Their arrival, and the story he gathered about the swamp, and the odd apparition haunting the air, had made the old, wise medicine man wonder, John added. He had deduced, sagely enough, the real motive for the apparition. It was, as the Indians believed, no ghost-scare devised to ruin the airport owner and his venture.
“We decided,” John stated, “the ghost was being made to create a big scare among pilots and to keep them away from the swamp!”
“I think you are right!” Garry exclaimed. “I see it, now! If the flyer wanted to study that swamp—he’d do it from the air. He wouldn’t want other pilots coming along to catch him flying to and fro—but, at that—how would he know what to look for—and where?”
“The camera!” the Indian said. “Father went to his cupboard, where the map was stored, and found that while it had not been stolen, actually, it had been displaced. He had it under some other papers——”
“Was he sure he remembered just how it had been left?” asked Don.
“I got memory—never forget!” the old medicine man remarked briefly.
“Yes,” John agreed, “Father knew just how it had been—and it was not the same. It had been found—the look showed scratches where it had been picked, and then re-locked. That pilot had taken a picture of the chart!”
“That accounts for the tracing on thin paper!” Chick saw a clue. “He had to enlarge it, to study it, if he made the picture with a vest-pocket camera. That film isn’t much larger than the film in a motion picture camera—he enlarged it, and from the enlargements on tracing paper, he copied it—and then camouflaged the map on the tracing by adding the wings and struts and frames. And—then he slipped in the hangars and removed the tracing from Mr. Vance’s drawer, and took the blue-print I had made—so we haven’t got far, after all.”
“No,” Garry agreed, and turned once more to John.
“What did you do about it?”