Trooping around to the rear, at one corner, Sandy bade them bend down and examine the bolted metal sheaths, large plates of sheet iron, that composed the walls of the edifice.
“I don’t see anything,” objected Dick, dejected that he had not been as quick of wit as had his younger chum. “But, then, you saw it first by daylight.”
“I did, that’s so.” Sandy gave them all the information he had. “I saw a break in the paint, only up one-half of this big plate of iron.
“The bottom half pushed inward,” he explained. “It has hinges fixed to the inner part so it will lift up into the hangar and we can creep in.”
He proved it, and they followed him through the fairly low orifice.
“Now,” he said, as Dick, last to crawl in, cleared the edge of the metal, “see how clever this is—the inside of the two plates it has to come down against are fixed with something soft—I think it’s felt—to keep the plate from clanging. It fits so well that the only way I found out about it was by the sun making the dent in the paint show up a few little bright worn spots of bare metal.”
They complimented him with no trace of envy.
“Do you think Jeff did this?”
“Well, Larry, he said he flew over here at night. He chews gum and we saw how fast he chewed the day he pretended to be forced to land here. He knew all about the emeralds. And the most telling thing against him is that his wife—Mimi—is Mrs. Everdail’s maid and was on the yacht——”
“Mimi his wife?”