"Hello," he cried, "you out here?"
Gladys did not answer at once. She was straining her eyes as if to see some object which might be hovering above the jagged, sea-swept skyline.
"No," said Curlie, as if in answer to a question, "you couldn't see the plane. You couldn't see it fifty fathoms away and then it would flash by you like a carrier pigeon. No use if you did see it. Couldn't do anything. But there's one chance in a million of their coming into our line of vision, so it's no use watching. Only chance is a radiophone message giving their location."
"But I—I want to. I—I ought to do something." For the first time he noticed how white and drawn her face was.
"All right," he said in a quiet voice, "you just sit where you are and I'll sit here beside you and you tell me one or two things. That will help."
"Tell—tell what?"
"Tell me this: Did your brother have the original of that old map?"
"Yes," her tone was already quieting down, "yes, he did, or Alfred Brightwood did. His father is very rich and he has a hobby of collecting very old editions of books. He pays terrible prices for them. He bought an old, old copy of 'Marco Polo's Travels'; paid fifteen thousand dollars for it. And inside its cover Alfred found that old map with the curious writing on the back of it.
"He thought right away that it might hide some great secret, so he had it photographed and sent the photo to Vincent. Vincent got a great scholar to read the writing for him. He never told me what the writing was; said that no one but he and Alfred should know; that it was a great secret and that girls couldn't keep secrets, so I was not to know.
"But they can keep secrets!" she exploded, breaking off from her narrative. "They do keep secrets—more secrets than boys do. Wonderful and terrible secrets sometimes!"