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.
“Well,” concluded Mr. Everdail, “here are the emeralds, minus the chain, which can easily be duplicated. And you know who’s who, and why the hangar seemed to be haunted, and all about the gum. Is there anything you don’t understand?—before Larry starts taking flying instructions from Jeff and you others join my wife and I for a cruise to Maine where I will leave Mrs. Everdail.”
“Yes, sir,” Larry responded. “We saw that parachute the man in the seaplane had come down with—the harness was unbuckled, so he wasn’t hurt in the drop. What I want to bring up is this: why did he desert the stunned pilot—and not appear when we landed there?”
“I wonder,” the millionaire was thoughtful. “I wonder what you would do if you had to make a ’chute jump and then, after the excitement discovered that the pilot was ‘out’ and had a blow on the temple—and with concealed jewels in his cockpit——”
“Guess I’d hide too!”
“But why were the chunks of gum put in the pilot’s cockpit and not in the passenger’s?” Larry persisted.
“You’re getting worse than I am,” grinned Sandy.
“The passenger was not an aviator,” the rich man retorted soberly. “He put them where he thought he would sit—in the wrong place, it happened. So, when they got the jewels, it was simpler to put them where the pilot could hide them, where the gum was.”
“Another reason would be,” Jeff said, “pilots use gum and it would look more natural for it to be stuck around where he did his control job than up forward, where the special agent had it in the amphibian.”
“That’s all that bothered me,” admitted Larry.
“And Pop! goes our mystery,” chuckled Dick.
Mrs. Everdail bent forward, and then looked up sharply.
“I don’t know about that?” She turned to her husband.
“Atley,” she said, excited and nervous. “Look here!” The man almost raced around the library table, bending close to where her finger touched the dark green showing through the adhesive gum.
“I don’t see anything—out of the way,” he replied to her look.
The Sky Patrol saw her expression and each grew taut with excitement at her next words.
“Don’t you see? Can’t you?” She raised her voice to a shrill pitch of excitement.
“I see one of the emeralds——”
“Don’t you see that it is pitted—burned—by acid?”
“Glory-gracious-golly!” Larry was agitated enough to couple all the exclamations.
“This isn’t the Everdail Emerald,” the lady was almost screaming, her hands trembled as she pointed. “It is the emerald that I had in the hotel room——”
“The imitation!”
“Yes, Atley! Oh——”
Dick turned to Larry.
“I just said, ‘Pop! goes our mystery.’” He had to laugh in spite of the grave situation, the new development, as he added:
“Well—‘Pop!’ Here comes our mystery back again!”
“Bigger than ever!” agreed Larry.
For once Sandy was absolutely speechless.
After their exciting day, the next two weeks proved more than dull to the youthful members of the Sky Patrol.
Nothing happened to clear up the mystery.
To the surprise of the yacht crew, Captain Parks kept them all busy preparing, the day after Mrs. Everdail’s dramatic discovery, for a run to Bar Harbor, Maine.
That was unusual. After a trip across the Atlantic, the yacht was ordinarily laid up for awhile, giving its crew some shore liberty.
Captain Parks, however, agreed with Mr. Everdail, who trusted him absolutely—if Sandy did not—that it would be wise not to give any person who had been on the yacht during its crossing any chance to get away.
“On the run,” Mr. Everdail told Sandy and Dick, “and while we lay over at Bar Harbor, you two can watch for anything suspicious. My wife won’t let me say that Mimi, the maid, could be guilty—besides, how could she get into Captain Parks’ safe?”
“I think, myself, some man of the crew would be the one to watch,” Dick agreed. “Maybe the steward, who could have a reason for getting into the captain’s quarters.”
“But it was a woman Larry saw, through the glasses, at the stern,” Sandy objected.
“Well, then—there’s the stewardess who attends to the ladies’ cabins,” argued Dick. “We can watch her.”
They did, but no one on board asked for shore leave, either on the day before lifting anchor or during the stay in the Maine waters. Dick and Sandy used ears and eyes alertly; but nothing suspicious looking rewarded their vigilance.
Larry, staying at the old estate home with Jeff, had some compensation, at least, for being separated from his chums. Not only could he keep an eye on things and be ready if Jeff called for an aide; as well, he had his daily instruction in ground school and in the air.
Already “well up” on all that books could tell about engines, types of airplanes, construction methods, rigging and even handling a craft in the air, he got the practical personal experience that is the only real teacher, and the thrill of donning the Gossport helmet, with its ear ’phones and speaking tube through which Jeff, in the second place of the amphibian or the airplane, instructed him, correcting faults or gave hints, was a real thrill.
He learned, first of all, not to start up an engine while the tail of the ship pointed toward a hangar, or other open building, or toward a crowd, in future, on a field.
The propeller blast threw a torrent of dust and as Jeff told him, he mustn’t become that most unpopular of airport nuisances, a “dusting pilot,” whose carelessness flung damaging clouds on airplanes in hangars and people on the fields.
Learning to warm up the engine, to check up on instruments, to keep the ship level while taxiing down the field to head into the wind, to make the turn, either in stiff wind or gentle breeze, so that the wind did not tip the craft and scrape wingtips—these and a dozen other things he acquired in several early lessons.
The second place of the airplane had been fitted with a set of dual controls, rudder bar, throttle and “joystick” so that Jeff, for two successive hops, let Larry put feet on his rudder bar and lightly hold the stick as Jeff manipulated the controls and explained, by use of the Gossport helmet, why he did this or that.
Jeff believed, as does every good instructor, that showing, and explaining, is necessary as a first step, but that a flyer is developed only by practice during which he makes mistakes and is told why they are mistakes and how to correct them, thus gaining confidence and assurance by actually flying.
“That-there time,” Jeff might say, “when the caretaker ‘playing mechanic’ and pulling down the prop till the engine catches, didn’t you open up the throttle too wide? Better to open it just enough to give the engine gas to carry along on—and even cut the gun a bit more to let it run fairly slow till it warms up. Turning her up to full eighteen hundred revs don’t gain while she’s cold, and it throws dust like sin!”
Or, as Larry taxied, learning to manage speed on the ground by use of wider throttle for more speed, cutting down the gas if the craft began going too fast, he would catch an error:
“Did you forget last time to put the stick back and make the blast on the elevators hold the tail down while we taxi? Sure, you did—but you won’t again, because you saw that if you didn’t we might nose over. You ‘over-controlled’, too, and almost nosed over before you caught it—and then, we were going so fast I don’t know what kept this-here crate from starting to hop.
“That’s right—easy movements always—don’t jerk the controls—take it fairly easy. And you are doing right to move the stick back to neutral this time when the tail came up—kick rudder a bit, isn’t she slanting to the right? That’s it, buddy, left rudder and back, and now the right rudder—there she is, headed right.”
Mostly, Larry caught his own mistakes in time.
Ordinarily cool-headed, he had to be told only once or twice, and reminded almost never that jerky manipulation of the controls was not good practice or helpful to their evolutions. Easy movements, continual alertness and a cool head stood him in good stead.
Seeing those fine qualities, Jeff had Larry thrilling and happy on the fourth day by letting the youthful enthusiast for aviation take over for a simple control job, straight, level flying.
“You’ll want to get the feel of the air, and see how stable the average modern crate is,” Jeff spoke through the Gossport tube. “How does that-there wing look to you—kind of dropping?—remember what I did—that’s the stuff, stick to the left a bit and back to neutral, so the other wing won’t drop! No use teetering back and forth. They put neutral position into a control so you can set ailerons or rudder or elevators where you want them and hold them.”
There was more than Larry had ever dreamed there would be to keep in mind: there was the maintaining of level flight; even in his simplest personal contact with the controls; then there was the job of keeping the horizon line at the right location by watching past a chosen spot on the engine cowling, else they would start to climb or go into a glide. There was the real horizon to distinguish from the false horizon, which an airman knows is, through some trick of the air, the visible horizon that is just a little bit above the true horizon, so that to hold level flight in a forward direction, that false horizon is not held on a line with the top of the engine cowling, but, to hold a line with the true horizon the marking point is held just a trifle below that false, visible horizon line.
Had that been all he had to comprehend Larry’s first control job would have been simple. There was much more to watch—the tachometer, to keep track of engine speed; the air speed was learned by watching the indicator on the wing of that particular type of airplane; the position of the nose with relation to the horizon had to be constantly noted and a tendency to rise or lower had to be corrected: little uprushes or warm air made the airplane tilt a trifle to one side or the other and ailerons had to be used to bring it back, the stick had to be returned to neutral gently at exactly the point of level flight after such correction and not sent to the other side or the craft tipped the other way and opposite aileron had to be applied; then there was the chosen point such as a church steeple, tall tree or other landmark selected as a point on the course to hold the nose on—that must be watched and a touch of rudder given if the craft deviated from its straight line.
