CHAPTER VI
SOMETHING QUEER
For a little while, after he had read to Joe theletter from Mr. Hadley, Blake remained silent. Nor did his chumspeak. When he did open his lips it was to ask:
"Well, what do you think of it, Blake?"
Blake drew a long breath, and replied, questioningly:
"What do you think of it?"
"I asked you first!" laughed Joe. "No, but seriously, what do youmake of it all?"
"Make of it? You mean going to Panama?"
"Yes, and this chap Alcando. What do you think of him?"
Blake did not answer at once.
"Well?" asked Joe, rather impatiently.
"Did anything--that is, anything that fellow said--or did--strikeyou as being--well, let's say--queer?" and Blake looked his chumsquarely in the face.
"Queer? Yes, I guess there did! Of course he was excited about therunaway, and he did have a narrow escape, if I do say it myself.Only for us he and Hank would have toppled down into thatravine."
"That's right," assented Blake.
"But what struck me as queer," resumed Joe, "was that he seemedput out because it was we who saved him. He acted--I mean theSpaniard did--as though he would have been glad if someone elsehad saved his life."
"Just how it struck me!" cried Blake. "I wondered if you felt thesame. But perhaps it was only because he was unduly excited. Wemight have misjudged him."
"Possibly," admitted Joe. "But, even if we didn't, and he reallyis sorry it was we who saved him, I don't see that it need matter.He is probably so polite that the reason he objects is because hedidn't want to put us to so much trouble."
"Perhaps," agreed Blake. "As you say, it doesn't much matter. Irather like him."
"So do I," assented Joe. "But he sure is queer, in some ways.Quite dramatic. Why, you'd think he was on the stage the way hewent on after he learned that we two, who had saved him, were themoving picture boys to whom he had a letter of introduction."
"Yes. I wonder what it all meant?" observed Blake.
The time was to come when he and Joe were to learn, in a mostsensational manner, the reason for the decidedly queer actions ofMr. Alcando.
For some time longer the chums sat and talked. But as the daywaned, and the supper hour approached, they were no nearer adecision than before.
"Let's let it go until morning," suggested Blake.
"I'm with you," agreed Joe. "We can think better after we have'slept on it.'"
Joe was later than Blake getting up next morning, and when he sawhis chum sitting out in a hammock under a tree in the farmyard,Joe noticed that Blake was reading a book.
"You're the regular early worm this morning; aren't you?" calledJoe. "It's a wonder some bird hasn't flown off with you."
"I'm too tough a morsel," Blake answered with a laugh. "Besides,I've been on the jump too much to allow an ordinary bird thechance. What's the matter with you--oversleep?"
"No, I did it on purpose. I was tired. But what's that you'rereading; and what do you mean about being on the jump?"
"Oh, I just took a little run into the village after breakfast, onthe motor cycle."
"You did! To tell that Spaniard he could, or could not, go withus?"
"Oh, I didn't see him. I just went into the town library. You knowthey've got a fairly decent one at Central Falls."
"Yes, so I heard; but I didn't suppose they'd be open so early inthe morning."
"They weren't. I had to wait, and I was the first customer, if youcan call it that."
"You _are_ getting studious!" laughed Joe. "Great Scott! Look atwhat he's reading!" he went on as he caught a glimpse of the titleof the book. "'History of the Panama Canal' Whew!"
"It's a mighty interesting book!" declared Blake. "You'll likeit."
"Perhaps--if I read it," said Joe, drily.
"Oh, I fancy you'll want to read it," went on Blake,significantly.
"Say!" cried Joe, struck with a sudden idea. "You've made up yourmind to go to Panama; haven't you?"
"Well," began his chum slowly, "I haven't fully decided--"
"Oh, piffle!" cried Joe with a laugh. "Excuse my slang, but I knowjust how it is," he proceeded. "You've made up your mind to go,and you're getting all the advance information you can, to springit on me. I know your tricks. Well, you won't go without me; willyou?"
"You know I'd never do that," was the answer, spoken rather moresolemnly than Joe's laughing words deserved. "You know we promisedto stick together when we came away from the farms and started inthis moving picture business, and we have stuck. I don't want tobreak the combination; do you?"
"I should say not! And if you go to Panama I go too!"
"I haven't actually made up my mind," went on Blake, who was,perhaps, a little more serious, and probably a deeper thinker thanhis chum. "But I went over it in my mind last night, and I didn'tjust see how we could refuse Mr. Hadley's request.
"You know he started us in this business, and, only for him wemight never have amounted to much. So if he wants us to go toPanama, and get views of the giant slides, volcanic eruptions, andso on, I, for one, think we ought to go."
"So do I--for two!" chimed in Joe. "But are there really volcaniceruptions down there?"
"Well, there have been, in times past, and there might be again.Anyhow, the slides are always more or less likely to occur. I wasjust reading about them in this book.
