Sandy agreed with Larry’s exclamations but urged his chums to leave the hangar: they knew all it could tell them. He wanted to replace the book he had used and get away from the hangar for awhile.
In the old, disused house, to which Mr. Whiteside had secured a set of keys for them so they need not hang around the grounds until there was work to be done, they talked in low tones. Sandy believed that Jeff had coaxed his wife to put acid on the gems in the London hotel, as had been done.
“He might be as much of a fanatic as that,” admitted Larry, but not with any great delight—he had always liked Jeff. “He is as superstitious as a heathen.”
“But the maid knew those weren’t the real gems!” Dick remarked.
“How do we know she did?”
“That’s so. But somebody said she did, or thought she must know the real ones.”
“That doesn’t prove she did, Dick. The real ones were hardly ever removed from safe deposit,” Sandy argued.
“Then why did she throw over that life preserver?—” and as he began the inquiry Larry saw the answer.
“She—saw—the—captain hide—the real gems!” he finished.
“Jeff didn’t use the amphibian, though. And he brought us here and induced us to aid him, saying we were helping Mr. Everdail.”
“Yes,” Dick supplemented Larry’s new point. “Another thing, Sandy, that doesn’t explain why he’d take three boys and fly a ship he could never use on water—with an amphibian right here.”
“I am only saying what I believe. I don’t know very much. But what I do know points to Jeff.”
“But he didn’t get the life preserver.”
No, Sandy agreed, Jeff did not expect to do that. He argued that Jeff must have planned to superintend the affair, while the man in the seaplane with Tommy Larsen secured the gems, whereupon Jeff could chase him, probably turn on him and get the emeralds, and then pretend on his return that the man had gotten safely away.
“But we don’t need to guess,” Sandy said. “Before I began asking questions I met Jeff on the way here.” He explained what made him suspect the man who said he must repair his “stalled” engine with a bolt that he knew was not made—a slotted bolt. “I slipped down across that estate to the inlet and saw the amphibian. And Mr. Whiteside was in it, supervising the filling of its tank!”
“Then he means to get away with Jeff——”
“No he doesn’t!” said Larry, sharply. “Here he comes onto the lawn!”
Pretending to be unaware of the arrival, the Sky Patrol issued from the house.
They saw that Mr. Whiteside carried a life preserver. In black on its side was painted “Tramp, New York.”
“Well, Sky Patrol—and Ground Crew,” he hailed them. “We are going to see some excitement at last!”
“Why?” asked Larry.
“How?” Dick amended.
“We are going to trap the real culprit.”
“How?”
“By watching in and around the hangar to-night—and this time our bait will be this life preserver that I discovered in the swamp. I guessed the ‘ghost’ was searching the amphibian and the seaplane for the right life preserver. I devised a plan to get rid of the caretaker while Jeff and I made a complete, exhaustive search, this noon. We found nothing; so Jeff flew me over the swamp and we got—this.”
“Let’s open it!” urged Sandy, all his former suspicions gone in his eagerness. “We can take out the emeralds and then put the empty doughnut in place.”
“No. We won’t tamper with it. I want to deliver it, intact, to Atley Everdail. His is the right to open it.”
“Isn’t it a risk?” Sandy objected.
“No. Dick will watch inside the hangar, Larry and I by the doors. Sandy will be in or near the amphibian. If Jeff is the culprit we’ll soon know—if he had a confederate we will discover that, perhaps, also.”
“If it isn’t Jeff at all—and I hope it won’t be,” Larry said, “if it turns out to be the seaplane passenger who discovered that in his terror he chute-jumped with the wrong belt, and he comes to hunt the right one——”
“Or if it is Captain Parks, or his mate, or a seaman—” Mr. Whiteside began to chuckle as he led them toward the dark loom of the hangar, “Or—even if it turns out to be—me!—”
“Did you walk under a ladder, today, sir?” asked Sandy seriously.
“No. Why?” The man stared at him through the night. “What makes you ask?”
“Because Jeff did—he walked under a ladder where a man was pruning a tree as he came to the gate of the estate next door.”
“Hm! Then—if he’s as superstitious as he makes believe,” Larry laughed, “he’d better watch out.”
“He had that!” Sandy agreed.
And Dick, as they entered the hangar, rolled down the doors, set the switch at neutral and he was alone with Sandy in the pitchy blackness, echoed the sentiment.
A new idea flashed into Sandy’s mind.
