“We haven’t been able to watch everybody,” Bob said.
“That point is not important,” Mr. Wright declared. “It is the beginning of what we know, and can wait. Our second bit of knowledge—and more important this is, too—is that for several months before the seemingly fatal crash, accidents had occurred to every airplane that was sent out of the plant. Buyers complained by letter, and only by good luck was it possible to avert several tragedies.”
“I didn’t know it had been as bad as that,” Bob commented.
“It had,” Barney nodded. “We wanted you three boys to start in with open minds. Remember? We didn’t tell you details; but now it’s gone too far for taking things easy. We’ve got to get to work.”
“Right,” agreed the detective. “The third point we know is that Mr. Tredway was very anxious to hold up the good name of his corporation, and that he decided to take this last ship to its owner in person, after Lang, here, gave it—” he paused, noticing Bob’s expression.
“I know what’s on your mind,” Langley said, turning to his younger cousin. “I was the one who tested and checked that Silver Flash. I said she was O.K. before the take-off. But,” his manner was defensive, “if you think——”
“I don’t think,” Bob asserted. “For a minute I did—but Mr.—but Barney says not a thing was wrong about the Silver Flash. So, of course, there’s nothing to think.”
“Besides,” said Barney, “we none of us knew it would be the Silver Flash. The buyer couldn’t make up his mind, till almost the last minute, about that pair of twins. One time he’d come and say he liked the silver, then he wanted the copper-gold finish. Both crates were identical except for that. I thought, myself, he was going to take—well, we all thought the last time he came he wanted the gold one. But I guess he telegraphed.”
“Well, then, that explains one thing,” said Bob. “If everybody thought he wanted the Golden Dart, that’s why the rudder rope was frayed off in that ship.” Barney, who had been told everything, nodded.
“Yes,” he admitted, “but that don’t explain why the other ship—sound and perfect—crashed. Unless——”
“Unless—what?” Bob, Lang and the detective were interested, but Bob voiced the question.
“Unless Mr. Tredway did it on purpose—crashed!”
“Why should he?”
To Mr. Wright’s quiet inquiry Barney answered readily enough.
“I run the plant,” he said. “The deep part of the money end, and all that is none of my business. But I happen to know there’s some trouble about money, or losses, or something like that.”
“You think—” Mr. Wright bent forward, “—Tredway, because he was in some financial difficulty, or deeper trouble, might have done away with himself?”
“Well,” defensively Barney replied, “how else do you account for a diving ship, placed so careful, on the lakeside, close to shore, and only damaged as little as possible, and then not from anything being wrong in her?”
Bob saw that his father was very thoughtful.
“Do you think he ran off and hid, afterward?” he demanded.
“They didn’t find hide nor hair of him, did they? Dredging, or searching didn’t locate anything!”
“That’s so!”
“However,” the detective objected, “that doesn’t explain about the frayed cable, or the other things done to airplanes to damage the reputation of the corporation; that is my theory about the motive.”
“No,” Barney admitted. “If you’ve got a theory about the motive for damage to crates, maybe you’ve got one about the whole affair.”
“I have.”
“What is it, Father?” Bob was eager to hear.
“There are three crimes to investigate,” Mr. Wright said slowly. “The accidents, the thefts, and the——”
“Do you still think Mr. Tredway’s disappearance was due to a crime?”
“Yes, Lang, I do.”
“What sort of crime? Nothing is wrong with the ship he used, Barney says,” objected Bob.
“A very strange one,” his father replied. “Remember—there was a brown airplane hidden in a field. It was gone—before the accident. My theory is that either some one he feared, or some one who hated him, took off in that brown airplane, overtook or waited for Mr. Tredway—and——”
“Rode him down!” gasped Barney. “I’d thought of that!”
“Yes,” agreed the detective, “let’s drop all worry about the less important thefts, the deliberate damage to the airplanes—and look for the man who flew that brown airplane!”
“Will we?”
Bob asked it as a question, then he repeated it as an exclamation.
“Will we!”
