“Well!” Garry pushed past the crowd assembling around Don and Chick, “Don, do you hear what they’re saying in the crowd?”
“Yes,” admitted Don, looking around.
“We’re elected,” muttered Garry. “They say the Ghost of Mystery Airport is caught!”
Mr. McLeod, behind him, frowned.
“I wish you boys had shown some sense,” he told the trio. “It’s all very fine to discover methods, and to tell others how mysteries are worked; but it is pretty dangerous to show off when mail is being brought in. That man in the other ’bus is a postal inspector, by his looks—or an army man out of uniform.”
“I know we were hasty,” Don said ruefully, “but—we will have to face the music.”
“I don’t think we’ll like the tune very much,” Garry observed.
“No,” agreed Chick, “Garry’s pretty sure to lose his flying license, at the very least.”
The curt summons delivered by the man who came to them from the last land ’plane to set down, shoving his way through the crowd without ceremony, proved that there was basis for their uneasiness.
“Well, young man,” the newcomer snapped, “you and your scapegrace friends will come with me, unless there is some one here, in authority who will guarantee your safe arrival before the New York Chief of my department at nine in the morning. You can’t fool with mail, trying your tricks and stunts to delay the mails—especially air mail!”