"Thank you, Tom; then I'll call up somebody in Rayville. Good-bye."
"Oh, say, Sam, hold on a minute. You say the machine broke away. How was that?" Tom Bender was all curiosity.
"We were trying the engine and propellers, that's all. I'll tell you the rest when I see you," answered the youngest Rover, and rang off. "Tom would keep me answering questions for a year if I let him," he added, to his brothers.
He next tried the Rayville general store, but could get no information concerning the missing biplane. Then he tried several farmers who were utter strangers to him but whose names were in the telephone directory.
"Airship, eh?" queried one farmer, a man named Peter Marley. "Well, we sure did see an airship, fer it came nigh onto rippin' off the roof o' the barn. Ef I had the feller here as was runin' it I'd give him a dose o' buckshot! He nigh scart my wife into a fit, he did!"
"Which way did the airship go, Mr. Marley?"
"Went right over into Rocker's Woods,—over where the old saw mill used to be."
"Did the airship come down, do you think?"
"I guess so—leas'wise she looks like she was goin' to come down. But who was the crazy loon as was runnin' her?"
"Nobody was running the craft—she ran away on her own hook."