Standing in the doorway was a slim, wiry, alert-looking man of twenty-eight or thirty, dressed in a dark, serviceable suit, with leather leggings. He leaned carelessly against the sagging doorpost, a slight smile on his smooth-shaven face, watching them with keen, snapping black eyes.
“Is this your monoplane?” Dick asked quickly.
“I don’t know anybody that has a better claim to it,” the stranger answered promptly.
As he glanced again at the aëroplane, Merriwell gave a sigh of relief. This, then, was what they had seen the night before, and he had quite misjudged Randolph. The scientist had probably never left his house.
Dick had been so anxious to think the best of Frank’s friend that he was rejoiced beyond measure to believe that his suppositions to the contrary were wrong. Then he remembered the lie Randolph had told him. That, at least, had not been disproved.
“You gents seem mighty interested in my little bird,” the slim man remarked as he stepped forward and joined them. “Might I inquire if you’ve happened to see another one around here lately?”
Dick gave a slight start.
“Why do you ask that?” he questioned.
The stranger hesitated.
“I might as well tell you the truth,” he said at length, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “I’m about at the end of my rope, and you’re not apt to help me any unless you know what you’re doing. My name is Holton—Bert Holton. I’m a special officer from Washington. For about five months we’ve been trying to run down the cleverest gang of diamond smugglers that ever tried to beat Uncle Sam. Got on to ’em first through one of our agents in Europe. Glen is certainly a smart chap; I don’t know how he smells out some of these cases, but somehow he got wind of a party that was having a big bunch of rough diamonds cut in Amsterdam. Didn’t know where they came from, but he got suspicious at the amount of stones the duck had and wired us when he took passage direct to Canada.