So while Linda slept peacefully at home, her father and her best boy friend made plans to verify their suspicions against Ted Mackay, lying helpless in the hospital, twenty-five miles from Green Falls.
[Chapter X]
In the Hospital
When Ted Mackay opened his eyes at the hospital the following morning, he did not know where he was. Although he had regained consciousness when the orderlies brought him in from the ambulance the day before, it had not lasted long. An anesthetic was immediately administered, for it was necessary to cut into his arm, and later a drug was given to make him sleep. So, for the moment, he could not understand why he was here—in a ward, undoubtedly, judging from the long row of cots against the wall.
A dull aching pain in his arm and shoulder made him glance suspiciously at his left side. They were bandaged, of course. And then suddenly he remembered.
He had been sent out with a new plane, from his company in Kansas City, to make delivery to a purchaser in Buffalo. Just before he left, a radio message had been received from the Spring City Flying School, asking all pilots and mechanics to look out for a stolen Waco. Naturally, Ted remembered the plane.
He had been flying quite low, to make certain tests with the plane he was delivering, over the fields beyond Green Falls, when he suddenly noticed a wreck. Complying with the regulations of the Department of Commerce, he descended in order to report the casualty and to render assistance, if possible. Smashed as it was, he recognized it immediately as the old Waco, which he had so often piloted at Spring City. He looked about for the pilot, dreading to find his shattered body in the cockpit.
He had been leaning over, peering into the bushes, when a gun went off at his back, hitting him on the left arm, near the shoulder. Reeling about sharply, he just had time to see a shabbily dressed man run for the new plane. And then everything went black; he couldn't recall what happened, or how he got to the hospital.
"The company's new plane!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud, attempting to sit up in his cot. "It's gone!"