“Very well, sir,” answered Bob composedly, climbing back from the fusilage to his seat in the pit. “We don’t want to annoy you. Good day.”
With that, Frank swung clear, the propeller to which Bob had given a twist began anew to revolve, the plane taxied in a circle, then rose and started for the shore.
“We certainly surprised him,” chuckled Jack. “He didn’t know what to say to us. In his excitement and his fear of discovery of some secret or other, he acted in a way to arouse suspicion, not dispel it. Well, Frank, you win the gold medal. Your hunch about Higginbotham being untrustworthy certainly seems to have some foundation.”
“I’ll say so, too,” agreed Bob. “But what do you imagine happened to him?”
Bob sat with the glasses trained backwards to where the little plane still rode the sea.
“That’s easy,” answered Jack. “Something went wrong at the secret radio plant and the continuity of the dash which provides the juice for the plane’s motor was broken. That’s the only way I can figure it. I say. Let’s tune up to 1,375 meters, and see whether that continuous dash is sounding.”
“It’s not there,” Bob announced presently. “Not a sound in the receivers. Neither does the plane show any signs of motion. Look here. Suppose 58 that whatever has happened at that fellow’s radio plant cannot be fixed up for a long period, what will Higginbotham do? Ought we to go away and leave him?”
“Well,” said Jack, doubtfully, “it does look heartless. He’s four or five miles from shore. Of course, we might shoot him a continuous dash from our own radio plant.”
“Zowie,” shrieked Bob, snatching the receiver from his head, and twisting the controls at the same time, in order to reduce from the 1,375-meter wave length. “There’s his power. No need for us to worry now. Oh, boy, but wasn’t that a blast in the ear?”
Ruefully, he rubbed his tingling ears. Jack was doing the same. Poor Frank, whose eardrums had been subjected to the same shock, also had taken a hand from the levers at the same time and snatched off his headpiece.