Inside of half an hour after Matt and Ferral had left Carl with the Hawk, they had the air ship back in her old moorings.
Carl had hurried through the woods and watched proceedings from the ground as well as he could. When he saw the Hawk returning to her old berth, he followed her back, bursting into sight from the timber just as Matt and Ferral had finished securing the mooring ropes.
"Shake hants mit me!" bellowed Carl, rushing to grip Matt's hand, then passing to Ferral, and then to Helen Brady. "Dot vas der pootiest t'ing vat I efer saw done, yah, so helup me! Air ships can do t'ings vat nodding else vas aple, und der strangeness oof it fills me mit vonder and surbrises. Miss Prady, you vas a lucky girl! Und Matt vas lucky, und so vas Verral. I'm der only unlucky feller in der punch, pecause I don'd vas along to helup in der rescue. Matt cut me oudt oof der game. Anyvay, I'm glad dot everyt'ing come oudt like vat it dit. Dell us aboudt vat habbened mit you, Miss Prady."
Helen, seated in Matt's chair in the car, was leaning back, her eyes on the faces of the three lads. Ferral climbed up on the fence and sat down on the top board, and Matt leaned against the telephone pole. Carl sat down on the ground near the car.
"That's a good notion our Dutch raggie has just overhauled, Miss Brady," seconded Ferral. "We'd all like to hear that yarn. There's nothing better we can do, just now, as we haven't any guns and can't help Harris and the officers."
"Go on, Helen," said Matt. "We know something about what happened to you, but not all."
"Where did you find out anything?" queried the girl. "I was never more surprised in my life than when I saw you with the officers near the house."
"We'll tell you that later," answered Matt. "Your experiences first."
"Well," began the girl, "after I went to visit my friends in Archer Avenue, a letter came for my brother. I have been worried about my brother for a long time, for he would be honest if it was not for my father's evil influence." The girl's lip quivered, but she fought down her rising emotion and went on. "I opened the letter. It was from my father and asked Hector to go to the house at Lake Station, where I lived for a while, and get a paper which he would find under a loosened brick in the basement wall. The brick was marked with a cross.
"Hector, as I knew, had left the city, so I concluded to go to Lake Station and get the paper myself. I was wondering what it was all about. I found the paper, and it gave the location of a spot in Willoughby's swamp where some of the goods stolen by my father had been concealed. Father wanted the plunder turned into cash so that the best lawyers could be hired to keep him out of the penitentiary. I decided at once that I would turn the paper over the chief of police in South Chicago, and I had left my friends' house to start for there when a man stopped me on the street.