Nevertheless, complicated as flying appeared to be on that first handling of joystick, rudder and throttle, Larry knew that the happiest time of his life would be his first successful solo hop, and that the complicated look of the maneuvers and the number of things to watch—level flight, direction, maintaining flying speed, seeing that altitude was maintained, that his own craft was not menacing or menaced by any other in the air, all these would become simple, second nature as soon as the flying hours piled up and gave him more skill and experience.
Morning and afternoon Jeff took him up.
Quick to learn, retentive of memory, not repeating the same mistakes—even working out some points for himself—Larry, at the end of the fifth day, was gratified to have Jeff, as he slipped off the Gossport, tell him:
“The only trouble about this-here instruction is that I’m scared you’re going to make a better pilot than your teacher.”
“Oh, thanks—but I never could be any better than you, Jeff.”
“Yes, you can,” the older man’s face became doleful. “You ain’t the kind to let that-there superstition bug bite you.”
“No,” admitted his pupil. “I think superstition is just believing something somebody else tells you until you are so busy watching out for something to go wrong that you aren’t ‘right on the job’ with your own work—or you are so busy waiting for some good thing to ‘happen’ that you don’t see Opportunity when it comes up because you’re not watching Opportunity—you’re watching Luck, or Omens.”
“Don’t I know it!” Jeff was rueful. “I want to kick myself sometimes—but when you know other folks has had their crates ‘jinxed’ by being in the same hangar with one that has got the name for being hoodooed—what would you do?”
“Just what I’m doing now,” Larry grinned. “I know Mr. Everdail paid the company for the ruined seaplane and moved it into the hangar, here. I know your airplane almost touches it, every night. But I don’t let that worry me, because——”
“Well, it worries me. I try not to let it, but the worry is there, no matter what I do. You see, I never thought, out in the marsh, about anything going wrong because I took that big wrench and put it in my tool kit after we salvaged it out of the water. But I dreamt about emeralds, last night, and so I went to a fortune teller gypsy woman and she told me a dream like that meant bad luck in business, and so I said I was a pilot and told her all about the seaplane——”
“You ought to be careful,” Larry interrupted. “If she puts two-and-two together, emeralds and a chase and a wrecked seaplane——”
“Oh, she was too busy talking to listen that close.”
“They’re awfully quick—the way they guess what’s in your mind proves that.”
“Oh, she won’t think anything about it. Anyhow, she told me not on any chance to touch that cracked up seaplane or anything that ever was on it—and so—I put the jinx on my own crate without meaning to.”
“I’m still willing to learn in it.”
“Well—I don’t know—it worries me.”
“It doesn’t bother me, Jeff.”
And it didn’t, for several more busy days.
“Hello, Sandy! How are you, Dick?” Larry met the returning chums as they climbed to the small estate wharf from the yacht tender, and while they strolled up the path he asked eagerly:
“Anything new? Anything suspicious?”
“Not even our Sandy could discover a thing,” Dick confided.
“Those emeralds aren’t on the yacht,” Sandy declared. “Captain Parks helped us by sending most of the crew ashore while Mr. Everdail took his wife to their woods camp. We went over the yacht——”
“With a fine-tooth comb!” Dick broke in. “We did make one big discovery, though.”
Larry turned toward him quickly.
“What?”
Dick tried to conceal the twinkle in his eye, but it got the better of him as he explained.
“We found a string of beautiful, perfect emeralds in the stewardess’ cabin, hung up on a nail.”
“Honestly?”
“Positive-ully, Larry! The finest that ever came out of a ten-cent store!”
“Oh—you——”
“Sandy suspected her right away!” went on the jovial one, “but no arrest was made.”
“What have you discovered?” Sandy asked Larry quickly, to cover his impulse toward assaulting the teasing chum.
“Not a thing—except I learned that the injured pilot was able to sit up and I went to see him.” Dick and Sandy waited anxiously for a revelation, but Larry was unable to give one.
“He is named Tommy Larsen,” Larry informed them. “He’s getting well fast. He was glad that his passenger had been wrong in suspecting the Everdails——”
“You didn’t tell him the emeralds we found were the imitations?”
“No, Sandy. He thinks they were the real ones.”
“What did he say to explain about his passenger not helping him, and then taking the boat?”
“The man came while I was there,” Larry told Dick. “He is named Deane, and he’s a nice-looking, quiet chap. It seems that when he landed with his ’chute, he came down and struck some driftwood or an old log, and it knocked the wind out of him. When he got back strength to cut himself loose, he tried to get to the seaplane but his landing, as I explained the location—well, you saw it when you flew over—his landing was made a couple of hundred yards away. I got the gardener to take me to the place, yesterday, in the hydroplane. There was a big, sunken log close to the torn ’chute.”
“Did he see you, that day?”
“No. He tried to swim over, turned sick, crawled onto some mud that was out of water and stayed there. I guess he fainted. When he managed to get there, we had taken Tommy Larsen away—so he’s cleared!”
“I don’t see that!”
“Why—Sandy! We left with the pilot—I mean, Jeff did. Then the hydroplane came for me, and when he got there, afterward, don’t you see that if he was guilty of anything, he’d have taken the chewing gum?”
“He might have seen that one chunk was gone, suspected that the hiding place was discovered and left the rest——”
“Suspicious Sandy!” Dick laughed. “With twenty-nine lovely emeralds to recover—and a rubber boat to get away in!”
“All right! All right! He’s an innocent man.”
“As innocent as the man I helped capture—Mr. Everdail’s friend, that man we put on the wrecking tug for five hours.”
“Everybody is innocent,” declared Dick. “Sandy, my advice to you, for your birthday, tomorrow, is to turn over a new leaf and instead of looking for people to suspect, try to think where those emeralds can be.”
“They’re not on the yacht, you say,” Larry said to take away the sting to Sandy’s pride. “They aren’t in the old house. They were taken from the captain’s safe—where did they go?”
“You tell me who knew the way to get into the captain’s safe and I’ll try to get the emeralds.”
“Captain Parks says no one ever was told that combination.”
“All right, Dick,” Sandy replied to the chum who had just spoken. “You’ve answered Larry’s question.”
“Golly-glory-gracious! It does look that way!”
“Who else could be safer? He says the emeralds were gone and his word is his bond! Oh, yes!”
“Then the emeralds won’t be found,” concluded Dick. “Captain Parks has been ashore, and away, hours at a time, here and in Maine.”
“Let’s see if Mr. Everdail won’t listen to us about that, now.”
Dick’s suggestion was followed.
The millionaire listened gravely to their statement and broke into a hearty laugh.
“As I live and breathe!” he said. “You members of Jeff’s Sky Patrol are working for the wrong side. You ought to be with that London lad, who suspects my wife and her cousin, Miss Serena, and me! Oh—this is great! You’re helping me a whole lot. I think I must increase the allowances for Suspicious Sandy, Detective Dick and—er—Follow-the-Leader Larry.”
He turned his frowning lips and smiling eyes on the latter.
“I’m amazed at you, though. Jeff says you’ve got good judgment.”
“Captain Parks had opportunity—he knew you would take his word—no one else knew his safe combination. Isn’t that common sense, sir?”
“It’s a kind of sense that’s common enough—but——”
“Who else could get the emeralds?” persisted Sandy.
“Well, let’s see. Besides Captain Parks, there’s—” his voice trailed off; once he shook his head at some thought; once he scowled; finally he shook his head defiantly.
“As I live and breathe—it looks—but I won’t believe it! Not Billy Parks. He’s——”
“All right, sir,” Larry said. “We thought we ought to report what came into our minds. But we can’t prove anything, of course.”
“All right, my boy. Watch him, trail him, whatever you like. I’ll give you each a thousand dollars if you can prove——”
“How can we, unless we catch him—and the emeralds are gone——”
The millionaire swung on Sandy as the youth spoke.
“Wait—let me finish. A thousand dollars if you’ll prove—Parks is innocent!”
“Oh!”
He turned, dismissing them as he greeted his cousin, Miss Serena, who had declared that his wife would be better off alone to rest in the quiet camp in Maine. Miss Serena, with a will of her own, had come back, determined, if the rich man proposed to stay at his old estate, that she would assemble a group of servants and manage the house for him. The three chums sidled out, neither of the three counting on the payment of that, to them, large sum.
“There’s money we’ll never get,” said Sandy.
The others agreed.
Sandy’s birthday dawned hot, but clear, with a good, steady south wind blowing.
The rich man had not forgotten Sandy. A fine set of books awaited him at the breakfast table, a set of engineering books that he would prize and study for many years.
