Puss was for once taken off his guard.
“Why, yes, I believe it does, Larry,” he said, immediately pulling out a pack of fine cards. “You know I brought these up with me from the city. See, it has the Indian on the back, and the words ‘Red Hunter.’ I’ll run them over, and see if the jack of spades is missing.”
He did so in an adept manner that told how accustomed he was to handling such things.
“You see, it is missing,” he said triumphantly, “so I’ll thank you for returning my black jack to me. Where did you pick it up, Larry?”
“Oh! you’re not indebted to me for its return,” declared Larry, turning up his nose in disgust. “Frank here found it; he can tell you just where.”
And Puss grew fairly scarlet, he hardly knew why himself, as he turned his gaze upon the accusing face on the one whom he had done so much to injure.
“You dropped it out of your pocket the night you visited our hangar, and cut the canvas of our monoplane wings to flinders. I have been saving it for you. Thank you, Puss, for admitting that you were the author of that dirty trick,” and Frank turned his back on the confused rogue.
Unable to frame a reply, Puss and his crony walked hastily away. And before night the whole of Bloomsbury knew of what they had been guilty; because Larry and Elephant refused to keep it to themselves.
But it was not to be expected that this would cause such fellows as Puss Carberry or Sandy Hollingshead to see the error of their ways. On the contrary, it was only apt to make them the more bitter against the Bird boys; and in time to come they would wish more than ever that they could find some way by means of which they might injure those who had so skillfully guided their little air craft to victory in the race to the crest of Old Thunder Top.
Whether that opportunity would ever come, as well as many other things in the line of adventure which were fated to befall the Bird boys, must be left to another volume, which the reader, who has followed our venturesome young aviators thus far, will be pleased to know has already been issued under the title of “The Bird Boys on the Wing; or, Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics.”