Both Curt and Al listened eagerly while Bob related the details of the Sunday conference with the detective.
He gave them the information imparted by Barney.
“Not a thing wrong with the Silver Flash?” repeated Al. “Then that brown crate must have driven it down—but why?”
“Maybe some revengeful pilot Mr. Tredway had discharged,” suggested Curt. “At any rate there must have been some motive to make a man do anything as terrible as that. But how are we going to locate the brown ship?”
“I still have that message we discovered on the seat, and then picked up in the dewy grass.” Al produced it, dry but smudged and crumpled, from his pocket card and identification case. “We might compare the writing with the—well, say with the books in the aircraft plant, and with everybody’s writing.”
“Lang didn’t get any information when we made inquiries about the brown craft at the nearest airport, did he?” Lang, who was quite affable and good-humored, with Griff and his actions forgotten in the new search, answered Curt.
“No, nothing more than you did. They’d never heard of the ship I described.”
“Youhave got me more puzzled than this whole mystery has,” Al said, grinning. “Lang, the way Bob tells it, you must have been next door to ordering the undertaker, and then you were flying, stunting, as if you’d never eaten fish and ice-cream.”
“That’s psychologically explainable,” Lang liked to use long words, to indicate his superiority. “Under the stimulus of——”
“Never mind!” Al threw up his hands as if to ward off a flow of words too long for his youthful understanding.
“It’s too easy to explain,” Bob said. “Father said Lang got so excited that he forgot to think about himself, and ‘Nature took its course’ when he stopped worrying about his fears.”
“That was it,” agreed Lang. “I accepted the idea, from somewhere, that ice-cream and fish made poison, and while I was flying, when a little gas began to bother me I got scared, and the scare did the rest. Uncle said that half our pains are due to believing what other folks tell us can happen; the rest is from being afraid it is happening to us!”
“That clears it up.” Al became very sober. “I wish the disappearance of Mr. Tredway was as easy to settle.”
“Well, we’ll have to find that mysterious brown ’plane, or get hold of somebody who saw it flying, to tell us which way it went.” Lang rose, stretched, yawning, and sauntered off toward his wheel; the other three, sitting on the cottage porch before supper, for which Lang would not stay, looked after him in silence.
“Do you know what I think?” Curt broke the thoughtful pause. “I don’t mean to criticise, and I don’t want you fellows to get angry, but I have a feeling that Uncle Fred is wrong to have us drop all our suspicions and try to find a crate that could be five hundred miles away, in any direction. My theory is that if we locate the airplane it will be by ‘luck’ and I don’t believe in ‘luck’ because if you think ‘luck’ is going to help, you don’t have to do anything yourself, and if you believe it is going to hinder, there’s no use in doing anything. So,” he grinned, “I believe that everything comes out right only when we do everything we can to make it so—and as long as there isn’t any way to start hunting that brown crate, let’s——”
“Disobey?” asked Bob, rather surprised.
“I guess it would amount to that—and in another way it wouldn’t!”
“How could it if it didn’t and why wouldn’t it if it did?”
The others laughed at Al’s twisted inquiry.
“Uncle Fred didn’t give you orders to ‘lay off’ watching, did he, Bob?” and as Bob shook his head, “He only meant for us to concentrate on seeing if we could pick up a clue to the mysterious ’plane. Well, I feel that by finding out what Griff is doing, and why his father is so fidgety and furtive, and the rest of the puzzles here, we may be led to that ’plane, or get a clue to it or to its pilot.”
“I don’t see any disobedience in that.”
“Well,” Curt answered Bob, “the way I look at it, if Uncle Fred took us into the case he expected us to obey the ‘spirit’ of the orders he gave, and he did say to forget the smaller things here and work on locating the ’plane.”
“I see,” agreed Bob. “It’s a pretty deep—what Lang would call, ethical problem. Father meant to leave Griff alone, unless he did something actually incriminating, and to put all our effort on the other thing. Let’s see your paper, Al.” He held out his hand for the brief note Al had preserved.
