CHAPTER XXVIII NIGHT IN THE HANGAR

Never was a returning prodigal greeted with more delight than was Sandy when, close to dusk, with a parcel under his arm, he joined Dick and Larry inside a little Summer house in the Everdail estate grove.

“Where have you been?” demanded Larry. “We hunted high and low! We thought something had happened to you when we saw Jeff fly his airplane away, came here and didn’t locate you.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you. But I’ve been awfully busy.”

“Doing what, Sandy?”

“Following farmer boys down hot, sunny furrows while they picked vegetables for market, Dick.”

“Following farmer boys? What in the world for?”

“To ask them if their fathers would buy a book on family crests and have their coat of arms thrown in free.”

“Have you lost your head, Sandy?”
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The youngest Sky Patrol grinned, and shook his head in question.

“No, Larry. It was an excuse to get them talking. I got the book out of Mr. Everdail’s library and used it to make them think I was a subscription agent—so I could ask questions.”

“Ask—questions?”

Dick and Larry spoke together.

“About what?” demanded Larry, and Dick nodded to show he wanted an answer also.

“Well—about who is related to who, and family scandals, and who works for this one and that one—just ‘gossip’.”

Dick caught the impish youth by his shoulders and shook him.

“Stop that! Tell us where you’ve been and what you did? We’ve worried ourselves sick, nearly.”

“I have told you.”

Then he became really serious.

He had been all over that section of the farm-lands, he asserted, to see if he could pick up any information that would give him some connection between either Mr. Whiteside or Jeff, or the mysterious seaplane passenger—and Mimi or the yacht stewardess.
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“If I knew that, I thought we could start patching clues together,” he finished. “Because Jeff has a lot to do with this mystery.”

“I think you’re right,” Dick agreed. “But what started you off on that track?”

Taking an arm of each, Sandy led them, wordless, up the path.

Spying carefully to be sure that Mr. Whiteside was not in sight, and being certain that no one else was watching, Sandy led his chums into the hangar.

Across to one of its longer sides he led them.

“These are the switches that work the rolling door motor, you remember?”

“Yes, Sandy. What?——”

“Look at them before it gets too dark, Dick. Do you see anything strange? You know as much about wiring circuits as I do. We both built amateur short-wave sending and receiving sets. You, too, Larry. What isn’t right about the switches or—the wires?”

Thus guided, both studied the switches.

All Larry saw was that the wires were of a braided form.

“But—are they?” He pulled a wire out a trifle from the sheath.

Then his comrades observed what had first attracted Sandy’s attention, puzzled him and led to further search.
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One wire, somewhat lighter in its insulation than the other, was wound around the heavier one. They traced it, as Sandy had done. It seemed to wind on down, as did others he showed, from each switch-pole, into the protective sheathing of metal and insulation; but none really were wound any further. From there on down, they ran behind the other wires!

“Bend down, close to the floor,” urged Sandy. “See all the dust and lint piled up?” He scraped some aside.

“My!” exclaimed Larry. “Golly-gracious-gosh-gravy-granny! The wires come out from behind the sheath and turn along the floor, close to the wall—and there’s dust all covering them! No wonder we didn’t notice them.”

“Where do they lead to?”

“Follow the dust line, Dick,” Sandy urged.

Back along the hangar wall they crept, until they came up to the small wooden cupboard with its dusty, frayed protecting burlap across the front. Under the cupboard boards the wires ran well concealed by more dusty lint which seemed to have been swept into the corners by the lazy act of some cleaner.
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“Inside here—but don’t use a light—inside here, there are smaller duplicate switches for the electric light arc and the motors,” Sandy informed his breathless, admiring cronies.

They easily proved it. More, they located the wiring in the dusk.

“But how does Jeff get in and out of here?” asked Dick.

“We have to go outside so I can show you what I discovered.”

Trooping around to the rear, at one corner, Sandy bade them bend down and examine the bolted metal sheaths, large plates of sheet iron, that composed the walls of the edifice.

“I don’t see anything,” objected Dick, dejected that he had not been as quick of wit as had his younger chum. “But, then, you saw it first by daylight.”

“I did, that’s so.” Sandy gave them all the information he had. “I saw a break in the paint, only up one-half of this big plate of iron.

“The bottom half pushed inward,” he explained. “It has hinges fixed to the inner part so it will lift up into the hangar and we can creep in.”

He proved it, and they followed him through the fairly low orifice.
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“Now,” he said, as Dick, last to crawl in, cleared the edge of the metal, “see how clever this is—the inside of the two plates it has to come down against are fixed with something soft—I think it’s felt—to keep the plate from clanging. It fits so well that the only way I found out about it was by the sun making the dent in the paint show up a few little bright worn spots of bare metal.”

They complimented him with no trace of envy.

“Do you think Jeff did this?”

“Well, Larry, he said he flew over here at night. He chews gum and we saw how fast he chewed the day he pretended to be forced to land here. He knew all about the emeralds. And the most telling thing against him is that his wife—Mimi—is Mrs. Everdail’s maid and was on the yacht——”

“Mimi his wife?”

Sandy nodded at Dick’s exclamation.

