Ben Hardy's flying machine; or, Making a record for himself — Edition Insights

arest the engine had dropped. The jar of the engine had either broken a connection of the shaft or it had slipped a bearing. At all events, the shaft had taken a sidelong swing and had struck the floor, reducing a plank to splinters. There it turned, wobbled about and slammed up and down, smashing everything that came in its way.

“Do something, men!” shouted Martin Hardy, head machinist of the auto works.

As he spoke Mr. Hardy started on a run for the rear of the machine shop, but he was anticipated. His son, Ben Hardy, had arrived on the scene just in time to take part in the thrilling event of the moment.

It was after school hours, and Ben always had free run of the plant. His father was an expert in his line and an old and valued employee, and his son, with his cheerful, accommodating ways, was always a welcome visitor with the workmen, with whom he was a general favorite.

Ben was familiar with every turn and corner of the shop. In a flash his eye took in the unusual situation as it presented itself. He guessed out the cause of the commotion intuitively.

“Don’t go, father!” he cried, seizing his father’s arm and detaining him. “I know the way.”

Ben did, indeed, know the way. A sliding iron door separated the engine room from the machine shop. Above it was an open space, and through this the steam was pouring. Ben knew that it was many chances against one that the iron door was caught on the other side. Besides this, the wobbling shaft piece was still threshing about, a formidable barrier, although the power was dying down as the connecting dismantled shafts revolved less rapidly.

In a far corner of the machine shop there was a sashless window frame. Through it Ben had clambered many a time. It was used for ventilation. It opened upon the roof of a small brick oven which was used to bake the sand cores used in the molding flasks.

Ben leaped through the aperture and landed on the roof in a second. Beyond it rolled the iron drum which ground the fine charcoal for the dust bags employed in drying the wet sand in the molding frames. This Ben cleared at a bound.

He heard a timber fall in the machine shop, and there was an ominous quaking of the staunch timbers all over the place as his feet landed on the hard cindered floor of the boiler room.

“Where is Shallock, the engineer, all this time?” murmured Ben, and running alongside of the boiler he discovered that the man was mysteriously missing from his post at a critical moment.

Through the clouds of steam fast escaping from the overheated boiler Ben made out the engineer. He knew Tom Shallock well, and was not astonished at his present condition. He knew the son of the engineer, Dave Shallock, still better. Ben had no reason to feel particularly friendly towards either, but he sought honestly to save the engineer from the loss of his position and disgrace.

Shallock sat huddled back in the big heavy armchair in which he rested between spells of alternate duty to engine and boiler. He was his own fireman, and his chair was directly in front of the furnace door. Ben ran at him and shook him forcibly by the arm, with the urgent words shouted into his ear:

“Wake up, Mr. Shallock, there’s trouble!”

But the engineer simply grunted in an incoherent way, and a half-filled bottle that had slipped from his hand to the floor told the whole miserable story.

Ben darted past the helpless man and ran down two stone steps to the engine pit. It was well that he was a boy who noticed things and usually kept his bearings well in mind, for he had to grope his way. A thrill of gladness ran through his frame as his hand finally rested on the valve wheel. Two turns, and Ben drew back gasping for breath and reeking with perspiration. The whiz of the great driving wheel lessened, the governor slowed down to a stop. Returning to the boiler room, Ben set the escape valve on the boiler and knew that he had saved the day.

Some men came running in from the molding room. One of them went to the iron door and unset its latch and rolled it open, for some one was hammering vigorously on it on the other side. It was Mr. Hardy.

“Rouse him up, quick,” spoke Ben to one of the molders, and with a motion of his foot he kicked the tell-tale liquor flask towards the ash pit.

The man laughed, winked, and with the aid of a comrade dragged the engineer to his feet. By this time Mr. Hardy had reached the spot. Pressing past him, the foreman faced the blinking engineer sternly.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded. “Faugh!” as he caught a whiff of the engineer’s breath—“at the old trick again, eh?”

“Steam overcame me,” stammered Shallock.

The shop foreman turned to Ben.

“Did you do that?” he inquired in his sharp, crisp way, waving his hand towards the engine.

“I shut off the power—yes, sir,” replied Ben.

“What was this man doing?”

Ben hesitated and flushed up. He did not wish to tell on anybody, much less a person who disliked him and would be sure to ascribe any “peaching” to spite.

