“He didn’t get—the tracing!” cried Chick to the storm-swept grass.
He laughed in exultant delight.
“That Doc!” he exclaimed. “He was in such a hurry that instead of getting the tracing I had folded down on itself, he grabbed out the envelope of stamps I had in that pocket!”
Crowded into a long manila envelope Chick always kept a loose lot of assorted postage stamps, ready to “trade” for new varieties to add to a collection he was making.
In his haste the unknown—but easily guessed—adversary had caught hold of the fat envelope, crushed down as Chick had pinned in the other paper. Released, it had popped up. That had been his trophy. Chick danced and shouted triumphantly.
“He’s welcome to all those Bavarian and Venezuelan duplicate stamps!” cried Chick, making sure that the precious tracing was secure from any chance rip of the pocket allowing it to drop out, “and if he can make anything by selling a hundred cancelled American two-cent stamps, he will do better than I ever did!” He felt elated; but the distressing situation he was in came back to him and his face sobered in the glaring light of the tempest.
“I see the boathouse,” he told himself. “I guess I’d better go back there, and not try to get out of here in this storm.”
By guiding himself in the revealing light from the skies, he managed to get back to the right path, pushing through clutching clumps of the soggy, clinging grass that had hidden the way out but did not wholly conceal the way back. He had heard the Dragonfly, knew it had gone up.
Once more sheltered he shivered in his wet clothing, but made the best of a bad condition by righting an old, rickety chair and turning up the lantern wick till it gave a better light.
“Now,” he remarked to himself, “let’s see—Doc was here, and for all his denials I am sure he had taken the tracing—maybe others! I remember that I was sorting out the drawings of the new, all-metal ship, to make blue-prints in the morning. Scott came in and I guess I was so excited at the prospect of guarding the airlanes that I left those drawings on the big table.”