“Yes, miss. He said that Mister Terry hadn’t been found yet. I asked him b’cause I thought you’d like to know. That was all he said. I’m sure sorry I forgot it when you came in, but I—”
“That’s all right, Lizzie, I understand. You come back for the tray in half an hour, will you? And if you find me asleep, don’t wake me up. I’m tired to death. I need a long rest and I’m going to take it.”
When Lizzie came back she found Dorothy deep in the sleep of exhaustion. She lowered the window blinds against the early morning light and picking up the tray from the end of the bed, tiptoed from the room.
Morning broke bright and clear with no sign of yesterday’s mist and rain. Dorothy remained in bed for breakfast and it took but little persuasion on the part of Lizzie to keep her there till lunch time. She still felt stiff and bruised and was only too content to rest and doze.
Toward noon she rose and dressed in her flying clothes. Immediately after lunch she went out to the hangar. She slipped into a serviceable and grubby pair of overalls, and spent the afternoon in giving Will-o’-the-Wisp a thorough grooming. At quarter to five she was in the air and headed for Long Island Sound.
Half an hour later, with an altitude of ten thousand feet, she was cruising over yesterday’s course above the Long Island shore, when she spied a biplane coming across the Sound. In an instant she had her field glasses out and focussed on the newcomer.
“That’s him!” she murmured ungrammatically, though with evident relief. “Now for a pleasant little game of hide-and-seek!”
The Mystery Plane was flying far below, so continuing on her course at right angles, she watched it with hurried glances over her shoulder. When she reached the Long Island Shore line, it was a mile or so behind and below Dorothy’s tailplane. So waiting only long enough to be sure that her quarry was headed across the Island, she banked her plane and sent it on a wide half circle to the right. Long Island, at this point, she knew was about twenty miles wide.
Dorothy’s plan for trailing the Mystery Plane and doing so without being seen, was as simple as it was direct. The farther end of her circular course would bring her over Great South Bay and the South shore of Long Island at approximately the same point for which the other plane seemed to be bound. She would arrive, of course, a minute or two behind the other aviator. And as she planned, so it happened.
From her high point of vantage, Dorothy, swinging on her arc a mile or so to the east, was able to keep the other amphibian continually in sight. She watched him pursue his southerly course until he came over the town of Babylon on Great South Bay. Here her glasses told her that the bearded aviator turned his plane to the left, heading east and up the bay in her direction.