“Do you know,” he spoke through the darkness. “Dick, we’re not watching that amphibian at all! If Jeff did come here and managed to get away, he’d go straight there and fly off.”
Dick agreed, declared that with Larry and Mr. Whiteside within call he dared to wait in the hangar alone, and Sandy, going out through the secret way, encountered Larry and the detective, consulted them, had their sanction for his idea and hurried off toward the next estate.
Thus divided up, the Sky Patrol spent dull hours waiting.
But patience is always rewarded!
Wearisome though his vigil was, Sandy made the best he could of it by going over all the events that had happened.
With his chums he had become friendly with Jeff at the newly opened municipal airport. Jeff had flown them to the old estate, pretended that his motor died, simulated a forced landing, then explained it all in a way that looked sincere enough at the time—but now!——
Jeff had been the one to accompany Larry to the wreck of the seaplane, and to bring the life preserver back, when he took Tommy Larsen to the emergency hospital.
One little thing bothered Sandy at that point in his musing: why had Jeff not made away with the life preserver at once?
“Oh, but he hadn’t seen his wife then,” he thought. “Mimi told him her news, about seeing the captain of the yacht hide the real jewels—and being an airman, he hadn’t known that all yacht equipment has its name painted on it in case of a wreck at sea.”
Skipping many other things that seemed to point out Jeff as the ringleader, deceiving his employer and war buddy, Mr. Everdail, Sandy came down to the present suspicious circumstance.
“Jeff left the amphibian here on purpose. Of course he knows that Mr. Whiteside won’t leave the real jewel ‘preserver’ unguarded here, but he must know the plan to have it in the hangar. He thinks he is clever enough to outwit us all—but Jeff,” he addressed the imaginary image of the pilot, “you walked under a ladder, today. Don’t forget how superstitious you are. And—this time—it is an omen, and no mistake.”
He cut short his meditation and listened to the sound of oars in the inlet.
Was Mr. Whiteside coming—or Jeff?
His uncertainty was not maintained for long.
Making no effort to be quiet, the oarsman sculled to one of the steps arranged for embarking on the amphibian in water, looped a line around a strut to hold his boat against the drift of slack tide and a slight wind, and came onto the amphibian.
Sandy, crouched low in the passenger’s cockpit, hoping Jeff would not notice him, was dazzled by the beam of a searchlight pocket lamp which Jeff flashed around.
“Hello!” he exclaimed, surprised. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t you know the plan?” Sandy wanted to take advantage of Jeff’s momentary indecision: perhaps he would “give away” something.
“Yeah! I know what Whiteside planned. But he didn’t plan for anybody to be here. What’s the need?”
“In case the—ghost—got away from the others and knew this airplane was here.”
Sandy got a shock of surprise.
“Why, that-there is so! And if the gas-boat come and filled up the tank—I sent it, this afternoon and that was what Whiteside stayed here for, to see that the ‘phib’ got gassed and oiled up—the—ghost—could use it, if that-there ghost was a pilot.”
“That’s what we thought.”
Jeff chuckled rather sourly.
“Yes,” he said. “And you suspect me. I know you have, ever since the start of this business——”
“Oh, yes—I did.” Sandy thought fast: he decided to clear Jeff’s mind. “But don’t you remember that I turned over a new leaf?”
“I wish your buddies and that-there Whiteside would do as much, then.”
Sandy could not find anything to say.
“It’s funny,” Jeff remarked. “This-here psychology I’ve read about ain’t so far wrong when it says that folks who gets the wrong slant on a thing comes to believe it so strong that even the truth looks like a fib to them.”
Sandy said nothing.
“Oh, well,” Jeff turned and found his way back to the rowboat. “Time will tell. I seen a flock of birds circle over my head this afternoon and that-there is a sure sign of good fortune. I’ll come out cleared!”
With no further word he sculled away.
“Don’t forget,” he called over his shoulder, “if you can suspect me, I can suspect you—and Whiteside—and Dick—and Larry!”
Sandy, without reply, was already quietly undressing.
When the boat touched the wharf Sandy was a tiny figure moving with careful strokes through the water, screened by the amphibian as he swam for a sandy outcrop of the shore not far beyond the flying craft.
The dark figure of the pilot, moving across the estate shore paths had, at a good distance behind it, a shadow. Sandy had managed to hold his bundled clothes enough out of water to be fairly dry.
