“Mr. Everdail?” Even Dick, questioning as he repeated the name, was a little doubtful. “Why, I thought Mr. Everdail was in——”
“California? So I was. But one of my air liners brought me across in record time.”
Anybody could have learned that the millionaire was in California, Sandy reflected; it would be easy for a clever jewel robber, one of a band, to impersonate the man when he was caught off guard by their exchange of aircraft.
“If you boys were with Jeff you must be all right,” the man advanced, hand extended.
Dick shook it warmly.
Sandy’s grip was less cordial, but he played the part of an unsuspecting youth as well as he could by finishing the handshake with a tighter grip and a smile.
“I thought Jeff might be in the ship, yonder, until he nearly threw us out of control with his propeller wash. Then I thought—he might be——” he hesitated.
“He thought you might be—” Dick smiled as he made the response, winking broadly.
Sandy wished his chum would be more careful.
The man who called himself Mr. Everdail nodded.
“As long as you’re not, and I’m not—what neither of us cared to say,” he turned toward the airplane, “let’s get together! I’m here because my passenger, a buddy of mine, wrenched his shoulder climbing back into the ‘phib’ and we set down here so I could leave him at the fishing shack, yonder, and go back to see what was what. He was in too bad shape to take chances if I felt called on to do any stunts—I thought I could take the air in time to catch that seaplane coming out of the fog, but it fooled me. I already know why you’re here,” he added, “suppose we hop off in Jeff’s ‘crate’ and give a look-see if your friend and my war buddy need any help.”
“You can’t set down if they do,” objected Sandy, his confidence in the man’s possible guilt shaken by his knowledge of Jeff’s war record. “I don’t see, for my part, why Jeff didn’t use the amphibian in the first place!”
“I wondered about that when I got in at the estate, soon after you’d left,” Mr. Everdail—or the man who claimed to be the millionaire—asserted. “I could see he had been working on it, getting it ready—even had the tank full up, but he had disconnected the fuel gauge to fool anybody who might be looking around, I guess.”
“Maybe he landed and changed his mind about using it,” Dick suggested. “On account of taking us in—we organized a sort of Sky Patrol, to oversee things—but everything went wrong.”
“That accounts for it. I didn’t know he was going to make the hop or I might not have come myself—but now—well,” the man broke off his phrase and started to clamber into the control seat, “let’s get going.”
“And leave your passenger?”
“He’s comfortable, lying quiet in the fishing shack.”
Sandy, who had spoken, felt his suspicions returning at the reply. Could there be any reason why they must not identify the other man? Might he be the ringleader, or have some outstanding mark that they had seen before and might recognize?
Dick performed the “mech’s” duties for the pilot in getting the engine started again, then he clambered into his old place. Sandy was already behind their new pilot.
“Whoever and whatever he is,” Sandy mused, “he knows how to lift a ‘crate’ out of the sand.”
The man claiming to be Mr. Everdail made a skillful getaway from the beach, and it took them very little time to get over the marsh, already free of fog.
Dick located the crack-up, Sandy indicated the spot and the pilot dropped so low that his trucks almost grazed the waving eel-grass.
“There’s no amphibian in sight, though!” Dick murmured. “I wonder——”
“I see Larry! Yoo-hoo!” Sandy shouted.
Larry, in his rubber boat, just having given up trying to explain how a number of bits of chewing gum had transferred themselves from the amphibian, where last he saw them—or some like them—to the seaplane, gestured and pantomimed to try to tell them his news.
Flying past they could not fully understand.
The new pilot waved a reassuring glove at Larry and swerved back toward the end of the island. Larry wondered who he was and what his comrades were doing with him; but Larry, always practical, let the questions wait for their eventual answers and continued to study the half-sunken seaplane.
No new clues offered themselves. He detached one of the hard, adhering chunks of gum and dropped it into his pocket, “just in case,” he said, half-grinning, “just in case they transfer themselves somewhere else. I’ll leave twenty-nine of them—and see.”
The supposed Mr. Everdail scribbled a note which he handed back to Sandy, who caught his idea of dropping instructions on the deck of the yacht.
