“We ought to get a sample of the ex-pilot’s handwriting,” suggested Al, eagerly. “Shall I? I can try! They don’t know me out at The Windsock. Couldn’t I take my autograph album—and——”
“I’ll make inquiries about the brown ‘plane, from around The Windsock,” added Curt.
“Then I can keep tabs at this end,” argued Bob.
“Fine!” agreed Barney. “Fine! Yes, sir! Boys—we’ve got the case ‘sewed up’ or circumstantial evidence never pointed true.”
“Did you see Dad, again?” asked Bob as they rose.
“Yes, but he’s awfully busy on that other case. He must trust you fellows pretty well.”
“Well,” Al swelled with pride, “maybe we’ve disobeyed orders, but if this comes out as good as we think it will, we’ll have no trouble making Father see that he was wrong and we were right to disobey.”
“Right you are!” agreed Barney.
Griff seemed to be getting ready to work himself into danger for their special benefit, it seemed to Bob in the engine assembling rooms. The youth was angry, upset, uneasy, fidgety; he hurried out when he heard his father’s voice approaching down the hall and the older man betrayed as much uneasiness and concern as did his son.
But that night, when they thought they had the last stitches taken to “sew up” the case, as Barney said, Fate ripped out the whole thing—and they were left without a thread of a clue!—until the unexpected thing happened that gave Bob his “hunch!”
Cheerfully Al greeted the rigger for whom he worked.
“Barney—Mr. Horton—” he corrected his own familiar allusion to the manager of the aircraft plant, “—says please hurry the work on this sport biplane. The man who’s buying it is in a big hurry. He wants to get into some race with it.”
“Oh, sure!” the rigger grumbled a little. “They’re all in a hurry. But I don’t rush my part of it for anybody. There’s been enough complaint about this plant, already, without me doing anything to cut down the performance of a crate by skimping my share of the high standards Mr. Tredway always kept up.”
“I know,” agreed Al, “but he meant to do all you can, I guess.”
“Yes,” the rigger was in a complaining mood, “that’s all very well. But did he say why they’re giving us cheaper stuff to work with, since the real boss—went West, maybe!—did they tell you why that is, that we’re getting cheaper stuff!”
“No,” Al admitted, “but I do know that Mr. Parsons and Bar—and Mr. Horton were talking about some complaint from the wing assembling room, about poor fabric. They almost quarreled. Barney told Mr. Parsons it had to stop, he was going to uphold Mr. Tredway’s ideas, and Mr. Parsons said so was he.”
“Well, somebody’s ordering cheap stuff. Look here!”
He picked up a turnbuckle, a metal object in which the threads of each wire end were so threaded in that when the ends of wires were screwed in, the turning of the central, revolving part either drew the two sections of wire close, making it taut, or allowed them to recede a little from one another, for more looseness—by which the flying and landing wires, and other parts of the guying rig were adjusted.
The turnbuckle looked all right to Al and he said so.
“Shows how much you know,” scoffed the rigger, Sandy. “Look here—heft this—and then this one!”
He selected another turnbuckle, handed both to Al, and the youth “weighted them” in his two hands.
“This one does feel heavier.”
“Of course it does! It’s a cheap casting, not the aluminum alloy the other one is machined from. Why, them threads on the new one will wear and go bad in no time!”
Al, watching, observed that as the rigger manipulated a pocket knife in the threaded end of the part, bright metal and a worn look were almost immediately evident.
“Yes,” Sandy Jim agreed with his discovery, “and I’ve been talking around and others is dissatisfied—in the dope room, in the engine room. Everywheres!”
“But when Mr. Parsons talked with the manager,” Al explained, “they had the supply clerk in and went over the orders and way-bills and delivery check-up, and everything was all right. The orders went to the same firms, as always——”
“We’re getting shoddy stuff, all the same!” grunted Jim. “What good is it to rush out a ‘job’ and have it accepted on the reputation of Mr. Tredway, and then have complaints in a few days?”