Over to the disused estate the quarry and its watchful shadow moved.
The pilot turned up a slope and climbed the smooth turf.
Sandy, waiting until he got to a shrubbery, moved so it was between him and his quarry. He, too, crossed the ascending turf.
It startled Sandy to see Jeff turn in at the old house, climb the veranda steps, cross the porch to the door—and go in.
Sandy stayed behind some shrubbery.
Jeff could watch from the doorway. He might see a figure in the open space of the lawn around the house.
He thought he guessed Jeff’s ruse.
The pilot, he reasoned, would go through the house after seeing that no one seemed to be following; but to be doubly sure he would go on to the front, coming out there, or to the side opposite where he had entered. Sandy matched his plans to the chance. He went, Indian-still and crouched, to a point where an ornamental tree would be in line with his movement from the side door, then in that shelter moved back to the hedged path, bent low and ran down to a cross path that took him to another point of the grounds.
From that he could observe the whole lawn around the house.
But, when a half hour had elapsed and no one had come out, he was puzzled. Had his maneuver been executed too late? No, Jeff could not have gotten out of sight because the lawn was too wide to cross in the brief time Sandy used up.
“He’s in the house—doing what?” he wondered.
He did not dare to find out. That “what” might be answered by “watching!”
Once he thought he caught a glint of light in the library window; but it could have come from a high beam of some automobile headlight, on the distant highway that passed the estate.
So Sandy watched and waited.
Therefore he did not see the dark figure that emerged cautiously from the grove and, with intent, careful gaze, studied the hangar.
The ghost was getting ready to walk!
When Dick had tried crouching, sitting on his heels, walking and every other device he could think of to end the interminable difficulties of trying to pass time with nothing to do and nothing under him but the hard cement hangar floor, he began to wish he had never met Jeff or gotten into the adventure at all.
He resolved, then and there, never to become a detective.
Countless times his nerves had been pulled by sounds which turned out on second thought to be only the contracting of the hot metal, subjected to the sun all day, as the evening breeze robbed it of its warmth.
No wonder that he failed to react to a slight clinking, hardly more than would be made by the scratch of wire in a lock.
But the shrinking of metal had made intermittent noises, sharp and not repeated.
This sound, so insistent, so prolonged, began, at last, to make an impression. “Now what can that be?” he wondered, becoming strained in his effort to make his ears serve him to the fullest degree.
“It can’t be a rat’s claws,” he decided. “There aren’t any rats. There’s nothing to draw them, here.”
At the emission of a sharper click from some unlocated point he felt his spine chill, his nerves grew tense and a queer, uneasy feeling ran over his muscles, an involuntary tremble.
“What could make such a sound?” he pondered.
Then he drew his legs in under him as he sat with his back against the metal sheathing of a corner.
The small, side door, toward the Sound shore, was opening!
That was a complication for which nothing had been planned. Larry and Mr. Whiteside, Dick knew, were lying in the shadow of the hedge behind the hangar, watching the cleverly devised back entry way.
Because it had been supposed that the “ghost”—Jeff—or whoever it was, would use that means of getting in, Dick’s own position had been chosen. He had selected a place sharply diagonal in direction from it. In his corner he could not be seen in the beam of a flashlight from the small cupboard unless its user came all the way out: otherwise the sides would shape the path of the light so it would not come near him.
But a man or ghost entering from the side, and playing any light around, would show Dick fully exposed.
The worst of that was that there was no rear guard flanking that door!
“Well,” Dick thought. “I can only wait and see what happens—and be ready to chase if I am discovered. Maybe I can catch and hold the ‘ghost’ till the others get to us.”
Careful not to scrape his soles in the cement, he gathered himself into a crouching, compact, alert figure.
Dim and hardly distinct to his straining eyes, there seemed to be in the slightly lighter gloom of the floor where the door opened, a shadow.
It might be an illusion of his taut nerves and tense mind, Dick decided.
He could not see out through the opening because he was almost in a straight line with the wall on that side.
He waited, becoming shaky with the strain, for what seemed like a dragging eternity.
The intruder must be scanning the landscape, judging conditions, he guessed.
When it seemed that he could not stay as he was another instant, the door was slightly moved, and then softly closed. So quiet was the operation that he did not hear the latch click. He had detected no change in the color of the door itself as it hung, slantwise to his view, and he heard no sound of feet on the cement.
That meant nothing fearful or horrifying to Dick.