Study it as they would, they got nothing helpful from the grass-stained paper with the smudged writing.
“Let’s think who we’ve seen use an indelible pencil,” hinted Al. “Remember, the morning we found this, we decided, in a joke, that there were too many indelible pencils to try to trace the writer because he used one; but how many people close to this mystery have you seen using one?”
“The clerk in the supply room!” gasped Curt.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Bob—because he takes a copy of every order he writes and of every requisition, on an old-fashioned letter press, the same way they put their copying ribbon letters in between a damp cloth and a soft, thin sheet of the big book, put it all in the press and make the copying ribbon print the letter into the book instead of using carbon paper!”
“Then we have a clue! How does the clerk’s writing compare with this?”
“Let’s see!”
Each of the three having spoken in turn, by common consent they agreed to Al’s impulsive suggestion. They were hardly able to wait for their supper; however, they put it away with speed if not with the best of table manners and secured their bicycles.
It took them only a short time to reach the aircraft plant.
The watchman accepted their explanation that they were passing and wanted to borrow several books from Mr. Tredway’s reference library, in the offices.
Bob, accordingly, went to the offices, while Curt and Al strolled, with apparent aimlessness, across the inner quadrangle.
“There’s a light in one window—no, in two windows—already!” Al mentioned. “I wonder who’s here, at night again.” Almost at once he suggested that they go and see.
Curt, himself fired by the curiosity of his companion, hurried after Al.
They saw Bob, who had lighted the outer office electric bulbs, choosing several volumes from a shelf, to carry out in truth their explanation to the watchman.
“Now—who’s here?” Bob said, joining the others at the door as he put out the light.
“Can’t be Barney—unless he came back—no, the cabin ’plane isn’t here,” Al argued. “Anyway, Barney stayed over to transact some business, you said, Bob. Must be either——”
“Griff, or Griff and his father—or Mr. Parsons and somebody else,” Curt said breathlessly, excited. “There were two separate offices lighted, and you can see the door glass shining.”
“The doors are shut, though,” Al spoke, disappointedly.
“Yes,” continued Curt, “but one of us can hide in the alcove where the water cooler and door to the washroom are located. If anybody comes, it would be easy to dodge on into the washroom and no one would ask questions about that.”
“Then you’re elected!” Bob said. “I want to go with Al, because I think I know where to find the latest letter-book.”
With the reference volumes tucked under his arm he led Al down the dim corridor, while Curt secured a good place in the niche by the water cooler to watch from.
As the two brothers went down the steps, at the rear, toward the supply room, to be sure that no one was there and likely to come up and catch them, Al’s grip on Bob’s arm tightened convulsively.
Some one was coming down the steps behind them.
With lips close to Al’s ear, Bob whispered:
“Tiptoe! Come on!”
He led Al down to the lowest steps, and there, just beside the door to the supply room the brothers flattened themselves against the wall.
They held their breath. They made themselves as small as they could. A quick tread came on down the steps, there was the pause of a body close—almost touching them. Breathing, sharp, short, quick, carried to their ears; but they kept mouse-still. The door opened.
A light flared up as Bob dragged Al back out of range. But as they turned and stared down, hearts still pounding from the excitement of the narrow escape, both brothers gasped.
In the light below, stood—a bearded stranger!
Pulling Al further back out of the light, around the little dark jog beside the door jamb of the supply room, Bob put his lips close to his brother’s ear.
“Watch!” he whispered, hardly loud enough for Al to hear.
With a little squeeze to reassure his brother, Bob let go of Al’s arm and tiptoed back up the stairway, carefully clinging to the side wall and hoping that this precaution would enable him to get away without causing the steps to creak.
He was successful. Al, noting that the man inside the room seemed to be doing nothing more than standing there considering the layout of the place, guessed that Bob wanted to consult with Curt, watching upstairs. Al felt important: he was in the very heart of mystery, and much depended on him. Therefore he watched with every faculty alert as the man turned his head this way and that, apparently inspecting the stock of wing and fuselage cloth, the boxed instruments, the cases of “dope” for varnishing bodies and wings, the many other visible objects held in reserve.
