Long Island village of Sandy Beach. In the first place, coincident
with the completion of the building, a new element had been introduced
into the little community by the arrival of several keen-eyed,
close-mouthed men, who boarded at the local hotel and were understood to
be employees at the new building. But what the nature of their employment
was to be, even the keenest of the village "cross examiners" had failed to
elicit.

Before long, within the freshly painted wooden walls, still sticky with
pigment, there could be heard, all day, and sometimes far into the night,
the buzz and whir of machinery and other more mystic sounds. The village
was on tenter-hooks of curiosity, but there being no side windows to peer
through, and a watchman of ferocious aspect stationed at the door, their
inquisitiveness was, perforce, unsatisfied. Not even a sign appeared on
the building to indicate the nature of the industry carried on within, and
its employees continued to observe the stoniest of silences. They herded
together, ignoring all attempts to draw them into conversation. What Peggy
and Roy had observed that day had been the first outward sign of the
inward business.

From the throbbing automobile, which the boy and girl had observed draw up
in front of the Mortlake plant, a man of advanced age alighted, whose
yellow skin was stretched tightly, like a drumhead, over his bony face.
From the new building, at the same time, there emerged a short, stout
personage, garbed in overalls. But the fine quality of his linen, and a
diamond pin, which nestled in the silken folds of his capacious necktie,
showed as clearly as did his self-assertive manner, that the newcomer was
by no means an ordinary workman.

His face was pouchy and heavy, although the whole appearance of the man
was by no means ill-looking. His cheeks and chin were clean shaven, the
close-cut beard showing bluely under the coarse skin. For the rest, his
hair was black and thick, slightly streaked with gray, and heavy eyebrows
as dark in hue as his hair, overhung a pair of shrewd, gray eyes like
small pent-houses. The man was Eugene Mortlake, the brains of the Mortlake
Company. The individual who had just descended from the automobile,
throwing a word to the chauffeur over his shoulder, was a person we have
met before--Mr. Harding, the banker and local magnate of Sandy Beach,
whose money it was that had financed the new aeroplane concern.

CHAPTER II.

MR. HARD