Hike agreed, and they started down in the elevator. But as Hike stepped out into the lobby, and saw the eager crowd of newspapermen, the courage of the boy who had dared two hundred miles an hour, and armed moonshiners, quite disappeared. Dragging Poodle after him, Hike darted into another elevator, which was just going up. The grill closed in the face of the reporters, who followed the boys up in a third cage, only to find Hike’s door locked, and no attention paid to knocks. Within, Hike was grunting, in reply to Poodle’s suggestions that he might as well get the job of being interviewed over, “Aw, I don’t want to, Pood’. I ain’t done anything—just flown the _Hustle_, and it minds like a pet cat, anyway. It’d make me feel awf’ly foolish to read about what I’ve done—and what I haven’t. The fellows at school’ll kid us enough anyway—” “Gee, they sure will. We’ll look like the man that invented butting-in, to them Dignified Seniors. They always think it’s fresh for a Sophomore to do anything.” “There you are, you see. And if they read anything we’ve said to _reporters_ in the papers, they’ll never let us rest. I ain’t afraid of rushing the speed limit, but I don’t want the whole San Dinero football team grinning at me like a bunch of hyenas, next Thanksgiving.” “I s’pose you think you’ll be the whole School Team, next fall,” complained Poodle. Hike continued, “Say, I’ve got a good idea. Why can’t we escape ’em in the tetrahedral; have Jack Adeler bring it around; and then hang out in some place where the reporters won’t find us—say some place in the suburbs—till it’s time to go back home in the _Hustle_ with Jack.” Hike rushed to the telephone, and, after some moments, got Lieutenant Adeler, though meanwhile the exchange boy downstairs was breaking in with the news that a number of reporters wished to speak with Mr. Griffin on the telephone. Jack Adeler promised to bring the tetrahedral around. When the Lieutenant sailed slowly over the New Willard, the boys were waiting on the roof. Catching the mounting chains, they climbed up to the _Hustle_, safe from interviews for a while. It would be a couple of days before the Army Board of Aviation decided just what it wanted to do—whether or not they wanted to spend all of their appropriation on Priest Tetrahedrals. For that time, the Lieutenant arranged that the boys were to stay at the house of a family friend, out in Georgetown,—a suburb of Washington. * * * * * Lieutenant Adeler and Poodle were walking out to Poodle’s new residence, that evening. Hike had gone home earlier, after a day’s sightseeing. The Lieutenant noticed a quiet, strongly built man, with a slouch hat pulled low, following them out P street, but made nothing of it, taking the man for a reporter. But as he and Poodle crossed the Rock Creek bridge, the man ran up at them.