CHAPTER XXXII A DOUBLE PURSUIT

“Keep your heads, boys,” counseled Mr. Whiteside.

“We will—but come on—Jeff’s making for the amphibian—let’s——”

“Sandy went back to guard it,” Dick told Larry who had spoken.

“Not alone is Sandy on watch, but I arranged to have Tommy Larsen bring his airplane to the golf green Jeff used this afternoon,” Mr. Whiteside told them, as he walked, recovering breath, toward the hangar door.

“Tommy is to keep his engine warm, idling, and to be ready, at the first sign of escape, to take the air and overtake Jeff,” he added.

“But maybe Sandy might get into trouble,” urged Larry. “He’d fight to stop Jeff, and that man is in a dangerous mood if he’d do what he has done.”

“It will do no harm to go over,” agreed Mr. Whiteside, slamming the door behind them. “It’s shorter down along the water.”
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At a jog trot they went down the slope and at the wharf Dick gave a cry of surprise.

“There’s the motor boat—drifting just off the dock!”

“Then that woman—Mimi—came back to rejoin Jeff!” argued Larry, and broke into a run. “Come on, fellows!”

Down the wharf path they ran, turning into the shell-powder path that skirted the inlet on the far side of which the amphibian lay moored.

“Sandy will stop them,” panted Dick, a little to the rear because of his weight. Larry called, over his shoulder, that with two to give battle to, Sandy might need them before they could arrive.

“There’s somebody—on the lawn!” cried Dick, swinging off in that direction. From behind a large tree emerged a figure. Larry and the detective followed at a run. But the man who came quickly forward to meet them gave all three a surprise.

“Tommy!” Larry recognized the pilot.

“Larsen, why aren’t you by your airplane?” demanded Mr. Whiteside.

“I came over to report and get instructions, sir.”

“Why, I gave——”
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“Something new has come up, sir. I was waiting there by my ship a good while back, and I heard another one cruising and spiraling, shooting the field, I guess, because he came in and set down. My crate, just the way you ordered, was down by the grove, not in plain sight in the middle of the course. But Jeff set his ship down, left the engine running, and went off. I stayed hid to see what would happen, but when he didn’t come back, I thought I’d better go and find you—and see if it meant anything to you.”

“Jeff’s working with his wife, we think,” volunteered Larry. “Anyhow a woman slipped in and led us out of the hangar and started away in a motor boat, and then she must have come back, because yonder’s the boat——”

“See anything of Mimi?” asked Mr. Whiteside eagerly.

“Haven’t laid eyes on the lady.”

“She must have met Jeff and gone with him. We’re going to see.”

“I have orders, at that,” Mr. Whiteside told the pilot. “You go back and get into the air and then cruise around—just in case Jeff does get started.”

“I will that.”

“It would take him some time,” argued Dick.
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“He could start his motor and taxi while it warmed up, and be half across the Sound before he took off if he wanted to, in that ‘phib,’” the pilot said. Turning, he called that he would get going, and returned beyond their view beyond the trees.

Dick, Larry and Mr. Whiteside, listening for a call from Sandy, went hurrying along. But no call from Sandy. He had decided that it would be a wiser thing to hide than to risk doing battle with the pilot if he was actually as bad as they suspected; with that in mind he had crawled in through the opening from the back, into the fuselage of the amphibian. There, fairly comfortable, he lay, full length, listening. The open top allowed air to come because a strong, puffy breeze had gotten up, driving great, black thunderclouds before it.

Sandy regretted his ruse presently, because he heard a boat and realized that he could not see who occupied it: furthermore, while his position would enable him to be hidden and to go along if Jeff took off, he would be helpless in case of an accident to the craft.

When he decided to get out, it was almost too late—but not quite.

Jeff got his engine going by setting it on a compression point when he had primed the cylinders and using his booster magneto to furnish the hot sparks that gave it its first impulse.
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Then, as soon as he heard Jeff drop the mooring rope and get in, Sandy backed to a point where he could crawl to hands and knees, poked his head up carefully, saw Jeff, adjusting his helmet as the engine roared, and was able to climb over the seat back into the place behind the tank before Jeff decided they were warmed up enough, got the craft on the step and lifted it into the darkness, lit by intermittent flashes of approaching lightning.

Sandy snapped his safety belt.

“Now, Mister Jeff,” he remarked, safe behind the roar of their climb. “Go anywhere you like—life preserver and all. I’ll make the tracks ‘sandy’ for you if you want to stop!” He employed a railway expression, whimsically applying it to the airplane instead.

Dick, Larry and the detective, hearing the roar of the engine, delayed not a moment in their dash around the rest of the inlet shore.

They found that the amphibian was well out on the Sound, saw it lift.

It climbed in a northerly direction.
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As they reached the vicinity of its starting point and called and searched for Sandy, they heard the drone of another engine and saw the red-and-green and the white flying lights of what must be Tommy’s craft, also going northerly in pursuit.

“There he goes!” Larry cried. “There must be some place in Connecticut that Jeff and the woman with him know about—remember, Tommy’s passenger had him flying in that direction when the seaplane crashed, and the hydroplane boat went that way—by gracious-golly-gravy! Do you suppose it could have been the woman who ran off with that other life preserver, while Jeff pretended he was too sick to take up a ship?”

“It could be,” Dick replied. “I’m wondering more about Sandy.”

“Let’s go back to the house and make sure he didn’t stop there to see what Jeff had been doing before,” Larry suggested. “He may have missed going with Jeff. If the woman had been along he’d have had no place and they would have left him here. But there isn’t a trace.”

“No signs of any struggle either,” said the detective who had investigated with his flash.

They returned to the house.
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In the library, where Sandy had told Dick he had seen a glimmer of light, they saw nothing especially unusual, unless they could attach importance to an old photograph album, lying open on a corner settee with several small snapshots removed and only the gummed stickers left to show they had been there and what their size was.

“No Sandy,” said Dick, worried. “Do you suppose they?——”

“I wonder if he saw two people coming and crawled into the fuselage,” Larry said.

“He might have. I wish we could follow and see.”

“I’m ready—and I think I’d be safe to fly, even if it does look like storms. We could outfly Jeff, anyhow, catch up with him——”

He pointed to an open telephone book beside the instrument on the side table.

“It’s a Long Distance book, too—and its open at the E’s!” Dick glanced swiftly down the pages, “Evedall—Ever—Everdail!” he looked up with a surprised face.

Instantly Larry caught up the receiver.

“Long Distance Operator, please,” he spoke into the transmitter.

“Yes?”

“Long Distance?” He gave the number of the Everdail Maine estate, secured from the open book. “Has that number been called recently? Can you tell me?”

“Just a moment,” came back to him.

The moment became two—three——
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“Hello! It has! At ten o’clock. Thank you. Someone has been using our house telephone, then. Goodbye!”

“It was called!” the detective showed a baffled face.

“And by Jeff!” Larry consulted his watch. “The time checks with the report Sandy gave that Jeff was here. He called Mr. Everdail—why?”

“To tell him about the life preserver—and maybe to deliver it!”

“But Dick—he would never take it there if he means to——”

“I begin to think he doesn’t mean to make away with it.”

“But it had to be a pilot who did all the things we have evidence of, Dick.”

“Well—there’s another pilot!”

“And he’s flying after Jeff!” gasped the detective—leaping up he started out. “Come, boys—Larry, will you try to fly us? I’ve been on the wrong angle all along. Will you take us in Jeff’s airplane, Larry?”

Larry would!

Jacketed from the supply Jeff kept for passengers, two of the Sky Patrol and a discomfited detective rose in the air and joined the pursuit.

It was to have an unexpected outcome.