CHAPTER XXII THE “GROUND CREW” TAKES HOLD

“Hello, boys. Remember me?”

Dick rose to meet the man, tall, quiet, and with a smile of greeting on his face that belied the creases of worry around his eyes.

“I ought to,” Larry also advanced, rather sheepishly. “I tackled you the day you floated the dory out to the cracked-up seaplane.”

“Oh, no hard feelings, my friend,” the man shook hands. “You wrenched a shoulder that was already pretty painful—but you thought you had a jewel robber to deal with, so let’s let bygones sleep.”

He shook hands and accepted the lounging chair Dick offered.

“I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself,” the man began. “I’m Mr. Whiteside. Of course you wonder what I am here for.”

Naturally they did. Each nodded.
183

“I’ve kept pretty well in the background of this case,” he told them. “I am, by profession, an official of Mr. Everdail’s eastern enterprises. But I consider myself something of an amateur detective ‘on the side’ and I want you three to help me.”

“But Mr. Everdail ‘discharged’ us.” There was no resentment, only remonstrance, in Larry’s quiet remark.

“Oh, I know it. I have seen him, been up in Maine. But he has given me a free hand, and I think you three can be useful. You see, I want that hangar watched, now that the reporters have gone away. I can’t be there day and night—I know,” he broke off to explain, “that you three have suspected me of having something to do with the wrong side of the affair, and naturally enough. I came upon Larry unawares, at the seaplane. I accepted his offer about surrendering jewels and actually had a gun in my hand at the time. No wonder I fall in line as—well, as a suspected person. I don’t hold that against you. As it happens, I am trying to recover the missing jewels, just because I made such a failure of rescuing them before.”

That might, or might not be true, Sandy reflected; but he maintained a careful guard over expression and speech.
184

“We aren’t doing anything about the mystery,” stated Sandy, wondering if that might be the plan—that this man had come to try to pump news out of them. If so, Sandy was determined that as long as they had given up, been given up, it did not matter if the man knew it or not.

“But you will do something! To help me out?”

“What?” Dick asked, with a mental reservation as to any promise.

“Why, go out to the Everdail estate, under my direction, and watch.”

“We’d be trespassers,” argued Sandy. “We might be arrested.”

“I can arrange all that.”

Mr. Whiteside turned directly to Larry.

“I need you for something else,” he said. “Atley Everdail isn’t here to help, if any situation developed where I would need a pilot. I have a theory that makes me think I shall need one——”

“What about Tommy Larsen?”

The man who had piloted the cracked-up seaplane was again able to fly, he responded, but was not safe for a long flight. Besides, the detective argued, he wanted someone who had proved himself trustworthy in more things than flying.
185

“I’ve had only about nine hours instruction,” Larry said honestly. “I wouldn’t like to risk soloing on that. I can taxi, handle the ’plane to get into the wind, take off and fly level, bank, turn, circle, spiral, climb, shoot the field and set down. But——”

“That is all settled in advance,” Mr. Whiteside stated. “Tommy Larsen is ‘kicking around’ without a job. I’ve got his consent to finish your instruction, and put you in trim for a license by the end of Summer.”

Sandy, watching his friend’s face take on an eager light, a look of longing, decided that Mr. Whiteside could not have found a more certain way to fascinate Larry and enlist his cooperation.

Dick, too, showed an interested face.

“That would be great!” Larry declared. Then he became more serious, adding. “Finishing up my course would be fine, but if it means that I’d have to do anything against Mr. Everdail’s wishes, after he told us——”

“He wishes to recover those emeralds, my boy.”

“But he has agreed with Miss Serena that they are destroyed,” Dick objected.

“And I think they are not destroyed!”

He gave them his theory.
186

“When Everdail gave me all the facts he had about the London attempt to ruin the emeralds, the first idea I had was that some independent robber had failed to find the real gems and, in spite, had damaged the imitations.”