“I don’t know,” said Al, and changed the subject. “Mr. Horton says you’ll have to excuse me, this morning. He’s sending me out on an errand.”
“Oh, sure!” Jim snapped. “Wants this job rushed, and takes away my helper! Whyn’t he use his office boy?”
Al could not explain that it was Barney’s way of releasing him so he could go to The Windsock for that comparison of the ex-pilot’s autograph with the clue note Al held.
“I guess you’ll have to ask him,” Al grinned, and went over to get his bicycle. Sandy Jim followed him, dragging a small parcel out of his hip pocket.
“As long as you’re riding,” he suggested, “go past the house and slip this in to Jimmy-junior. It’s some odds and ends of broken stuff for him to use on his new model air-liner.”
“Glad to,” Al took the parcel.
“Get back quick as you can,” urged Sandy. “I need a good helper.”
Al quickly sent his bicycle along the highway. Stopping at Sandy’s home he took as little time as he could to drop the parcel, and to explain to Jimmy-junior that the reason he had not yet been taken into the Sky Squad was that they had been too busy, evenings, to hold any meetings.
Then he made his way to the roadhouse near Rocky Lake Park, and leaned his wheel against the veranda supports.
“Is Mister Jones busy?” he asked a sleepy waiter who was listlessly dusting off some chairs in one of the small compartments made to look like the cabin of an air-liner. Al had found it easy to learn the ex-pilot’s name.
“In the office,” the man jerked a thumb toward a side room. Al, knocking at the door and hearing a gruff voice bid him enter, went into the same room Bob had described as the scene of the quarrel between the roadhouse man and Griff.
The man, looking up from some work at a small desk, had a coarse, scowling face. No wonder he was “ex” pilot, Al reflected, with a face as brutish and a manner as unfriendly and curt as “Mr. Jones” showed.
“What’s wanted?”
“Why—er—” Al stammered, not so much ill at ease as trying to pretend he felt shy in the presence of a great man, “I’m one of the fellows who have a sort of club, to study airplanes, and all that—and I—we—heard about you being a clever pilot, and I thought I’d ride out and ask if you’d be generous enough to write a little something about aviation in our club autograph album.” He produced the small book he had brought in his coat pocket.
“Hm-m!” The man scowled. “Le’me see that book!”
He took the small volume and Al’s heart sank. Instead of writing sensibly and generously on blank page invitingly offered, he flipped the pages, and Al knew that the affair was a failure. There was nothing about aviation in the few autographed verses and sayings already collected.
“That’s no aviation album!” The man thrust it away angrily and jumped up. “What’s your scheme, young fellow?”
“Scheme?” Al tried to look innocent. “I told you—we want to get you to start the real autographs from aviators!”
The subterfuge did not satisfy the man. He frowned, stared at Al as though trying to get through his guard, to discover any hidden motive. Al, inexperienced, fidgeted, unable to conceal his uneasiness.
However, he received a surprise.
“Sure!” The man snatched up the book. “Come to think of it, why not? Fact is, kid, I’ll start you off withtwoautographs. Wait!”
He hurried out of the office. Al did not dare “peek” to see where he went or what he did. For all Al knew, the man might be just beyond the side door, watching. He sat very still, trying to be as self-possessed as he could.
Presently the man returned, with the book held open.
“Here y’are!” he said, affably. Al, glancing at the book, saw that two opposite pages bore fresh scrawls. The man waved a hand. “Welcome. Run along, now. We’re busy, here—getting set to open up a new ‘airport’ out on the side, where folks can dance to a fine orchestra in a hangar. Tell any of your friends you like—especially your parents. We got the prettiest imitation of an airplane for the orchestra to set in——”
Al, hardly able to mumble his thanks, dashed out to his bicycle. He could scarcely hold in his impatience. One of those sets of rough characters was written with a pencil, the other with an indelible pencil!
One had a familiar character to its shaping of letters!
A little way down the road, near the lake, where the airplane had cracked up, Al drew his machine in under a tree, almost tore the book out of his pocket and opened it hastily.