Bob, slipping along the hallway at the top of the steps, noticed that both offices were lighted still, that both doors were closed, and as far as he could see, nothing had changed up above.
Curt was still watching. He was practically invisible in his nook by the water cooler. Bob, with a small word under his breath, reassured his comrade who came out of hiding as soon as he knew that the footsteps he heard approaching were Bob’s.
“Where did the stranger come from?” asked Bob softly.
“Stranger?” Curt’s voice betrayed amazement.
“The man who came down to the supply room!” Bob was also surprised.
“Was he a stranger?” Curt asked. “I thought it was Mr. Parsons. He came out of that dark directors’ room, beyond me.”
“Oh!” Bob clutched Curt’s arm in a tight grip. “Have you used your eyes, Curt, in daylight? If you have, you recall that there is a fire escape running up the side of the building—and the landing is by that directors’ meeting room window.”
“Is that so? Then, if that window is open——”
The opening of one of the lighted offices startled them, ended the consultation. Both comrades, tense, drew close against the wall behind the water cooler. If anybody was thirsty!——
The lighted square of that door went black. Someone had put out the dome light. Footsteps went carelessly along the corridor from the hiding youths, toward the front stairway.
“I must follow—whoever it is!” whispered Bob. “Curt, watch here. Al will watch that other man. It’s——”
“A triple trail!” gasped Curt. “Go on, Bob. Be careful.”
Bob agreed and tiptoed along to the stairway. By the time he got there he had no need for special caution, the lower door was closing.
Bob ran lightly down the stairs, crossed the entry below, cautiously peered into the yard, lighter just there by the arc over the office building doorway, and nodded to himself.
Griff was passing around the side of the building!
Cautiously Bob trailed him, allowing the partner’s son to get out of sight beyond the turn before he left the doorway.
Where was Griff bound? The main gates were across the yard and, as Bob knew, they were locked while the night man made his rounds of inspection among hangars and plant structures.
While Al watched his man in the supply room, while Curt hid, watching the lighted office door, Bob wondered what Griff was about. The young man did not go anywhere near or bend his steps in the direction of the main entrance but turned, with Bob carefully watching as he clung close in the shadow of the office structure, and went on around the building toward the private exit used by the officials. Being the son of Mr. Tredway’s partner, Griff had a key; but Bob could see, as he peered around the building, that the gate stood slightly ajar already.
“Will he go on home?” Bob wondered. “Had I better go back to Al?”
His thought was answered by Griff’s actions. He paused at the gate, seeming to inspect it. He was surprised to find it ajar, Bob decided. He held his place close to the office shadow and watched, as Griff looked around, inside and outside the fence.
Then, as though discovering something, Griff ran out of sight, leaving the gate as he had found it.
Instantly Bob ran across the small open space to the gate. There, in sudden caution, he cuddled his body close to the fence; it had just crossed his mind that Griff might have gone outside in a pretended hurry to draw out any pursuer; he might be hiding, watching!
He was not, however.
The sputter and roar of a motor startled Bob.
“That’s queer,” Bob mused, while he projected his head through the gateway. Almost in the same instant that he saw Griff starting up a motorcycle, Bob saw Griff shut off the motor and trundle the machine away.
“His own motorcycle is broken, since Saturday’s accident,” Bob reflected. “Now he must have brought another one. He meant to ride off in a hurry,” he deduced, “but he decided the noise would startle and warn people, so he’s going further away before he starts up.”
Instantly his own action was decided upon. He streaked back across the yard, around the hangars, to get his own bicycle. Against a speedy motor it would not keep Griff in sight, but it would enable Bob to get over the ground faster, and, if Griff did not go home, Bob meant to pursue him, making careful inquiries as he pedaled. There was only the crossroad for him to take, and Bob could see it from the highway.
In a very short time, and without having been seen by the watchman, Bob was out on the road. The distant sputter of the motorcycle engine and a speeding form passing the junction of the crossroads gave Bob all the information he needed. Without wasting energy in an effort to keep the flying cycle in sight, he pedaled after it.
