“If you boys were with Jeff you must be all right,” the man advanced, hand extended.
Dick shook it warmly.
Sandy’s grip was less cordial, but he played the part of an unsuspecting youth as well as he could by finishing the handshake with a tighter grip and a smile.
“I thought Jeff might be in the ship, yonder, until he nearly threw us out of control with his propeller wash. Then I thought—he might be——” he hesitated.
“He thought you might be—” Dick smiled as he made the response, winking broadly.
Sandy wished his chum would be more careful.
The man who called himself Mr. Everdail nodded.
“As long as you’re not, and I’m not—what neither of us cared to say,” he turned toward the airplane, “let’s get together! I’m here because my passenger, a buddy of mine, wrenched his shoulder climbing back into the ‘phib’ and we set down here so I could leave him at the fishing shack, yonder, and go back to see what was what. He was in too bad shape to take chances if I felt called on to do any stunts—I thought I could take the air in time to catch that seaplane coming out of the fog, but it fooled me. I already know why you’re here,” he added, “suppose we hop off in Jeff’s ‘crate’ and give a look-see if your friend and my war buddy need any help.”
“You can’t set down if they do,” objected Sandy, his confidence in the man’s possible guilt shaken by his knowledge of Jeff’s war record. “I don’t see, for my part, why Jeff didn’t use the amphibian in the first place!”
“I wondered about that when I got in at the estate, soon after you’d left,” Mr. Everdail—or the man who claimed to be the millionaire—asserted. “I could see he had been working on it, getting it ready—even had the tank full up, but he had disconnected the fuel gauge to fool anybody who might be looking around, I guess.”