[Chapter X]
Susie Disappears
When Linda entered her hotel bed-room after the conversation with her Aunt Emily over the long-distance wire, she found two pleasant surprises awaiting her. The first of these that she saw was her trunk, sent on from Atlanta. The second was a telegram from the Pitcairn Autogiro Company.
Her new roommate, who was bending over her own suit-case, looked up expectantly.
"Good news, Linda?" she inquired.
"Splendid!" replied the other girl. "The parts for my 'Ladybug' have been shipped from Miami, where the company has some autogiros on exhibition. They'll be at the Jacksonville Airport tomorrow."
"Then your Ladybug is damaged?" asked Dot, who had heard nothing of the story as yet, beyond the bare facts that had been in the newspapers. All that she had read was that Linda Carlton, famous aviatrix, who had been lost in the Okefenokee Swamp for several days, had turned up in Jacksonville, Florida.
"Yes, quite a smash-up," answered Linda. "But I wasn't in it. Another girl was flying——" She stopped abruptly. "Wait till Lou and Ted are with us, Dot, so I can tell the story all at once. I'm rather fed up with it myself. I'd loads rather hear what you've been doing at Spring City."
"O.K.," agreed her companion, cheerfully, and proceeded to report to Linda all the news that she could remember.
"What I can't understand," remarked Linda, a few minutes later, as she unpacked her trunk and took a flowered chiffon which she decided to wear, "is how everyone finds me at this hotel. I didn't know where I'd be staying when I sent those telegrams yesterday."
"I can answer that," replied Dot, immediately. "It's your friends at the City Hall. The Chief of Police there directed us. It was Ted's idea to go to him, for I never would have thought of it."