"Lou! Oh, Lou!"
"Yes!" came the instant reply. "Around the bend."
Linda hurried around the cliff which separated her chum from sight, and there, to her amazement, she beheld a shattered airplane. The wings and the propeller were gone—had evidently been floated out on the stream and swept away on the current, and the plane itself was smashed to pieces. Louise was standing beside it, holding a man's coat in her hand.
"Ye gods!" cried Linda, shocked by the horror of such a wreck. "How terrible!"
But Louise was searching the pockets of the coat madly, excitedly, as if she had no thought for the man who had been killed.
"Look, Linda!" she cried triumphantly. "I had an inspiration it might be your thief! I've got it!"
"What?" demanded the other.
"The necklace!"
Both girls held their breath while Louise steadied her nervous fingers and opened the box—a cheap pasteboard affair, totally unlike the original one in which Kitty Clavering's pearls had been sold. To Linda's unbelieving eyes, she held up the costly jewels.