The sudden sharp noise evidently startled others besides Bob.
Al, watching, saw the man who was evidently making some notes in the supply room, suddenly dash to the switch. Out went the light.
Al heard the scrape and rumble of a window being unfastened and thrown up. The man was listening, he judged.
Curt, by the water cooler, heard nothing but the faint sounds of the motor; at first he thought they were shots. When he saw the office light go out suddenly, immediately afterward, he thought someone in there had shot at some one else; but the door was flung open and he heard hurried feet pounding along the hall and almost stumbling down the front steps, careless of how much noise they made.
Curt could not go to explain to Al. He must see who that was going out of the quickly darkened office so swiftly.
Al needed no one to warn him. He crouched, tense and listening intently, outside the supply room door for a full minute. Absolute, torturing silence began to twitch his nerves. Nameless fears and countless uncertainties filled his mind. Was the man stalking him? Was he there at all? Had he ever been there? Was he human—or——?
Al heard a queer sound; at once he identified it. The window was being quietly pulled down.
Again he listened, watched, waited.
Curt, slipping down the banisters in the good, old-fashioned, speedy boys’ way, landed quietly at the foot of the stairs soon after the front doors of the office building closed.
But by that time whoever had emerged was far across the quadrangle and it was too dark to recognize him. There came the flare of the headlights of an automobile.
From its position on the grounds and from the style of its lamps, Curt guessed it was the runabout used by Mr. Parsons, Tredway’s remaining partner. What was he doing here? Where was he going? Curt, in the office doorway, not daring to emerge because of the beams of light that might swing around the yard at any moment, heard the voice of Parsons hailing the watchman, questioning him. The other replied in a way to show he had not heard any noises, could not account for them.
Curt, as the car got under way and the main gate was flung wide to permit it to depart, raced around the office building “ell” and across to his bicycle. He knew he could not pursue, but the wheel would give an excuse for emerging from that gate at once.
“Wait!” he called to the watchman, pedaling swiftly across to him. “I guess he forgot I was here,” pretending that Mr. Parsons sponsored his presence there so late at night. The watchman said nothing but held the gates open until Curt pedaled through and took his way after the car, not to keep it in sight but to see if it went to its owner’s home.
Al, ignorant that he was the only remaining member of the Sky Squad, watched tensely and listened alertly beside the supply room door. He heard nothing. Cautiously he protruded his head around the door jamb.
The room was silent, evidently the man was hiding or—“gone!”
“But how—where—could he go?” Al answered his own questions at once, for the window, made of tiny panes of thick glass between heavy bars, locked always from inside, impossible to open from outside, was not tightly shut.
For once in his life Al paused to think before he acted.
That window was not tightly shut. He had heard it opened, and—closed. But if the man had closed it from within the room he would have pulled it down tightly. He had not done so. He had left it partly open—why? To provide a way to come back, Al decided.
Almost at the same instant it flashed into his head that if he were to be caught in that room, with its door unfastened, he would be accused by any of the plant members, the watchman or those he thought were still in the upstairs offices, of stealing whatever might be missing.
He had a plan, at once!
He tiptoed back to the steps, listening. No sound came to him. Softly he went into the open doorway, made sure the window was not tightly shut, by inspecting the lighter space beneath it, then very quietly let the door go shut, allowing its spring lock to snap. He could open it from inside if he had to escape. No one without a key could open it from the hallway.
Then he ran close to the window, peered out, listened with an ear to the crack beneath the lower panes.
Nothing was stirring. But from the window he could see the gate, and the light was sufficient to show him a man’s form arriving there.
Evidently the form stopped from surprise or caution, then it went swiftly out. Al, forgetting fear, flung the window slightly upward, edged out, dropped to the ground, reached up and almost closed the window, then fully drew it down with a little slam, and raced to the gate. There he paused, peering out carefully.
Down the narrow lane he saw a man’s form trudging rapidly.
The third trail was opened!
