“The firm sent no investigator!”
“Then we have found the man who is guilty!” exclaimed Dick. “He was with Tommy Larsen, hired him to go out to meet the yacht!”
“That seems to be the fact,” Mr. Whiteside admitted. “Before the arrival of the yacht I had no inkling that this fellow had come over; but Mrs. Everdail was so nervous and worried, we decided to fly out to meet the yacht, just as Jeff, who had been retained before Everdail found me, decided to do.”
Sandy had made no contribution to the discussion.
He spoke, at last, quietly.
“I said, early in the adventure, that nothing was what it seemed to be,” Sandy remarked. “This backs me up. But——”
“But—what?”
“Look at this, Mr. Whiteside—we are sure he made a try for the emeralds in the seaplane he hired. He thought they were destroyed—at least he had done all he could to destroy them. Then—why did he make another try?”
“Maybe he wasn’t sure he’d done what he intended,” argued Dick.
“He had ruined them! Wasn’t that enough?”