"This is serious," put in Ted. "We ought to do something—right away!"
"What can we do? I made the girls a map, but they may be off their course. I have no plane—and your time's not your own, Mr. Mackay."
"But I'll have to do something!" cried Ted, excitedly. "Even if I lose my job on account of it! It may be a question of life or death!"
"I'll tell you what I'll do," decided Roger. "I'll buy that plane of yours. I want it anyhow. And tomorrow morning at dawn we'll go on a search.... Now, mother, can you give Mr. Mackay something to eat—and a room?"
Gratefully the young man accepted the hospitable offers of his new friends and, pleased with the sale he had put through, he fell instantly asleep, not to awaken until Roger both knocked at his door and threw pillows at him the next morning.
He dressed and they left in short order, after a hearty breakfast, however, and armed with a lunch perhaps not so dainty as that provided for the girls, but at least as satisfying. Roger reconstructed the map, like the one he had made for Linda, and they flew straight for the nearest airport.
Unfortunately, however, they got no information there, no news of a wreck, or of two girls flying in a biplane. But their time was not wasted, for they took the opportunity to question one of the flyers who seemed familiar with the territory around him. They asked particularly about the more lonely, desolate parts of the near-by country, where an airplane accident would not quickly be discovered.
"There's a stretch about ten miles south of here," the man informed them, indicating a spot on Roger's rough map. "Not a farm or a village, as far as I know, except one old shack where a German lives. He hid there during the War, because he didn't want to be sent home, and he has continued to live on there ever since. He has a sort of garden, I believe—just enough to keep him alive—with the fish he catches. And a few apple trees. Once in a while he drives in here with his apples. I could tell you pretty near where he lives, because I was stranded there once myself. You could drop down and ask him if he heard any planes."
Eagerly the two young men marked the spot and set off once more in their plane, flying in the direction indicated. Before nine o'clock they came to the shack, which was the building that Linda and Louise had spied at a distance. They found the man frying fish on a fire in front of his tumble-down house.
Their landing had been of sufficient distance to avoid frightening him, but near enough for him to hear them. They hurried towards him, Roger almost shouting the question about the girls, before he actually reached him.