Borrowing Dick’s jackknife for a weight, Sandy prepared the message.
Cruising slowly the yacht came into sight.
Their pilot was skillful at coursing in such a direction and at such a height that he could skim low over the water craft’s radio mast and come almost to stalling speed while Sandy cast the note overside.
Dick, who had caught up Larry’s abandoned binoculars, saw as they zoomed and climbed that a sailor had rescued the note before it bounded over the cabin roof and deck into the sea.
At once the hydroplane was manned and sent away, the yacht took up its own course, and Mr. Everdail—to give him his own claimed title—pointed the airplane’s nose for his estate. Sandy occupied the time of the flight by trying to piece together the strangely mixed jig-saw bits of their puzzle—or was it only one puzzle?
By the time they sighted the hangar and field, he had all the bits joined perfectly. Sandy’s solution fitted every point that he knew, and was so “water tight” and so beautiful that he landed with his face carrying its first really satisfied, and exultant grin.
The beautiful part of it, to Sandy, was that he could sit by and watch, do nothing, except “pay out rope and let them tie themselves up in it.”
For Sandy’s suspects would certainly incriminate themselves.
“Let them guy me and call me ‘Suspicious Sandy,’” he murmured as he followed Dick toward the wharf on the inlet by the shore of the estate. “If I untangle this snarl the way I expect to, I may not bother to go in for airplane engineering. There might be as much money in a private detective office.”
Mr. “Everdail” proceeded at once to tie himself in his first knot.
“Well—hm-m!” he remarked to Dick, “feels good to be on the old place again. First time I’ve set foot on it for three years.”
“And he told us, on the beach, he’d been here this morning,” Sandy whispered to himself.
He decided to pay out another bit of rope.
“Mrs. Everdail will be glad you’re here when she lands,” he remarked.
The man whirled, frowning, hesitated and then spoke very emphatically.
“Look here, boys,” he said earnestly, “don’t say a word to her about me! I won’t be here when she lands—and I don’t want it known I’m in the East. There’s a good reason——”
“I’ll bet there is!” Sandy said to himself.
Turning with a confidential air and addressing Dick, for whom he seemed to have the greater liking, Mr. “Everdail” spoke.
“I’ve just thought of a good scheme. Has Jeff—er—taken you into his confidence any?”
Sandy, helpless to interfere, heard Dick give the substance of what they had learned from the superstitious pilot. The man continued:
“That lets me snap right down to my plan. Now we don’t know where those emeralds are. We don’t know which people used the seaplane, or whether the man who jumped has them and has gotten away or not. But if I should fade out of sight, and no one but my dependable Sky Patrol knows I’m around——”
“Your dependable Sky Patrol!” Sandy thought. “Going to try to use us now. Well——”
“If no one else knows I’m around—I can watch and see a lot that others might miss. I’m going to have that seaplane brought here—and then I’ll be around, watching to see who comes snooping—if anybody does. As I live and breathe, I think that’s a great idea, don’t you?”
Dick agreed readily.
“All right, then. You can tell your other comrade—Larry, you said you call him, Dick. I’ll leave a note for Jeff. Now I’ll go on up to the house and write it and make a couple of telephone calls—and then I’ll drop out of things—but you’ll hear from me off and on till we get those emeralds safe in our hands. Then—even while we’re waiting—if you can get your parents’ consent to stay, which I think can be arranged by Jeff—Larry can take some flying navigation—you, Dick, can study engines and construction, or navigation—whatever you like.”
He put a hand on Sandy’s shoulder and the latter managed not to wince or draw away.
“Sandy can have the run of my library, full of books on engineering and mechanics—and you’ll be learning while you help me get those emeralds and find out who flew the seaplane and who helped them on the yacht.”
“I know I can get my father’s consent to ‘visit you’ here,” Dick said eagerly. “And I like the plan,” he added heartily.
Sandy, watching their confidant stroll toward the closed mansion, turned a cold face to Dick.
“You’re a fine Sky Patrol,” he grumbled. “You swallowed everything he said, like a big softie! And told him everything you knew,” he continued, bitterly.
