“There ain’t a sign of him,” he said hurriedly. “I waited right where you told me to wait, and if he’d have been anywhere within a couple of miles I could have seen him after it got dark. The moon has been shining bright for a long time, and I had a pair of glasses with me. I’m afraid it’s all up with him if he hasn’t landed some place else along the coast. It’s tough for all of us if anything’s gone wrong, ain’t it?”
The chauffeur was instructed to make another trip to the selected landing place and to stay there until dawn when relief was promised. Jimmy was pale and over-wrought when he hung up the telephone receiver and turned to McClintock.
“If he had landed any place else,” he remarked, “he’d have made every effort to get to a phone. He’d know we’d be worried. Gee, Mac, supposin’ somethin’s happened to ’em. If there has little old Robert B. Remorse’ll be my side-partner for life. He told me he’d be prepared for all emergencies and he’s there with the nerve, but maybe they ran into a squall or something. Why’d I ever think of this stunt? I’ve got too much imagination, Mac, I’ve got to teach it to lie down and behave.”
The two sat up all night, smoking incessantly and discussing the variety of fates which they fancied might have overtaken the adventuresome Bobby Wilkins and his distinguished fellow passenger. Jimmy called up one of the newspaper offices every fifteen minutes for news, but there wasn’t any worth mentioning. The dirigible had not been sighted by any ship with which the navy wireless had been able to get into communication and the half dozen destroyers sent out to search for it were reported to be without definite information.
The entire country seethed with the story in the morning. The Associated Press had carried fifteen hundred words into every newspaper office in every city of importance from coast to coast and the big dailies in Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston had three and four column stories from their metropolitan correspondents, liberally illustrated with pictures of the Hon. Betty, who was one of the most photographed women of her time. McClintock, who had no knowledge of Jimmy’s promise to keep Bobby Wilkins’ real name out of print, had blurted it out to a group of reporters in the evening and the salient facts concerning the modest wearer of three war medals were incorporated in all of the accounts. Robert Wilkins, Sr., forgot that he was a mere business machine, wiped a few tears out of the corners of his eyes, looked tenderly at a picture of a curly headed boy he always kept in one of the drawers of his desk and started east on a special train.
The total haul in the New York morning papers was seventy-six columns of solid reading matter and thirty-eight photographic illustrations. Every angle of the story was covered in great detail and in addition to the main narrative there were extended biographical sketches of the Hon. Betty and of Bobby Wilkins. There were cabled stories from London concerning the festive career of the former and containing an expression of deep concern from the British premier. There were also eulogies of the one time ace from personages no less important than the American commander in chief in France and the generalissimo of the allied armies. All in all it was the most spectacular “feature story” in years and the greatest achievement in the history of American press agentry. McClintock admitted that much when the first editions came in.
“Jimmy,” he said, “it’s a dog-goned shame that you’ve got to lie low and never get credit for this. Still you’ve got company. I was reading in the paper the other day that there’s a well defined rumor that the more or less celebrated covenant of the well known League of Nations was finally framed up by a clerk in the British foreign office. You can drop over later on and take a little drink with him and cry it all out on each other’s shoulder.”
Jimmy’s only response was a mournful attempt at a smile. He lit another cigarette, jerked out of his chair and began to swear softly as he walked up and down the room. He made a vicious lunge with his foot at a waste-basket and kicked it through the door into the next office. Then he took off his soft hat, rolled it into a lump and slammed it down on the floor with a wide, sweeping gesture.
“I don’t mind that so much,” he said testily. “After landin’ a smear like that, though, I’d kinda like to have a good time with myself for a few minutes. I’d kinda like to throw a few assorted flowers up in the air and let ’em drop on me, but I’m so gosh-darned worried about what’s actually happened that I can’t even have that much fun.”
His anxiety increased as the day wore on and the early editions of the evening papers which played up the story even more extensively than the “mornings” failed to buoy him up. There was still no word of the N-24, and navy department officials in Washington were reported to be gravely alarmed at the possibilities.