"Culebra Cut! That's where the really stupendous work of thePanama Canal came in. Think of it, Joe! Nine miles long, with anaverage depth of 120 feet, and at some places the sides go up 500feet above the bed of the channel. Why the Suez Canal is a farmditch alongside of it!"
"Whew!" whistled Joe. "You're there with the facts already,Blake."
"They're so interesting I couldn't help but remember them," saidBlake with a smile. "This book has a lot in it about the biglandslides. At first they were terribly discouraging to theworkers. They practically put the French engineers, who startedthe Canal, out of the running, and even when the United Statesengineers started figuring they didn't allow enough leeway for theCulebra slides.
"At first they decided that a ditch about eight hundred feet widewould be enough to keep the top soil from slipping down. But theyfinally had to make it nearly three times that width, or eighteenhundred feet at the top, so as to make the sides slope gentlyenough."
"And yet slides occur even now," remarked Joe, dubiously.
"Yes, because the work isn't quite finished."
"And we're going to get one of those slides on our films?"
"If we go, yes; and I don't see but what we'd better go."
"Then I'm with you, Blake, old man!" cried Joe, affectionatelyslapping his chum on the back with such energy that the book flewout of the other's hands.
"Look out what you're doing or you'll get the librarian afteryou!" cried Blake, as he picked up the volume. "Well, then, we'llconsider it settled--we'll go to Panama?"
He looked questioningly at his chum.
"Yes, I guess so. Have you told that Spaniard?"
"No, not yet, of course. I haven't seen him since you did. But Ifancy we'd better write to Mr. Hadley first, and let him know wewill go. He'll wonder why we haven't written before. We canexplain about the delayed letter."
"All right, and when we hear from him, and learn more of hisplans, we can let Mr. Alcando hear from us. I guess we can moseyalong with him all right."
"Yes, and we'll need a helper with the cameras and things. He canbe a sort of assistant while he's learning the ropes."
A letter was written to the moving picture man in New York, andwhile waiting for an answer Blake and Joe spent two days visitingplaces of interest about Central Falls.
"If this is to be another break in our vacation we want to makethe most of it," suggested Joe.
"That's right," agreed Blake. They had not yet given the Spaniarda definite answer regarding his joining them.
"It does not matter--the haste, young gentlemen," Mr. Alcando hadsaid with
a smile that showed his white teeth, in strong contrastto his dark complexion. "I am not in so much of a haste. As wesay, in my country, there is always manana--to-morrow."
Blake and Joe, while they found the Spaniard very pleasant, couldnot truthfully say that they felt for him the comradeship theymight have manifested toward one of their own nationality. He waspolite and considerate toward them--almost too polite at times,but that came natural to him, perhaps.
He was a little older than Joe and Blake, but he did not takeadvantage of that. He seemed to have fully recovered from theaccident, though there was a nervousness in his actions at timesthat set the boys to wondering. And, occasionally, Blake or Joewould catch him surreptitiously looking at them in a strangemanner.
"I wonder what's up?" said Blake to Joe, after one of thoseoccasions. "He sure does act queer."
"That's what I say," agreed Joe. "It's just as though he weresorry he had to be under obligations to us, if you can call itthat, for saving his life."
"That's how it impresses me. But perhaps we only imagine it.Hello, here comes Mr. Baker with the mail! We ought to hear fromNew York."
"Hasn't Birdie Lee written yet?" asked Joe.
"Oh, drop that!" warned Blake, his eyes flashing.
There was a letter from Mr. Hadley, in which he conveyed news andinformation that made Blake and Joe definitely decide to make thetrip to Panama.
"And take Alcando with us?" asked Joe.
"I suppose so," said Blake, though it could not be said that hisassent was any too cordial.
"Then we'd better tell him, so he'll know it is settled."
"All right. We can ride over on the motor cycle."
A little later, after a quick trip on the "gasoline bicycle," themoving picture boys were at the only hotel of which Central Fallsboasted. Mr. Alcando was in his room, the clerk informed the boys,and they were shown up.
"Enter!" called the voice of the Spaniard, as they knocked. "Ah,it is you, my young friends!" he cried, as he saw them, andgetting up hastily from a table on which were many papers, hebegan hastily piling books on top of them.
"For all the world," said Joe, later, "as though he were afraidwe'd see something."
"I am delighted that you have called," the Spaniard said, "and Ihope you bring me good news."
"Yes," said Blake, "we are going--"
As he spoke there came in through the window a puff of air, thatscattered the papers on the table. One, seemingly part of aletter, was blown to Blake's feet. He picked it up, and, as hehanded it back to Mr. Alcando, the lad could not help seeing partof a sentence. It read:
"... go to Panama, get all the pictures you can, especially thebig guns...."
Blake felt himself staring eagerly at the last words.