“Why not?” Dick wanted to know.
“You wait till Larry comes and I tell him my theory!”
“All right,” Dick agreed cheerfully. “But don’t start in earning your nickname all over again,” he warned.
“I’ll have you calling me ‘Successful Sandy’ before I’m through.”
The drone of an incoming airplane took them racing to the landing spot where Jeff came down to report that he had taken the unconscious seaplane pilot to a hospital where it was declared that he had a bad blow on his temple and might not recover his mental clearness for many days.
“And I’m glad I’m done with this-here amphibian,” he added. “Had more trouble than I ever had before. I think the crate’s hoodooed.”
“Maybe the ghost haunting the hangar ‘put a spell’ on it,” Dick chuckled. “Well—don’t, worry, Jeff. You’re down safe, and——”
Sandy shook his head. Let them take Jeff up to the house, he decided, and watch the two men when they met. Dick, not comprehending the idea behind Sandy’s headshake, nevertheless, did not finish his sentence.
The roar of a motor boat began to attract their attention and as they went to the wharf again, Jeff wanted explanations of how they got in with the airplane.
“You won’t make me believe Dick flew that-there crate,” he declared.
“No,” Dick agreed. “I didn’t. You’ll find the man who did up at the house.”
Jeff swerved aside on a graveled path, leaving them to aid the caretaker and his mechanic to bring the hydroplane to its mooring and let Larry jump out to join them.
They compared notes eagerly. Dick and Sandy could hardly forego interrupting one another as they brought their story up to the minute after hearing how Larry had helped to get the pilot to the amphibian, discovering and rescuing the life preserver on the way.
“Now, Larry,” Dick said, finally, “Mr. ‘Everdail’ said we could take you into our confidence, and he’s probably telling Jeff everything. Suspicious Sandy has a theory all worked out. I suppose Jeff is a double-dyed villain, and this Mr. ‘Everdail’ will turn out——”
“It’s no joking matter,” Sandy spoke sharply. “You listen to my idea and see what you think.”
Jeff, the so-called Mr. “Everdail,” and the pilot and passenger of the seaplane, as well as the presumably injured man whom they had not seen—all these were members of an international band of robbers, Sandy claimed.
“The man who jumped with the parachute and life preserver must be named Gaston—from what the pilot said to you, Larry,” he went on.
“Then he must be French, maybe,” Dick said.
“Most likely he is,” agreed Larry. “But if he was——”
“Wait till I get to that,” urged Sandy. “Well, they learned, somehow, that Mr. Everdail was in California and his wife was taking the emeralds to London. They didn’t have any conspirator on the yacht—then—or else they would have gotten the real emeralds long ago. So there was just those five in the band—Jeff, Mr. ‘Everdail,’ Gaston, the man we haven’t seen, and the injured pilot.”
“There might have been two gangs, one of three, one of two—or three bands—one of two, one of two, one of one——”
“Don’t poke fun at him, Dick. He argues reasonably so far.”
“Thanks, Larry,” Sandy was grateful. “All right, then, the band planned the work in London, at the hotel—that’s how Jeff knew the emeralds were imitations they poured acid on.”
“Did they carry acid just in case?” Dick could not restrain his tendency to tease.
“I think it was something they meant to throw on anybody who tried to stop them.”
“Golly-gracious! That might be,” Larry exclaimed.
“Anyhow, they discovered the false emeralds and tried to destroy them.” Sandy was more confident at Larry’s acceptance of his ideas.
“They managed to get somebody on the yacht,” Sandy guessed, “and then to be sure that there was no hitch, divided into three groups—Jeff, possibly the ringleader after all, in his airplane, two in the seaplane, the other two in the amphibian.”
“The confederate on the yacht was to secure the gems, somehow, and they must have had a radio somewhere to get messages,” Larry was beginning to see daylight and to concur with Sandy’s opinions.
“Yes,” Sandy nodded, “and they all went to the appointed place——”
“But Jeff interfered with the amphibian,” objected Dick, “and you forget to account for the two men in the hydroplane.”
