“Sure is,” admitted Bob, watchful, quiet, but willing to follow Griff’s unexpected lead.
“Lang says you had your suspicions of me,” Griff grinned, quite pleasantly. Had he, Bob wondered, been “tipped” by Lang to cultivate friendship? Was there something really underneath the friendship of the partner’s son and Bob’s pilot cousin? Was there something else?
“Why, I suppose when we got excited about that broken rudder pull, we thought of anything and everything,” Bob grinned also.
“Well, you thought wrong, friend. Would you try to do any harm to your buddy, Curtis, if you knew he was to fly a certain crate?”
“No,” Bob admitted, honestly and fervently.
“But some other pilot, jealous, maybe—might! Eh?”
Bob had not in any way considered that possible solution. There was another test pilot, not as popular as his cousin. He gave the most serious attention, but Griff evidently felt that he had said enough, adding only: “But I don’t mean to accuse anybody. Let’s forget it. Come on, let’s forget motors and go up and have a look at them little fleecy clouds.” He caught Bob’s arm, after slipping the cylinder head over the pistons of the model with Bob’s help.
“Ever fly a crate?” he asked.
“Not solo!” Bob admitted, “but Lang has let me take the controls six or seven times when he used to take us up, before we came here to——”
“To what?”