A vagrant puff of wind struck the planes, just over the concert garden, and only quick work on the part of the intrepid young motorist averted a disaster. Gathering headway under the impetus of the thrashing propeller, the aëroplane darted upward into the blue and began reaching out toward the city.
Matt, while manipulating the aëroplane, had little time for sights and scenes below him. He was obliged to keep every faculty riveted on his work. Now and again, however, as he took his bearings and laid his course, he glimpsed the staring people in the roadways and on rooftops. Some of these spectators had opera glasses and binoculars.
Over the flat roofs of the city he whirled, cheered almost continuously.
The motor had never worked better. Everything depended on the motor. If the power had happened to fail, Matt could have glided harmlessly down the airy slope to earth—providing the city afforded him a good clear space in which to alight. A street zigzagged with telegraph, and telephone, and electric light wires was not such a place.
Passing the close-packed buildings of the business section, Matt gained the residence districts, and held on in a straight line for the Elgin road. He watched his landmarks, and, while they looked differently to him from aloft than they did from the ground, he knew he was going right when he saw the waiting automobile.
McGlory was standing up and waving his hat.
Throwing full speed into the propeller, Matt set the automobile a fifty-mile pace. At such a speed only a few minutes were necessary to carry the flying machine close to the oak opening where Ben Ali was to be in waiting for Dhondaram.
Peering forward and downward, Matt guided and manœuvred the Comet by sense of touch alone, watching eagerly the while for the great gap in the woods.
Finally he saw it, and what he glimpsed in the centre of the cleared space—etched into his brain as by the instantaneous operation of a photographic lens—was startling, to say the least.
The irregular circle of the opening was crossed through its centre by the hard, level road. Off to one side of the road were the dying embers of a fire, and near the fire lay a bundle, on which a young woman was sitting, her head bowed dejectedly. A turbaned figure stood at a distance from the girl—the figure covered with a red robe and its brown, staring face uplifted. This was Ben Ali. And the girl—who was she? Was it possible, could it be possible, that the girl was Margaret Manners? A wild hope leaped in Motor Matt's breast.