“I think it came out the way it does in books,” Sandy declared. “Each set wanted those emeralds, and they tried to outdo one another—and maybe the hydroplane was the honest one of the lot, with Mr. Everdail’s—the real one’s—caretaker, summoned by the captain.”
“But Jeff had us signal them,” Dick said.
“They must know Jeff,” added Larry.
“I know how that fits,” Sandy spoke earnestly. “The hydroplane men were honest, and Jeff worked into their confidence and offered to help them—to discover the plan!”
“Well—that’s possible,” Larry admitted.
“We know what happened. Jeff signaled, but he knew the amphibian was coming, and the seaplane, to make sure neither would break down and leave him helpless—while he supervised,” Sandy had good going now, “the seaplane got the life preserver, and then Jeff decided that they might get away, tried to follow—and while the seaplane was flying, its passenger got the emeralds free of the life preserver, and then——”
“Now you’re stalled,” chuckled Dick, but Sandy was not defeated.
“The passenger, while they were high up, threw something and hit the pilot, the seaplane went out of control, the man jumped—and then cut free his parachute, cut the sack holding the emeralds, and hid in the swamp.”
“Why wouldn’t he take the rubber boat?”
“It would be missed, Larry. He was too bright for that.”
“How could he get away?”
“Why, Dick! Wait till everybody was gone, then take to the rubber boat, get himself picked up——”
“If the boat isn’t there when they bring up the seaplane, I’ll think you’ve hit the nail on the head,” Larry conceded.
“I know I have.”
“Sh-h-h! Here comes Jeff.” Larry turned. “Well, Jeff——”
“He says you know all about him, but he was gone when I got this-here note.” He failed to display the missive, to Sandy’s disappointment. It would have provided a fine chance to compare the writing with what he had seen in the letter supposed to have come from California. And—if he was really flying East, why had Mr. Everdail written? A letter, by mail, would be slower than an airplane flight!
“I don’t like this plan a-tall, a-tall,” Jeff went on, dubiously. “That seaplane is jinxed.”
“Oh—pshaw, Jeff——”
“I don’t care, Larry. Listen—she cracked up and her pilot got a bad smash—from something! And—the emeralds vanished!”
“We recovered the life preserver, anyhow,” chuckled Dick. “And here comes the yacht so we can return that much property. I tell you, the Sky Patrol has accomplished something!”
Jeff did not share Larry’s smile. He imitated Sandy’s scowl.
“He says for me to shove my crate in the hangar, stay here, get your parents to let you make a visit and Larry learn flying and so on, but if I put my crate in that hangar—it haunted and now the jinxed seaplane to come in—any instruction I give will be at your own risk.”
“I’m not worrying,” Larry said.
“And say—here’s a queer one.” Jeff changed the subject. “I notice them chunks of gum wasn’t in the amphibian! Did you take ’em out when you stayed back in the hangar, Sandy?”
“No—or, if he did, somebody else put the same kind in the seaplane.” As Larry spoke he withdrew from his pocket a dark, hard object.
“Give that here!” cried Sandy, snatching at it.
He tore at the hard substance with finger-nails, working it flatter, and then, with an exultant screech, boy-like but not good practice for an amateur detective, he pointed to something dark, green, glowing.
“There’s one of the Everdail Emeralds!” he exulted.
“How did you ever guess the gem was in the gum?” Dick stared admiringly at Sandy, exultantly at the green light flashing from that hidden emerald as Sandy scraped aside the clinging substance from it.
“First the gum was in the amphibian,” Sandy said, trying to be as modest as the discovery would let him, “then it was gone. We thought we saw somebody in the hangar when first we went in—but he got away somehow. Then we saw the amphibian flying and it flashed over me that whoever we had seen before had been working on the amphibian and had chewed up all those pieces of gum—but I didn’t see why he had left it there. Then, when we found out that the man calling himself ‘Everdail’ didn’t look for or miss the gum, I guessed that he hadn’t been the gum chewer—but who had, then, I wondered. And why. It must have been for some reason, because if he had found the gum when he came to play ghost, keep everybody away from the estate by scaring them, and get the amphibian ready, he’d have throw any gum he found into the waste can.”
