CHAPTER XI “POP! GOES OUR MYSTERY!”

Before the lowered landing wheels of the amphibian touched the private landing field, after a flight delayed by the need of more fuel, Larry saw his chums waiting by the hangar.

As the aircraft taxied to the end of the runway he saw that their expressions were doleful.

“Bad news?” Larry asked, climbing to the turf.

“Our adventure is over and done with,” Dick said. “It has gone ‘poof’ like a bursted soap bubble.”

“But Jeff and I have caught the man who was with the one claiming to be Mr. Everdail——”

“Claiming to be,” Sandy said disgustedly. “I was wrong. He is Mr. Everdail.”

“How did you find out?”

“He came back, Larry.” Dick chuckled.

“Came back? I thought——”
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“He wrote the note for Jeff, and then called up the hospital where the pilot was taken,” Dick stated. “They said the man seemed to be coming out of his sleep and Mr. Everdail went out to the road while we weren’t especially watchful, and got a passing car to take him to the next village. Then he took a taxi to the hospital.”

“And what he heard there made him come home,” Sandy added.

“What did the pilot say?”

“You recall what you thought was part of a word?”

“Yes, Dick—the beginning of ‘Gaston,’ we thought.”

“Larry—it was a whole word.”

“Gast?——”

“It sounds the same, but if I spell it you’ll see.”

Slowly he spelled a word of six letters.

“G-a-s-s-e-d.”

“Gassed?”

“Carbon monoxide—deadly fumes that blew in from the exhaust of the engine—it was an old crate, and the engine didn’t have perfect combustion, he said,” Sandy gave the explanation.
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“The direction they flew,” Dick added, “across the wind—the fumes blew into his cockpit. It was set low, you know. Well, before he knew what was what, he felt himself going. Then he thought he could snap out of it, loosened his safety belt, tried to lift himself for a breath of pure air—the seaplane dived, and he fell against something that knocked him out!”

“Then the passenger didn’t——”

“No. He didn’t throw anything. The pilot explained all that,” Dick said, while Jeff formed an interested fourth of the group. “You recall, Jeff, the captain of the yacht took out extra insurance on the emeralds?”

“I remember that, too,” Larry said.

“The English company became suspicious,” Dick went on. “They sent a man—we’ve called him ‘the passenger’—to this side, suspecting that some effort was on foot to hide the gems or get rid of them till the insurance was paid—it’s a trick that has been worked.”

“I begin to understand,” said Larry. “The man from England hired the stunt pilot to fly him out to meet the yacht—but how did he know when it would arrive?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“I can,” said Jeff. “That English fellow was that-there ‘spook.’ Maybe he ‘listened in’ on the short wave set in the big house yonder.”

“That’s probably it,” Dick retorted. “Anyway, he flew out, and when he saw the amphibian and the small hydroplane and our airplane, he jumped to the idea that either one or more gangs of robbers had somebody on the yacht to get the jewels and throw them out, or else——”
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“Wait!” urged Larry. “How does the gum fit in with that?”

“That’s so,” said Dick. “Let’s go up to the house and see what Mr. Everdail says.”

“If he is Mr. Everdail, after all,” Larry said.

“Oh, his wife would know any impersonator,” argued Dick. “So will Jeff.”

“That’s so. Come on.”

That the millionaire was genuine, “in person and not a caricature,” as Dick put it, was evident. Both the nurse, his relative, and his wife, were chatting with him as Jeff delivered the heavy packed ball made up of the gum.

“How about this-here?” he asked. “How does this fit in?”

“That’s simple enough,” responded the rich man, breaking the exhibit into its separate pieces. “The special agent from England, watching here, had seen Jeff making his nightly hops over from the airport. He thought, quite naturally, Jeff was working with some jewel robbers.”

“That doesn’t explain this-here gum,” objected Jeff.
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“This will. The agent from London thought it likely that some attempt would be made to get the jewels. He proposed to see whether it would be made by professionals or by some one working for me. He thought my wife or I had the intention of robbing ourselves—making the gems disappear until we could collect the insurance. When he couldn’t make up his mind which was most likely—professionals or amateurs hired by us—he thought of trying to get the jewels—and that meant——”

“A safe hiding place if he was followed, until he could get to a vault and notify his firm,” Sandy broke in, eager to declare how mistaken he had been by giving the true facts.

“And how about the man who was with you?” Larry turned to Mr. Everdail, while Mrs. Everdail with a little grimace of disgust, drew Sandy’s first discovery of the gem in the gum closer to look at.

“He’s one of my divisional managers in the transcontinental tourist airlines,” stated the millionaire.

“Then we’d better get him off that wrecking tug,” and Larry gave the story of the man’s appearance and capture, giving Jeff the credit which Jeff, generously and promptly, returned to him with interest.
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“Well,” concluded Mr. Everdail, “here are the emeralds, minus the chain, which can easily be duplicated. And you know who’s who, and why the hangar seemed to be haunted, and all about the gum. Is there anything you don’t understand?—before Larry starts taking flying instructions from Jeff and you others join my wife and I for a cruise to Maine where I will leave Mrs. Everdail.”

“Yes, sir,” Larry responded. “We saw that parachute the man in the seaplane had come down with—the harness was unbuckled, so he wasn’t hurt in the drop. What I want to bring up is this: why did he desert the stunned pilot—and not appear when we landed there?”

“I wonder,” the millionaire was thoughtful. “I wonder what you would do if you had to make a ’chute jump and then, after the excitement discovered that the pilot was ‘out’ and had a blow on the temple—and with concealed jewels in his cockpit——”

“Guess I’d hide too!”

“But why were the chunks of gum put in the pilot’s cockpit and not in the passenger’s?” Larry persisted.

“You’re getting worse than I am,” grinned Sandy.
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“The passenger was not an aviator,” the rich man retorted soberly. “He put them where he thought he would sit—in the wrong place, it happened. So, when they got the jewels, it was simpler to put them where the pilot could hide them, where the gum was.”

“Another reason would be,” Jeff said, “pilots use gum and it would look more natural for it to be stuck around where he did his control job than up forward, where the special agent had it in the amphibian.”

“That’s all that bothered me,” admitted Larry.

“And Pop! goes our mystery,” chuckled Dick.

Mrs. Everdail bent forward, and then looked up sharply.

“I don’t know about that?” She turned to her husband.

“Atley,” she said, excited and nervous. “Look here!” The man almost raced around the library table, bending close to where her finger touched the dark green showing through the adhesive gum.

“I don’t see anything—out of the way,” he replied to her look.

The Sky Patrol saw her expression and each grew taut with excitement at her next words.

“Don’t you see? Can’t you?” She raised her voice to a shrill pitch of excitement.

“I see one of the emeralds——”

“Don’t you see that it is pitted—burned—by acid?”
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“Glory-gracious-golly!” Larry was agitated enough to couple all the exclamations.

“This isn’t the Everdail Emerald,” the lady was almost screaming, her hands trembled as she pointed. “It is the emerald that I had in the hotel room——”

“The imitation!”

“Yes, Atley! Oh——”

Dick turned to Larry.

“I just said, ‘Pop! goes our mystery.’” He had to laugh in spite of the grave situation, the new development, as he added:

“Well—‘Pop!’ Here comes our mystery back again!”

“Bigger than ever!” agreed Larry.

For once Sandy was absolutely speechless.