Rubber soles and a dark suit covered the logical explanation.
“Still, I should have seen his face—maybe a mask, though——”
At any rate, he knew that he was not alone inside the edifice, and if Dick’s common sense was too great to let him think of uncanny spirits, the sense of danger supplied chills and thrills a-plenty.
A faint, glowing, bluish light broke out.
It threw no beam, only a sort of dull phosphorescence; but Dick’s quick eyes ran instantly to its source—some small flashlamp covered with colored cloth, a handkerchief, perhaps.
Behind that silhouette, because the light was aimed in the direction away from Dick, he saw what caused him to emit a revealing gasp.
The figure silhouette between him and the glow wore a dress!
“A woman!” gasped Dick, and at the same instant the figure whirled, Dick leaped up, the light went out and Dick rushed blindly forward.
A hand fumbled with the catch: that located her.
In his rush, Dick’s arms were carried around the shoulders he could not see. Like a serpent, sinuous, tense, powerful, the woman squirmed around in his arms.
He tried to hold her with one hand as he strove to open that door with the other, while he took the beating of her furious hands on his bent face.
The door catch yielded—their wrestling, struggling weight drew it inward.
“Help—this way!” screamed Dick.
And he clung like a terrier to a tigress!
Sandy was first to hear the call and locate it. The others, not expecting a cry for help from within the hangar until they had seen some one go in, when Dick would be only a sort of surprise attacker while they proposed to make the capture, Larry and the detective were confused for an instant.
Then, recovering, and supposing Dick had called from close inside the hangar, they took the quickest way in, and interfered with one another at the small opening in the plates.
Sandy, dashing toward the hangar, correctly supposing Dick had called from its smaller doorway, did not see Jeff emerge from the old house and start on a run in the same direction.
Dick, clinging with all his strength to a wiry, supple powerful body, strove to keep that hold while he captured the hands that were pounding at his neck and averted face.
Hot, quick puffs of breath fanned his cheek.
Hissing, sibilant gasps marked the throes of the struggle.
Unexpectedly the figure went limp.
Dick clung. He heard the aides coming in through the metal opening. He caught the pound of Sandy’s approaching shoes.
But he did not believe he had made his captive so tamely surrender.
He realized that with a hand at her side the woman was striving to get at something in her skirt.
He slipped his arm down lower so that his hand encountered her wrist.
That lessened his ability to hold with the arm that was already aching from its prolonged strain. His hand gripped convulsively in the folds of the dress at the back; but his grip was not as tight as it had been because his mind was concentrated on stopping that other hand!
He felt a knee coming up.
Involuntarily he shrank back from a possible kick in some vital spot.
Like a cat the figure squirmed, a heel, small and sharp, came down on his foot. He grunted and winced and the figure broke his grip.
Pushing him, leaping backward, only to catch balance, the form wheeled on agile feet and ran for the grove.
Sandy, within sighting distance, cut into the wood to intersect the path of flight.
Dick pounded after the woman.
From the door of the hangar Larry and Mr. Whiteside emerged to join the chase.
“If I could have held her one second more!—” panted Dick.
“Her?” cried Larry.
The grove had prevented him from seeing the escaping figure.
“It was Mimi, I guess!”
They all disappeared into the grove, and Jeff, coming rapidly closer, paused to listen to the sound of the pursuit.
A smile, inscrutable in the dark, crossed his face, twisted his lips. He turned into the hangar.
Down the wood’s path raced Dick, Larry slightly ahead of him, the detective, older and not so quick, bringing up the rear.
“Scatter!” cried he. “She has turned off!”
“Here she is—” Sandy shouted, but a crash indicated that he had stumbled or missed his footing on slippery sod or pebbles.
The chase turned toward him.
Recovered, he dashed in pursuit of the woman.
Their quarry was fleet, clever and terrorized: she led them always toward the water, down hill.
Sandy, having hurt his foot somewhat in his stumble, was quickly out of the race.
He decided to go back and see if the hangar, with its door wide, was still deserted. Sandy had a misgiving that the woman might be a decoy and that the hangar ought to be watched.
As Dick passed at a slight distance, Sandy told his idea.
“That’s—so,” panted Dick. He decided that the other two must be both fleeter and more agile than he, with his fat; so he returned with Sandy, to a point where they saw that the door was in the same relative position they had left it—wide.