Larry’s remembrance, a radium-dial wrist watch, and Dick’s gift, the set of drawing implements he coveted, delighted him. Jeff’s modest but earnestly presented “luck charm” secured from his gypsy fortune teller was accepted with a grave, grateful word—but Sandy had hard work not to break into a wild laugh.
“How old are you, buddy,” Jeff asked.
“Thirteen!”
Jeff’s face grew sober.
“And this is Friday!” he murmured.
“Surely it is,” laughed Larry, and then, in a lower tone, he urged, “now, Jeff——”
“No, sir! I won’t go up, today, even if you did plan to surprise——”
“You would spoil it!” Larry was unable to keep from being annoyed, almost angry, because Jeff had spoiled a surprise.
“We might as well tell you, Sandy, now that it’s ‘all off’,” Dick said. “We were going to give you another present—a hop over your own house in Flatbush—with Larry for pilot! But——”
“Oh, never mind Jeff. Let’s go!”
“Don’t be silly, Jeff,” Mr. Everdail chided the pilot. “Check over everything and then go up. You know mighty well that accidents don’t come from ‘hoodoos’. They come from lack of precaution on the pilot’s part. The weather charts for today give perfect flying weather. The airplane is in fine shape. Go ahead—give the lads a treat!”
“On your heads be it!” Jeff said somberly.
He did not neglect his duty. For all his nonsense about omens and such things, he gave the airplane a careful checkup, warmed up the engine for Larry himself and made sure that everything he could foresee was provided for.
Sandy, thrilled at the prospect of a hop with his own comrade doing the control job, was full of fun and jokes.
Dick, no less eager to see Larry perform his new duties, wasn’t behind Sandy in good humor.
Larry, though quiet, was both confident and calm.
He did not forget to assure himself, by a final look at the windsock indicating the wind direction, that the breeze had not shifted.
Neither did he “dust” the hangar, nor lose his straight course as he taxied across the field at an angle to turn, without scraping wings or digging up turf with the tail skid.
A final test, with chocks under the wheels, the signal for the wheels to be cleared by the caretaker, a spurt of the gun for several seconds to get the craft rolling as the elevators were operated to lift the tail free, a run at increasing speed, picked up quickly because of the short runway—stick back, lifting elevators so the propeller blast drove the tail lower and the nose higher—and they left the ground.
Stick back from neutral, after leveling off for a bare two seconds to regain flying speed, and they climbed, the engine roaring, Jeff nodding but making no comment through the speaking tube he still used. Dick shouted a hurrah! Sandy joined him.
Over the hangar they rose, and Larry, holding a more gentle angle to avert a stall, continued upward until his altimeter gave him a good five hundred feet.
Then, choosing a distant steeple as in direct line with the course he would fly toward Brooklyn, to be out of any airline around the airports, he made a climbing turn, steadied the craft, straightening out, went two thousand feet higher to be doubly safe—and drew back his throttle to cruising speed.
“Who says this airplane is hoodooed?” shouted Sandy, jubilantly.
And then—the hoodoo struck!
Flying close to three thousand feet above Oyster Bay, level and stable, the airplane seemed to be in perfect condition.
Jeff, for all his superstition, would have given it as a pilot’s opinion that only some mistake on Larry’s part, or a quitting engine, leaving them with a dead stick, could cause danger.
Just the same the unexpected happened!
“There’s where President Roosevelt lies,” Dick, in the last seat, because their places were rearranged by Larry’s position as pilot, indicated to Sandy, just ahead of him, the cemetery beneath them.
Very tiny, in its iron fenced enclosure, the last resting place of a national idol, was almost invisible with its simple headstone; but Dick’s statement was understood by Sandy to mean the location more than the exact spot.
“I’ll get Jeff to ask Larry to spiral down for a better look,” Sandy decided.
He transmitted the suggestion.
“Sandy wants to see President Roosevelt’s place in the cemetery,” Jeff spoke into the tube of the Gossport helmet Larry still used.
“There it is, just off our left wing, buddy. That’s right—stick goes to the left and a touch of left rudder, but when you moved the stick sidewise to adjust the ailerons you neglected that-there bit of forward movement to tip us down into a glide. Remember, it’s the double use of the stick that works ailerons and elevators both.”
Larry had overlooked that point for the instant. It was his only difficulty in flying, to recollect always to control all the different movements together. The joystick, operating the wing-flap ailerons by the left-or-right, lateral movement, also raised or depressed the elevators by forward-or-backward movement. However, in any lateral position, the forward and backward set of the stick worked the elevators and in executing a control maneuver, even as simple as going into a bank combined with a turning glide, or downward spiral, the movement of the stick should be both slightly sidewise, for sufficient bank, and, with the same movement, slightly forward, for depressing the nose into a glide, returning the stick from slightly forward back to neutral to avoid over-depressing the nose into too steep a glide; if not put back in neutral when the right angle was attained, the depressed elevators would continue to turn the forward part of the craft more steeply downward.
“Not too steep, Larry. Back with the stick.”
Just at the instant that Larry was about to obey Jeff’s instruction a gust of air, coming up warm, tilted the lifted wing more, and as he corrected for that, trying to get the wing up and the nose higher for a flatter spiral, his movement was a little too sharp, and the sensitive controls, working perfectly, but too sharply handled, sent the craft into an opposite bank, rolling it like a ship in the trough of a sidewise wave.
Also, Larry meant to try to draw the stick backward at the same time, coordinating both corrections; but Jeff, a little less calm than usual because of the superstitious fears that kept riding him, neglected to speak the words by which he would inform Larry that he was “taking over” until the correction was made.
By that neglect, both drew back on the stick at the identical instant, and the nose came up much too sharply.
Larry, not aware that Jeff meant to handle the job, almost pulled the stick away from Jeff in his anxiety to get the nose down again, and Dick, in the last seat, thought he felt a sort of thud.
“Hands off! I’ll take over!” Jeff said tardily.
He drew back on the stick for, with the throttle rather wide—because Larry had feared a stall as the nose went up and had thrust the throttle control sharply forward—the craft began to go down in a very steep glide, not quite a dive, but with engine on full gun, sending it in a sharp angle toward earth.
Naturally, when he pulled back on the stick and it did not yield, Jeff shouted through the speaking tube, “Let go!” for he thought Larry had lost his head and was fighting his control.
Larry was not doing anything. He had removed his hand from the stick, his feet merely touched the rudder bar.
Jeff called out something.
They did not realize his words, but Sandy saw his expression.
Almost as though he had been able to hear, Sandy knew Jeff’s idea.
“The jinx has got us.”
Jeff cut the gun swiftly, and came out of the bank pointed toward the wide, shimmering waters of Oyster Bay.
“What’s the matter?” Larry swung his head to call back.
“Stick’s jammed!” Jeff grunted through the tube.
“Jammed?”
“Stuck. It won’t come back. It’s the jinx! Hoodoo! We’re heading down for the bay and I can’t get the nose up!”
Dick, from the back place, saw Jeff struggling with the stick.
If he did not hear, at least his flying study informed him that something had gone amiss.
Equally, his quick mind arrived at a good guess at the trouble.
The only reason Jeff would swing toward the water and give up working with the stick must be that the stick would not operate the elevators.
And that, to Dick, spelled disaster.
Its speed accelerated at the start by the engine the airplane picked up speed rapidly because its nose was steadily going down.
Jeff tugged madly again.
The stick, part of an installed auxiliary control for instruction work, snapped out of its bed.
Jeff flung it disgustedly out to the side.
Larry sat quietly, knowing well that in no time they would be diving toward a wet, deep bay—and the end!
Sandy, not fully aware of the situation, but tense, thought of his ’chute, in the seat-pack. Would there be time? Could he use it? He waited, watching Jeff and Larry.
None of the three noticed Dick.
Seconds counted, he knew.
If the stick was jammed, it might be possible to get into the fuselage. There he might operate the elevator cable by hand enough to get that nose up more, flatten the glide, maybe enough to enable Larry, who alone had a stick, to swing around and come down on land—somehow.
A crack-up would not be as bad, perhaps, as a plunge, a dive into the bay!
Before his mind flashed the recollection that in construction plans he had seen provision for getting into the after part of the fuselage.
Not wasting a second, he was already free from his safety belt, climbing with agile quickness for all his plumpness, onto the fuselage.
It was a fearful risk.
Their speed sent them through the air so fast that the wind was a gale there on the unprotected top fabric of the fuselage.
With his cotton-stuffed ears tortured by the pressure, with the fierce wind tearing at him, Dick clutched the seat top as he tore away the fabric flap covering a sort of manhole back of his place.
Headfirst he plunged in, scrambling, instantly beginning to seek the points where the control cables passed through channeled guides at each side.
He was in a dark, stuffy, closely confined and narrow space, his legs hanging out in the roaring gale, unable to see, half suffocated by the fumes collected in that restricted area.
