“Hello, boys. Remember me?”

Dick rose to meet the man, tall, quiet, and with a smile of greeting on his face that belied the creases of worry around his eyes.

“I ought to,” Larry also advanced, rather sheepishly. “I tackled you the day you floated the dory out to the cracked-up seaplane.”

“Oh, no hard feelings, my friend,” the man shook hands. “You wrenched a shoulder that was already pretty painful—but you thought you had a jewel robber to deal with, so let’s let bygones sleep.”

He shook hands and accepted the lounging chair Dick offered.

“I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself,” the man began. “I’m Mr. Whiteside. Of course you wonder what I am here for.”

Naturally they did. Each nodded.
183

“I’ve kept pretty well in the background of this case,” he told them. “I am, by profession, an official of Mr. Everdail’s eastern enterprises. But I consider myself something of an amateur detective ‘on the side’ and I want you three to help me.”

“But Mr. Everdail ‘discharged’ us.” There was no resentment, only remonstrance, in Larry’s quiet remark.

“Oh, I know it. I have seen him, been up in Maine. But he has given me a free hand, and I think you three can be useful. You see, I want that hangar watched, now that the reporters have gone away. I can’t be there day and night—I know,” he broke off to explain, “that you three have suspected me of having something to do with the wrong side of the affair, and naturally enough. I came upon Larry unawares, at the seaplane. I accepted his offer about surrendering jewels and actually had a gun in my hand at the time. No wonder I fall in line as—well, as a suspected person. I don’t hold that against you. As it happens, I am trying to recover the missing jewels, just because I made such a failure of rescuing them before.”

That might, or might not be true, Sandy reflected; but he maintained a careful guard over expression and speech.
184

“We aren’t doing anything about the mystery,” stated Sandy, wondering if that might be the plan—that this man had come to try to pump news out of them. If so, Sandy was determined that as long as they had given up, been given up, it did not matter if the man knew it or not.

“But you will do something! To help me out?”

“What?” Dick asked, with a mental reservation as to any promise.

“Why, go out to the Everdail estate, under my direction, and watch.”

“We’d be trespassers,” argued Sandy. “We might be arrested.”

“I can arrange all that.”

Mr. Whiteside turned directly to Larry.

“I need you for something else,” he said. “Atley Everdail isn’t here to help, if any situation developed where I would need a pilot. I have a theory that makes me think I shall need one——”

“What about Tommy Larsen?”

The man who had piloted the cracked-up seaplane was again able to fly, he responded, but was not safe for a long flight. Besides, the detective argued, he wanted someone who had proved himself trustworthy in more things than flying.
185

“I’ve had only about nine hours instruction,” Larry said honestly. “I wouldn’t like to risk soloing on that. I can taxi, handle the ’plane to get into the wind, take off and fly level, bank, turn, circle, spiral, climb, shoot the field and set down. But——”

“That is all settled in advance,” Mr. Whiteside stated. “Tommy Larsen is ‘kicking around’ without a job. I’ve got his consent to finish your instruction, and put you in trim for a license by the end of Summer.”

Sandy, watching his friend’s face take on an eager light, a look of longing, decided that Mr. Whiteside could not have found a more certain way to fascinate Larry and enlist his cooperation.

Dick, too, showed an interested face.

“That would be great!” Larry declared. Then he became more serious, adding. “Finishing up my course would be fine, but if it means that I’d have to do anything against Mr. Everdail’s wishes, after he told us——”

“He wishes to recover those emeralds, my boy.”

“But he has agreed with Miss Serena that they are destroyed,” Dick objected.

“And I think they are not destroyed!”

He gave them his theory.
186

“When Everdail gave me all the facts he had about the London attempt to ruin the emeralds, the first idea I had was that some independent robber had failed to find the real gems and, in spite, had damaged the imitations.”

“But no other jewels were taken!”
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