“You needn’t answer,” suddenly spoke the foreman, his keen eye catching sight of the bottle, and picking it up. “Get out of here, you,” he added disgustedly, giving the engineer a shove towards the door.

“Look here, Mr. Dunn——”

“You get!” reiterated the foreman.

Shallock began to snivel.

“See here, you may be sick yourself some time,” he declared in a maudlin tone.

“Sick!” repeated the foreman contemptuously.

“I’ve run my engine two years——”

“It isn’t your engine any more,” observed the foreman. “One of you men go for Pete Doty,” he continued to the group from the molding room. “He’s out of a job, and he can have this one if he qualifies right. That’s all,” added Dunn, with a peremptory wave of his hand.

The signal was understood promptly by all hands to get back to their respective places. Mr. Hardy moved over to the side of Ben. He placed a hand on his son’s head and his eyes were full of emotion.

“I am proud of you, my son,” he said simply.

“You ain’t the only one,” broke in Dunn, brusquely brushing Mr. Hardy aside and catching Ben’s arm in his iron grip. “You come with me, boy.”

He was a resolute hustling piece of humanity, always doing things forcefully. With a rush he dragged Ben into and through the machine shop.

“Good boy!” spoke a machinist, patting Ben on the shoulder as he passed him.

“You did it grand, lad,” commended a second.

“Three cheers for Ben Hardy!” roared Tim Grogan, a jolly and independent apprentice.

The enthusiastic cheers, given with a will, died away as the foreman and Ben reached the office.

“Where’s Saxton?” demanded Dunn in his bluff off-handed way.

“He went outside the building,” explained the bookkeeper, who had suspended work and looked anxious and flustered. “Say, is the danger over?”

“Oh, maybe a few shingles shaken off the roof. I reckon Saxton went outside to see how many,” retorted the foreman sarcastically. “Here he comes.”

The portly proprietor of the works at that moment came strutting through the front doorway. He was very consequential, now that the peril was past.

“Here Mr. Saxton,” spoke the foreman, “—you know this boy?”

“It’s Hardy’s lad, isn’t it?” replied Jasper Saxton, with a stare at Ben.

“Yes. He’s saved your shop from rattling to pieces, that’s all,” announced the foreman bluntly. “That pet of yours, Tom Shallock, was in liquor and asleep at his post. If Ben here hadn’t got in action there’d have been a long shut-down of the Saxton Automobile Works, I can tell you, and maybe some funerals.”

Saxton looked annoyed and angry at the reference to the engineer, and slightly bored at the determined way in which his foreman kept pushing Ben to the front. All this embarrassed the latter, who tried to wriggle free from the grasp of the foreman.

“Where is Shallock?” asked Mr. Saxton uneasily.

“Fired,” tersely reported the foreman.

“Why—I—that is——” stammered Mr. Saxton.

“You act as if you were afraid of that man, Mr. Saxton,” observed the foreman bluntly. “I’ve sent for Pete Doty. He’ll be here directly. About this boy, now——”

“Yes, yes,” nodded Mr. Saxton hurriedly. “Good boy. First-class father, too. Shake hands. Glad. Thank you.”

“Hold on, Mr. Saxton,” interrupted the foreman, as his employer started to close the incident by entering the office of the works. “What are you going to do for young Hardy?”

“Do—eh. Ah. I see. Come into the office, Hardy.”

Ben obeyed the order. Mr. Saxton looked nettled, and Ben felt dreadfully conscious. The former put his hands in a pocket and drew out a roll of bills. These he promptly transferred to another pocket. He next fished out a dollar, glanced at it, then at Ben, went over to a desk, drew out a money draw and changed the large silver coin.

He pocketed three quarters and handed the other twenty-five cent piece to Ben.

“Oh, no,” dissented Ben, drawing back. “There is no need of that, Mr. Saxton.”

“I insist,” said Mr. Saxton grandly. “You’ve done quite a big thing, Hardy, and you deserve the reward.”

“Thank you,” said Ben.

“Don’t mention it,” responded Jasper Saxton.

The manufacturer turned from Ben with a decided expression of relief on his face. He acted like a man who had got off cheaply.

It was in Ben’s mind to ask Mr. Saxton if he “was to keep all of the twenty-five cents,” but sarcasm was not Ben’s forte. He was too ingenious to cherish resentment against either friend or enemy. Ben simply pocketed the coin. He concealed a smile of comicality. The situation, displaying Jasper Saxton’s usual meanness, rather tickled him.

