“If we run across them at the meet I’m going to give them a wide berth,” declared Ned. “I don’t cotton to ’em.”
“Me either,” agreed Jerry.
“And so your old enemy, Noddy Nixon, is also to have an aeroplane?” asked the professor, that fact having been mentioned. “Do you expect to race with him?”
“Not if we can avoid it,” declared Jerry. “He may enter his craft in the meet though, but we haven’t seen anything of it as yet. Perhaps it’s only a rumor.”
But it was more than that, as our friends found a few days later, when as they went down to the freight office to get some duplicate parts for their motor, which they had ordered from the factory, they saw several large packing cases on the platform. The boxes were addressed to Noddy Nixon, and were marked—“Fragile—Handle with Care.”
“Maybe that’s his aeroplane that Andy Rush was telling us about,” suggested Bob.
“Shouldn’t wonder,” agreed Jerry. “Let’s see if we can tell where it’s from. There are several firms making them now.”
They saw no harm in looking at the shipping tag to ascertain what type of aircraft Noddy was getting, and they had just located the card, tacked on the end of one of the boxes, when a rough voice exclaimed:
“Here, get away from there! What are you trying to do; damage our machine?”