On one page was a maxim, exactly what a pilot might write:
“Knowing when to stay on the ground makes a better pilot than knowing how to get off it!” It was signed with initials—“T. J.” Al did not recognize the writing although, he understood that the saying meant that a pilot wise enough to be cautious was better than one who thought that getting into the air was all there was to flying.
The second page revealed one word, the pilot’s good-luck wish, and two initials also:
“Tailwinds! J. T.” it told him.
“T. J. and J. T.”
Hurriedly Al drew out the folded, ragged, dirty little note—his clue.
It exactly corresponded in every character with the short autograph!
But!——
Who had written the autograph? Had Mr. Jones? If his name was Jones he would have signed the initials on the first autograph—“T. J.” Or—would he have signed that way? Might he not have signed the reverse? Had he written either page? Who else had helped?
More mystery! And no way to solve it!
On a former occasion Bob had related news to an audience composed of Al and Curt.
As the trio rode homeward, Curt to share supper with the brothers, Al was the spokesman.
“Did you ever see so many people to suspect and so many clues that don’t lead anywhere?” asked Curt when Al had told his story and had shown his evidence.
“The Sky Squad has a mystery, and there’s no mistake about it,” declared Al. “We got what we wanted, but now—what can we do with it?”
“You mean the mystery?”
“No, Bob. I mean the autograph.”
“Well, it proves one thing, anyway,” Bob asserted. “The single word matches our ‘Everything O.K.’ note. That proves that the man who wrote the note is at that roadhouse, The Windsock.”
“It does,” Curt agreed. “But—is it the man named Jones? Did he write it?”
“Did he write either one?” Bob was puzzled as he spoke.
“He left the room, you said.” Curt turned to Al, who nodded.
“Maybe he didn’t write anything!”
“What does all that matter?” Bob said. “The point is that we have proof that the man who used the brown ‘plane is staying at The Windsock. Now our job is to discover who he is.”
“Let’s see those autographs again.” Curt drew his wheel to the roadside and took the book from Al. “‘T. J.’ is written with a plain leadpencil,” he remarked. “The ‘J. T.’ one is the one written in indelible pencil. ‘J. T.’” he repeated thoughtfully. “Do you suppose Jones transposed his initials and then got a waiter or a clerk to write the other and sign what Al would take for his initials?”
“It’s too tangled up to suppose about,” argued Bob. “Two things we do know from it.”
“One is,” Al remarked, as they resumed their ride, “one is that we know the brown airplane man is at The Windsock. What’s the other?”
“Well, whether it’s Jones or not—Jones has something to hide, this proves. Otherwise he’d have scribbled a word or two for Al, and thought no more about it.”
“That’s so.”
“It simplifies things, doesn’t it?” Al, speaking after Curt’s agreement, was not so sure as his words indicated.
“It makes them more complicated,” Bob retorted. “Let’s see what we know and where we stand.”
As they rode slowly, he tabulated their clues and theories and discoveries, with many interruptions from his companions.
“First of all,” he began, “we saw a mysterious brown airplane hidden in the woods. Then, when we went there, it was gone—and this note was flung aside. The crate took off in a hurry because we saw heavy tracks, and made in a hurry, by the way they looked. Then there was a crack-up at Rocky Lake and we found out Mr. Tredway was in the Silver Flash that crashed.”
“And we saw a man come to try to help, swimming across the lake,” Curt broke in.
“And then we met Barney and he and Father called us in to help solve the Mystery Crash,” added Al.
“We learned there was more mystery than just the fall of the crate,” Bob went on. “That was bad enough; but there was more! Parts were being stolen from the aircraft plant, and ‘planes had been tampered with—after tests showed them to be perfect!—and——”
“When we went there to work in the plant,” Curt was eager to add his contribution to the sum of their recollections. “We saw Mr. Parsons acting suspiciously, and Griff, too.”
“And we have suspected Langley was in bad company with Griff, and Lang got mad at us about Griff—but we haven’t found any reason to suspect Lang, since,” Al declared. “But now we’ve got more people to suspect—the stranger who came to the plant and this ex-pilot.”
