"Why," Henryson stammered confusedly, in a quavering voice, "I just dropped in to see whether any of you fellows were here. I wanted to find out how you had outrigged your machine against extraordinary winds."
"Yeh, wanted to loosen it up a little, so that the first wind would cause the whole plane to collapse, eh?" demanded Andy, advancing again upon the culprit.
"What do you mean?" Henryson could hardly more than whisper.
"You know well enough what's meant," Fred interjected, while Don, his mind's eye picturing the tragedy which might and probably would have overtaken them if the treachery had not been discovered in time, stood silently by, merely clenching and unclenching his hands as an unconscious way of working off some of his pent-up anger and disgust at such inhuman and underhand work.
But before Henryson or anyone else could say anything further, Big Jack had grabbed that misguided young man by the scruff of the neck, and, with no one, not even Captain Allerson, attempting to interfere, thrust him toward that part of the plane where the cut strands of the wire had been discovered.
"I suppose you don't know anything about that little job, eh?" Jack demanded, shaking Henryson as a terrier might shake a rat.
"What do you—Why, I—I—I—"
"Oh, shut up, you cowardly idiot," interrupted Captain Allerson. "If you can't say one honest word, don't say anything at all. You're convicted already, and I guess it means a nice term of solitude fer you, too."
"Now look here," Andy broke in. "This bird's as guilty as Satan, and he knows it, and he knows we know it. However, I'm of no mind to let one crook like him besmirch a science, a sport and a profession which decent men have kept decent and clean and far above that sort of thing.