lescope as you
were watching Norton that betrayed you."

Lamar said nothing.

"I'm glad to say you had no confederate in the hangar here," continued
Craig. "At first I suspected it. Anyhow, you succeeded pretty well
single handed, two lives lost and two machines wrecked. Norton flew all
right yesterday when he left his gyroscope and dynamo behind, but when
he took them along you were able to fuse the wires in the dynamo--you
pretty nearly succeeded in adding his name to those of Browne and
Herrick."

The whir of Norton's machine told us he was approaching. We scattered to
give him space enough to choose the spot where he would alight. As the
men caught his machine to steady it, he jumped lightly to the ground.

"Where's Kennedy?" he asked, and then, without waiting for a reply,
he exclaimed: "Queerest thing I ever saw up there. The dynamo wasn't
protected by the sheet-lead shield in this flight as in the first
to-day. I hadn't risen a hundred feet before I happened to hear the
darndest sputtering in the dynamo. Look, boys, the insulation is
completely burned off the wires, and the wires are nearly all fused
together."

"So it was in the other two wrecked machines," added Kennedy, coming
coolly forward. "If you hadn't had everything protected by those shields
I gave you in your first flight to-day you would have simply repeated
your fall of yesterday--perhaps fatally. This fellow has been directing
the full strength of his wireless high-tension electricity straight at
you all the time."

"What fellow?" demanded Norton.

The two Pinkertons shoved Lamar forward. Norton gave a contemptuous look
at him. "Delanne," he said, "I knew you were a crook when you tried
to infringe on my patent, but I didn't think you were coward enough to
resort to--to murder."

Lamar, or rather Delanne, shrank back as if even the protection of his
captors was safety compared to the threatening advance of Norton toward
him.

"Pouff!" exclaimed Norton, turning suddenly on his heel. "What a fool I
am! The law will take care of such scoundrels as you. What's the grand
stand cheering for now?" he asked, looking across the field in an effort
to regain his self-control.

A boy from one of the hangars down the line spoke up from the back of
the crowd in a shrill, piping voice. "You have been awarded the Brooks
Prize, sir," he said.

X. The Black Hand

Kennedy and I had been dining rather late one evening at Luigi's, a
little Italia