CHAPTER XVII A FIGHT FOR A FORTUNE

Into the waiting assemblage in the Everdail library plunged Sandy with a white, frightened face and his breath coming in gasps after his run.

“It’s—gone! Mr. Everdail—the life—preserver——”

“Gone? That can’t be!”

“It is, sir!”

“I don’t see how—” Mr. Everdail was thinking, as was Sandy, that with everyone whom they suspected, except the maid Miss Serena had accused, present in that room, the loss of the carefully hidden object must be impossible.

“When did you last see it, wherever you had it?” asked the man from London, cool and practical.

“Just before—the meeting here, sir!”

“It was—where?”
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“We left it where Dick had discovered it—in the fuselage of Jeff’s airplane. One of us watched, taking turns, all afternoon. Just before we came in here we made sure it was all right, and Larry, who has the longest reach, pushed it in as far as he could get it and still be able to take it out again.”

“Could that girl, Mimi, have come back?” Jeff wondered.

“Whether she did or not,” the pilot, Tommy Larsen, jumped up, “if the life preserver was safe an hour ago, and gone now, it was taken during that hour. Maybe within the last few——”

“Yes—I think it was in the last few minutes!” Sandy declared. “We didn’t talk about the emeralds being hidden in it until almost the last thing before we went to fetch it here.”

“Let’s search the estate!” urged the pilot.

“Come on, everybody—spread out—” cried Jeff. “We’ll get that-there girl——”

“Wait!” begged Sandy. “Everybody will get mixed up and hunt in the same places. We ought to organize——”

“Sound common sense,” commented Miss Serena. “But if you ask——”

Sandy guessed that she would have given her opinion, if asked, that the search was useless.
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She was given no time for the comment. Leaving her with the white-faced stewardess and the pilot, whose injuries prevented him from being of much use due to his evident weakness, the others, under Mr. Everdail, were grouped into parties. Given a definite territory, each set out, one group to search the grove under Jeff’s leadership, another to cover the shore section, boathouse and boats, with Captain Parks and his men in the party. Others, under the mate and engineer, divided the rest of the searchers to beat the further and less cultivated woods on the estate and to walk the roads, while Miss Serena gladly agreed to telephone to outlying estates, and to the nearby town to have a watch kept for any unknown person, woman or man.

“Where’s Larry—and Dick?” asked Jeff, as Sandy ran beside him.

“Searching the hangar——”

“But it was locked and all doors down,” Jeff grunted. “Why waste time there?”

“I guess we thought, just at first, somebody might have hidden the preserver somewhere—we thought we saw somebody in the hangar the day the mystery started, but we found no one, so Dick thought——”

“Well, go tell them to come and help me in the grove. Don’t waste time there!”
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Sandy separated from the superstitious one, as the latter rushed among the trees, muttering that some omen had warned him of trouble.

As the beaters separated, and widened the circle of their search, the sounds of calls, shouts, voices identifying one another grew fainter.

Sandy, reaching his comrades, compared notes.

“They’ve organized and started,” Sandy reported. “What have you two found?”

“Nothing,” Dick said dejectedly. “We ought not to have left that thing unguarded.”

“Not with a fortune in it,” agreed Larry. “But we were so sure——”

“Whoever got it can’t be far off,” interrupted Dick. “No one but Miss Serena and Captain Parks—and we three—knew about the hiding place until the last part of the meeting.”

“Let’s lock up, here, and join Jeff,” suggested Sandy.

“Where is he?”

“In the grove, Dick.”

“All right,” Larry moved to the small door. “The spring lock’s set. The place is surrounded. Nobody’s in here—” They were outside as he made the last statement. “Slam the door and try it, Dick. All right. Come on, let’s find Jeff.”

The search took longer than they expected.
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To all calls the thick grove gave back only echoes.

Dick, rounding a tree, stumbled.

“Larry—Sandy—come—quick!” He called his chums in a strained voice.

When they reached him, in the dying glow of the flashlight Dick trained on a body lying in a heap, they identified the man who had been warned by his gypsy fortune teller to “look out for a hidden enemy.” He was lying at full length in the mould and leaves.

“Jeff!” Dick knelt and lifted the man’s head.

“Huh!—uh—oh!”

Slowly, while they held their breath, understanding came into the dazed eyes, the breath was drawn in, and Jeff struggled to a half-reclining posture.

“What happened to you?” begged Sandy.

