“Let’s open it!” urged Sandy, all his former suspicions gone in his eagerness. “We can take out the emeralds and then put the empty doughnut in place.”
“No. We won’t tamper with it. I want to deliver it, intact, to Atley Everdail. His is the right to open it.”
“Isn’t it a risk?” Sandy objected.
“No. Dick will watch inside the hangar, Larry and I by the doors. Sandy will be in or near the amphibian. If Jeff is the culprit we’ll soon know—if he had a confederate we will discover that, perhaps, also.”
“If it isn’t Jeff at all—and I hope it won’t be,” Larry said, “if it turns out to be the seaplane passenger who discovered that in his terror he chute-jumped with the wrong belt, and he comes to hunt the right one——”
“Or if it is Captain Parks, or his mate, or a seaman—” Mr. Whiteside began to chuckle as he led them toward the dark loom of the hangar, “Or—even if it turns out to be—me!—”
“Did you walk under a ladder, today, sir?” asked Sandy seriously.
“No. Why?” The man stared at him through the night. “What makes you ask?”
“Because Jeff did—he walked under a ladder where a man was pruning a tree as he came to the gate of the estate next door.”
“Hm! Then—if he’s as superstitious as he makes believe,” Larry laughed, “he’d better watch out.”