For the first time Jerry had a chance to observe the two who had come with Tod's father. Heavy-set, rather stolid chaps they were, just beginning to show a paunch, and gray about the temples. They looked good-natured enough but gave the impression of being set in their ways, a judgment Jerry had no occasion to change later. They spoke with an odd sort of accent but were evidently used to conversing in English, although the first glance told that they were not Americans.
They were plainly but expensively dressed; they looked like men of wealth rather than like business men. They had come to see Mr. Fulton's invention tried out, Jerry surmised, and, if it proved successful, perhaps to buy it. Those two men he had seen with the rifles were foreigners too, but of a different station in life and, Jerry was sure, belonging under a different flag.
They were soon down to the water's edge, where was moored the launch Jerry had heard chugging over to the island not long before. Blankets were brought from the Scout camp and piled on the launch floor to make a comfortable bed, and poor Billings was carefully lifted from the stretcher and laid in the boat. The doctor and Mr. Fulton got in. The two men remained on the bank. Mr. Fulton looked at them questioningly, but their heavy faces gave no sign. So he asked:
"You will wait for me, I trust! I don't want you to feel that this—accident——" he hesitated over the word—"makes the scheme a failure. There is something about it all that I can't understand, but a close examination may reveal——"
"Ah, yes," answered the shorter of the two, "we will want to be just as sure of the failure as we insisted on being of the success. But you understand of course that we feel—ah—feel considerably—ah—disappointed in the trial flight. Oh, yes, we will wait for you. You will not be long?"
"Just long enough for the doctor to find out what needs to be done. That slim youngster there is my son Tod. He knows almost as much about my—about it as I do. Tod, you take care of Mr. Lewis and Mr. Harris till I come back. You'd best stay close to the Skyrocket; we don't want to take any chances, you know."
All the time he had been talking he had been tinkering with the motor, which was having a little balky spell. At his last words Jerry spoke up hastily:
"I'll chase over and keep an eye on the Skyrocket while the rest of you take your time," and he hurried off, adding to himself: "Skyrocket's a good name, 'cause it sure went up in a blaze of glory, and came down like the burnt stick." But he had other things in mind besides the mere watching of the wreck. At Mr. Fulton's hesitation over the word "accident" a picture had popped into his mind—two men carrying rifles and peering up over the tree-tops.
He was destined to see them again, for as he crossed the road he heard a crackling in the underbrush of someone in hasty retreat. He blamed his thoughtlessness in whistling as he ran along; perhaps he might have caught them red-handed if he had been careful. As it was, he saw the two scurrying toward the south, whereas before they had been going northward.
He did not go directly to the fallen aeroplane. Instead he picked his way carefully over the route the men had followed just after the explosion, stooping low and examining every spear of grass. His search was quickly rewarded. Just where the trampled turf showed that the two men had stood for some time he pounced upon a powder-blackened cartridge, bigger than any rifle shell he had ever seen before, even in his uncle's old Springfield. That was all, but it was enough to confirm his suspicions.