After the man, at a distance, trudged Al!
For Al the trail ended abruptly after a walk of a mile. The stranger, whose face, with its heavy beard, Al could not dare get close enough to identify—even if he knew it!—hailed a passing automobile, asked for a “lift” and was taken in. That concluded Al’s chances of following because no other car came along. Dejectedly he returned to the aircraft plant to discover that some one, perhaps the watchman, had closed the gate. There was nothing left for him to do but to go to the main gate, call the attendant and get his bicycle. His friends were gone, the man assured him, and Al had no excuse to stay there.
Dejectedly, feeling that he had been close to a clue and that it had slipped through his hands by his “bad break,” Al rode home.
Curt’s trail took him, eventually, to the Parsons cottage. Seeing the car drawn up before the garage, Curt decided that he had no need to watch the car being put into the garage; evidently its driver had gone into his home for a moment first. Curt rode away. Had he waited his trail would have led further; but he did not guess that!
Bob had better fortune.
He saved his strength as he pedaled along, well ahead of his two less fortunate trailmates, and when he came to a cross street of the suburbs where a policeman was directing traffic Bob drew up beside the officer.
“Hello, Bob!” the policeman hailed. “Out sort of late, hey?”
“Yes, Mr. O’Brien. I stayed at the plant—I’m learning how they put airplanes together at the Tredway plant. I wanted to ask if you noticed a motorcycle, not long ago—maybe fifteen minutes—a friend——”
“Yes,” the officer, starting the cars down the street by a wave of his hand, did not wait for an explanation of Bob’s reason for the question, “Griff Parsons rode by.”
“That’s who I mean. Did he turn off, here, to go home?”
Bob knew that Griff’s house was several blocks over, on an up-and-down street that was “one way” for traffic. If Griff had turned here Bob’s quest, he knew, was over; if he did not, Griff would be gone much further, because if he did not turn here, and thus enter his own home street in the right direction he surely would not go on and approach it in the wrong way, against the traffic rules.
“He rode on by, just waved to me,” O’Brien said, and turned to signal a warning to a car that was trying to slip past the stoplights.
Thanking him Bob rode on. Griff must be going somewhere!
The highway had no turns, except the suburb’s cross streets. It was possible that Griff might have turned into one of them, perhaps to return a hired motorcycle to its garage; nevertheless, so strange had been the action of the youth that Bob decided to ride on, at least to the last police officer along the main traffic road, to see if he could learn whether the trail continued or not.
The traffic officer, used to seeing this rider, greeted Bob and told him that several motorcycles had passed him. Bob, riding to the curb to rest, was puzzled. Had one of those been the motorcycle he had followed?
A thought caused him to ride on.
Griff, Bob knew, from his own inquiries, “hung out” with quite a rough crowd of youths; they had very little reputation in the suburb, and one of their haunts, near Rocky Lake, came to Bob’s mind. Griff, riding his motorcycle, might have gone on to the inn or roadhouse or “speakeasy” or whatever it was, near the picnic grounds at Rocky Lake.
Tired, but determined, Bob went on.
Some time later he approached the gayly lighted roadhouse.
He smiled to himself as he observed the name of the place.
“The Windsock!” it was called.
On roadside signs, down the road in both directions, were admonitions to automobilists to “set down at The Windsock,” “Don’t fly past The Windsock,” and such tempting notices.
A windsock, Bob knew, was the cornucopia of doped cloth, closed at one end and held open at the other by a metal ring, which was fastened in a prominent, high position at every flying field and airport, to be filled by the draft of a breeze and thus, by its position, to indicate to flying craft which direction to “head in” or to “take off.” Since an airplane is much easier to get off the ground, and back to earth, headed into the wind, the “windsock” was a most important adjunct to every field; and Bob knew that the name, and the symbol, a real windsock on top of the inn, had been chosen by its owner because he had been an ex-pilot who put his money into the hotel venture and tried to attract picnickers, automobile parties and other patrons of a less savory nature by the novel idea of having his dining alcoves built to resemble the cozy little cabins of airplanes and had his meals served by girls clad in suits and helmets resembling those worn by pilots. Also, he had let it be rumored around town that he chose the flying symbol and the aviation idea because, in his inn, “the sky is the limit!”