He found a cable with exploring hands.
He tugged at it.
It was slack. That told his feverishly acute intelligence that it was the cable whose lever did not operate. He had seen that Jeff, when he flung the stick forward to try to free it, had been able to pull it back again without operating the elevators.
Almost as his hand touched the cable and twitched at it, his other hand, as he lay with his weight on his chin, face and chest, contacted something else—a large, roundish object, feeling like a spare landing wheel tire.
He knew as though the light photographed the truth to his eyes, that this tire-like object had moved, shifted, fallen onto the cable, wedging it.
Instantly Dick pushed it into the center of the small space.
Gripping the cable, he twitched it sharply once—twice—three times!
In the dark, he did not know how close the water was. He could not tell if his alertness had been able to give back the use of the elevators in time.
Larry, his hand idly on the useless stick, felt it twitch three times.
Automatically he tested it. It came back, and the nose began to come up a trifle. He did not dare over-control. He had learned that lesson!
The water was rushing up at them—but the stick—might——
Seconds to go!
He must not drag the ship out of that dive too swiftly—a wing might be torn off.
But with his nerves taut, by sheer power of his cool will forcing himself to work steadily but not sharply, he brought the nose up, closing his eyes to that wild nightmare of water seeming to be leaping toward the airplane.
Jeff shut his eyes. Then he opened them again. No use to try a jump, no use to do anything but be ready if——
Sandy braced himself.
The airplane was flattening out!
Larry was operating the stick!
The nose came up steadily—with a fraction of time to the good, they began to come out of the glide to level flight.
Larry braced himself against the slap of the wheels into the surface water. That might offer just enough resistance to nose them in.
He must be ready to open the throttle and pull up the nose—but he must not do it too soon, or do it at all in his strained, excited state—he might go too far.
Level! The airplane skimmed, it seemed to Larry, inches above the slightly ruffled water.
Gently he drew back the stick, opening the throttle carefully.
“Golly-to-gosh!” he muttered, “that was close——”
When he had lifted the craft and headed for home, he glanced back.
Two legs waved over the last cockpit place.
And in that ridiculous position Dick, a hero upside down, came to earth at the end of Sandy’s birthday flight—on the thirteenth, a Friday, as Jeff, white and shaken, hastened to remind them.
“But you sure done some swell control job,” he told Dick.
“Thanks,” Dick retorted, without smiling.
He turned to Larry.
“You did the trick, Larry,” he declared. “I only loosened the cables—freed them——”
“What made them jam, I wonder?” mused Sandy.
“The jinx!”
Dick turned on Jeff.
“Yes,” he said very quietly for him. “The jinx! The hoodoo. I think it’s broken, though—in fact, I know it is.”
“Why?”
“Because.” Dick began to chuckle, “I’ve thought of a sure way to break it.”
“How?” Jeff was regaining his color and his curiosity.
But Dick grinned and shook his head.
He knew the answer to the puzzle of the missing emeralds!
“Glad to hear you think the hoodoo is busted,” Jeff commented. “Me, I don’t care. I’ve taken my last hop in that-there crate. I’m shaking like a leaf, even now.”
“Why don’t you go to your room and have a lie down?” suggested Dick.
Jeff decided that Dick had the right idea.
Dick watched him go along the gravel path, watched him climb to the side veranda of the big house, pausing for a moment to tell the newly installed housemaid about his recent adventure.
“I think I’ll go get some lunch,” observed Larry.
“Wait!” urged Dick, but said no more.
Mr. Everdail’s cousin, Miss Serena, evidently hearing the voices, came out on the veranda and listened.
“She’s coming out to ‘make over us,’ as she calls it.” Sandy saw the elderly, stern-faced, but kindly lady descend the steps and come rapidly toward them.
“My! My!” she called, coming closer. “What is this I hear from Jeff?”
“We had a little trouble,” Dick said. “Somehow the cable for the ‘flippers’ got jammed, but Larry got us out of the trouble like a born flyer.”
“Yes,” laughed Larry. “After Dick guessed what to do so I could work the stick.”
“Oh, I only crawled back to loosen the cable.” Dick tried to make his exploit seem unimportant. “First time I ever flew around standing on my head,” he broke into his infectious gurgle of laughter. “Sandy, did I look like a frog stuck in the mud?”
“Whatever you looked like,” Sandy retorted, “you did a mighty big thing, crawling out onto that open covering in the wind, risking being snatched off or slipping, or having the airplane shake loose your grip!”
“I agree with Sandy,” Miss Serena declared. “It was a very fine thing——”
“I think so,” agreed Sandy. “He gave me one gift for my birthday at breakfast. But just now he made me a present of my life.”
“He did that for all of us.” Larry put an arm affectionately around his chum’s shoulders.
“A very fine thing, Dick.” Miss Serena smiled gently. “Now you had better go and lie down, and I’ll have the maid bring up some hot cocoa and something for you to eat.”
“That is just what I need, ma’am,” Sandy told her.
“I think we’d better get this crate into the hangar—we’ll get the gardener and the caretaker and push it in,” Dick suggested. “I always get over a scare quicker if I’m busy doing something to take my mind away from it.”
“Very well,” the lady agreed. “I shall have a good lunch ready when you come in.”
She started away, but turned back.
“What caused the—the—trouble?”
“Jeff calls it a ‘jinx’—a ‘hoodoo’,” responded Dick.
“Jeff is silly,” she said with some annoyance. “There are no such things.”
“I don’t know—” Larry took up the argument. “It is not usual for a cable to jam. It might break, but one shouldn’t get caught.”
“I see. Don’t think for a moment, Lawrence, that it was caused by anything but Jeff’s carelessness, because of his fears.”
She went to get their lunch ordered.
“Did I play up to you all right?” Larry asked. “I saw you didn’t want to explain anything.” Dick nodded.
“You did just what I wanted,” he said. “Let’s get the airplane in. Then we can talk.”
With others of the new group of servants they took the craft to its place.
As soon as they were alone, Dick climbed up onto the back of the fuselage, dived down into the small space, while Larry waited an agreed signal, in the after seat, and pulled his chum out.
“Great snakes!” cried Sandy, then lowering his voice. “How did that get there?”
Dick, emerging from the fuselage working compartment, displayed a large, fat, round object.
“The life preserver—from the yacht!” gasped Larry.
“How did it get there?” repeated Sandy, stunned.
“Jeff!” said Dick, briefly.
“Oh, no!” declared Larry. “Jeff is a good pilot. He’d never leave anything that could shift about and cause trouble.”
“But how did it get there?” Sandy reiterated. “I thought——”
“We all thought it went back to the yacht,” Larry finished his sentence for him.
“It did,” said Dick, seriously. “I know that after Jeff brought it in, the caretaker in the hydroplane took it out—and I’ve seen it at the stern.”
“Well, this may not be the same one—we can easily find out.”
Larry hurried from the open hangar, followed by his two friends. At a trot they went through the grove and down the path, after Dick, dropping the life preserver onto the after seat, jumped down.
As soon as the yacht came in sight, they stared toward the stern.
“That’s queer,” observed Larry. “I see a life preserver hanging in its regular place. This must be another one!”
The one in the airplane, Dick argued, was “the one”—and the one on the yacht was a substitute.
“But why was it put there?” demanded Sandy.
Dick eyed him with surprise.
“Suspicions Sandy—asking that?” he teased.
“I’m trying not to suspect anybody. Instead of doing that I try to believe everybody’s innocent and nothing is wrong. I’m going to let you do the suspecting.”
“That’s turning the tables on you, Dick,” Larry grinned. Sobering again he turned back to Sandy.
“I think Dick is working out something we may be able to prove,” he argued. “I think I see his idea. Captain Parks was the only one who could open the cabin safe. He is a seaman, and he would know that a life preserver isn’t bothered with except if somebody is overboard or in some other emergency. Supposing that he meant to help some one in America to ‘get away with’ the emeralds——”
“He would tie them to a life preserver and throw them over where somebody he ‘expected’ could get them,” agreed Sandy, with surprising quietness. “Only—a woman threw the life preserver.”
Dick nodded. Sandy threw another clog into the nicely developed theory.
“Furthermore, Captain Parks was on the bridge at the time——”
That all fitted in, Dick asserted.
“I am working on the notion that Captain Parks agreed with somebody not on the yacht—to get the emeralds. But he made up his mind to get them all for himself!”
“So he hid them in the life preserver.” Sandy spoke without enthusiasm, making the deduction sound bored and commonplace, although it ought to have been a striking surprise, an exclamatory statement. It would have been, Larry thought to himself, if Sandy had made it. Was the youngest chum jealous of Dick, displeased because it was not his own discovery that led to the hiding place of the jewels—if they were right?