“But all this hasn’t brought us any closer to knowing anything definite,” Bob objected. “I begin to wonder if Father was right, after all, when he told us to ‘drop those unimportant things and locate that brown airplane.’”
“But we can’t!” defended Al. “There’s no way to start hunting. I’m for keeping on disobeying until something happens to help us.”
“And I’m for getting in to supper,” Curt changed the subject as they dismounted at the cottage. “Let’s give what brains we have a good rest while we eat.”
“Well, one thing more and we will.” Bob paused, thoughtful and serious. “Al said we had no cause to suspect Lang. Well—today, I was wondering why Griff was so nervous and fidgety and furtive, and Lang came in and took me out, to give me a lesson in handling the controls, he hinted. He really did, but before he took me up while he tested the new sport speedster, he said, ‘I see you’re bothering Griff again,’ and he gave me ‘down the banks’ about it.”
“What’s suspicious about that?” Curt asked.
“Not that, so much. But—he told me to go on home, that it was closing time, and I put on my cap and punched the time-clock, and then I recalled that I had left the baseball we were playing ‘catch’ with at noon, in my bench drawer. I went back, and there was Griff, all excited, and Lang, with his head close to Griff’s, acting as upset and as uneasy as Griff when I came in and surprised them. Lang snapped at me—I—don’t—like it——”
“Well,” Curt was quiet, a little hesitant, but firm. “If Lang is mixed up in something wrong—we ought to—at least we ought to try to save him!”
“That’s good,” agreed Bob, quickly. “I thought you were going to say ‘we ought to catch him with the rest.’”
“No, indeed, I think more of Lang than that.”
“But how could we save him?” asked Al.
To that they had no answer as they went in to eat.
As they sat at the table Al mentioned the morning’s chat with Jimmy-junior, and suggested that they really ought to go and spend an evening with him as he had urged them to do; if the others liked him, they could communicate by nods and take him into the Sky Squad, not as a full member, but just to please him and have a fourth member to call on if an emergency arose where he would be needed. Al vouched for his innocence and good nature, eagerness to please and willingness to work without asking for explanations of why he did a certain thing.
“He’d be a good one to send to watch anybody—Griff, or the ex-pilot,” Al spoke as the trio rode toward Jimmy-junior’s home.
“We’ll see——”
Bob did not finish. He applied his coaster brake, made a quick signal for silence, swerved into a garage driveway, followed by his companions, and dismounted, dropping his bicycle on the lawn.
“What happened?” asked Al, thrilling to some possible mystery.
“Lang turned the corner!”
“You didn’t want him to see us?”
“Certainly not!” Bob answered Al.
“Wonder where he’s going.” Curt slipped along the side of the house by which they had stopped. “He’s in a terrible hurry,” he reported, coming back. “In a second he’ll be passing this house. Get back—behind the house. I don’t think he’ll notice the bikes on the grass in the dusk.”
They hid from the view of anyone on the sidewalk. Peering cautiously out in turn they saw Langley hurrying by.
“Now—where’s he going?”
“And what shall we do about it?”
“See where he goes,” Curt answered the other two.
Lang turned the next corner.
“I’ll bet he’s going to Griff’s house!”
Al was correct in his guess. As they trundled their bicycles, keeping as far behind Lang as they thought necessary, they saw him turn in at Griff’s gate. Five minutes later, from carefully chosen points of concealment they saw Lang come out, take Griff’s repaired motorcycle and ride off in haste.
Consulting one another with dismayed eyes, the chums, by common consent, mounted and pedaled for dear life along the street, around the corner, back to the main highway.
They seemed to sense where Langley was going.
They did not, however, divine what he planned to do!
Before they reached the aircraft plant toward which they pedaled with all their power, Bob, Curt and Al saw a light flare up.
“That’s the flying field ready for a hop,” panted Al. “Hurry!”
“Do you think it could be Lang?” Curt asked.
“Who else?” Bob retorted, pedaling faster.
“There’s nobody at the gate,” Curt called. They were near enough to see the open gateway.
