“No,” he replied. “If they do, they can find me soon enough. I’m off to get into dry duds. I didn’t waste time riding around the end of the lake. I dropped my motorcycle and ran in to see what I could see.” He smiled, sadly. “I guess I was too late, even at that.”
Thanking them as he climbed onto the rocky shore, he pushed the bow of their boat into the stream again, and watched them turn in the still water.
“You can tell the police I didn’t think they’d need me right away,” he called. “I’m passing through this section, and I don’t want to be held up and kept here for any sort of investigation. You saw as much as I did. Well—goodbye!”
He turned, and as they heard the “crash ’bus” arriving from the airport in a nearby city of which they lived in the suburbs, Bob rowed his two young companions back toward the airplane.
The police came, and many others with them and after them.
Preparations were made to drag under the craft, and to lift it, if tackle could be gotten into suitable position, to see if any trace of the missing pilot could be discovered.
Nothing further developed, however, and one of the “mechs” with the airport ’bus told Bob it would be afternoon before they got the monoplane out. The three comrades had given the police lieutenant all the information they could. There was a healthy appetite making itself felt among them.
“Let’s go home,” Bob suggested.
“Wait, all of you,” urged the reporter for a small suburban daily. “I’ll make heroes of you yet.”
Protesting that they had done nothing heroic and that they did not want to be “put in the paper” for doing their duty, Curt and Bob refused to answer any questions. The police, Bob said, might not want information published. He did not know, but he would prefer not to talk. “Oh, I see—there is a mystery, then!” the reporter declared. “Well, if you won’t talk—” he began to write swiftly.