CHAPTER XV A TRAP IS BAITED

“Glad to hear you think the hoodoo is busted,” Jeff commented. “Me, I don’t care. I’ve taken my last hop in that-there crate. I’m shaking like a leaf, even now.”

“Why don’t you go to your room and have a lie down?” suggested Dick.

Jeff decided that Dick had the right idea.

Dick watched him go along the gravel path, watched him climb to the side veranda of the big house, pausing for a moment to tell the newly installed housemaid about his recent adventure.

“I think I’ll go get some lunch,” observed Larry.

“Wait!” urged Dick, but said no more.

Mr. Everdail’s cousin, Miss Serena, evidently hearing the voices, came out on the veranda and listened.
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“She’s coming out to ‘make over us,’ as she calls it.” Sandy saw the elderly, stern-faced, but kindly lady descend the steps and come rapidly toward them.

“My! My!” she called, coming closer. “What is this I hear from Jeff?”

“We had a little trouble,” Dick said. “Somehow the cable for the ‘flippers’ got jammed, but Larry got us out of the trouble like a born flyer.”

“Yes,” laughed Larry. “After Dick guessed what to do so I could work the stick.”

“Oh, I only crawled back to loosen the cable.” Dick tried to make his exploit seem unimportant. “First time I ever flew around standing on my head,” he broke into his infectious gurgle of laughter. “Sandy, did I look like a frog stuck in the mud?”

“Whatever you looked like,” Sandy retorted, “you did a mighty big thing, crawling out onto that open covering in the wind, risking being snatched off or slipping, or having the airplane shake loose your grip!”

“I agree with Sandy,” Miss Serena declared. “It was a very fine thing——”

“I think so,” agreed Sandy. “He gave me one gift for my birthday at breakfast. But just now he made me a present of my life.”

“He did that for all of us.” Larry put an arm affectionately around his chum’s shoulders.
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“A very fine thing, Dick.” Miss Serena smiled gently. “Now you had better go and lie down, and I’ll have the maid bring up some hot cocoa and something for you to eat.”

“That is just what I need, ma’am,” Sandy told her.

“I think we’d better get this crate into the hangar—we’ll get the gardener and the caretaker and push it in,” Dick suggested. “I always get over a scare quicker if I’m busy doing something to take my mind away from it.”

“Very well,” the lady agreed. “I shall have a good lunch ready when you come in.”

She started away, but turned back.

“What caused the—the—trouble?”

“Jeff calls it a ‘jinx’—a ‘hoodoo’,” responded Dick.

“Jeff is silly,” she said with some annoyance. “There are no such things.”

“I don’t know—” Larry took up the argument. “It is not usual for a cable to jam. It might break, but one shouldn’t get caught.”

“I see. Don’t think for a moment, Lawrence, that it was caused by anything but Jeff’s carelessness, because of his fears.”

She went to get their lunch ordered.

“Did I play up to you all right?” Larry asked. “I saw you didn’t want to explain anything.” Dick nodded.
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“You did just what I wanted,” he said. “Let’s get the airplane in. Then we can talk.”

With others of the new group of servants they took the craft to its place.

As soon as they were alone, Dick climbed up onto the back of the fuselage, dived down into the small space, while Larry waited an agreed signal, in the after seat, and pulled his chum out.

“Great snakes!” cried Sandy, then lowering his voice. “How did that get there?”

Dick, emerging from the fuselage working compartment, displayed a large, fat, round object.

“The life preserver—from the yacht!” gasped Larry.

“How did it get there?” repeated Sandy, stunned.

“Jeff!” said Dick, briefly.

“Oh, no!” declared Larry. “Jeff is a good pilot. He’d never leave anything that could shift about and cause trouble.”

“But how did it get there?” Sandy reiterated. “I thought——”

“We all thought it went back to the yacht,” Larry finished his sentence for him.
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“It did,” said Dick, seriously. “I know that after Jeff brought it in, the caretaker in the hydroplane took it out—and I’ve seen it at the stern.”

“Well, this may not be the same one—we can easily find out.”

Larry hurried from the open hangar, followed by his two friends. At a trot they went through the grove and down the path, after Dick, dropping the life preserver onto the after seat, jumped down.

As soon as the yacht came in sight, they stared toward the stern.

“That’s queer,” observed Larry. “I see a life preserver hanging in its regular place. This must be another one!”

The one in the airplane, Dick argued, was “the one”—and the one on the yacht was a substitute.

“But why was it put there?” demanded Sandy.

Dick eyed him with surprise.

“Suspicions Sandy—asking that?” he teased.

“I’m trying not to suspect anybody. Instead of doing that I try to believe everybody’s innocent and nothing is wrong. I’m going to let you do the suspecting.”

“That’s turning the tables on you, Dick,” Larry grinned. Sobering again he turned back to Sandy.
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“I think Dick is working out something we may be able to prove,” he argued. “I think I see his idea. Captain Parks was the only one who could open the cabin safe. He is a seaman, and he would know that a life preserver isn’t bothered with except if somebody is overboard or in some other emergency. Supposing that he meant to help some one in America to ‘get away with’ the emeralds——”

“He would tie them to a life preserver and throw them over where somebody he ‘expected’ could get them,” agreed Sandy, with surprising quietness. “Only—a woman threw the life preserver.”

Dick nodded. Sandy threw another clog into the nicely developed theory.

“Furthermore, Captain Parks was on the bridge at the time——”

That all fitted in, Dick asserted.

“I am working on the notion that Captain Parks agreed with somebody not on the yacht—to get the emeralds. But he made up his mind to get them all for himself!”
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“So he hid them in the life preserver.” Sandy spoke without enthusiasm, making the deduction sound bored and commonplace, although it ought to have been a striking surprise, an exclamatory statement. It would have been, Larry thought to himself, if Sandy had made it. Was the youngest chum jealous of Dick, displeased because it was not his own discovery that led to the hiding place of the jewels—if they were right?

“You thought of the life preserver as a hiding place?” asked Dick.

Sandy nodded.

“Where else?” he argued. “Captain Parks couldn’t get a better or safer place, right in front of everybody and never noticed. If the life preserver was thrown into the sea—it would be recovered.”

“Doesn’t it get you excited?”

“No, Dick! Why should it? I thought of it. But I’m not telling all my ideas, any more. I’m not ‘peeved,’ but I mean to be able to prove this before I accuse anybody again.”

“We can prove it—come on!”

“No need,” declared Sandy. “I noticed while we were on the way to Maine that a new life preserver was on the stern of the yacht. I saw it hadn’t been cut and sewed up, so the emeralds couldn’t be in that—or in any other one on the yacht. And, when Dick made his discovery, just now, I examined the one he found for cuts and marks of being sewed up.”

“I didn’t notice any,” admitted Larry.
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“Bang! Another theory gone up in smoke!” Dick was rueful.

“All the same,” Larry commented, “Jeff didn’t put the preserver in his fuselage, and Captain Parks could open his safe and no one else knew how, he declared! There are some things I can’t work out and I wish I could.”

“Let’s make whoever knows anything—er—let’s make them work it out for us,” suggested Dick. “Let’s bait a trap with the life preserver—leave it where it is, get Mr. Everdail to call everybody together, and we’ll tell what we found and what we think is in it—and see what we see.”

Eagerly Larry consented. Sandy nodded quietly.