He was about to turn and leave the office when an extraordinary movement on the part of Saxton enchained his attention. The latter with something between a growl and a yell had described an active jump. He landed up against a parcel bench on which lay a variety of small machine parts, bagged and ready for shipment.

“What! hasn’t that gone yet?” he shouted, his hand closing over a small steel section of some machine weighing about ten pounds.

“Oh, dear me!” exclaimed the bookkeeper, “I was just going to wrap that up and send it when the shop began to shake. I’ll attend to it immediately, sir.”

“Immediately!” howled Saxton, as the bookkeeper fumbled over twine and wrapping paper—“why, it’s special. Do you understand that? The man it is for is expecting it at the depot. He is to leave on the five o’clock train, and it’s—seven minutes of five now!” yelled the manufacturer, glancing at his watch. “Here, wrap it quick, and send the office boy kiting with it fast as you can.”

“Dan has gone for the mail, sir,” said the office man.

“Then hustle with it yourself,” ordered Saxton.

“You forget that I am lame,” submitted the bookkeeper reproachfully.

“It’s got to go,” stormed the manufacturer. “Hold on, there.”

He shouted these last words at Ben just as the latter was about to leave the office.

“Yes, sir!” said Ben inquiringly.

“I’ve paid you that money, you know—you’ll do a little extra job, hey?”

“With pleasure,” answered Ben, with his usual bright accommodating smile.

“That’s a good boy,” said Mr. Saxton. “Hustle, now,” to his bookkeeper.

Ben stood awaiting the package from the nervous fingers of the office employee. He was more amused than disappointed in the narrow view Mr. Saxton took of things in general. The quarter of a dollar and the “extra job,” as he designated it, were characteristic of the tight-fisted manufacturer. His treatment of Ben had been of a piece awarded Mr. Hardy, and Ben was not much surprised.

The Saxton Automobile Works was doing a large and growing business, but it was not his own business ability, as the self-centered manufacturer imagined, that had brought about all this progress and prosperity. Mr. Hardy had designed the Estrelle auto. The Saxton Company never gave him credit for this. Ben’s father was more of an inventor than a business man, and he had never protected himself as a shrewder man might have done.

He was a valuable workman in the Saxton service and received very good pay. Ben, however, had always thought that his father should have been given more credit and money that he really got.

Ben’s mother had often talked to her husband about this. Finally Mr. Hardy had gone to Mr. Saxton and had put the case before him. Nearly all the new and popular points about the Estrelle machine were inventions of Mr. Hardy. Jasper Saxton did not deny this, but he proposed that the patents be taken out in his own name. In an indefinite way he agreed to make some kind of an equitable settlement with his employer as soon as the rush season was over. Mr. Hardy asked for a memorandum of the agreement.

To this Mr. Saxton reluctantly consented after a great deal of delay. Mr. Hardy placed the precious document in his coat pocket. When he went back to work he hung up his coat in its usual place. When he got home that night the written agreement was missing.

An unavailing search was made for the document. Then in a day or two Mr. Hardy went back to his employer and related the circumstances, asking for a new copy of the agreement.

Mr. Saxton put him off on the pretext of being very busy. Then, when urged by Mrs. Hardy and Ben, the head machinist again approached Jasper Saxton, the latter told him that if he would wait till the active selling season was over and he could get at his books, they would go together to a lawyer and have a contract drawn up in due legal form.

Mr. Hardy was easily satisfied and rested content with this promise. His heart was in his work. When Ben intimated that he was dealing with a man with a general reputation for business slipperiness, his father told him that it would come out all right. He was sanguine that Mr. Saxton would do the liberal thing by him as soon as the selling season was over.

“Here you are,” said the bookkeeper, at last completing the packing of the steel fittings.

“Where am I to deliver it?” inquired Ben, accepting the parcel.

“Name’s on the bag,” explained Jasper Saxton hurriedly.

Ben glanced at the bag and read the name: “John R. Davis.”

“All right,” he said. “Will he be at the depot?”

“He is leaving for Blairville on the five o’clock train,” said Jasper Saxton. “You’ll know him when you see him—large, tall man with a full beard, and wears gold eye glasses.”

“I will find him if he’s there,” said Ben confidently.

