A little later, sitting in the plain but convenient office opposite the great man he had come to see, Lawrence was impressed by the power and force in the steady eyes that looked so straight into his own, and in the kind mouth and forceful broad brow saw a promise of clean dealing and deep wisdom.

“I cannot get over my surprise at your youth,” said Mr. Ridgeway. “It seems a foolish procedure to give such a great enterprise into the hands of a boy like you. Are you sure,” he added, laughing, “that you have not a father or brother to whom I should be talking?”

“No, sir; I am the one you sent for,” replied Lawrence. “I have been fooling with airplanes and balloons ever since I graduated from kites.”

“How old are you?” asked Mr. Ridgeway.

“I don’t know, sir,” said Lawrence, a flush mounting to his brow. “I am a waif. I do not know my own name, or my age. I was taken from one of the worst parts of the city to the Home where I was partly brought up. I have no hope of ever finding anyone belonging to me.”

“Have you no clues?” asked Mr. Ridgeway.

“I fear not, sir,” he replied. “At least they are too slight to be considered. I speak of this because I think you ought to know that whatever becomes of me, there is no one to rejoice and no one to grieve.”

“I am sorry,” said Mr. Ridgeway simply. “Yet for my purpose, that simplifies everything. You will embark on a desperate enterprise if you attempt what I have in mind for you to do. And I cannot tell you, indeed I cannot guess the outcome. It depends largely on your own daring, caution and ability. Your youth is your best safeguard because no one would ever believe you to be embarked on anything like this.”

“I am willing to take the risks,” said Lawrence simply.

“Then you may try it,” decided the great man. “I believe there were two other men coming to see me this morning on this same errand. Step into my private office until I see them. Perhaps one or both will do to work in as mechanicians.”

Still in the dark as to what Mr. Ridgeway wanted him to undertake, Lawrence was about to go into the other room when a clerk rapped on the outer door and entered without waiting for a summons. His face was pale, and his eyes rolled wildly. “M-m-m-ister Ridgeway, sir,” he stuttered, “those two gentlemen who were waiting outside for you, they are both asleep.”

“Both what?” asked Mr. Ridgeway sharply.

“Both asleep, and we can’t wake either of them.”

“Drugged!” exclaimed Mr. Ridgeway, glancing at Lawrence. “Come on, you may as well see this thing out before you decide to cast your fortune in such dangerous places.” He rushed to the door, followed by Lawrence and the agitated clerk.

On a broad settee in the waiting-room two men were sprawled. Mr. Ridgeway took one keen glance at their pallid faces and half closed lids, between which their pupils, contracted to pin points, glared strangely.

“Drugged!” he said again. Then stepping to the telephone, he called the office of the great building and asked sharply, “Office, is the house doctor there? Ask him to come to Mr. Ridgeway’s office, nineteenth floor, immediately.”

He returned to the settee, where the men still sprawled. “Lay them flat on the floor,” he ordered.

Scarcely had this been done when the doctor, a small, keen young man, entered with a little bag in his hand. His sharp eyes swept the group and he nodded to Mr. Ridgeway as he hastened to the two men on the floor and dropped on one knee beside them.

“Drugged,” he said, glancing up.

“I thought so,” said Mr. Ridgeway. “They couldn’t get enough whiskey in as dry a land as this is now to affect them like this. Besides, their pupils; do you see them?”

“Contracted to nothing,” said Doctor Lansing. He prepared a hypodermic needle and made an injection in each left forearm.

“If there is no response of the heart action after fifteen minutes,” he said, “I will know that they are suffering from one of the three newly discovered anesthetics which are so deadly in the hands of a criminal.”

“Don’t you think we had better get them to the hospital at once?” asked Mr. Ridgeway.

“Not until the fifteen minutes pass,” said the doctor. “If the needle takes effect, they will be all right in an hour or two; at least they could be taken home, but if it is the other, we will have a long tussle with them.”