“The watchman’s helping with chocks and spinning the prop.”
Bob, increasing his pedal revolutions, forging ahead, spoke over his shoulder.
“Wait!” called Curt. “What are you going to do?”
“Find out——”
“No! Wait!”
Bob slowed up his pedals, permitting the bicycle to coast along as the modern, free-wheeling automobile runs when the foot is removed from the accelerator pedal. Curt caught up to him. In a moment, as they approached the gate, Al came up also.
“Don’t let him see you at all,” warned Curt. “Better wait and ask the watchman after he’s gone. You’ll find out more, that way.”
It was good advice, and Bob agreed to act on it.
They hid the bicycles, in case it turned out that Lang had not left the ground. Careful not to disclose themselves, they watched at the gate as the engine of the sport model owned by Griff was warmed up. In the flood of light on the runway they recognized Lang as the pilot, and watched him adjust flying helmet and leather jacket, get into the craft, test the instruments, checking carefully, and then get his wind direction from the windsock, which told that the light Summer breeze was from the South. The watchman swung the tail around, set the chocks again for a final test. Lang “gave her the gun,” to see if everything was hitting perfectly, signaled for the chocks to be removed, and since his craft was correctly headed into the wind the airplane taxied, gaining speed, and rose swiftly into the dark.
Hardly waiting for the flood to be extinguished, the trio of amateur detectives hailed the watchman.
“Too late to see Lang take off,” greeted Bob. “He didn’t say why he hopped at night did he?”
“Yeah, he did! He’s going off to see his uncle about something.”
“That’s funny,” Al argued, under his breath, to Curt.
“Certainly is,” Curt agreed.
“Thanks,” Bob spoke to the watchman. “As long as we’re here,” he turned to his chums. “Let’s bring in our bikes and get some more of those books on metal alloys Barney told us about.”
“The boss is here, himself,” the watchman explained. “Go ahead.”
Barney was working late!
“His office is lighted,” Al commented. “Let’s stop in and tell him about the note and the autograph.”
“And about Lang.”
“He must know Lang hopped off,” Curt told Bob.
“Yes—the crate made enough noise—unless he’s awfully busy.”
Barney was busy enough, but he had heard the take-off, he admitted.
“I’m trying to check up on the firm’s books.” Barney waved a hand toward the pile of heavy volumes, ledgers, daybooks, indexes and others, scattered on his desk. “I can’t find out what way they’re doing it, but something’s being ‘worked’ about the materials.”
“So Sandy told me this morning,” Al stated.
“Well, I can’t find it,” he pushed three of the smaller books into a large lower desk drawer, and turned, mysteriously smiling. “How do you like this idea?” he asked. “I’ll put a few books aside, and then, when the staff comes in, tomorrow, I’ll see how the bookkeeper and Parsons take it. If there’s anything ‘flim-flammy’ about them, they will show it when they miss the books.”
“That’s dandy!” agreed Al.
“What do you figure on doing now?” Barney asked.
“Why—nothing special,” said Bob. “We thought if Lang was flying over to see Father, that would take him about three hours—or four, and he wouldn’t get back here before morning, so there’s no use waiting for him to come back here. But—we haven’t anything special to do, except go to call on Sandy’s son, Jimmy-junior.”
“Why not ‘stick around’ here?” suggested Barney. “For awhile, at least. I don’t want to be mixed up in anything, but if anybody should come slinking around, I’d like to know it—as long as you have nothing much on hand?”
“Let’s!” urged Al.
“Suits me,” Curt agreed. Bob was willing.
“Why not put out all the lights, and just hang around in the dark for an hour?” suggested Barney.
They agreed readily enough, and felt quite like conspirators or real sleuths on a big case as they occupied easy chairs in the big “directors’ room” and talked in low tones.
Their vigil was soon rewarded.
Footsteps, sounding without effort at concealment, in the corridor, caused all three comrades to become tense and alert.
Bob felt a hand clutch his arm, and almost called out in his nervous reaction until he realized that Curt was whispering:
“Hide!”