“But no other jewels were taken!”

That supported his decision that neither a single robber nor a band of miscreants had planned the affair. They would have taken all the real stones, and he believed that these were numerous.

“I weighed the situation,” went on the detective. “A robber would be enough of a gem expert to know the stones were imitations and would have taken the others. But—some Hindu fanatic, in India, where the emeralds came from originally, might have a fixed idea that they must be destroyed. He might not know imitations from real ones.”

“That would explain why acid was put on them,” agreed Dick. “It wouldn’t explain any other attempts, though.”

“No! I argued that as soon as a Hindu accomplished the entry to the hotel and believed he had destroyed the stones, he would stop.”

“Then why did you and Mr. Everdail fly out to meet the yacht?”
187

“We wanted to take every precaution, Larry. There was a chance that no Hindu was involved. It might be someone with what the French call an idee fixee—a fixed notion—a demented purpose of destroying emeralds—no other stones were treated with acid except those lying in the little pool around the emeralds.”

“Are there people as crazy as that? And going around, loose?”

“Once in awhile you hear of such people, Dick.”

“Well, wouldn’t anybody in England give up then?” asked Larry.

“Anybody who remained in England would have to—he’d be left there. But—” Mr. Whiteside leaned forward and spoke meaningly, “—a man sailed from England—and although I did not know it at the time, I have checked up, since, and the man from London is an English circus acrobat—who went in for ‘stunting’ on airplanes.”

“The man who claimed to be a secret agent of a London insurance firm?” asked Dick, amazed.

“The firm sent no investigator!”

“Then we have found the man who is guilty!” exclaimed Dick. “He was with Tommy Larsen, hired him to go out to meet the yacht!”

“That seems to be the fact,” Mr. Whiteside admitted. “Before the arrival of the yacht I had no inkling that this fellow had come over; but Mrs. Everdail was so nervous and worried, we decided to fly out to meet the yacht, just as Jeff, who had been retained before Everdail found me, decided to do.”
188

Sandy had made no contribution to the discussion.

He spoke, at last, quietly.

“I said, early in the adventure, that nothing was what it seemed to be,” Sandy remarked. “This backs me up. But——”

“But—what?”

“Look at this, Mr. Whiteside—we are sure he made a try for the emeralds in the seaplane he hired. He thought they were destroyed—at least he had done all he could to destroy them. Then—why did he make another try?”

“Maybe he wasn’t sure he’d done what he intended,” argued Dick.

“He had ruined them! Wasn’t that enough?”

“My idea is that he learned—there was an accomplice on the yacht——”

“Mimi?”

“Perhaps! He must have learned that the real gems were not ruined at all,” Mr. Whiteside explained.

“Do you think his confederate threw the real ones overboard, in the life preserver, with the ruined imitations tied to it?”

Turning to answer Larry, the detective hesitated.
189

“That doesn’t check up,” he said. “The confederate—Mimi—knew the imitations! She wouldn’t throw them at all. If she knew the real ones were hidden in that life belt she’d have flung that. But we know that the imitations went overside and were in the gum—as Sandy cleverly discovered. So—that makes it all muddled up again!”

“I don’t understand how the haunted hangar comes in,” protested Larry.

“That’s what I want to discover. It does come in—I’m sure of that! You, and Dick and Sandy, can help, I believe. Two to watch the hangar, taking turns, and with my aid whenever I can manage it. You, Larry, to perfect your flying technique and be ready if I need you.”

“It sounds good to me!” urged Larry, turning to his chums.

“Well, I say, let’s reorganize,” Dick had a twinkle in his eye. “You, Larry, will be the sole member of the Sky Patrol—and Sandy and I will be—er—the ‘ground crew’!”

“That’s a good description,” the detective chuckled.

“All right,” agreed Sandy. “Dick, you and I are the ground crew. As soon as you’re ready, Mr. Whiteside, we’ll take hold!”