Morning, noon, and night the Camerons speculated about that telegram. They combed its words with a fine-toothed comb, but they couldn’t make anything out of them except the bald fact that Pete was missing.
If you think they let it go at that, you are very much mistaken. Where the fact stopped the Cameron imaginations began, and imaginations never know where to stop. The less actual information an imagination has to work on, the busier it is. The Camerons hadn’t any more imagination than most people, but what they had grew very busy. It fairly amazed them with its activity. If you think that this was silly and that they ought to have chained up their imaginations until the promised letter arrived, it only shows that you have never received any such telegram.
After all, the letter, when it came, didn’t tell them much. The letter said that Lieutenant Peter Fearing had gone out with his squadron on a bombing-expedition well within the enemy lines. The formation had successfully accomplished its raid and was returning when it was taken by surprise and surrounded 249 by a greatly superior force of enemy planes, which gave the Americans a running fight of thirty-nine minutes to their lines. Lieutenant Fearing’s was one of two planes which failed to return to the aërodrome. When last seen, his machine was in combat with four Hun planes over enemy territory.
“What did I tell you?” interrupted Tom. “He’s a prisoner.”
An airplane had been reported as falling in flames near this spot, but whether it was Lieutenant Fearing’s machine or another, no data was as yet at hand to prove. The writer begged to remain, etc.
No, that letter only opened up fresh fields for Cameron imaginations to torment Cameron hearts. Nobody had happened to think before of Pete’s machine catching fire.
“Gee!” said Henry, “if that plane was his—”
“There’s no certainty that it was,” said Bruce, quickly.