“You didn’t tell him the emeralds we found were the imitations?”
“No, Sandy. He thinks they were the real ones.”
“What did he say to explain about his passenger not helping him, and then taking the boat?”
“The man came while I was there,” Larry told Dick. “He is named Deane, and he’s a nice-looking, quiet chap. It seems that when he landed with his ’chute, he came down and struck some driftwood or an old log, and it knocked the wind out of him. When he got back strength to cut himself loose, he tried to get to the seaplane but his landing, as I explained the location—well, you saw it when you flew over—his landing was made a couple of hundred yards away. I got the gardener to take me to the place, yesterday, in the hydroplane. There was a big, sunken log close to the torn ’chute.”
“Did he see you, that day?”
“No. He tried to swim over, turned sick, crawled onto some mud that was out of water and stayed there. I guess he fainted. When he managed to get there, we had taken Tommy Larsen away—so he’s cleared!”
“I don’t see that!”
“Why—Sandy! We left with the pilot—I mean, Jeff did. Then the hydroplane came for me, and when he got there, afterward, don’t you see that if he was guilty of anything, he’d have taken the chewing gum?”
“He might have seen that one chunk was gone, suspected that the hiding place was discovered and left the rest——”
“Suspicious Sandy!” Dick laughed. “With twenty-nine lovely emeralds to recover—and a rubber boat to get away in!”