“A passenger airplane is due through here about this time. Sometimes I listen for it so hard I imagine the sound of the engine.”
“The job must get tiresome at times,” Penny ventured, making herself comfortable by the glowing stove.
“Oh, it does, but I’m glad to serve my trick. What brings you girls here on such a wild night?”
The story was quickly told. Nevertheless, by the time Penny had telephoned to Mrs. Weems, it was after eight o’clock. Footsteps pounded on the stairway. An elderly man, his hat and overcoat encrusted with snow, swept into the room.
“My relief,” said Salt, presenting Nate Adams to the girls. “I’m free to shove off now.”
“Hope you can start your car,” commented the newcomer. “It’s mighty cold, and the temperature is still dropping.”
Salt’s battered coupe was parked not far from the tower. Snow blanketed the windshield. He wiped it away and after several attempts started the engine.
“Think I’d better stop at the first garage and have more alcohol put in the radiator. No use in taking a chance.”
Salt followed the same road over which the girls had trudged an hour earlier. In passing the estate not far from Old Henry’s cabin, Penny peered with renewed interest at the big house. In the blinding snow storm she could not be sure, but she thought a light gleamed from an upstairs window.
“Salt,” she inquired, “who lives in that place?”