“I don’t think we need to stay here—both of us,” Sandy said. “And if Jeff went into the house, he may have come out. Suppose he plans to get hold of that life preserver, and the woman was sent ahead to get us all away—” He considered that, then went back to his original idea, “Then it would be a good thing for me to get back to where I can watch that amphibian.”
Dick agreed.
He went inside the hangar, closing the door, and resumed his vigil.
In a short time two others returned, to knock on the door and to inform Dick, when he opened it, that the woman, clever planner that she proved herself, had arranged the small motor-boat of the estate so that its engine was going; by a ruse she had gotten far enough ahead of them while they stopped to “capture” her discarded coat after she had cried out as if she had stumbled. That enabled her to get to the boat. They had no way to overtake her as she swept out of the inlet. Evidently she had started the boat motor in the afternoon while they were away, or they would have heard the roar of the start though no one had noticed the softer purr of it as it idled.
Then they went into the hangar and Mr. Whiteside, listening to Dick’s report, from Sandy, of Jeff’s movements, swung his flashlamp around.
From each came an amazed, horrified gasp.
The life preserver was gone!
“Keep your heads, boys,” counseled Mr. Whiteside.
“We will—but come on—Jeff’s making for the amphibian—let’s——”
“Sandy went back to guard it,” Dick told Larry who had spoken.
“Not alone is Sandy on watch, but I arranged to have Tommy Larsen bring his airplane to the golf green Jeff used this afternoon,” Mr. Whiteside told them, as he walked, recovering breath, toward the hangar door.
“Tommy is to keep his engine warm, idling, and to be ready, at the first sign of escape, to take the air and overtake Jeff,” he added.
“But maybe Sandy might get into trouble,” urged Larry. “He’d fight to stop Jeff, and that man is in a dangerous mood if he’d do what he has done.”
“It will do no harm to go over,” agreed Mr. Whiteside, slamming the door behind them. “It’s shorter down along the water.”
At a jog trot they went down the slope and at the wharf Dick gave a cry of surprise.
“There’s the motor boat—drifting just off the dock!”
“Then that woman—Mimi—came back to rejoin Jeff!” argued Larry, and broke into a run. “Come on, fellows!”
Down the wharf path they ran, turning into the shell-powder path that skirted the inlet on the far side of which the amphibian lay moored.
“Sandy will stop them,” panted Dick, a little to the rear because of his weight. Larry called, over his shoulder, that with two to give battle to, Sandy might need them before they could arrive.
“There’s somebody—on the lawn!” cried Dick, swinging off in that direction. From behind a large tree emerged a figure. Larry and the detective followed at a run. But the man who came quickly forward to meet them gave all three a surprise.
“Tommy!” Larry recognized the pilot.
“Larsen, why aren’t you by your airplane?” demanded Mr. Whiteside.
“I came over to report and get instructions, sir.”
“Why, I gave——”
“Something new has come up, sir. I was waiting there by my ship a good while back, and I heard another one cruising and spiraling, shooting the field, I guess, because he came in and set down. My crate, just the way you ordered, was down by the grove, not in plain sight in the middle of the course. But Jeff set his ship down, left the engine running, and went off. I stayed hid to see what would happen, but when he didn’t come back, I thought I’d better go and find you—and see if it meant anything to you.”
“Jeff’s working with his wife, we think,” volunteered Larry. “Anyhow a woman slipped in and led us out of the hangar and started away in a motor boat, and then she must have come back, because yonder’s the boat——”
“See anything of Mimi?” asked Mr. Whiteside eagerly.
“Haven’t laid eyes on the lady.”
“She must have met Jeff and gone with him. We’re going to see.”
“I have orders, at that,” Mr. Whiteside told the pilot. “You go back and get into the air and then cruise around—just in case Jeff does get started.”
“I will that.”
“It would take him some time,” argued Dick.
“He could start his motor and taxi while it warmed up, and be half across the Sound before he took off if he wanted to, in that ‘phib,’” the pilot said. Turning, he called that he would get going, and returned beyond their view beyond the trees.
Dick, Larry and Mr. Whiteside, listening for a call from Sandy, went hurrying along. But no call from Sandy. He had decided that it would be a wiser thing to hide than to risk doing battle with the pilot if he was actually as bad as they suspected; with that in mind he had crawled in through the opening from the back, into the fuselage of the amphibian. There, fairly comfortable, he lay, full length, listening. The open top allowed air to come because a strong, puffy breeze had gotten up, driving great, black thunderclouds before it.
