"How did Motor Matt know where we had gone?"
"I put him next, Jurgens."
"How did you know?"
"Why, as for that, when you put me down and out, there in New Orleans, Bangs' coat dropped from the car. When I corralled my wits I found it. There was a notebook in the pocket and that gave me a line on your rendezvous."
"Bangs!" snapped Jurgens. "We ought never to have hooked up with him. He's a sot and a bungler."
"You're a bungler yourself, Jurgens. If you had treated me square, instead of trying to hog the whole bag of tricks, I might have kept right on with you and turned into a promising crook. On the whole, it's a fine thing for me you let Whistler give me that bump. I was at the turning point, and that rap on the block gave me a shove in the right direction."
"You'll do time for stealing those diamonds if my evidence counts for anything!" snapped Jurgens.
"But it won't. You're fooling yourself with a pipe dream when you let your little two-by-four run in that groove. Who was it shot at the air ship? Talk a while about something sensible."
"Bangs, again!" snorted Jurgens. "He was moseying along by the bayou and saw the air ship overhead. He blazed away, making a good shot. That was all right, but where Bangs was wrong was in hustling off to tell Whistler and me and not waiting to find out what damage he had done. As soon as I got Bangs' story, I made for the bayou. I saw the air ship, all right, smashed to smithereens in the top of a live oak, but King, Ferral and the Dutchman had vanished."
"Den you vent to hunt for us," bubbled Carl, "and got yourself in some drouples."