“Keep your heads, boys,” counseled Mr. Whiteside.

“We will—but come on—Jeff’s making for the amphibian—let’s——”

“Sandy went back to guard it,” Dick told Larry who had spoken.

“Not alone is Sandy on watch, but I arranged to have Tommy Larsen bring his airplane to the golf green Jeff used this afternoon,” Mr. Whiteside told them, as he walked, recovering breath, toward the hangar door.

“Tommy is to keep his engine warm, idling, and to be ready, at the first sign of escape, to take the air and overtake Jeff,” he added.

“But maybe Sandy might get into trouble,” urged Larry. “He’d fight to stop Jeff, and that man is in a dangerous mood if he’d do what he has done.”

“It will do no harm to go over,” agreed Mr. Whiteside, slamming the door behind them. “It’s shorter down along the water.”
256

At a jog trot they went down the slope and at the wharf Dick gave a cry of surprise.

“There’s the motor boat—drifting just off the dock!”

“Then that woman—Mimi—came back to rejoin Jeff!” argued Larry, and broke into a run. “Come on, fellows!”

Down the wharf path they ran, turning into the shell-powder path that skirted the inlet on the far side of which the amphibian lay moored.

“Sandy will stop them,” panted Dick, a little to the rear because of his weight. Larry called, over his shoulder, that with two to give battle to, Sandy might need them before they could arrive.

“There’s somebody—on the lawn!” cried Dick, swinging off in that direction. From behind a large tree emerged a figure. Larry and the detective followed at a run. But the man who came quickly forward to meet them gave all three a surprise.

“Tommy!” Larry recognized the pilot.

“Larsen, why aren’t you by your airplane?” demanded Mr. Whiteside.

“I came over to report and get instructions, sir.”

“Why, I gave——”
257

“Something new has come up, sir. I was waiting there by my ship a good while back, and I heard another one cruising and spiraling, shooting the field, I guess, because he came in and set down. My crate, just the way you ordered, was down by the grove, not in plain sight in the middle of the course. But Jeff set his ship down, left the engine running, and went off. I stayed hid to see what would happen, but when he didn’t come back, I thought I’d better go and find you—and see if it meant anything to you.”

“Jeff’s working with his wife, we think,” volunteered Larry. “Anyhow a woman slipped in and led us out of the hangar and started away in a motor boat, and then she must have come back, because yonder’s the boat——”

“See anything of Mimi?” asked Mr. Whiteside eagerly.

“Haven’t laid eyes on the lady.”

“She must have met Jeff and gone with him. We’re going to see.”

“I have orders, at that,” Mr. Whiteside told the pilot. “You go back and get into the air and then cruise around—just in case Jeff does get started.”

“I will that.”

“It would take him some time,” argued Dick.
258

“He could start his motor and taxi while it warmed up, and be half across the Sound before he took off if he wanted to, in that ‘phib,’” the pilot said. Turning, he called that he would get going, and returned beyond their view beyond the trees.

Dick, Larry and Mr. Whiteside, listening for a call from Sandy, went hurrying along. But no call from Sandy. He had decided that it would be a wiser thing to hide than to risk doing battle with the pilot if he was actually as bad as they suspected; with that in mind he had crawled in through the opening from the back, into the fuselage of the amphibian. There, fairly comfortable, he lay, full length, listening. The open top allowed air to come because a strong, puffy breeze had gotten up, driving great, black thunderclouds before it.

Sandy regretted his ruse presently, because he heard a boat and realized that he could not see who occupied it: furthermore, while his position would enable him to be hidden and to go along if Jeff took off, he would be helpless in case of an accident to the craft.

When he decided to get out, it was almost too late—but not quite.

Jeff got his engine going by setting it on a compression point when he had primed the cylinders and using his booster magneto to furnish the hot sparks that gave it its first impulse.
259

Then, as soon as he heard Jeff drop the mooring rope and get in, Sandy backed to a point where he could crawl to hands and knees, poked his head up ............