“You thought of the life preserver as a hiding place?” asked Dick.
Sandy nodded.
“Where else?” he argued. “Captain Parks couldn’t get a better or safer place, right in front of everybody and never noticed. If the life preserver was thrown into the sea—it would be recovered.”
“Doesn’t it get you excited?”
“No, Dick! Why should it? I thought of it. But I’m not telling all my ideas, any more. I’m not ‘peeved,’ but I mean to be able to prove this before I accuse anybody again.”
“We can prove it—come on!”
“No need,” declared Sandy. “I noticed while we were on the way to Maine that a new life preserver was on the stern of the yacht. I saw it hadn’t been cut and sewed up, so the emeralds couldn’t be in that—or in any other one on the yacht. And, when Dick made his discovery, just now, I examined the one he found for cuts and marks of being sewed up.”
“I didn’t notice any,” admitted Larry.
“Bang! Another theory gone up in smoke!” Dick was rueful.
“All the same,” Larry commented, “Jeff didn’t put the preserver in his fuselage, and Captain Parks could open his safe and no one else knew how, he declared! There are some things I can’t work out and I wish I could.”
“Let’s make whoever knows anything—er—let’s make them work it out for us,” suggested Dick. “Let’s bait a trap with the life preserver—leave it where it is, get Mr. Everdail to call everybody together, and we’ll tell what we found and what we think is in it—and see what we see.”
Eagerly Larry consented. Sandy nodded quietly.
Simple and clever, Dick’s plan appealed to Mr. Everdail.
His library, that evening, made Sandy think of a “mass meeting of creditors or stockholders who have been tricked.”
The room sheltered a mixed assembly. Jeff was there, and so was the seaplane pilot, Tommy Larsen, and his former “passenger” supposed to be a special agent from London.
Miss Serena, with the yacht stewardess, uneasy but clinging close to the older woman, made up the representatives of the ladies’ side, while Captain Parks, his chef, mate, engineer and their helpers and crew, with the caretaker and all the new servants, filled one end of the room.
“Now you know why there was so much excitement as the yacht came in,” Mr. Everdail completed a long speech in which he told the astonished gathering about the missing emeralds. “That is, those of you know who didn’t know before,” he added meaningly, and went on quickly. “I decided to tell you because somebody on that yacht was ‘in cahoots’ with somebody else, and if any of you know who it is, it will be worth ten thousand dollars to you to point out the right one and help me prove you’re right!”
“That will start something!” mused Larry as many exclaimed, and others looked startled at the disclosure of the large reward.
By agreement Mr. Everdail watched the sailors and servants to note the effect of his story. Sandy, without doing it openly, watched Jeff. Larry’s eyes covertly observed Tommy Larsen and his associate and Dick noted the action and expression of Captain Parks.
“There’s some one who knows something!” Larry decided as he saw the passenger of the cracked-up seaplane bend forward, intent, but without a trace of expression. He had the sort of face that can completely conceal its owner’s emotions.
“I’ve discovered that Captain Parks has a hand in this somehow,” Larry determined, as he saw the mariner’s eyes shift. Larry followed the swift, instantly changed direction of the seaman’s glance.
“He looked smack at the stewardess,” Larry added to himself.
Sandy’s watchfulness drew blank.
“Jeff didn’t turn a hair,” Sandy murmured under his breath. “He knew all about it, of course. But—just you wait, Jefferson-boy, till Mr. Everdail ‘springs’ the trap.”
As soon as the sensation created by the large offer was over, everybody looked suspiciously at his or her own neighbor.
No one spoke.
The millionaire waited a decent interval for someone to come forward, and Miss Serena finally broke the spell of silence by saying, quietly:
“You won’t find out anything by that, Atley.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” She spoke in harmony with her name, pronouncing her words serenely:
“Because—the person who threw the jewels off the Tramp—isn’t here—and wasn’t suspected or seen.”
“As I live and breathe!” The rich man rose, while Dick, Larry and Sandy almost bounced out of their chairs.
“Serena, explain that!” he added.
“It was your wife’s French maid—Mimi!” she said quietly.
“How do you know?”
“Did you see her?” broke in Sandy, astonished.
“I did not see her,” Miss Serena replied to Sandy while she answered the older man’s question in the same breath. “But I saw a glimpse of dress just afterward.” Her expression showed confident assurance.
“Why, Miss Serena!” Jeff was stunned. “I didn’t know you was one of these-here detectives.”
“I’m a woman and I use my eyes,” she responded quietly. “A woman needs only to catch a flash of a dress to identify it. Mimi’s maid’s outfit has a distinctive cap—and I saw her cap just as she turned into the after cabin—I was on the bridge. I went there immediately but she had gone out through the galley door and I could not locate her.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” her cousin demanded.
“There was no need. She had taken only the imitations—the ones you found.”
“But she knew them,” objected Dick. “She wouldn’t throw over the wrong ones and she couldn’t get the right ones.”
“She threw over both sets!”
The Sky Patrol gasped in unison. So did all the others.
“But she couldn’t get the real ones!” persisted Dick.
“She did not know she was throwing them over!”
There was another chorus of amazed exclamations.
“Explain that,” commanded the millionaire sharply.
“She—did—not—know—that the real emeralds—had been—hidden—in the life preserver she used!”
“Who put the real ones there?” Larry spoke abruptly in the astonished silence.
He did not need to have her reply. Captain Parks was red and white by turns.
“I hid them to keep them secure!” he stammered, turning toward his employer. “I had no wish to take them. I felt—sure—nobody knew the combination of the cabin safe—but I couldn’t say that a clever man, some ‘Jimmy Valentine’ fellow, might not get in. So I decided to hide the real emeralds—and what was safer than a life preserver?”
While eyes were fixed on him, surprised, accusing, unbelieving, he spoke haltingly to his employer:
“I hope you’ll take my word for it, sir.”
The millionaire hesitated.
“I believe you!” Larry spoke earnestly, reassuringly. “It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
“But how did you get them into the life preserver?” asked Sandy.
“Took off part of the cover, cut the rubber, put them in, wrapped in oiled silk to make a tight pack, then used some rubber patching cement I keep for torn rubber coats or boot patching, and with a hot electric iron I vulcanized the rubber together and put back the covering.”
“Then there weren’t any stitches to be discovered!” exclaimed Dick.
“None!”
“Then we’re all right!” Larry leaped to his feet. “We can restore the jewels!”
“Certainly we can!” agreed Sandy. “And Mr. Everdail can telegraph his wife to have Mimi arrested——”
“And she will have to tell who was her partner,” added Dick.
“Now you had better go and get that life preserver, and we’ll cut it open,” suggested Mr. Everdail. “I guess it’s safe enough hidden in the tail of Jeff’s plane—” He was baiting their trap. “Don’t look so surprised, Jeff—that was what caused your ‘hoodooed’ crate to go out of control—but we don’t suspect you of putting it there!”
Sandy, Dick and Larry had left the room by the time he completed his sentence.
Reaching the hangar, with Mr. Everdail’s private key they opened the smaller door, and used a flashlight to locate, reach and climb to the tail of the airplane’s fuselage.
“Now—out comes—why!——”
Dick and Sandy saw Larry’s dazed face.
Instantly they knew the worst!
Into the waiting assemblage in the Everdail library plunged Sandy with a white, frightened face and his breath coming in gasps after his run.
“It’s—gone! Mr. Everdail—the life—preserver——”
“Gone? That can’t be!”
“It is, sir!”
“I don’t see how—” Mr. Everdail was thinking, as was Sandy, that with everyone whom they suspected, except the maid Miss Serena had accused, present in that room, the loss of the carefully hidden object must be impossible.
“When did you last see it, wherever you had it?” asked the man from London, cool and practical.
“Just before—the meeting here, sir!”
“It was—where?”
“We left it where Dick had discovered it—in the fuselage of Jeff’s airplane. One of us watched, taking turns, all afternoon. Just before we came in here we made sure it was all right, and Larry, who has the longest reach, pushed it in as far as he could get it and still be able to take it out again.”
“Could that girl, Mimi, have come back?” Jeff wondered.
“Whether she did or not,” the pilot, Tommy Larsen, jumped up, “if the life preserver was safe an hour ago, and gone now, it was taken during that hour. Maybe within the last few——”
“Yes—I think it was in the last few minutes!” Sandy declared. “We didn’t talk about the emeralds being hidden in it until almost the last thing before we went to fetch it here.”
“Let’s search the estate!” urged the pilot.
“Come on, everybody—spread out—” cried Jeff. “We’ll get that-there girl——”
“Wait!” begged Sandy. “Everybody will get mixed up and hunt in the same places. We ought to organize——”
“Sound common sense,” commented Miss Serena. “But if you ask——”
Sandy guessed that she would have given her opinion, if asked, that the search was useless.