“The gum was there for some reason,” agreed Dick. “This is one time when being suspicious has paid,” he added.
“Yes,” Sandy admitted. “When the life preserver was found and no gems were in the oilskin tied to it, and Dick showed me the gum, the reason for the big chunks of old gum came to me. The passenger had been getting it ready. He had to chew a great lot to get enough.”
“We mustn’t waste any more time,” cried Larry, eagerly. “There are twenty-nine more chunks in the seaplane. Let’s fly there, Jeff, and get it.”
“That-there is good sense.” Jeff started toward the flying field. “The fellow we didn’t find might come back for the emeralds.”
Going with them, to help out, Dick told Larry that he proposed to go at once to the various airports and flying fields, to learn, if he could, who had engaged the seaplane.
“The new Floyd Bennett field is the best chance,” argued Jeff. “They have got water and seaplane facilities there. It’s on Barren Island, and that’s where a man could have gone, in about the time between your seeing the ‘spook’ and the time the seaplane got where the yacht was.”
“I’ll wait for the yacht,” Sandy said, accompanying them. “Mrs. Everdail will be glad to see what I discovered.”
That gave each of the members of the Sky Patrol something to do.
Dick had no difficulty in learning, when he got the executives of Bennett field interested that the seaplane was an old one belonging to a commercial flying firm operating from the airport.
“The pilot who handled the control job,” the field manager told him, “was a stunt man who has been hanging around since he stunted on our opening day. I’ve questioned some of the pilots for you, but no one seems to know who the pilot had with him. A stranger, one says.”
That brought Dick’s quest to a dead stop.
Sandy had even less success. Although in the short time since his disappearance the supposed impersonator of Mr. Everdail could not have gone far, he was not to be discovered by any search Sandy could make.
Farmhouses had no new “boarders.” The house on the estate, searched with youthful vim and alert thoroughness, revealed no observable hiding places. Sandy finally gave up.
The arrival, anchoring and debarkation of its people by the yacht allowed him to meet and to reassure Mrs. Everdail and Captain Parks.
Besides these two he met the almost hysterical French maid, Mimi, also Mrs. Everdail’s companion and cousin, who had traveled with her, a quiet, competent nurse and attendant whose lack of funds compelled her to serve as a sort of trained nurse for the millionaire’s wife, who was of a very nervous, sickly type.
In spite of everybody’s relief when Sandy displayed the emerald, the elderly trained nurse and companion insisted that Mrs. Everdail must retire, rest and recover from her recent exciting experience.
Sandy, left alone, searched the hangar for an unseen exit, but found none.
Landing the amphibian, at almost the same spot they had set down before, Jeff looked around for the rubber boat they had left tied to a sunken snag.
“I guess Sandy’s ideas were right, after all,” decided Larry as he saw that the small water conveyance was not there. Sandy had claimed that if the missing seaplane passenger had hidden during the recent search of the seaplane, the boat would aid him to escape from the otherwise water-and-swamp-bound place.
“If the rubber boat’s gone,” Jeff commented, “the twenty-nine other emeralds of the thirty on the necklace—they’re gone, too.”
“I’ll have to swim over again and see.” Larry stripped and made the short water journey.
“They’re still here,” he shouted across the channel.
Jeff, who had kept his engine idling, decided to risk a closer approach in the amphibian whose lower wingspan barely cleared the tops of grass clumps.
“I guess there aren’t any snags to rip the pontoons,” Larry assured him. To get closer would save Larry many trips to and fro in the water.
“Fine!” Larry commented as the amphibian, moving cautiously, came close enough for him to catch a rope and put a loop around the closest truss of the submerged seaplane. Thus he was able to pass the chunks of gum to Jeff, who had his clothes on and pockets for storage.
While the transfer was being made the amphibian’s engine died with unexpected suddenness.
“Golly-gracious!” Larry exclaimed, “I’ll bet she’s out of gas.”