Sandy regretted his ruse presently, because he heard a boat and realized that he could not see who occupied it: furthermore, while his position would enable him to be hidden and to go along if Jeff took off, he would be helpless in case of an accident to the craft.
When he decided to get out, it was almost too late—but not quite.
Jeff got his engine going by setting it on a compression point when he had primed the cylinders and using his booster magneto to furnish the hot sparks that gave it its first impulse.
Then, as soon as he heard Jeff drop the mooring rope and get in, Sandy backed to a point where he could crawl to hands and knees, poked his head up carefully, saw Jeff, adjusting his helmet as the engine roared, and was able to climb over the seat back into the place behind the tank before Jeff decided they were warmed up enough, got the craft on the step and lifted it into the darkness, lit by intermittent flashes of approaching lightning.
Sandy snapped his safety belt.
“Now, Mister Jeff,” he remarked, safe behind the roar of their climb. “Go anywhere you like—life preserver and all. I’ll make the tracks ‘sandy’ for you if you want to stop!” He employed a railway expression, whimsically applying it to the airplane instead.
Dick, Larry and the detective, hearing the roar of the engine, delayed not a moment in their dash around the rest of the inlet shore.
They found that the amphibian was well out on the Sound, saw it lift.
It climbed in a northerly direction.
As they reached the vicinity of its starting point and called and searched for Sandy, they heard the drone of another engine and saw the red-and-green and the white flying lights of what must be Tommy’s craft, also going northerly in pursuit.
“There he goes!” Larry cried. “There must be some place in Connecticut that Jeff and the woman with him know about—remember, Tommy’s passenger had him flying in that direction when the seaplane crashed, and the hydroplane boat went that way—by gracious-golly-gravy! Do you suppose it could have been the woman who ran off with that other life preserver, while Jeff pretended he was too sick to take up a ship?”
“It could be,” Dick replied. “I’m wondering more about Sandy.”
“Let’s go back to the house and make sure he didn’t stop there to see what Jeff had been doing before,” Larry suggested. “He may have missed going with Jeff. If the woman had been along he’d have had no place and they would have left him here. But there isn’t a trace.”
“No signs of any struggle either,” said the detective who had investigated with his flash.
They returned to the house.
In the library, where Sandy had told Dick he had seen a glimmer of light, they saw nothing especially unusual, unless they could attach importance to an old photograph album, lying open on a corner settee with several small snapshots removed and only the gummed stickers left to show they had been there and what their size was.
“No Sandy,” said Dick, worried. “Do you suppose they?——”
“I wonder if he saw two people coming and crawled into the fuselage,” Larry said.
“He might have. I wish we could follow and see.”
“I’m ready—and I think I’d be safe to fly, even if it does look like storms. We could outfly Jeff, anyhow, catch up with him——”
He pointed to an open telephone book beside the instrument on the side table.
“It’s a Long Distance book, too—and its open at the E’s!” Dick glanced swiftly down the pages, “Evedall—Ever—Everdail!” he looked up with a surprised face.
Instantly Larry caught up the receiver.
“Long Distance Operator, please,” he spoke into the transmitter.
“Yes?”
“Long Distance?” He gave the number of the Everdail Maine estate, secured from the open book. “Has that number been called recently? Can you tell me?”
“Just a moment,” came back to him.
The moment became two—three——
“Hello! It has! At ten o’clock. Thank you. Someone has been using our house telephone, then. Goodbye!”
“It was called!” the detective showed a baffled face.
“And by Jeff!” Larry consulted his watch. “The time checks with the report Sandy gave that Jeff was here. He called Mr. Everdail—why?”
“To tell him about the life preserver—and maybe to deliver it!”
“But Dick—he would never take it there if he means to——”
“I begin to think he doesn’t mean to make away with it.”
“But it had to be a pilot who did all the things we have evidence of, Dick.”
“Well—there’s another pilot!”
“And he’s flying after Jeff!” gasped the detective—leaping up he started out. “Come, boys—Larry, will you try to fly us? I’ve been on the wrong angle all along. Will you take us in Jeff’s airplane, Larry?”
Larry would!
Jacketed from the supply Jeff kept for passengers, two of the Sky Patrol and a discomfited detective rose in the air and joined the pursuit.
It was to have an unexpected outcome.
Hour after hour, into a North wind that cut down their forward mileage somewhat, Larry held the airplane.
