"But you do believe I'm capable, don't you, Ted?" Linda's eyes searched his for the truth; she was not asking for flattery, she really wanted his opinion.
"Yes indeed I do!" Ted answered, with assurance. "But it's always safer for two pilots to go together. However, the Pursuit is in fine shape now—and filled up with gas.... Linda, I have something to tell you."
"Yes?"
"About the wreck—and—those thieves.... The other dead man was my father."
"Your father! Ted!" Every bit of color left the girl's face. What a dreadful, ghastly thing to happen to anybody, and especially to a fine boy like Ted! To come upon his father, dead, in that abrupt fashion, and to know, worst of all, that he had died in disgrace!
Finding no words to express her sympathy, she pressed his hand tightly in silence.
"So you see how much I have to do—why I can't go with you," he continued. "I have reported the wreck to my company, and made arrangements about my father's body. But I must go right home to my mother."
"But how do you explain it all, Ted?" Linda asked.
"I think my father was paying one of his regular visits to the Spring City Flying School—he came there once in so often to get money from me—and he was disappointed to find I had gone. Whether he knew that other man before, I don't know, but it would seem probable that he did. Together they must have cooked up the scheme to follow your plane and get the necklace.... That is why it is really fortunate the man got the necklace by a ruse. You see he was armed with a gun—as I later found out, and if he had had to fight for the jewels, I'm sure he wouldn't have hesitated to fire on you!"