CHAPTER VIII SANDY MEETS A “SUSPECT”

“Hello, boys!”

Sandy and Dick, standing by the airplane on the beach, whirled to see a short, stoutish man in regulation flying togs come unexpectedly into view from behind an inshore hillock of sand.

“As I live and breathe!” the man continued, “I’m seeing things!”

His gaze was bent on the aircraft.

Sandy discerned instantly that he was looking at the pilot who had handled the control job on the amphibian during the recent excitement.

The stranger had a pleasant, round face, with eyes that twinkled in spite of the creases around them that showed worry. No wonder he was worried, Sandy thought: having deserted the craft they had foiled in its attempt to get the gems, the man had returned from some short foray to discover his craft replaced by another.
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“Howdy!” Dick greeted the stranger and replied to his exclamation. “No, sir, you’re not seeing things! At least you’re not if you mean the airplane near where the amphibian was——”

Sandy wanted to nudge his comrade, to warn him to be careful. There was no chance; the man was observing them intently.

“Amphibian? You know the different types, eh? May I ask if you belong around here, and if not, how you got here—and who took the ‘phib’?”

Unable to check Dick, his younger chum had to stand, listening while Dick related some of their most recent adventures.

“As I live and breathe! So you’re two of the lads who were in the other ‘crate’. Where’s the third—and was that Jeff with you? I thought it must be.”

“Superstitions and all!” chuckled Dick.

Dick judged the man to be both friendly and “all right,” from his pleasant, affable manner and his evident knowledge of their pilot’s identity.

Not so Sandy!

His mind leaped through a multitude of theories and of suspicions.

This man might be “in cahoots” with Jeff, and Sandy was determined not to take Jeff, or anyone else, at face value too readily.
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The whole strange affair looked “queer” to him.

Jeff had falsified the true reason for the landing in the Everdail field. He might falsify other things—his real reason for flying out to the yacht. This man might be his partner in some hidden scheme. Even the Everdail Emeralds, Sandy decided, might be just “made up.”

“Nothing has been what it seemed to be,” he mentally determined. “I wish Dick would be careful what he says.”

Since Dick had already given the man a sidelight on Jeff’s character by mentioning his superstitions, it occurred to Sandy that he might learn, from the stranger’s reply, how well he knew Jeff.

His expression, as Sandy watched narrowly, became one of amusement, he smiled broadly, threw back his head and as he answered Dick’s phrase about superstitions and all, he laughed.

“He must have walked under a ladder, from the way things have turned out,” he said, amusedly.

“Who are you, please?” Sandy shot the question out suddenly.

“Me? Oh—” Did the man hesitate, Sandy wondered. It seemed to be so before he continued. “I’m Everdail.”
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“Mr. Everdail?” Even Dick, questioning as he repeated the name, was a little doubtful. “Why, I thought Mr. Everdail was in——”

“California? So I was. But one of my air liners brought me across in record time.”

Anybody could have learned that the millionaire was in California, Sandy reflected; it would be easy for a clever jewel robber, one of a band, to impersonate the man when he was caught off guard by their exchange of aircraft.

“If you boys were with Jeff you must be all right,” the man advanced, hand extended.

Dick shook it warmly.

Sandy’s grip was less cordial, but he played the part of an unsuspecting youth as well as he could by finishing the handshake with a tighter grip and a smile.

“I thought Jeff might be in the ship, yonder, until he nearly threw us out of control with his propeller wash. Then I thought—he might be——” he hesitated.

“He thought you might be—” Dick smiled as he made the response, winking broadly.

Sandy wished his chum would be more careful.

The man who called himself Mr. Everdail nodded.
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“As long as you’re not, and I’m not—what neither of us cared to say,” he turned toward the airplane, “let’s get together! I’m here because my passenger, a buddy of mine, wrenched his shoulder climbing back into the ‘phib’ and we set down here so I could leave him at the fishing shack, yonder, and go back to see what was what. He was in too bad shape to take chances if I felt called on to do any stunts—I thought I could take the air in time to catch that seaplane coming out of the fog, but it fooled me. I already know why you’re here,” he added, “suppose we hop off in Jeff’s ‘crate’ and give a look-see if your friend and my war buddy need any help.”

“You can’t set down if they do,” objected Sandy, his confidence in the man’s possible guilt shaken by his knowledge of Jeff’s war record. “I don’t see, for my part, why Jeff didn’t use the amphibian in the first place!”

