approached the crowd, and introduced himself as Andrew Carnavon.
“What the hell...” Valiantine hissed, and began to move forward, shouldering past a reporter in front of him.
Cabot’s hand shot out in the blink of an eye and caught his partner’s arm. His grip was tight, but only enough so to force the lieutenant to pause and think.
“Steady, old man,” Cabot said. “What’s it all about?”
Valiantine’s head shot around to glare at him. “I know him. I know the bastard!”
Andrew Carnavon was a dead ringer for Awanai, the Indiana bandit.
The Treasury man did not release his grip on his partner. “Wait a moment. Let him speak.”
Carnavon sauntered up to the open gates and stopped, holding up his hands in a gesture to ask for silence. He was dressed in a simple suit with a large, white coat over it. The coat was smudged with oil and grease and other substances.
“I thank you for your interest, gentlemen,” he said, raising his voice to be heard, “but I beg you to be patient with me. I regret that I am not yet prepared to make a full accounting of my discoveries.”
A collective moan arose from the reporters. They all looked at each other with various degrees of disappointment and disgust.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Carnavon said, frowning. “I... might have been a tad... premature in my initial release, but I never assumed that it would cause such a stir. Again, I appreciate that you all have a job to perform, but you must indulge me and wait a while longer, if you can.”
“What are you on about, Mr. Carnavon?” a voice called out from the throng. Others echoed it.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please ...” the engineer pleaded, becoming visually flustered.
One rough-looking fellow stepped forward, brandishing a notepad and well-chewed pencil. “Are you behind the airships, sir?” he asked in a gruff, accusatory voice.
Valiantine and Cabot perked up. The question sizzled in the air around them.
Carnavon smiled. Crossing his arms in front of his chest, he rocked back and forth on his heels.
“I’m not that wealthy,” he said.
“What do you mean by that?” the reporter asked, screwing his mouth up in a grimace. “You’re smart enough, ain’t ya? Got the degrees for it, eh? What’s wealth got to do with it?”
The two agents glanced at one another, ensuring the other was listening closely.
Carnavon cleared his throat. “I thank you for the compliment, but please apply some rational thought to it. If these ‘airships’ are real, and I have my doubts, it would take a great deal of money to make one, let alone the veritable fleet that supposedly haunts the skies above us.”
Some of the reporters tittered at that.
“I do believe that the technologies needed for such a craft exist today,” the engineer continued, “but no one has yet to pull it all together and make it work... work efficiently, that is. So, it would be a combination of both an incredible leap in thinking and a tidy fortune to make it happen. That’s not me, gentlemen.”
“You say,” another pressman called out, “that it’s possible, sir. But these things are doing amazing, impossible things in the skies. Silent, deadly silent. And fast, with turns that would rip apart a balloon. Amazing things!”
“Only in that rag you write for, Jack!” one of the man’s fellows shouted. The crowd roared with laughter.
Inwardly, Valiantine agreed with the joke; however humorous its intent, it spoke to his growing suspicion that the newspapers were behind much of the airship flap.
“But it all began out west, in California,” Carnavon insisted, his face reddening slightly. “No, I assure you that my path is different! If you will just wait and hear what I have to say, when I’m ready, I—”
Overlapping shouted questions suddenly drowned him out. Valiantine bit his tongue so as not to shout them all down and demand the man be heard. To the lieutenant’s chagrin, Carnavon spat on the ground, turned on