“Here, you come along with me and do your talking to the commandant,” a gruff voice spoke at his shoulder.

“And let these gobblers fool around here and maybe lose the stuff this man’s got in his clothes!  Oh-h, no!  Bring him along, and I’ll go.  I’d sure like a chance to talk to somebody that can show a few brains on this job.  That’s what I came over here for.  I didn’t have to land, recollect.”

The petty officer gave an order or two.  The guards fell in beside Johnny with a military preciseness that impressed him to silence.  From somewhere near two men trotted up with a field stretcher, and upon it Cliff was laid, still unconscious.

“You sure beaned him right,” one of them observed, looking up at Johnny with some admiration.

“Yes, and I’d like to bean the whole bunch of you the same way.  You fellows ain’t making any hit with me at all,” Johnny retorted uncivilly as he left under guard for headquarters.

A few minutes later he was standing alone before a man whose clean-cut, military bearing, to say nothing of the insignia of rank on his uniform, awed Johnny to the point of calling him “sir” and of couching his replies in his best, most grammatical English.  The guards had been curtly dismissed, for which he was grateful, and he had the satisfaction of stating his case in private.  Johnny did not want those fellows out there to hear just how easily he had been fooled.  They seemed to know altogether too much about him as it was.

The commandant listened attentively to what John Ivan Jewel had to say.  John Ivan Jewel had nearly finished his story when he thought of another phase of the affair, and one that had begun to worry him considerably.

“I forgot to tell you about the money.  I’ve got a good deal from them since I started.  They paid me on a sliding scale, beginning with fifteen hundred dollars a week and ending with two thousand that Cliff paid me this evening.  I’ve got it all with me.”

Prom his secret pocket Johnny drew all his wealth, counted off four hundred dollars and handed the rest to his inquisitor.

“This four hundred dollars is my own, that I brought from Arizona,” he explained, flushing a little under the keen eyes of Captain Riley.  “This is honest money; the rest is what they paid me for flying back and forth across the line.”

The commandant turned the big roll of bank notes over, looking at it quizzically.

“Who is really entitled to this money?” he asked Johnny crisply.

“Well, I—­I don’t know, sir.  It’s what they paid me for flying.”

“And did you fly as agreed upon?”

“Yes, sir; I made trips back and forth whenever Cliff wanted me to.  That is, up to the time I lit out for here, so you could see for yourself what he’s up to.  He ordered me to go back to Schwab’s place, but I wouldn’t.  I—­I knocked him on the head and came on.  But until then I flew as agreed upon.”