She was given no time for the comment. Leaving her with the white-faced stewardess and the pilot, whose injuries prevented him from being of much use due to his evident weakness, the others, under Mr. Everdail, were grouped into parties. Given a definite territory, each set out, one group to search the grove under Jeff’s leadership, another to cover the shore section, boathouse and boats, with Captain Parks and his men in the party. Others, under the mate and engineer, divided the rest of the searchers to beat the further and less cultivated woods on the estate and to walk the roads, while Miss Serena gladly agreed to telephone to outlying estates, and to the nearby town to have a watch kept for any unknown person, woman or man.
“Where’s Larry—and Dick?” asked Jeff, as Sandy ran beside him.
“Searching the hangar——”
“But it was locked and all doors down,” Jeff grunted. “Why waste time there?”
“I guess we thought, just at first, somebody might have hidden the preserver somewhere—we thought we saw somebody in the hangar the day the mystery started, but we found no one, so Dick thought——”
“Well, go tell them to come and help me in the grove. Don’t waste time there!”
Sandy separated from the superstitious one, as the latter rushed among the trees, muttering that some omen had warned him of trouble.
As the beaters separated, and widened the circle of their search, the sounds of calls, shouts, voices identifying one another grew fainter.
Sandy, reaching his comrades, compared notes.
“They’ve organized and started,” Sandy reported. “What have you two found?”
“Nothing,” Dick said dejectedly. “We ought not to have left that thing unguarded.”
“Not with a fortune in it,” agreed Larry. “But we were so sure——”
“Whoever got it can’t be far off,” interrupted Dick. “No one but Miss Serena and Captain Parks—and we three—knew about the hiding place until the last part of the meeting.”
“Let’s lock up, here, and join Jeff,” suggested Sandy.
“Where is he?”
“In the grove, Dick.”
“All right,” Larry moved to the small door. “The spring lock’s set. The place is surrounded. Nobody’s in here—” They were outside as he made the last statement. “Slam the door and try it, Dick. All right. Come on, let’s find Jeff.”
The search took longer than they expected.
To all calls the thick grove gave back only echoes.
Dick, rounding a tree, stumbled.
“Larry—Sandy—come—quick!” He called his chums in a strained voice.
When they reached him, in the dying glow of the flashlight Dick trained on a body lying in a heap, they identified the man who had been warned by his gypsy fortune teller to “look out for a hidden enemy.” He was lying at full length in the mould and leaves.
“Jeff!” Dick knelt and lifted the man’s head.
“Huh!—uh—oh!”
Slowly, while they held their breath, understanding came into the dazed eyes, the breath was drawn in, and Jeff struggled to a half-reclining posture.
“What happened to you?” begged Sandy.
“The rest—oh, I’m sick!—I got a bang in the solar plexus—I sent the rest of the men out to the edge of—the woods—oh!—my stomach—to beat in towards me—when I come around this-here tree, somebody was waiting and poked me—oh!”—
“Then somebody is still close. How long ago?——”
“I don’t—know—I passed out——”
“Hey—everybody—yoo-hoo!” Larry cupped his hands and began to shout in various directions.
The crash and call of the beaters coming in began to grow louder.
Unexpectedly, from the water of the inlet, and yet in a muffled, unnatural tone, there came the sputtering roar of a motor.
“What’s that?” cried Dick.
“One of the airplanes—somebody’s in the hangar——”
“No, Sandy, it’s from the water.”
“But there’s no boat out—the only boat with an engine is the hydroplane——”
“The yacht tender’s tied to the wharf,” Dick reminded Larry.
They raced down the sloping woods path.
“Where’s the guard—where’s everybody?” Sandy shouted.
The men came running. They had scanned the place by the wharf, and, satisfied that no one lurked there and that the tender was secure, they had gone further along the inlet coast.
“No one’s in the tender!” Larry exclaimed.
“It’s the hydroplane, then!” Dick decided. “It’s coming from the water-dock inside the boathouse, now—there it is. Hey! You! Stop!”
Seamen, the mate, Pilot Tommy Larsen, servants, dashed up.
“What’s happened? What’s the excitement? The hydroplane—there it goes!”
Their shouts came in a chorus of helpless questions and suggestions.
“Man the yacht tender!” ordered Captain Parks. His men tumbled into it.
“That isn’t fast enough!” objected Pilot Larsen. “I’d fly that amphibian crate only—I’m too weak and dizzy——”
“Jeff’s hurt, too,” said Dick, desperately. “I guess they’ll get away with the emeralds!”
“Why can’t Larry fly the ‘phib’?” demanded Sandy.
“At night? I haven’t had any experience.”
“But Jeff could go along.” Dick took up the idea eagerly. “Couldn’t you, Jeff? And tell him what to do in an emergency!”
“Yes—sure I could! Not in the ‘phib’ because we don’t know how much gas—the gauge is out of whack—but we got the airplane ready this morning—if it wasn’t the night of the thirteenth I’d have said something about it long ago!”
“Forget about the thirteenth—remember the thirty emeralds!” cried Sandy. “Come on, all—help us get that crate out and started. It’s a flight for a fortune!” They took up the cry. Dick and Larry ran off.
Those of the servants and seamen who were not too excited by the escape of the hydroplane to hear, followed the Sky Patrol as they raced through the grove. Jeff, supported by Sandy and friends among the men, came more slowly, still unwell from the blow in a tender spot.
“Mr. Everdail could fly the crate if he was here—he’s an old war pilot,” said Larsen, but they did not wait to locate him. As soon as the engine was warmed, the instruments checked, in spite of the delay at cost of precious moments, Larry donned the Gossport helmet, Jeff got in behind him, Sandy and Dick, without waiting for invitations, snapped their belts—the engine roared—and they were off!
Larry was keyed up to a high tension; but he had no lack of confidence in himself. Night flying, of course, differed from daytime piloting. But Jeff was in the second seat, with the Gossport tube to his lips.
Sandy and Dick were in their places, ready to observe and to transmit signals by using the flashlamp—one flash, directed onto the dash before Jeff so it would not distract Larry, meant turn to the right, two meant a left turn, three quick flicks would tell of the discovery of the hydroplane.
Jeff was too upset to pilot; and since the morning adventure he had no second control stick; but he could give instructions.
“I see a light,” Sandy said as the airplane swung far out over the dark water. “A green light, but the hydroplane wouldn’t carry lights.”
As they swung in a banked turn to circle over the Sound, the green disappeared and its place was taken, as it seemed, by red.
“Dick!” Sandy turned and gestured, pointing.
“I see it!” Dick located the tiny light well below them.
“The hydroplane must have its electric running light switched on,” Sandy mused, unable to convey his idea, because Larry had the engine going full on.
“That must be the hydroplane,” Dick decided. “He—whoever is in it—is afraid to run without his lights.”
Three swift flicks of his own flash showed to Jeff.
“Larry, they’ve spotted that-there boat,” Jeff spoke through the tube to the young pilot. “Yep. More to the left. That’s it—both at the same time! Stick to the left, rudder, too. Good boy. Now the stick comes back to neutral. Hold her as she is—better cut down the throttle a little as we bank and turn to the left.”
Thus began their flight for a fortune!
From their cockpits Sandy and Dick watched the hydroplane. At cruising speed their airplane made nearly three miles to the hydroplane’s one. Its mysterious occupant must know that they were trailing him, but he held to a straight course so that his lights were never in a different place as their craft above swung to show its observers the red and then the green.
“He’s making straight for Greenwich, on the Connecticut side,” Dick decided, knowing a good deal about the Sound ports.
“How are you fixed?” Jeff spoke to their youthful pilot through his tube.
Briefly Larry swung his head, nodding.
“We’ll be getting tired of turning to the left all the time,” Jeff suggested. “Think you could follow a sort of zig-zag, flying slantwise across the course of that-there boat, then coming around an angle and flying slantways back to the other side?”
Larry nodded emphatically.
“Good! Here we go—to the right. Get your eye on that Fall River Liner, coming up the Sound—that’s about the point of our first leg.
“Now, touch of right rudder and right aileron—and stick back to neutral. There! She’s level. Keep moving stick and rudder a bit, steadily. Now she’s banked and turning. Neutralize! That’s the ticket.
“There! The nose is on that steamer. That’s it—don’t let her swing off that point for awhile—and watch that you don’t nose down—that’s right, back a bit on that-there stick, up she comes, stick back to neutral.”
Thus directed, and admonished, Larry managed to give the airplane a swinging, zig-zag course, so that its greater speed was used up in the longer legs of its slanted progress, and since the hydroplane did not try any tricks or change its path, the Sound was being crossed in the wake of the steamer by the boat and in a corkscrew path by its aerial bloodhound.
