CHAPTER VIII
CURLIE MEETS A MILLIONAIRE
It was a tense situation for Curlie. He spent an uneasy night and that in spite of the fact that the air was particularly free from trouble.
"Hang it all," he exclaimed once as, dashing the receiver from his head, he sprang from his chair to pace the floor of the secret tower room, "I'd welcome something in the line of trouble. This eternal thinking—thinking—thinking, drives me wild. What to do, that's the question. Suppose I'd ought to go out and tell Ardmore what I know. If a millionaire father's like any other father, I guess he's pretty well wrought up by now. But if I go, and if I tell him the whole truth, I'm as sure as I am of anything that it will get me into a mess and that's the sort of thing I don't like."
Glancing down, his eye was caught by Coles' report of the night before. Dropping once more into his chair, he began going through the messages written there. When he came to the one sent out by the boy whose car he had wrecked, he pondered over it for a long time.
"'Island, airplane, map, much gold; airplane, map, island, gold,'" he repeated. "What does one make out of that? It might be that this boy has been planning a secret voyage with some other chap. Certainly sounds like it. Other messages were the same kind. By Jove! Perhaps he's skipped out and gone on that trip and is not hiding out at all! Let's see."
Taking down a file he drew forth a bunch of message records clipped together. They were those sent by the moving operator on 600, the millionaire's son.
A long time he studied over these.
"Seems to sort of prove my theory," he muttered once. "Can't be sure though."