“Can’t tell by the gauge.” Ruefully Jeff upbraided his stupidity in forgetting to see if they had to gas up before the take-off from the estate.
“Now what’s to do?” he wondered.
Larry, too, saw a number of difficulties—perhaps more than did Jeff, because, from Larry’s point of view, due to Sandy’s suspicion of the superstitious pilot, Jeff must not go free with the gems in his pockets, nor did Larry dare be the one to go. If he did, Jeff might be playing a trick, let him get beyond chance of return in time, use some reserve gas and fly away.
“I can’t swim,” Jeff began, considering the ways of escape to some place where they could secure a supply boat with fuel.
“I wouldn’t chance swimming all the way down the swamps to the nearest village on shore,” Larry said quietly.
“This-here is a fix that is a fix,” morosely Jeff summed up the situation. “Here we are with a pocketful of emeralds—and no gas and no way to get to any—and if anybody knows the gems are in this gum—we’d be helpless if they wanted to take them.”
Larry did not answer.
He was mentally going over the seemingly unbreakable deadlock.
One thing that kept coming into his mind was the strange fact that if the disappearing passenger of the seaplane had taken the rubber boat he had not also taken the hidden jewels.
“He must have known something about them—or guessed,” he reflected. “If they were put in the gum while they were flying—unless it was done while they were in the fog. But, even then, he knew all that excitement meant something. I don’t understand it—he did know, because he must have hired the pilot and the seaplane to get the emeralds.”
Still, in that case, he mused, if the man had known where the gems were, why hadn’t he inflated the rubber boat and taken them all, in the first escape?
A possible solution came to him.
Saying nothing to Jeff he bent his whole power of thinking on the more important discovery of a way to get fuel.
Climbing onto the amphibian and dressing, he considered that matter without arriving at any workable solution.
His eyes rested for a moment on the upthrust wing of the submerged seaplane. His face changed expression. An idea flashed across his mind.
“Jeff,” he cried, “do you suppose we could make a gas line from the brass tubing on the seaplane?”
“What for?”
“See that wing?” he pointed. “It sticks up, and it’s higher than our own tank—and if there’s a wing-tank, and I think a seaplane would have them——”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” grinned Jeff. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that-there is right.”
He carefully climbed out onto the amphibian’s lower wing till he could grip a guy wire on the seaplane. By agility and a good deal of scuffling with some damage to the doped fabric of the seaplane, he got into the partly sunken pilot’s seat and from that, climbing up, sent a quick glance over the cockpit, tracing the fuel lines.
“Right as can be!” he called. “Now if I can find a wrench and get loose some brass tubing——”
“Can I help?”
Jeff, bent down in the pilot’s seat, lifted his head, shaking it.
“Stay where you are,” he called. “Two might push the crate down into the mud too fast for safety. She’s half a foot deeper in than when we were here before. I’ll manage.”
Shutting off the governing valve, Jeff began unscrewing the pipe lines, rejoining lengths of piping until, with a section from the carburetor to give the needed length, he passed over a makeshift path for the wing-tank gas to flow by gravity into their own craft.
“All ready!” called Larry, bending the end of the line so its flow went into the central tank of the amphibian.
Jeff opened the gas valve under the wing-tank.
“Here she comes!” Larry was exultant.
“We’ll get enough to hop down the shore to a fuel supply, anyhow,” Jeff said.
The gauges were out of commission and they had to figure the amount they secured from the size of the pipe and time that the gas flowed.
“I guess that’s all—about seven gallons,” said Jeff as the last drops fell into their tank. Larry threw aside the useless pipe, sent home the tank cap and dropped down into the after seat to be sure the ignition was off before Jeff swung the propeller sturdily to suck the gas into the cylinders.
So intent had they been on the business of the gas transfer that as Jeff swung the “prop” both were taken by surprise when a curt voice came from close under the amphibian’s tail assembly.
“Put your hands up—both of you! Quick!”
A man, coming silently from some concealment, in a dory, undetected in their busy absorption, held something menacingly businesslike and sending sun glints from its blue steel. Its hollow nose covered both at the range he had.