“I think I know what is going to happen,” Sandy decided, as they crossed the course of the hydroplane so that its two tiny colored beams showed at the same instant. “He’ll wait till we get closer in to the Connecticut shore line and then he’ll ‘douse the glim’ and leave us with nothing to watch.”
Bending forward Dick began to rummage in a compartment built in his section of the seating space.
He believed that he could outwit any effort to escape by taking advantage of the landing flares, attached to small parachutes, which Jeff carried as a precaution during his former night hops to the old estate.
“Better cut the gun and glide down a couple of hundred feet,” Larry heard Jeff’s voice in his earphones. “If he tries any tricks——”
“That’s queer!” Sandy exclaimed to himself, as he stared down and saw the small, swift boat open a vivid, glowing eye at the bow.
The helmsman had switched on its searchlight.
“What’s that for?” Dick wondered.
Jeff, warned by the trail of light on the water below, took a quick look.
“He must be looking for his landing!” Sandy called.
Larry, holding the airplane in a moderate glide, saw the beam glowing out beyond the airplane’s nose, felt that he was as low as he dared be with land ahead, and drew back on the stick to bring up the craft to a level keel, opening the throttle as the glide became a flat course about three hundred feet higher than the water.
“He’s swinging the boat out to open water again!” cried Sandy.
“There it goes around!” shouted Dick, unheard, excited, as the beam of the hydroplane swung in a wide arc from shore, heading once more back toward Long Island.
“He’s going back!” Sandy exulted. “We’ll get him!”
“Good boy,” Jeff spoke to Larry. “You made that turn without a hitch. With that searchlight to guide you, I don’t need to talk through this-here thing any more.”
Larry had no trouble following the boat with the white beam as a guide.
It puzzled Sandy, and he swung around to look questioningly back at Dick. The latter, unable to see his expression, but guessing his idea, shook his head.
“It’s time to find out what’s what!” he muttered.
As Larry banked and came around on a new slant across the hydroplane’s path, which seemed not so true to the straight line as it had been, Dick secured a parachute-equipped landing flare, sent it over safely past the wings, and watched the white glare light up the surface of the water.
To Larry’s disappointment, they were so far to one side and behind the hydroplane that the flare failed to disclose its occupant.
He held up a hand, and pointed ahead, then opened the throttle, came onto a straightaway course over the hydroplane, rapidly overhauled it and got well ahead. Then, cutting the gun and gliding, as it came up under them, he signaled, and Dick, waiting, ignited a second flare.
All four of the Sky Patrol members gasped as the light blazed out.
Larry looked back at his companions, amazedly.
“It’s—empty—nobody in it!” he cried.
“Somebody had to be in that hydroplane,” Sandy mused. “They were there to switch on the light, to turn the boat, and to set it on the new course!”
Quickly he peered to the side and back, downward at the water in the place where the first landing flare had settled into the water.
Just a little closer to their position, should have been the spot where the clever miscreant might have abandoned the boat.
Sooner than that, Sandy guessed, the unknown person could not have quit the hydroplane: otherwise the turning from shore would have continued and the hydroplane, instead of proceeding in a straight course away from land, would have swept in a wide circle, round and round.
“There’s no life preserver in the boat either—so that’s what the mystery man used to swim away with—Mr. Everdail’s jewels!” he added.
Straining his eyes, he peered, looking for a bobbing head, a round white object supporting a body, as the flare died. Dick, arguing in much the same fashion, stared from the other side of the fuselage and gave a shout of elation.
“There!”
His arm pointed.
Sandy prodded Jeff, and quickly the pilot, much recovered, gave Larry his instructions.
“Nose up—we’re getting too low. Right! Now a right bank—not too steep. Don’t get excited. That-there lad in the hydroplane headed her outbound and then took to the water. Now we’re heading in—steady with that-there rudder—don’t try to jam her around—now she’s all right. Level off and hold her as she is.”
Larry obeyed all instructions, doing the work as Jeff gave the order. Larry was rapidly growing sure of his ability.
He fought down the excitement that wanted to express itself in hasty manipulation of his controls and kept a steady hand and a cool brain.
Dick, scribbling hurriedly, passed a note to Sandy, who read it in the light of the flash, and then passed both paper and light to Jeff.
Dick, recalling a wide, spacious cement-floored parking space at a nearby bathing resort, had suggested “setting down” there. As he read the note Jeff shook his head.
“Dangerous trying to land there!” was the note Jeff passed back as Larry flew the airplane at just above stalling speed toward the shore. Dick agreed. After all, there might be automobiles in the parking lines, and the light might be bad for Larry. Even using a power-stall by which, with the engine going and a flat gliding angle, the airplane could settle gradually closer until it took the ground with hardly a jar, the maneuver would not be safe, Dick admitted.
“Here comes another ’plane!” Sandy called out, taking the flashlamp from Jeff again as the older pilot handed it back. “He’s flying right after us.”
They all located the drone of the other engine.
“Steady, Larry!” Jeff cautioned. “Hold as you are. That-there is our amphibian—and I reckon the boss is doing the control job.”
The amphibian, as they made out its pontoon understructure, came fairly close alongside. Its speed was almost identical with their own and at first all four occupants of the land crate wondered who was in it, and why.
“Signaling!” cried Larry, cutting the gun and turning to observe.
“All right, buddy,” admonished Jeff. “Stick to your job. Sandy or Dick will read the dots and dashes—if he’s using Morse code——”
“He is spelling out something with his flashlight,” Sandy decided, as he saw short flickers and longer dashes of light while the amphibian kept a course within close range but at safe wing distance.
“I’ve got it!” Dick passed forward his paper.
“‘G-i-v-e r-e-p-o-r-t,’” Sandy read, and as he handed Jeff the note, Sandy, using his own light, sent back the Morse code answer:
“Man swimming ashore with life belt.”
Then, with the beam directed in the path the mysterious unknown must have taken, he tried to show the occupant of the amphibian what he meant.
Evidently the endeavor succeeded, for the amphibian dived, and took to the water, while Larry, directed by Jeff, swept around in a circle out of range if the amphibian rose unexpectedly, but within visual range of its maneuvers.
Watching intently, his comrades saw that the amphibian kept on toward shore in a taxiing course on the water surface.
A shout greeted the advent of an automobile on a shore drive. As it swung around a curve, close to the water, its bright headlights fell in a sweeping line across the water—and picked out a round, white dot bobbing, vividly lit, in the rays.
The amphibian was headed directly for it.
It went close, just as the swinging lights swerved and were gone.
“drop another flare!” shouted Larry.
Sandy caught and relayed the suggestion as they retained their swinging curve.
With the glare from the dropped light picking out things in sharp silhouette, they saw a man clamber out onto a pontoon and rescue the floating prize.
“Now, I wonder if that is Mr. Everdail—or if it’s somebody else?” thought Larry, correcting for a tendency of the nose to fall away.
“Whoever it is,” he concluded, “he can’t get away. He has the life preserver. But we have superior speed. And a good tankful of fuel.”
He glanced at the gauge to reassure himself, made an almost automatic correction of a wing tip, pushing up in a gust of air as he saw that his surmise about fuel was correct.
There was no need for the concern that all four felt for the moment.
As soon as it got under way again and took up its climb, the amphibian, coming to their level, showed its pilot holding up the life preserver, as the flare still settled toward the water. In the glow they recognized the triumphant, smiling millionaire.
The flight back to the landing field was without event. Larry made the landing first, and his companions tumbled out to join the waiting cluster of people while they all “took hold” to run the airplane out of the way so that the spiraling amphibian, its wheels down, could shoot the flare-lit field, and land.
“Here!” Mr. Everdail was triumphant as he threw the life preserver out of his cockpit to Larry. “As I live and breathe, that life preserver ought to be in a museum!” He grinned as he came to the ground. “That’s the flyingest life preserver I ever saw—first it goes joy-riding in a seaplane, then in the ‘phib’ and now it runs off on the Sound and comes riding back with me.”
“Let’s see what’s in that-there!” Jeff urged. “That’s most important, right now!”
The crowd trooped into the hangar, where Larry, at Jeff’s direction, switched on the overhead electric lamps.
Close around Mr. Everdail, Jeff, Captain Parks and Miss Serena, with the youthful Sky Patrol in their midst, the rest of the sailors, and most of the house servants gathered.
“Somebody give me a good knife,” ordered Mr. Everdail. “We’ll cut this thing to ribbons and get rid of all the suspense!”
Larry held out the round, heavy inflated “doughnut” as half a dozen pocket knives were unclasped and held out to the millionaire.
Taking the long-bladed one Sandy produced, Mr. Everdail advanced.
“Hold on, sir!” Captain Parks stepped forward.
“What’s the matter, Parks?”
“Son, turn that preserver over—let me see the other side.”