“I wondered about that when I got in at the estate, soon after you’d left,” Mr. Everdail—or the man who claimed to be the millionaire—asserted. “I could see he had been working on it, getting it ready—even had the tank full up, but he had disconnected the fuel gauge to fool anybody who might be looking around, I guess.”
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“Maybe he landed and changed his mind about using it,” Dick suggested. “On account of taking us in—we organized a sort of Sky Patrol, to oversee things—but everything went wrong.”

“That accounts for it. I didn’t know he was going to make the hop or I might not have come myself—but now—well,” the man broke off his phrase and started to clamber into the control seat, “let’s get going.”

“And leave your passenger?”

“He’s comfortable, lying quiet in the fishing shack.”

Sandy, who had spoken, felt his suspicions returning at the reply. Could there be any reason why they must not identify the other man? Might he be the ringleader, or have some outstanding mark that they had seen before and might recognize?

Dick performed the “mech’s” duties for the pilot in getting the engine started again, then he clambered into his old place. Sandy was already behind their new pilot.

“Whoever and whatever he is,” Sandy mused, “he knows how to lift a ‘crate’ out of the sand.”

The man claiming to be Mr. Everdail made a skillful getaway from the beach, and it took them very little time to get over the marsh, already free of fog.
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Dick located the crack-up, Sandy indicated the spot and the pilot dropped so low that his trucks almost grazed the waving eel-grass.

“There’s no amphibian in sight, though!” Dick murmured. “I wonder——”

“I see Larry! Yoo-hoo!” Sandy shouted.

Larry, in his rubber boat, just having given up trying to explain how a number of bits of chewing gum had transferred themselves from the amphibian, where last he saw them—or some like them—to the seaplane, gestured and pantomimed to try to tell them his news.

Flying past they could not fully understand.

The new pilot waved a reassuring glove at Larry and swerved back toward the end of the island. Larry wondered who he was and what his comrades were doing with him; but Larry, always practical, let the questions wait for their eventual answers and continued to study the half-sunken seaplane.

No new clues offered themselves. He detached one of the hard, adhering chunks of gum and dropped it into his pocket, “just in case,” he said, half-grinning, “just in case they transfer themselves somewhere else. I’ll leave twenty-nine of them—and see.”
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The supposed Mr. Everdail scribbled a note which he handed back to Sandy, who caught his idea of dropping instructions on the deck of the yacht.

Borrowing Dick’s jackknife for a weight, Sandy prepared the message.

Cruising slowly the yacht came into sight.

Their pilot was skillful at coursing in such a direction and at such a height that he could skim low over the water craft’s radio mast and come almost to stalling speed while Sandy cast the note overside.

Dick, who had caught up Larry’s abandoned binoculars, saw as they zoomed and climbed that a sailor had rescued the note before it bounded over the cabin roof and deck into the sea.

At once the hydroplane was manned and sent away, the yacht took up its own course, and Mr. Everdail—to give him his own claimed title—pointed the airplane’s nose for his estate. Sandy occupied the time of the flight by trying to piece together the strangely mixed jig-saw bits of their puzzle—or was it only one puzzle?

By the time they sighted the hangar and field, he had all the bits joined perfectly. Sandy’s solution fitted every point that he knew, and was so “water tight” and so beautiful that he landed with his face carrying its first really satisfied, and exultant grin.
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The beautiful part of it, to Sandy, was that he could sit by and watch, do nothing, except “pay out rope and let them tie themselves up in it.”

For Sandy’s suspects would certainly incriminate themselves.

“Let them guy me and call me ‘Suspicious Sandy,’” he murmured as he followed Dick toward the wharf on the inlet by the shore of the estate. “If I untangle this snarl the way I expect to, I may not bother to go in for airplane engineering. There might be as much money in a private detective office.”

Mr. “Everdail” proceeded at once to tie himself in his first knot.

“Well—hm-m!” he remarked to Dick, “feels good to be on the old place again. First time I’ve set foot on it for three years.”

“And he told us, on the beach, he’d been here this morning,” Sandy whispered to himself.

He decided to pay out another bit of rope.

“Mrs. Everdail will be glad you’re here when she lands,” he remarked.

The man whirled, frowning, hesitated and then spoke very emphatically.

“Look here, boys,” he said earnestly, “don’t say a word to her about me! I won’t be here when she lands—and I don’t want it known I’m in the East. There’s a good reason——”

“I’ll bet there is!” Sandy said to himself.