Al, already at his other side, was anxious.
“How? Where?” he said quickly but softly.
“Behind the chairs.”
However, hardly had they gotten into concealment when they realized that there was no need to hide; the steps went briskly past the door and on, down the hallway.
“Now what?” asked Al as a door opened and slammed.
At the door to the hall Curt turned, waiting until the other two joined him, he spoke quietly.
“You wait here,” he urged. “I’m lightest—and quickest, I think. Let me go on down and ‘snoop’ a little. He slammed the door so hard it jumped open a little—it’s Barney’s office!”
“Barney? He—do you suppose?—” Al was puzzled. “He told us to wait, though——”
“It’s never Barney. I’ll soon see——”
Curt was gone, tiptoeing, clinging close to the inner wall, where, he felt sure, the boards were so sturdy and well secured that they would be unlikely to creak.
In suspense his companions waited.
Soon, in the dim hall, they saw Curt returning.
“It’s—it’s—Mr. Parsons!”
“What’s he doing?” Al was eager.
“Hunting for something.”
“Those books, I’ll give you odds on it!” Bob spoke softly.
They waited, uncertain what to do—in fact, there was nothing they could do but wait.
They had only a moment to decide. Down the hall, from the stairway, came other steps; the chums drew back inside the doorway. They let Curt peer out.
“It’s Griff, this time!” he informed the others. “He’s coming to meet his—no he isn’t! Get back! Hide!”
Hesitating steps paused but before there was any further movement Curt, Al and Bob were well screened from any but a careful search in full light.
They were glad, this time, they had gotten under cover. Griff did not go to meet his father!
Instead he came into the directors’ room, at least as far as inside its door, where, a faint blotch against a very dull oblong of weak light, Bob saw him standing, watchful.
“Shucks!” thought Al, “we can’t find out about Mr. Parsons on account of——”
They did not hear anything; but evidently the youth watching at the door did, for he came further into the room. Would he decide to hide? Might he choose the spot already occupied by one of the youths?
Their suspense was relieved! He waited inside the doorway, and it was a wait of a long, dragging three or four minutes that seemed like an age to the crouching trio; but finally he walked out, his step confident and loud, showing that need for concealment was over.
Quickly the three reached the door. Already, as they peered out, a light was glowing, but not electric ceiling domes—it was a pocket flash held close to something in Mr. Parsons’ own office.
Like shadows the three, arms touching, went down the hall. They could not contain their suspense. At an open door, partly drawn shut but not locked, they stopped. Looking through the crack, hardly daring to breathe or move, they saw Griff fit a key to his father’s desk, open it, take something from a small drawer—and walk confidently, if slowly, to—the safe in the corner!
Before it his light was held low, close. He was manipulating the knobs of the combination. As the partner’s son he had access to it, the chums realized. They forgot some of their caution but not all; they peered closely in through the crack of the door—and saw——
“Phew!” breathed Al, “he’s got—a package—of—money!”
Spellbound the three watching youths saw Griff count the bills in that packet he had taken from the aircraft plant safe.
They heard the ruffle of paper as he ran through the ends of the crisp, new bills.
Then he stepped out of their line of vision.
With unexpected promptness, startling his companions, Al flung the door inward so that it banged against the wall. Instantly he leaped into the room. His chums followed. Startled, dropping his packet, Griff swung around to stare in amazement and terror.
“Drop those bills!” Al cried needlessly, “we’ve caught you red-handed!”
All three of the Sky Squad were in the room.
Al dashed across to the window, to block any possibility of Griff trying to drop the ten or fifteen feet to the ground. Bob snatched up the money. Curt blocked the door.
After his first look of stunned horror, Griff sank into the swivel chair and buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook with a sudden revulsion of feeling that unmanned him, made him sob like a creature in pain.
For a moment no one moved. The comrades were rather dismayed and nonplussed by Griff’s pathetic attitude.
They had caught him, yes! Red-handed, as Al had said, they had caught him, in the act of something very dreadful.