Surprised, Larry did as he asked.
They all saw the captain’s face assume an expression of disgust.
“That’s not the life preserver from the Tramp,” he grunted.
“What?”
“You know as well as I do, sir,” the yacht captain turned to his employer to answer his amazed cry, “you know that all the life preservers have the yacht’s name and port painted on them.”
“And that’s so, too,” said the mate, advancing and backing up his captain’s declaration.
“No, sirree!” Captain Parks stated. “That’s not the yacht property. It hasn’t any marks on it at all.”
“Maybe it’s the one off the hydroplane,” Larry was dejected, but not convinced that the life preserver was a strange one to all.
“Not that!” the mate declared. “It’ud be marked Scorpion. No, Mr. Everdail, this is no life preserver we’ve ever seen before.”
“Well, anyhow, I’m going to cut into it.”
“Please, sir, do that!” urged Sandy. “I can be sure it’s the one we found in the airplane fuselage, anyhow—I remember that little rusty stain in the cover.”
“Cut,” said Jeff, “but something tells me you’ll waste time.”
Sandy, Larry and Dick shook their heads, looking hopeful.
But Jeff was right!
From the rear of the crowd in the hangar, Pilot Larsen came forward.
“Who was in that boat?” he asked. “Could you recognize him?”
“The flares died just too soon,” Dick informed him. “Maybe Mr. Everdail saw more than we did.”
The millionaire shook his head.
“There’s one way to check up,” Jeff suggested. “Who’s not here who was in the house before the life preserver was missed?”
“You can learn nothing from that,” Miss Serena spoke up. “Too many are away.”
“We can get somewhere, anyhow,” Larry insisted. “Captain Parks, can you account for your men?”
“Yes, sir. Those who are not here are in the tender.”
“I saw them start to get back Mr. Everdail’s hydroplane,” Sandy nodded.
“The fellow who flew with you in the seaplane isn’t here,” remarked Larry, quietly, and, after a glance around, he said: “Neither is the yacht stewardess.”
“I sent her to her cabin,” Miss Serena stated. “She was greatly disturbed about this affair.”
“Oh!” said Larry, slowly, “she was?”
“Yes, but she is a high-strung girl,” argued the lady; and during the silence that followed, she turned to her relative.
“Atley,” she told the millionaire, “we are getting nowhere. For my part I believe that the emeralds have already been destroyed!”
“Destroyed!”
“Certainly. That seemed to be the purpose, in the London hotel. A person as clever as that must have planned this entire affair and has undoubtedly accomplished his wish and vanished long ago—or else he can never be caught because we have no way to discover him.”
“He ought to be caught and punished,” Jeff argued. “That-there set of emeralds was too precious for us to let somebody do a thing like this-here.”
“We know who was on the yacht,” Larry agreed with Jeff. “At least we can try to find out who threw the emeralds off.”
“We know,” Dick broke in. “Don’t you remember that Miss Serena recognized the maid—Mimi—by her uniform?”
“Then why don’t we go and question her?” Larry suggested. “Make her tell what she knows!” A murmur of assent broke out among the seamen who were naturally anxious to be cleared of any possible suspicion.
“Did you get an answer from Mrs. Everdail when you telegraphed her about Mimi?” asked Dick.
Mr. Everdail shook his head.
“Not yet,” he admitted. “I don’t believe Mimi is the one. She was with my wife during the last seven years and you get to know a person’s character in that time.”
“Just the same,” Larry insisted, “many respected bank tellers have been discovered for what they were after bank money disappeared.”
“As I live and breathe!” Mr. Everdail spoke gruffly, “I begin to wonder if you shouldn’t be the one to have ‘suspicious’ for a nickname. You have suspected Jeff, and me, and my friend who was with me, and Larsen, here, and his passenger—Captain Parks and now Mimi! It will be Miss Serena next!”
“My gracious!” that lady exclaimed, “I hope not!”
“I never will,” Dick declared.
“I guess I caught the disease from Sandy,” Larry was red-faced, “I admit I deserve the nickname now.”
“If Sandy doesn’t object to losing the nickname, then—” Mr. Everdail smiled a little teasingly.
“Oh, he’s welcome to it,” Sandy cried. “I’ve turned over a new leaf!”
“How’s that?” Jeff wanted to know.
“I used to take one little thing for a start, and make up my mind that whoever did it was the one I must suspect,” Sandy explained. “But that’s like trying to prove a man guilty because I think he may be.”
“That’s so,” Dick began to chuckle. “Pinning clues onto folks is like the clothing salesman who tried to sell a white linen suit to a man who wanted a dark grey one. ‘I’ll give you what you want,’ the salesman said—and he went over and pulled down all the shades!”
“And that-there suit looked dark!” chuckled Jeff.
“Now I mean to listen, and watch, and not suspect anybody, as if I had a dark suit and a light one to sell and I’d wait to see who the different suits fitted!”
Breaking into a hearty laugh, Jeff slapped Sandy on the shoulder.
“That-there’s the ticket,” he said.
“By the way,” Captain Parks turned to his employer. “How about that cruise around New York to see the buildings lighted up that you told me to get the yacht ready for?”
“As I live and breathe!” Mr. Everdail slapped his thigh. “I forgot all about our birthday dinner and cruise for Sandy.”
“Well, the dinner was being got ready when you sent for us,” remarked the captain.
“A birthday dinner for me?”
“Meant for a surprise?” chimed in Dick.
“I’m starving,” laughed Larry.
“Then let’s go on board the Tramp and see what the chef trots out.” Mr. Everdail led the way, inviting the others who had not originally been planned for.
“Thanks,” Larsen stated, “I’m too tired. Me for bed.”
“That’s right,” laughed Dick. “After a crack-up, always take a rest-up.”
“Now we’ll shelve this mystery.” Mr. Everdail led the way to the tender which would transfer them to the yacht for the evening run around illuminated Manhattan. “Eat, and have a good time, Sky Patrol.”
“We will, gladly, sir,” agreed Larry.
With the zest of healthy youth the chums “shelved” the mystery and hid their chagrin at being wrong again. The repast provided by the yacht chef was worth their attention. Especially palatable was the iced lemonade which the hot, humid night made very delightful.
“How do they get these ice-cubes the same tint as the lemonade?” Larry wondered, admiring the yellowish tone of the cubes, as he stirred the clinking mixture in his tall glass.
Dick grinned.
“Dye!” he chuckled. “If you want special food or drink you have to dye-it!”
“To diet!” Jeff caught the pun. “That-there’s a hot one!”
“It leaves me ‘cold’,” Larry came back at him. “But I’m interested about this ice.”
“Why?” asked Mr. Everdail, curiously.
“It’s simple enough,” the youngest member of the Sky Patrol broke in. “They pour some of the lemonade into the compartments in the ice-trays and freeze that. It is better than plain ice because it doesn’t weaken the lemonade at all.”
“That’s right,” Larry agreed. “Why, Mr. Everdail, I was only curious. I don’t know much about refrigerating plants and I didn’t think they could turn the ice any color they liked—but I see they can.”
He dropped the subject, finished his drink and, with the others, partook of a frozen sherbet also prepared in the yacht’s icing plant.
Finished, they were invited on deck to see the sights of Manhattan’s night sky, with its millions of electric bulbs, on signs and in high windows, and on skyscraper domes, painting a fairy picture against a dark heaven.
“What made you speak about the tinted ice?” Sandy asked, softly.
“Only what I explained,” Larry retorted. “I hadn’t thought about colored ice cubes, ever——”
“And aren’t you taking any hint from the yellow tones?” Sandy demanded.
“No! Why should I?”
“Don’t you, Dick?”
“Not a thing, Sandy. What’s in your mind?”
“Well—think! If they can freeze lemonade, and get yellow ice cubes, they can freeze lime juice—even something darker—and get——”
“Green cubes!” Larry broke in. “Yes—or freeze indigo and get blue ones. What of it?”
“What would dark green ice cubes conceal?”
Both chums stared at Sandy.
What would dark green ice cubes conceal?——
Suddenly Dick gripped his arm.
“Emeralds!” he almost shouted it, but dropped his voice instead.
“What better place could Captain Parks—or anyone else—find if he thought the life preserver idea might be too open?”
“But the chef would discover it—they couldn’t be left there!”
“Certainly they could.” Sandy was earnest. “If the Captain ordered that they be kept for his special use—and if he drank lime juice. Come on, let’s ask him.” They followed Sandy to the bridge.
“Captain,” Sandy asked, “what’s your favorite drink? Lemonade or——”
“I’m very fond of lime drinks——”
Sandy, elated and panting, turned to Mr. Everdail as Dick and Larry raced away.
“Come on, sir,” Sandy panted. “I’ll show you your emeralds!”