“The rest—oh, I’m sick!—I got a bang in the solar plexus—I sent the rest of the men out to the edge of—the woods—oh!—my stomach—to beat in towards me—when I come around this-here tree, somebody was waiting and poked me—oh!”—

“Then somebody is still close. How long ago?——”

“I don’t—know—I passed out——”
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“Hey—everybody—yoo-hoo!” Larry cupped his hands and began to shout in various directions.

The crash and call of the beaters coming in began to grow louder.

Unexpectedly, from the water of the inlet, and yet in a muffled, unnatural tone, there came the sputtering roar of a motor.

“What’s that?” cried Dick.

“One of the airplanes—somebody’s in the hangar——”

“No, Sandy, it’s from the water.”

“But there’s no boat out—the only boat with an engine is the hydroplane——”

“The yacht tender’s tied to the wharf,” Dick reminded Larry.

They raced down the sloping woods path.

“Where’s the guard—where’s everybody?” Sandy shouted.

The men came running. They had scanned the place by the wharf, and, satisfied that no one lurked there and that the tender was secure, they had gone further along the inlet coast.

“No one’s in the tender!” Larry exclaimed.

“It’s the hydroplane, then!” Dick decided. “It’s coming from the water-dock inside the boathouse, now—there it is. Hey! You! Stop!”

Seamen, the mate, Pilot Tommy Larsen, servants, dashed up.
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“What’s happened? What’s the excitement? The hydroplane—there it goes!”

Their shouts came in a chorus of helpless questions and suggestions.

“Man the yacht tender!” ordered Captain Parks. His men tumbled into it.

“That isn’t fast enough!” objected Pilot Larsen. “I’d fly that amphibian crate only—I’m too weak and dizzy——”

“Jeff’s hurt, too,” said Dick, desperately. “I guess they’ll get away with the emeralds!”

“Why can’t Larry fly the ‘phib’?” demanded Sandy.

“At night? I haven’t had any experience.”

“But Jeff could go along.” Dick took up the idea eagerly. “Couldn’t you, Jeff? And tell him what to do in an emergency!”

“Yes—sure I could! Not in the ‘phib’ because we don’t know how much gas—the gauge is out of whack—but we got the airplane ready this morning—if it wasn’t the night of the thirteenth I’d have said something about it long ago!”

“Forget about the thirteenth—remember the thirty emeralds!” cried Sandy. “Come on, all—help us get that crate out and started. It’s a flight for a fortune!” They took up the cry. Dick and Larry ran off.
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Those of the servants and seamen who were not too excited by the escape of the hydroplane to hear, followed the Sky Patrol as they raced through the grove. Jeff, supported by Sandy and friends among the men, came more slowly, still unwell from the blow in a tender spot.

“Mr. Everdail could fly the crate if he was here—he’s an old war pilot,” said Larsen, but they did not wait to locate him. As soon as the engine was warmed, the instruments checked, in spite of the delay at cost of precious moments, Larry donned the Gossport helmet, Jeff got in behind him, Sandy and Dick, without waiting for invitations, snapped their belts—the engine roared—and they were off!

Larry was keyed up to a high tension; but he had no lack of confidence in himself. Night flying, of course, differed from daytime piloting. But Jeff was in the second seat, with the Gossport tube to his lips.

Sandy and Dick were in their places, ready to observe and to transmit signals by using the flashlamp—one flash, directed onto the dash before Jeff so it would not distract Larry, meant turn to the right, two meant a left turn, three quick flicks would tell of the discovery of the hydroplane.
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Jeff was too upset to pilot; and since the morning adventure he had no second control stick; but he could give instructions.

“I see a light,” Sandy said as the airplane swung far out over the dark water. “A green light, but the hydroplane wouldn’t carry lights.”

As they swung in a banked turn to circle over the Sound, the green disappeared and its place was taken, as it seemed, by red.

“Dick!” Sandy turned and gestured, pointing.

“I see it!” Dick located the tiny light well below them.

“The hydroplane must have its electric running light switched on,” Sandy mused, unable to convey his idea, because Larry had the engine going full on.

“That must be the hydroplane,” Dick decided. “He—whoever is in it—is afraid to run without his lights.”

Three swift flicks of his own flash showed to Jeff.

“Larry, they’ve spotted that-there boat,” Jeff spoke through the tube to the young pilot. “Yep. More to the left. That’s it—both at the same time! Stick to the left, rudder, too. Good boy. Now the stick comes back to neutral. Hold her as she is—better cut down the throttle a little as we bank and turn to the left.”

Thus began their flight for a fortune!