and the detectives who swarmed on the scene are agreed upon this. The marks of the murderers fingers are clearly impressed upon both sides of the dead mans throat.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the case, and one which may lead to the slayers speedy detection, is the fact that his right hand had only two fingers. The police and the coroners physician and the coroner himself came to this conclusion after a brief examination of the marks on the throat. On the left side of the larynx where the murderers right hand must have pressed the breath out of the Nicaraguan there is a hiatus between the mark made by the thumb and first finger of the right hand, indicating clearly to the minds of the authorities that the man who killed Dr. Moneague is minus the middle and index fingers of his right hand.

Every available detective at headquarters and from the different precincts have been put upon the case and every employee of the hotel connected with it even in the remotest way examined closely. No result has developed to date however. The clerk of the hotel admits that he was chatting with a friend most of the morning and after he had assigned Dr. Moneague to a room, and it might have been possible for a stranger to slip in and up the stairs without his noticing it.

There, concluded Frank, throwing the paper into a scupper, hows that for a ringtailed roarer of a sensation?

It seems queer began Harry, but the sudden deafening roar of the Aztecs whistle cut him short. His words were drowned in the racket. It was her farewell blast this time. As the sound died away, echoing in a ringing note on the skyscrapers opposite, the boys felt a sudden trembling beneath their feet.

Far down in the engine-room the force was tuning her up for her long run which would begin in a few minutes now. Already a couple of tugs that had been hanging alongside since noon had wakened up and now made fast lines thrown from the Aztecs lofty counter to their towing bitts. It was their job to pull her stern first out into the stream where the current of the ebb-tide would swing her head to the south.

All clear there forard? it was the bearded muffled-up skipper bellowing through a megaphone from the bridge, where the equally swaddled pilot stood beside him.

Were off at last, Frank old boy, said Harry jubilantly as what seemed a silence compared to the racket of hoisting in the last of the cargo fell over the wharf.

Anything Frank might have had to reply was cut short by a hoarse echo of the skippers hail, it came from the bow.

All go o ne forard, sir.

The officer in charge of casting off the bow lines waved his hand and a quartermaster at the stern wigwagged to the tugs to go as far as they liked.

All go o ne aft, suddenly came another roar from that quarter as the tugs screws began to churn up the water. The hawsers tightened and the Aztec began to glide slowly backward into the stream.

At that moment from far down the wharf, there came a loud hail.

Stop the ship twenty dollars if I make the ship.

A loud yell of derision was the reply from several steerage passengers clustered in the bow of the Aztec.

Hold on, there, suddenly roared the same vigilant old wharfinger who had earlier in the day shown such a respect for discipline that he had shooed the newsboy off the wharf, hold on there.

The boys heard coming up the wharf the staccato rattle of a taxicab running at top speed.

The two sailors in charge of the gangplank were at that moment casting it loose and lowering it to the wharf. They hesitated as they heard the frantic cries of the old wharfinger.

Let go, there. Do you want to carry something away, yelled the second officer, as he saw the gangplank under the impetus of the ship being crushed against the stanchions of the wharf.

The taxicab dashed up abreast of the landward end of the imperilled gangway. Out of it shot a man whom the boys, in the blue-white glare of the arc-lights on the pier, noticed wore a short, black beard cropped Van Dyke fashion, and whose form was enveloped in a heavy fur overcoat with a deep astrachan collar.

Five dollars a piece to you fellows if I make the ship, he shouted to the men holding the gangplank in place. Already the wood was beginning to crumple as the moving ship jammed it against the edge of the stanchion.

The stranger made a wild leap as he spoke, was up the runway in two bounds, it seemed, and clutched the lower rail of the main deck bulwarks just as the two men holding the crackling gangway up, dropped it in fear of the wrath of their superior officer. The man in the fur coat dived down in his pocket and fished out a yellow-backed ten-dollar bill.