Outside, in the crisp December afternoon, the air was filled with the heavy throb of plane motors. Overhead, a silver ship was wheeling into the wind, landing gear down.
The loud-speaker came to life again. “Flight two-oh-six, from Paris,” it intoned, “now landing.”
Sandy Allen, the huge redhead, touched his friend’s arm. “Feels good to have him coming home for Christmas, huh?”
Ken Holt grinned briefly, his eyes steadily riveted on the plane now zooming toward them down the paved strip. “And how!”
“If I had any sense,” Sandy said, “I’d fade out on an occasion like this. It isn’t often that you and your father—”
“If you had any sense,” Ken interrupted, “you’d remember that if it weren’t for the oversized Allen clan I might not even—”
The deafening roar of engines cut off the rest of his sentence, but Sandy’s face had already begun to redden. He could take almost anything except gratitude, and he hated to be reminded of the circumstances in which he and Ken had first met. Ken’s father had been in desperate danger then, and the entire Allen family—Pop, Bert, Sandy, and Mom—had taken part in the frightening hours of action that followed their meeting.
Afterward, Ken Holt, motherless for years, had left his boarding school at the Allens’ insistence to make his home with them. Mom Allen treated him like another son, and Pop Allen had given Ken a part in the operation of the Allen-owned newspaper, the Brentwood Advance.
Ken and Sandy had shared many adventures since then; had encountered many exciting and dangerous puzzles which they had solved together. They worked as a team, both in unraveling mysteries and in reporting them afterward. Ken’s stories and Sandy’s photographs had been eagerly accepted not only by the Advance, but also by Global News, the gigantic news-gathering agency for which Ken’s father, Richard Holt, worked.
Ken glanced up at Sandy’s flushed face. “Relax, chum,” he said. “I won’t say another word about how much I owe—”