Nevertheless, his surprising way of giving in, sitting there in a bent posture, with his body racked by his sobs, made him a rather pitiful figure.
“Stop that!” Bob said, finally, and rather gruffly. “You’ve done wrong. You’ve been caught. Take it like a man!”
“Yes,” Griff replied in a shaking voice. “Yes—I’m caught. I know I’m a baby—but—but——”
He fought back his weakness and gulped.
“But—what?” demanded Curt. “I suppose you’ll say you were forced to do this by somebody else. They always do, in books!”
“No,” Griff answered. “No. I—it’s all my doing. But——”
“Why do you keep saying ‘but’?” asked Al.
“Oh!” Griff had hard work not to break down again. In spite of the way they had found him, in spite of what he had been planning to do, there was something that touched the youthful hearts of the trio, in Griff’s sorrowful eyes and drawn face.
“Oh!” he repeated, “if only somebody could help me instead of hounding me and——”
“We’re not ‘hounding’ you,” Bob defended their action. “You’d have done the same.”
“But you’ve been watching me and following me and suspecting me,” Griff declared sadly. “I know I deserve it—but——”
“Oh! Stop saying but!” Curt was annoyed by what he took to be an attempt to win sympathy. “We’d have helped you, instead of ‘hounding’ you if you’d been honest, instead of trying to be cunning and in with the wrong sort of people.”
“Oh, yes, you would!” retorted Griff, bitterly. “That’s easy to say.”
“Well, it’s true,” declared Bob stoutly.
“Nobody helps me,” responded Griff. “Everybody is after me for one reason or another.”
“That’s because you’re so furtive and fidgety that you ask for it—and doing things—like this—” Bob shook the bills.
Griff sat in silence for a moment. Bob walked over to the open safe, saw where the package belonged, and pushed it into place, then slammed the safe door, turned the knob of the combination to lock it and swung back to Griff.
“There!” he exclaimed. “That shows we’re helping you.”
“I—I—what do you mean?” Griff stared.
“I mean this!” Bob came and stood in front of him. “I mean that the money is back in the safe. If you can show any reason besides temptation or somebody forcing you to do—this!—we’ll all promise to say nothing more about the things we saw you do.”
Griff shook his head.
“That wouldn’t do any good,” he said despondently. “I’ve got to have that money. You think it’s—” he could not bring out the word, but he saw that the trio recognized what he meant. “It isn’t—because Lang is flying, right now, to his uncle, to get him to come back and give me money—a loan—to replace this.”
The chums exchanged surprised, wondering glances.
“Lang! Going to Father for money for you?”
“Yes,” Griff answered Al. “It’s—it’s all mixed up and—awful!—but you say you’d help instead of telling on me, if I could show I wasn’t as bad as you think.”
Bob thought he saw a genuine honesty in the clear look Griff gave him. His sympathy was really quick and he wanted to be fair.
“You could count on that!” he stated earnestly.
“You bet you could!” Al declared and Curt added a similar assertion.
“If I thought you meant that—if I thought you’d believe me——”
“Really we would!” Al was also touched; Griff, caught and breaking down and seeming to be declaring innocence in some way, was not the furtive, uneasy, shifty-eyed Griff they had known. “Honestly! Try us and see.” He and Curt moved closer. The three stood in a group in front of the huddling youth in the swivel chair.
Griff looked up dolefully.
“It will make me out bad enough,” he stated. “But—not as bad as you’ve been thinking. Oh, I know!” he took on a touch of his old defiance, “I know you’ve tried to connect me with all the wrong things that have been going on here! I know I’ve acted as though I am guilty. I’m not, though—not in the way you think.”
“All right,” Curt admitted. “We’ll listen. We’d rather have you innocent than guilty—of anything!”
“Even if our case—” Al stopped suddenly, but Griff nodded.
“I guess you all think you’re clever,” he said, forgetting his own trouble for a second or two. “You come here to learn all about this mystery of where the missing parts go and who did things to the crates, and why. Don’t you think we have eyes? It’s all over the plant what you are trying to do. Don’t you suppose we all know one of you is a close friend of the other two, and Bob and Al are sons of a detective? What’s the answer?”