“Don’t delay, boy,” broke in the manufacturer, “you’ve got barely five minutes.”

Ben placed the parcel under his arm and passed from the office. He made a bee-line for the front door, to be interrupted by a shout.

“I’m in a desperate hurry, Mr. Dunn,” said Ben, recognizing his challenger.

“Never mind—only a moment.” The big foreman got to Ben’s side and gripped his arm. “What did he give you?” he demanded.

“It isn’t fair to tell,” declared Ben, with an evasive smile.

“You’ll tell me,” firmly insisted the foreman.

“Well then—twenty-five.”

“H’m! He gave the night watchman only ten dollars when he saved the shop from burning down. Twenty-five dollars? That’s pretty fair—for Saxton.”

“Don’t delay me, Mr. Dunn,” again pleaded Ben, tugging to get loose.

“Just one more question,” said the foreman.

“Which do you like best—open face or hunting case watch?”

“Eh?” exclaimed Ben, with a start.

“They’ve started a little appreciation list back there. Come, which is it?”

“Decide, or we’ll buy you both,” declared Ben’s determined captor.

“Any boy would like an open faced watch,” said Ben.

“All right, you can go now,” said Dunn, with a chuckle.

Ben darted off on a sprint to make up for lost time. It was four blocks to the depot, and he had about three minutes to make it in. As he darted through the front doorway of the works Ben heard the first starting bell ringing out at the depot.

“I’ve got to hustle to make it!” he declared. “No, it can’t be done. I know what I’ll do—I’ll cut across the triangle.”

Ben figured that this short cut across a dumping yard would land him up to the train before it got going at full speed. His calculations, however, were somewhat at fault. As he neared the tracks the train came down the rails at a pretty good rate of speed.

Ben waited till the baggage car and one passenger coach had passed him. Then, hampered by his bundle, he gave it a fling and landed it on the platform of the second coach.

Poising for a spring and a catch, Ben made a grab for the railing of the last car.

Then he gripped firmly at its outer edge. With a wrench he was pulled from the ground, but clung sturdily, his feet flying out in the air like streamers.

“I’ve made it!” panted Ben Hardy, with a swing landing both feet safely on the platform of the last car of the speeding train.

“Now to find my man,” he added, pausing a moment or two to catch his breath and then entering the coach.

Ben had the name of the man well in mind to whom he was to deliver the machine parts. He also recalled the vague description given of the man by Mr. Saxton. The lad glanced casually at the occupants of the seats on each side of the coach as he proceeded down the aisle of the car.

No tall bearded man with eye glasses showed up, and gaining the front platform of the coach Ben took up the package where it had landed and entered the next car.

“Fare, there,” pronounced the conductor of the train, confronting him.

“Oh, yes,” said Ben with a smile, resting his package on a radiator and producing the quarter Mr. Saxton had given him. “Ought to keep it to frame as a souvenir, I suppose,” added Ben to himself comically, “but it happens to be all the money I’ve got. First stop, conductor—the junction, isn’t it?”

“I’ll go that far. Take fifteen cents out of that,” directed Ben, producing the reward coin.

“It’s twenty-five cents if you don’t have a ticket,” announced the conductor, “ten cents extra, that’s the rule.”

“That’s so,” said Ben with a wry grimace.

“You’d ought to have thought of that,” suggested the conductor.

“I didn’t have much time to think of anything except getting aboard this train double quick,” answered Ben. “You don’t happen to know a gentleman named Mr. Davis, do you, conductor?”

The fare collector shook his head in dissent and proceeded on his round of duty to the rear coach. Ben took up his package again and began to scan the passengers beyond him.

“That twenty-five cent piece ought to have turned out counterfeit to carry out the fun of the thing,” smiled Ben. “There’s a likely prospect—I think it is my man,” added the youth, fixing his eyes upon a person occupying a double seat near the front of the coach.

This individual had a heavy beard, was tall and athletic, wore eye glasses, and was acting excited and nervous. He would glance from his car window and then ahead and back in the coach, and half arose as if to go in search of a train official to ask some important question.

As Ben approached the seats he occupied, he noticed a book of mechanical drawings lying open against the front cushions. Also leaning against the seat were several quite long parcels. The ends of these showed what Ben took to be rods or bars. The man was certainly in the mechanical line, Ben reasoned, and he advanced without hesitation.