“Miss Serena saw her run in her uniform,” contributed Larry.

“How did you discover she was Jeff’s wife?”

“Talking to farmer boys—what they didn’t know, they found out from their older sisters when any of them were picking up early potatoes or snipping asparagus or digging up onions.”

“My—golly—gosh—gracious——”
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Sandy agreed with Larry’s exclamations but urged his chums to leave the hangar: they knew all it could tell them. He wanted to replace the book he had used and get away from the hangar for awhile.

In the old, disused house, to which Mr. Whiteside had secured a set of keys for them so they need not hang around the grounds until there was work to be done, they talked in low tones. Sandy believed that Jeff had coaxed his wife to put acid on the gems in the London hotel, as had been done.

“He might be as much of a fanatic as that,” admitted Larry, but not with any great delight—he had always liked Jeff. “He is as superstitious as a heathen.”

“But the maid knew those weren’t the real gems!” Dick remarked.

“How do we know she did?”

“That’s so. But somebody said she did, or thought she must know the real ones.”

“That doesn’t prove she did, Dick. The real ones were hardly ever removed from safe deposit,” Sandy argued.

“Then why did she throw over that life preserver?—” and as he began the inquiry Larry saw the answer.

“She—saw—the—captain hide—the real gems!” he finished.
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“Jeff didn’t use the amphibian, though. And he brought us here and induced us to aid him, saying we were helping Mr. Everdail.”

“Yes,” Dick supplemented Larry’s new point. “Another thing, Sandy, that doesn’t explain why he’d take three boys and fly a ship he could never use on water—with an amphibian right here.”

“I am only saying what I believe. I don’t know very much. But what I do know points to Jeff.”

“But he didn’t get the life preserver.”

No, Sandy agreed, Jeff did not expect to do that. He argued that Jeff must have planned to superintend the affair, while the man in the seaplane with Tommy Larsen secured the gems, whereupon Jeff could chase him, probably turn on him and get the emeralds, and then pretend on his return that the man had gotten safely away.

“But we don’t need to guess,” Sandy said. “Before I began asking questions I met Jeff on the way here.” He explained what made him suspect the man who said he must repair his “stalled” engine with a bolt that he knew was not made—a slotted bolt. “I slipped down across that estate to the inlet and saw the amphibian. And Mr. Whiteside was in it, supervising the filling of its tank!”
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“Then he means to get away with Jeff——”

“No he doesn’t!” said Larry, sharply. “Here he comes onto the lawn!”

Pretending to be unaware of the arrival, the Sky Patrol issued from the house.

They saw that Mr. Whiteside carried a life preserver. In black on its side was painted “Tramp, New York.”

“Well, Sky Patrol—and Ground Crew,” he hailed them. “We are going to see some excitement at last!”

“Why?” asked Larry.

“How?” Dick amended.

“We are going to trap the real culprit.”

“How?”

“By watching in and around the hangar to-night—and this time our bait will be this life preserver that I discovered in the swamp. I guessed the ‘ghost’ was searching the amphibian and the seaplane for the right life preserver. I devised a plan to get rid of the caretaker while Jeff and I made a complete, exhaustive search, this noon. We found nothing; so Jeff flew me over the swamp and we got—this.”

“Let’s open it!” urged Sandy, all his former suspicions gone in his eagerness. “We can take out the emeralds and then put the empty doughnut in place.”
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“No. We won’t tamper with it. I want to deliver it, intact, to Atley Everdail. His is the right to open it.”

“Isn’t it a risk?” Sandy objected.

“No. Dick will watch inside the hangar, Larry and I by the doors. Sandy will be in or near the amphibian. If Jeff is the culprit we’ll soon know—if he had a confederate we will discover that, perhaps, also.”

“If it isn’t Jeff at all—and I hope it won’t be,” Larry said, “if it turns out to be the seaplane passenger who discovered that in his terror he chute-jumped with the wrong belt, and he comes to hunt the right one——”

“Or if it is Captain Parks, or his mate, or a seaman—” Mr. Whiteside began to chuckle as he led them toward the dark loom of the hangar, “Or—even if it turns out to be—me!—”

“Did you walk under a ladder, today, sir?” asked Sandy seriously.

“No. Why?” The man stared at him through the night. “What makes you ask?”

“Because Jeff did—he walked under a ladder where a man was pruning a tree as he came to the gate of the estate next door.”

“Hm! Then—if he’s as superstitious as he makes believe,” Larry laughed, “he’d better watch out.”
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“He had that!” Sandy agreed.

And Dick, as they entered the hangar, rolled down the doors, set the switch at neutral and he was alone with Sandy in the pitchy blackness, echoed the sentiment.

A new idea flashed into Sandy’s mind.

“Do you know,” he spoke through the darkness. “Dick, we’re not watching that amphibian at all! If Jeff did come here and managed to get away, he’d go straight there and fly off.”

Dick agreed, declared that with Larry and Mr. Whiteside within call he dared to wait in the hangar alone, and Sandy, going out through the secret way, encountered Larry and the detective, consulted them, had their sanction for his idea and hurried off toward the next estate.

Thus divided up, the Sky Patrol spent dull hours waiting.

But patience is always rewarded!