“The answer seems to be that you thought we weren’t smart and so you went right ahead.” Curt was a little nettled by Griff’s statement, although common sense told him, now that Griff mentioned the point, that their scheme must be fairly evident to any sensible person.
“I didn’t think whether you were smart or dumb,” Griff replied. “I had too much on my mind. Bad as it is, it might as well be confessed. I gamble, and owe money for it, and I came here to borrow this from the safe—it’s as much my father’s as anybody’s, because he’s Mr. Tredway’s partner, but—I didn’t intend to try to ‘get away’ with the money. I only wanted it overnight. Before the office opens Lang will be back with the money to replace it.”
“What makes it so important to get money at this time of night?” demanded Curt, suspiciously.
“I guess I’d better tell the whole thing.”
“We’re listening!”
“Go ahead. Tell us!”
Griff nodded. Dejectedly, shamefaced and humble, he related his story:
“I’ve been running around with a pretty rough crowd,” he admitted, “and they got me in the habit of going to places like The Windsock, out on the——”
“We know!” Al interrupted impatiently.
“All right. There’s ways to gamble, out there, if you know the people who run the place.”
“Jones?”
“Well—he owns it, yes. Mostly its Jenks, his manager, and the waiters that let the crowd do things outside the actual license rights of the roadhouse. Well, anyhow, I got to spending money pretty fast and I gambled. After awhile I lost so much I found out I was owing the ‘house’ as they say, more than two hundred dollars!”
Although several maxims and Biblical quotations sprang into Bob’s mind, he kept silent. This was no time for preaching, for pretending the “holier than thou” pose. Under the same temptations, argued Bob to himself, it would be hard to say whether he’d go Griff’s way or not. It isn’t how good a fellow thinks he is, but how good he proves himself to be under temptation, that counts, Bob decided.
“That’s what you’re taking the money for—or trying to,” Curt determined. “But why did you have to take it this way, and at this time?”
“The manager at the roadhouse said, last week, he’d have to get all the debts owed the house and clean up, because they’re spending a lot on a new dance place, like a——”
“Hangar. We know. Never mind why they wanted it. Tell me,” Bob changed the subject for a moment, “what does the owner look like? Is he short, thick-set——”
“That’s the manager——”
“But that man let on to be Jones.” Al broke in.
“Maybe he did? What were you doing there—snooping?”
“Never mind,” said Curt, pacifically, wishing to get Griff’s side of the matter first. “We wanted a specimen of his handwriting——”
“I wishIcould get one!” declared Griff, ruefully. “That’s the whole trouble, fellows.” His manner was more eager, more confidential. “I paid the money once—and he didn’t give me a receipt——”
“Oh!” Bob was connecting some things in his mind. “He came here one evening and demanded the money, and you gave him a parcel and then realized he didn’t give you a receipt. You tried to chase him on your motorcycle and got into an accident.”
“I thought you were watching, but I was too excited and upset to care,” agreed Griff. “Yes, I had borrowed from all the fellows I knew, and had scraped every cent out of my savings account, and I had the money. But he didn’t give any receipt, and when I finally got over the smash of the motorcycle and went to ask for it he declared I’d paid him with a package of wadded, folded paper and not money!”
“But it was money,” declared Bob. “Unless you changed it, because I caught you wrapping up something green the day I came into the engine assembling room.”
“It was money, all right enough,” Griff asserted. “But he wanted it twice. Well, I had promised my father that I wouldn’t go with that crowd any more, and I had been weak and went against my promise. So I couldn’t go to him about it.”
“If you had, and made a clean breast of it, he would have gotten you out of this scrape.” Bob had to say that much.
“I don’t think so!” Griff was morose. “He’s got so much worry on his mind about the plant and all that’s happened that he’s jumpy and nervous and suspicious and he’d throw me out of here, and maybe send me away from home. And I am trying to go straight. I will—I make a vow on that!—if once I can get out of this scrape. I’ve learned a lesson.”