Doyle snapped on a light and looked at his watch.
“Twenty after four,” he announced. “We’ll never make it.”
“We will unless Rascomb takes off ahead of time!” Flash answered grimly.
Dawn was beginning to color the eastern sky. Trees and houses along the road gradually assumed definite shape. The air was heavy with smoke from the forest fire which still raged miles away.
Flash and Doyle drove through Clear Lake at ten minutes of five. Houses were dark, the streets deserted. There was no police delegation to meet them.
Doyle nervously fingered the loaded revolver.
“It looks as if we’re on our own,” he said. “Unless that chauffeur gave us a bum steer.”
They were drawing near the private air field. Flash snapped off the headlight beams. As the car swung around a bend of the road, they saw the cleared field ahead of them, shrouded in the morning mists.
Flash leaned forward. A plane stood near the hangar, propeller turning, blue flames licking from its exhaust.
“It’s Rascomb!” he shouted.