Up went Larry’s hands. Jeff, also, elevated his own.
“Now!” remarked the stranger, pulling the dory around without losing his advantage, “both turn your backs and clasp your hands behind you!”
“Wait!” said Larry, suddenly, earnestly. “I’ll give you the jewels without making any trouble—if you’ll let me put my hand in my pocket I’ll throw the emeralds down to you.”
The man stared, amazed, either incredulous or not quite understanding.
Larry had no emeralds and was well aware of it. Jeff still made his pockets bulge with the packed chunks of gum.
But Larry had seen a chance that they might turn to their own advantage if once the man’s eyes could be diverted from Jeff. Just before he had clambered onto the forward bracing to spin the amphibian’s propeller, Jeff had laid down the sturdy wrench he had used for bending the pipes; evidently he meant to transfer it to his own tool kit but had wished to start the amphibian’s engine first.
The wrench, within his reach, could be used as a weapon. Larry had caught Jeff’s flash of the eyes toward it as his hands had been elevated. From Jeff’s expression Larry saw, out of the corner of his eye, that the older pilot caught the younger comrade’s purpose.
“All right,” the man had recovered his surprised wits and was closely watching Larry. “Which pocket?”
“This one!” Larry, carefully keeping fingers spread wide, tapped one side of his coat.
“Throw the package or whatever it is——”
Jeff’s hand was quietly coming down.
“It’s stuck!” Larry began to tug, with his hand in his inside pocket where he pretended the jewels were.
“No monkey shines!” warned the stranger, watching closely.
Jeff’s hand flashed down, the wrench, with a twisting, underhand fling, spun through the air. Jeff dropped into the cockpit. The wrench struck, hitting the man’s arm and deflecting the muzzle of his weapon as it exploded—but he did not drop it.
In that split minute of time Larry was on the cockpit seat—and plunged, in a swift, slantwise leap, down upon the man in the dory.
His unexpected assault was executed so rapidly that the man had not time to recover from the surprise and get his weapon trained, before Larry was on him, sending him sprawling backward.
“Oh—my shoulder!” the man cried out in sudden anguish.
Larry, startled, seeing the pain in the face just under his own, relaxed for an instant, only being sure that his quick grip on the wrist holding the weapon in its hand was not released.
“Oh!” the man groaned, and dropping his weapon, he began to nurse his shoulder.
Larry suspected some trick, but there was none. The man tamely surrendered. As he nursed his painful muscles, a sudden misgiving came over Larry.
The man, he recalled, in pulling with his arm, had winced, before he got the dory where he wanted it. His cry, his subsequent favoring of his shoulder, told Larry the truth.
“You’re the man who was in the amphibian when Mr. Everdail flew it!” he said. “How did you get here, with your injured shoulder?”
“Tide brought me through a channel. I felt better, saw a spare dory and watched some debris on the water and reckoned the tide would get me to where I could see where the amphibian set down. I saw it hop off the beach, saw it disappear, heard it and saw it coming back—and was curious—but how did you know about Mr. Everdail—and who was in the seaplane, and in the other crate I saw?”
“Here comes the tug and floating crane, to salvage the seaplane,” said Jeff. “You’ll have to stay in the tug deckhouse, till we get the straight of this—and for holding a gun on us. You can explain to the police, maybe—as for us, we don’t need to explain!”
And, as later, he and Larry resumed their places in the amphibian, Larry’s captive remained under guard on the tug.
Before the lowered landing wheels of the amphibian touched the private landing field, after a flight delayed by the need of more fuel, Larry saw his chums waiting by the hangar.
As the aircraft taxied to the end of the runway he saw that their expressions were doleful.
“Bad news?” Larry asked, climbing to the turf.
“Our adventure is over and done with,” Dick said. “It has gone ‘poof’ like a bursted soap bubble.”
“But Jeff and I have caught the man who was with the one claiming to be Mr. Everdail——”
“Claiming to be,” Sandy said disgustedly. “I was wrong. He is Mr. Everdail.”
“How did you find out?”
“He came back, Larry.” Dick chuckled.
