“Thanks for the way you handled that,” Mr. McLeod remarked as the crowd, looking a trifle sheepish, thinking itself hoaxed into attending and helping along a publicity drive, melted away.
“Thanks for the ‘ad,’” Toby chuckled. “I saw a way to turn it to my own advantage—but, of course, I thought of it to get our young friends out of hot water.”
“Thanks, a lot,” Garry said. “They might have thought it would be a good time to give some harum-scarum fellows a ducking—or worse.” He became very earnest. “But, honestly, Mr. Tew—and all of you folks—” Doc, the handlers, the control chief and many friends, heard his statement at the hangar door, “—we meant only to try to lay the ghost of the spectre in the clouds, that was all, by showing how it was done.”
He was believed, and presently the group dwindled to the chums, the airport executive, Doc and Toby.
To their great surprise they were joined by the pilot whose liking for “spooks” had started the chums into the whole affair.
Limping badly, with a heavy swathing of bandages visible even under his loose trousers, on his left thigh, Scott came slowly in.
“Well!” he greeted them, “I see there’s been some excitement.”
“Why, Scott! We thought you were pretty bad when Uncle took you to the hospital last night. Glad you came out so quickly,” cried Doc.
“Oh—I had a good ‘break,’” the pilot said, but his face showed his strain, for he winced and drew wrinkles around his set lips as pain seemed to attend each halting step.
He had been grazed, he told them, by the flying propeller, when it had flung itself loose from its shaft on the Dart, the night before. The doctors and nurses, he explained, had patched him up—“Battered, but not busted!” was his summing up of his condition.