Emergencies, the child’s medicine, the violin, all called for full speed ahead.
“Land!” he cried aloud to the waiting night. “Land!”
There was no reply vouchsafed him. His machine carried no sending set.
“Land!” he muttered suddenly. “It’s a plot!”
He touched a lever. His motor thundered louder than ever and his thoughts raced with the plane.
“That,” he told himself a moment later, “was a mistake. It told them at once that I accept their challenge.”
But what did they want? Again his thoughts flew to the sack of registered mail in the fusilage just before him.
“Three precious packages,” he thought. “Can’t be the medicine. Who would rob a dying child?
“The violin! Forty thousand dollars! that’s it. They would rob the mail to get that.”
And yet, as he gave the matter a second thought, the thing seemed uncertain. There was no doubting the true value of the violin. But where would a robber sell it? Such instruments are few; they are known the world over. To offer a stolen one for sale would be to court arrest.