“Came back? I thought——”
“He wrote the note for Jeff, and then called up the hospital where the pilot was taken,” Dick stated. “They said the man seemed to be coming out of his sleep and Mr. Everdail went out to the road while we weren’t especially watchful, and got a passing car to take him to the next village. Then he took a taxi to the hospital.”
“And what he heard there made him come home,” Sandy added.
“What did the pilot say?”
“You recall what you thought was part of a word?”
“Yes, Dick—the beginning of ‘Gaston,’ we thought.”
“Larry—it was a whole word.”
“Gast?——”
“It sounds the same, but if I spell it you’ll see.”
Slowly he spelled a word of six letters.
“G-a-s-s-e-d.”
“Gassed?”
“Carbon monoxide—deadly fumes that blew in from the exhaust of the engine—it was an old crate, and the engine didn’t have perfect combustion, he said,” Sandy gave the explanation.
“The direction they flew,” Dick added, “across the wind—the fumes blew into his cockpit. It was set low, you know. Well, before he knew what was what, he felt himself going. Then he thought he could snap out of it, loosened his safety belt, tried to lift himself for a breath of pure air—the seaplane dived, and he fell against something that knocked him out!”
“Then the passenger didn’t——”
“No. He didn’t throw anything. The pilot explained all that,” Dick said, while Jeff formed an interested fourth of the group. “You recall, Jeff, the captain of the yacht took out extra insurance on the emeralds?”
“I remember that, too,” Larry said.
“The English company became suspicious,” Dick went on. “They sent a man—we’ve called him ‘the passenger’—to this side, suspecting that some effort was on foot to hide the gems or get rid of them till the insurance was paid—it’s a trick that has been worked.”
“I begin to understand,” said Larry. “The man from England hired the stunt pilot to fly him out to meet the yacht—but how did he know when it would arrive?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“I can,” said Jeff. “That English fellow was that-there ‘spook.’ Maybe he ‘listened in’ on the short wave set in the big house yonder.”
“That’s probably it,” Dick retorted. “Anyway, he flew out, and when he saw the amphibian and the small hydroplane and our airplane, he jumped to the idea that either one or more gangs of robbers had somebody on the yacht to get the jewels and throw them out, or else——”
“Wait!” urged Larry. “How does the gum fit in with that?”
“That’s so,” said Dick. “Let’s go up to the house and see what Mr. Everdail says.”
“If he is Mr. Everdail, after all,” Larry said.
“Oh, his wife would know any impersonator,” argued Dick. “So will Jeff.”
“That’s so. Come on.”
That the millionaire was genuine, “in person and not a caricature,” as Dick put it, was evident. Both the nurse, his relative, and his wife, were chatting with him as Jeff delivered the heavy packed ball made up of the gum.
“How about this-here?” he asked. “How does this fit in?”
“That’s simple enough,” responded the rich man, breaking the exhibit into its separate pieces. “The special agent from England, watching here, had seen Jeff making his nightly hops over from the airport. He thought, quite naturally, Jeff was working with some jewel robbers.”
“That doesn’t explain this-here gum,” objected Jeff.
“This will. The agent from London thought it likely that some attempt would be made to get the jewels. He proposed to see whether it would be made by professionals or by some one working for me. He thought my wife or I had the intention of robbing ourselves—making the gems disappear until we could collect the insurance. When he couldn’t make up his mind which was most likely—professionals or amateurs hired by us—he thought of trying to get the jewels—and that meant——”
“A safe hiding place if he was followed, until he could get to a vault and notify his firm,” Sandy broke in, eager to declare how mistaken he had been by giving the true facts.
“And how about the man who was with you?” Larry turned to Mr. Everdail, while Mrs. Everdail with a little grimace of disgust, drew Sandy’s first discovery of the gem in the gum closer to look at.
“He’s one of my divisional managers in the transcontinental tourist airlines,” stated the millionaire.
“Then we’d better get him off that wrecking tug,” and Larry gave the story of the man’s appearance and capture, giving Jeff the credit which Jeff, generously and promptly, returned to him with interest.