“We can prove it—come on!”
“No need,” declared Sandy. “I noticed while we were on the way to Maine that a new life preserver was on the stern of the yacht. I saw it hadn’t been cut and sewed up, so the emeralds couldn’t be in that—or in any other one on the yacht. And, when Dick made his discovery, just now, I examined the one he found for cuts and marks of being sewed up.”
“I didn’t notice any,” admitted Larry.
“Bang! Another theory gone up in smoke!” Dick was rueful.
“All the same,” Larry commented, “Jeff didn’t put the preserver in his fuselage, and Captain Parks could open his safe and no one else knew how, he declared! There are some things I can’t work out and I wish I could.”
“Let’s make whoever knows anything—er—let’s make them work it out for us,” suggested Dick. “Let’s bait a trap with the life preserver—leave it where it is, get Mr. Everdail to call everybody together, and we’ll tell what we found and what we think is in it—and see what we see.”
Eagerly Larry consented. Sandy nodded quietly.
CHAPTER XVI
THE “BAIT” VANISHES
Simple and clever, Dick’s plan appealed to Mr. Everdail.
His library, that evening, made Sandy think of a “mass meeting of creditors or stockholders who have been tricked.”