Sandy snapped his safety belt.
“Now, Mister Jeff,” he remarked, safe behind the roar of their climb. “Go anywhere you like—life preserver and all. I’ll make the tracks ‘sandy’ for you if you want to stop!” He employed a railway expression, whimsically applying it to the airplane instead.
Dick, Larry and the detective, hearing the roar of the engine, delayed not a moment in their dash around the rest of the inlet shore.
They found that the amphibian was well out on the Sound, saw it lift.
It climbed in a northerly direction.
As they reached the vicinity of its starting point and called and searched for Sandy, they heard the drone of another engine and saw the red-and-green and the white flying lights of what must be Tommy’s craft, also going northerly in pursuit.
“There he goes!” Larry cried. “There must be some place in Connecticut that Jeff and the woman with him know about—remember, Tommy’s passenger had him flying in that direction when the seaplane crashed, and the hydroplane boat went that way—by gracious-golly-gravy! Do you suppose it could have been the woman who ran off with that other life preserver, while Jeff pretended he was too sick to take up a ship?”
“It could be,” Dick replied. “I’m wondering more about Sandy.”
“Let’s go back to the house and make sure he didn’t stop there to see what Jeff had been doing before,” Larry suggested. “He may have missed going with Jeff. If the woman had been along he’d have had no place and they would have left him here. But there isn’t a trace.”
“No signs of any struggle either,” said the detective who had investigated with his flash.