“Well, this settles one thing,” said Mr. Ridgeway decidedly. “We have had every office building in this and every other large city supplied with house physicians for the last three years, but another law must be made requiring every building over a certain size to equip a hospital room for first-aid.”

“It would be a great thing,” said Doctor Lansing, his keen eyes on his two patients, “both for the patients and the doctors. I have had to send many a sufferer home or to the hospital when some slight surgical or electrical care would have finished the matter within a short time, and with a great deal less suffering.” He took out his stethoscope, listened to each heart, and rose. “Well, Mr. Ridgeway, these men are suffering from administration, by themselves or others, of one of the new poisons. Do you know who they are?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ridgeway. “I can tell you about them, but first get them to the hospital.” He called for an ambulance, and as soon as he had seen the unconscious victims of an unknown villain’s dastard hand carried away, he turned and beckoned Lawrence to follow him into his private office. Sinking down in his chair, he passed a hand through the thick masses of grey hair and sighed.

“There you have it, Lawrence,” he said.

“I don’t believe I understand,” replied Lawrence.

“Sit down then,” said Mr. Ridgeway, “and I will explain.”

“In the first place,” he commenced, “young as you are, you must have felt the dangerous mood the whole world is in. Of course the adjustment after a world war necessarily takes several generations. But to us who happen to be on hand during that adjustment comes the task of hurrying the thing along as much as we possibly can. For this comes the need for absolutely safe transportation of papers, messages and money. Often, too, there is the need for the transportation of millions of dollars’ worth of jewels—jewels enough to ransom whole principalities, let alone a king or two.

“We have worked this thing out with the greatest difficulty, trying one method after another, sending our papers in disguised packages, with trusted messengers, and using the most intricate codes. But all the time there are leaks. For instance, a short time ago a message to the King of Morania, sent under a triplicate code, that is, a code that must be translated three times, was intercepted and only the fact that it was a false message sent to try out a new system kept us from the brink of a fresh war.

“These things are only known to the inner circles, you understand. It would not do to frighten and agitate the public with intimate affairs of state. But we absolutely must find a means of transportation that is as free from danger, free from spies and thieves, as it is possible to invent.

“As a last resort, we are going to make use of the dirigible. This of course is where you come in.

“In my private business I have used planes, hydroplanes and one or two dirigibles and as they are well known to be used exclusively for passenger and freight service, they have never been interfered with in any way. I am not known to be working with the government, and my one hope was that we could take the new dirigible that has just been completed for me and make use of it for the transportation of these priceless documents that mean so much to the peace of the world.

“What has happened this morning troubles me more than I can tell you. Someone suspects us, or else those two men are the victims of a private enemy.”

The telephone bell jingled. Mr. Ridgeway lifted the receiver and adjusted the delicate needle point on the desk pad by means of which all telephone conversations were recorded, a new invention which Lawrence had heard of but had not seen. Mr. Ridgeway listened with a frown darkening his brow.

“I will be right out,” he said finally, and replaced the receiver.

“Well, the new dirigible was wrecked in the night,” he said. “That looks like business! Come on; we will go out and look the ground over. That is, if you care to cast your lot with such a dangerous game.”

“Of course,” said Lawrence simply. “I shall enjoy it.”

“Good!” said Mr. Ridgeway. “We will draw up the necessary papers this afternoon. I want you on your past record as an airman, and your youth is a good safeguard to you. Also you are not afraid. Your duties will be whatever the moment calls for. You may have to drive the car, you may be simply a passenger, a messenger, or a boy idling around the hangars. I want you to be ears and eyes and hands and brain for me. Rather a large order? Well, you will be paid well for it.” He paused and then named a sum that made Lawrence catch his breath, so large was it.

“All our transactions are confidential,” he said.

Entering a small but perfect roadster, Mr. Ridgeway drove rapidly out of the city to the aviation field, where he found a group of excited men around the new dirigible.