Bob, approaching, was surprised to see the very motorcycle—he was sure of that!—he had followed, leaned against a post in the parking yard, and he felt certain that his long ride had not been wasted.
Where was Griff? Bob wondered. He hoped there would be some way for him to discover the whereabouts of the youth.
Not wishing to walk into the place for fear he might disclose his presence to Griff, Bob skirted the building, unobserved.
From an open window at the side came voices in angry altercation.
Bob did not need to get within sight of the occupants: he recognized Griff’s loud, sharp, furious tones. What was he saying?
“——all I could scrape together—Ididput it in that package, I keep telling you——”
“Bologna! Rats! It was wads of paper!”
“It was money! I want my receipt! If—if you don’t!——”
“Ifyoudon’t, you better say. If you don’t come through—by this time tomorrow night—I’ll ask your old man for it!”
There was silence.
Bob did not dare creep any closer. They might look out of the window. Some payment had been made, by Griff’s claim. By the denial of the other man it had not been made. By his threat it must be made.
Bob hesitated—and while he stood, undecided, the roar of a car, coming at full speed, came to his ears.
He glanced down the road. Hardly had he located the direction when he recognized the car. It contained—Mr. Parsons!
A man’s head leaned out of the open window. To Bob, as he crouched back into some ornamental shrubbery, the face was unfamiliar; but he saw it was brutish, fierce, angry—and he impressed it on his memory.
“Here’s your pop, now,” the man called—and then he gave an exclamation that Bob could not comprehend. Presently the light went out—and, almost at the same time, while Parsons alighted in the parking place, Bob, near the rear corner of the building, saw a form emerge from the kitchens and race away down the yard toward the grove beyond.
“Griff!” muttered Bob to himself. “Griff—running tight as he can go—running away from his father—to hide.”
Watching, more interested in the new arrival than in the son, Bob remained in concealment. But his mind was puzzled.
“Why?” he wondered. “Why—and what next?”
Sitting on the Wright porch, early the next morning, Curt and Al listened eagerly to Bob’s recital of the past night’s events.
“After Griff ran off—what, then?” Al demanded.
“A taxi came racing along and stopped at The Windsock.”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do, except keep hidden and watch?” Curt’s question brought the counter-question from Bob. “The taxi door opened—and who do you suppose jumped out?”
“Who?” Curt and Al spoke at once.
“The very man Al and I saw in the supply room.”
“I saw him hail the taxi,” Al exclaimed. “Everything is beginning to fit together.”
“Yes, it is,” Bob agreed, “and, what’s more, it fits tightly. As soon as the stranger paid his fare he recognized Mr. Parsons who was halted on the roadhouse veranda, watching. They began to talk, and stood there for a minute.”
“They knew each other!” Curt exclaimed. “They must be working together to loot the supply room. That’s probably how the mystery man got in: he had a key from Mr. Parsons.”
“It looks like that,” admitted Bob.
“What then?” Al wanted the story. “Did they find Griff?”
“No—but the stranger saw his motorcycle. He got awfully excited about it and he went with Mr. Parsons to look at it. They went close to where I was hiding back of the shrubs, but they didn’t say anything until they were close to the motorcycle. They were too far away for me to hear, then.”
“I’d have crept closer,” declared Al.
“Oh—yes! You would!” Bob was scornful. “Right out across an open yard!”
Al subsided, crestfallen.
“What then?” Curt asked quickly, to avoid any quarrel.
“They talked for about ten minutes—then the man made some notes of things Mr. Parsons said—I wish I could have heard! Then he hopped onto his motorcycle and rode off, and Mr. Parsons stood thinking for awhile and then——”
“Yes? Don’t keep us waiting. What?”
“Curt—he turned the car and went back toward town!”
“Didn’t look for Griff?” Al had recovered his usual interest.