He flew low, in order to hold the coastline of the ocean, because he did not dare try to navigate, inexperienced as he was, with no practice at “blind flying” above the clouds.
Thunderstorms menaced, but always they were to the inland side, and Larry did not have to pass through them, or climb above them and lose his way.
Boston, easily recognized for its expanse and illumination, as well as by the name-markers on certain roofs, painted there by air-minded owners, finally came into view.
They circled until Larry located the large airport there.
Noting its white boundary lights, its red warnings, its windsock to give him the direction of the air currents, he circled the field several times, to be sure he would not foul any other ship, and to see if any signal would be sent him.
Presently, after a commercial freight carrier had taken off, he got two red lights, a signal to land, and as the field was wonderfully well lighted, and he had learned to judge distance from the ground well, Larry was repaid for his self-control and confidence and care by making a perfect three-point landing.
Mr. Whiteside’s explanations seemed to clear away need for formality.
While they were gassing up the airplane, he went to the administration building and chatted with the field manager.
“The others are still ahead of us,” he reported to Larry and Dick as they munched a hurried meal and drank hot coffee, also securing additional flying togs to supplement what they had.
“I wonder how much we’ve caught up on them,” Larry said.
“Well, the amphibian stayed only a few minutes, and it wasn’t gone five minutes before the other one came in——”
“A two-place biplane?” asked Larry.
Mr. Whiteside nodded.
It remained only to get information, he stated, and then went up.
“Oh, dear,” he finished. “I gave Tommy orders to ride down Jeff if he had to, in order to stop him, and to get him arrested. I wish I could stop him!”
“Who was in the first ’plane?” Dick asked.
“Sandy was there—they saw a boy, and Jeff got him some gloves; and they seemed surprisingly friendly.”
“That means that Jeff is innocent and has made friends with Sandy; but where is the woman?”
Answering Dick, Mr. Whiteside explained.
“She was in the second airplane.”
“With Tommy!” exclaimed Larry. “Then he’s the one we want to catch, as well as to save Jeff and Sandy from being driven down.”
They wasted no time.
Friendly pilots, considering Larry such a boy aviator as Bobby Buck had proved to be, gave him some instructions that were most valuable, concerning night flying. The wind would be dead ahead, for most of his trip toward Maine, and he could check his direction by that until he had to veer to the West of North, when the wind, quartering, would drift him off the course—but they gave him rough corrections, and advised him to get above the clouds that were bearing down on Boston—local thunder storms.
Once more the low-wing craft took the air, climbed to a good height, Larry used his instructions, got the nose into the wind and drove ahead.
Slowly, as the distance behind them increased, their distance behind the other two ships grew less. Minute by minute they cut their handicap. Dick strained his eyes ahead, and to either side, watchful, eager.
He said almost nothing into the Gossport tube he had at his lips.
Larry knew his business: Dick wore the instructor’s part of the outfit only because it was the only helmet they could get at the start.
Under them black clouds, torn by vivid streaks of blue-white light, reeled backward, their tops tumbling and tossing.
Above them the night sky shone serene, with the full moon, just nicked by the curve of old Mother earth, riding higher and higher.
That was a glorious picture, had any one of them had the wish to enjoy it. But they were intent on much more important sights than that of a lovely sky.
“Flying lights ahead—” Dick spoke excitedly into the Gossport tube.
“Two sets—” he added.
Larry moved the throttle forward as far as it would go.
He peered ahead.
“Yes! There they are! Just a little below our level.”
Closer and closer they approached. The two airplanes were vividly visible in the bright light reflected upward also from the fleecy tops of wind-tossed cloud.
“They’re stunting—” Dick gasped.
“No—not stunting,” Larry forgot his voice would not reach Dick. “They’re maneuvering.”
It was clear to him. The amphibian, easily identified by its clumsy, bulky looking trucks, with the pontoons slung to braces, was trying to get away from a relentless biplane which sought to overtop it, to ride down onto its tail, force it down.
Two war pilots fought it out above the clouds!
In the airplane with one sat a woman whose presence marked him for a dangerous character, after the Everdail emeralds.
Behind the other pilot sat one of the Sky Patrol, at the mercy of a devilishly minded adversary, and he was as helpless to save himself as Larry and Dick were to aid him!
Larry, thinking of that, but hoping against hope that for all his lack of experience he might see some opportunity to stop the other man, banked moderately and began to circle.
They watched, breathlessly.