Well guarded as the place evidently was, someone had entered in the night and completely destroyed the delicate machinery. The propellers too were unscrewed, and the blades hacked.

Lawrence was shocked, and the men around were furious. It rather reflected on their care when such an outrage could occur inside of an area where watchmen were supposed to patrol incessantly. Mr. Ridgeway, however, showed no signs of anger. He ordered an investigation and told the head mechanician to see what could be done with the wreck. Then, pleasant as ever, he drove back to the city. “I am certainly glad that happened,” he said as they left the field behind.

“Glad?” said Lawrence in astonishment. “Glad? Why, it seems terrible to me!”

“Not at all,” said Mr. Ridgeway. “The point is this. Now we know that we are suspected. We know that this spying is a serious matter. The knowledge arms us. As for the dirigible—” he paused, and to Lawrence’s amazement laughed a merry, whole-souled laugh as though the loss of a machine worth many thousands of dollars was a matter of no consequence at all.

“Being my right hand man, Lawrence, I will tell you a secret,” he said after a moment. “That dirigible was not as new as it looked. It was an assembled machine, made up of about a dozen old ones that had been picked up here and there. I took good care, however, that all the papers held long accounts of the wonderful new machine that was being built for Hamilton Ridgeway, and as I own a lot of the papers, I assure you the accounts were glowing. Well, whoever tackled that bunch of junk in the night was unable to use more than a small glow from a pocket flash, so, as all the brass work was carefully polished and every part looked spick and span, there was no way for even a tried machinist to tell that the dirigible was not just what had been so widely advertised and photographed: Hamilton Ridgeway’s new dirigible for passenger service and light commercial enterprises.” He laughed again.

Then as though from force of habit he looked over his shoulder.

“I declare, the only place I like to talk confidences is in a ten acre lot,” he said, “but there is no place for anyone to hang on behind here.” He leaned toward Lawrence. “The new machine, safe and sound last night at least, is back on the sand hills in New Jersey, south of Barnegat. Two fishing launches are there in the inlet, but under the tarpaulins are small but effective machine guns. The fishermen fooling around in them are not as peaceful as they look. They are secret service men. In a hut back on the rise of ground to the west three other fishermen are smoking and lounging. They too have badges under their smocks. So we fooled ’em this time anyway,” laughed the great man.

Lawrence was silent. He felt the thrill of the old knight when he went galloping forth in quest of a dragon. This monster, threatening his country, was as dangerous and mysterious a dragon as any of the two- or ten-headed monsters that sent the fighting men of a long past age scouring over the downs and moors of merry old England.

Being younger, he was not so much inclined to laugh as Mr. Ridgeway. He wondered where the leak was that made it so easy for the dragon to approach.

Parking the car, they went to luncheon and then returned to Mr. Ridgeway’s office, where they found a thick-set man pacing the floor of the waiting-room and showing a good many signs of impatience. As they entered he walked quickly over to Mr. Ridgeway and said in a quick tone, “I tried to beat you in from the field, Mr. Ridgeway, but of course we busted a tire and had to stop, and then your man told me he thought you had gone to lunch, so I just stuck around.”

He looked curiously at Lawrence, and Mr. Ridgeway said,

“Come into my office, O’Brien. You may tell me anything you have to say before this young man. He is in my employ now.”

“Sort of a young kid for our work, isn’t he, Mr. Ridgeway?” asked O’Brien, smiling a wide, mirthful Irish smile at Lawrence.

“Pretty young,” admitted Mr. Ridgeway, “but I don’t think it will hurt him.”

“It is something he is sure to get over, give him time,” said the Irishman whimsically. Then as the heavy door closed, “Well, Mr. Ridgeway, I am the bearer of news. The watchman that has the beat from two until four was sick last night and I took his place, swearing him to silence about the change. He went to bed in my room, and I went out on the beat. At about three I sneaked close to the hangar and thought I could hear something making a sort of scratchin’ noise inside. I had a auger hole all fixed a good while ago, and I peeked.”