“No! He drove away. Griff must have been watching, too. He came out, and shook his fist toward the roadhouse and then walked off, and—that’s all.”
They discussed the incidents of the past night, coupling them with the strange actions and uneasiness of Mr. Parsons and of Griff on former occasions, riding, as they talked, toward the plant.
Barney’s cabin airplane was again on the field, and as soon as they arrived and he saw them, from an office window, Barney summoned them.
“Well,” he greeted them, closing the door, “how goes the study of airplane building?”
“Oh, we know how they lay down the framework for the fuselage and how careful they are to see that every longeron and brace and strut and guywire and turnbuckle fits exactly in place and is well fastened,” Al exclaimed. “And we’ve helped put on the wings and the tail assembly, and Bob is going to help install an engine, today, and we will watch.”
Bob laughed and Curt joined him. They saw the amused light in Barney’s eyes.
“Well—you asked!” Al defended his enthusiasm.
“It was just a ‘polite opening’,” Bob grinned. “Barney wants to know about—other things we’ve learned.”
Interrupting one another, they gave him the details of their experiences.
“Hm-m-m! Well!” Barney’s face became very serious. “So that’s it!”
“What?”
Barney smiled at Al.
“The partner and his son are working with an outsider. I thought so. But what about the brown ’plane? Any news of that?”
“We left it out entirely,” Bob said.
“We disobeyed Uncle,” Curt admitted. “Bob said Uncle wanted us to drop things here and concentrate on trying to find the brown ’plane, but——”
“We can’t find that ‘crate’ I feel sure.” Bob was earnest.
“Not only that, but if a crime is being committed under your nose you won’t go off looking for something else to do while it is going on, will you?” Al wanted their course confirmed.
“You did just right,” Barney commended them. “You lads stick to this end of it. I’ve suspected that Parsons and his son were ‘up to’ something, and I don’t agree with your father, Bob, about the brown crate at all! I think you fellows deserve a ‘raise’ and if you can only catch one or all of the crowd doing something—catch them ‘red-handed’ in a way of speaking, I’ll hand out a little private reward. I feel that it’s due to—to the memory of Mr. Tredway. He was mighty good to me and—and I want to—get everything cleared up here, because I think the ones who have been doing wrong right here at the plant got found out by him and they either hired that airplane from some distant place and flew out and rode down Tredway or else they paid some unscrupulous pilot——”
He paused as he saw Al squirming in his chair with eagerness.
“What is it, Al?”
“Unscrupulous pilot!” reiterated Al. “Why—the man at The Windsock is a—an ex-pilot.”
“Glory be! That’s so!” Barney nodded.
“Well, from what I saw of him, his face shows that he’s unscrupulous,” added Bob.
“It looks to me, from here,” Barney said, slowly, “it looks to me as though we’ve got the case ‘sewed up.’ All you need to do is to find out, some way, about that ex-pilot—what he does with his time, if he owns a crate yet, and so on.”
“You think?——”
Barney turned to Curt.
“I think,” he nodded, “that ex-pilot might know a lot about a brown ’plane, and about what it did to force another one down——”
“Then we have got the case ‘sewed up’,” Al declared. “We came here last night to see if we could compare a little scrap of writing we found where the ‘plane had been, with the books of letters and things to see if the writing agreed.”
“And what did you find?”
“We had no time to find anything,” Curt admitted. “The other things came up——”
“Let’s see that note? Where is it?”
Al produced the much-folded, dirty scrap and handed it to Barney.
“No!” he shook his head after a careful study. “Don’t recognize it!”
“The supply clerk?” hinted Bob.
“Not at all like his writing.”
“Well,” said Curt, “it’s done with an indelible pencil. Now that we know the ex-pilot is under suspicion, we can find out if he has an indelible pencil that he carries around—or, he might destroy it, considering what has happened since the note was written.”
“But who’s the note written to?” asked Bob. “It says ‘everything O.K.’”
“To whoever hired him. To Parsons, maybe—or to Griff——”
“That’s so!” Bob became very thoughtful.