“Lang didn’t get any information when we made inquiries about the brown craft at the nearest airport, did he?” Lang, who was quite affable and good-humored, with Griff and his actions forgotten in the new search, answered Curt.
“No, nothing more than you did. They’d never heard of the ship I described.”
“You have got me more puzzled than this whole mystery has,” Al said, grinning. “Lang, the way Bob tells it, you must have been next door to ordering the undertaker, and then you were flying, stunting, as if you’d never eaten fish and ice-cream.”
“That’s psychologically explainable,” Lang liked to use long words, to indicate his superiority. “Under the stimulus of——”
“Never mind!” Al threw up his hands as if to ward off a flow of words too long for his youthful understanding.
“It’s too easy to explain,” Bob said. “Father said Lang got so excited that he forgot to think about himself, and ‘Nature took its course’ when he stopped worrying about his fears.”
“That was it,” agreed Lang. “I accepted the idea, from somewhere, that ice-cream and fish made poison, and while I was flying, when a little gas began to bother me I got scared, and the scare did the rest. Uncle said that half our pains are due to believing what other folks tell us can happen; the rest is from being afraid it is happening to us!”
“That clears it up.” Al became very sober. “I wish the disappearance of Mr. Tredway was as easy to settle.”
“Well, we’ll have to find that mysterious brown ’plane, or get hold of somebody who saw it flying, to tell us which way it went.” Lang rose, stretched, yawning, and sauntered off toward his wheel; the other three, sitting on the cottage porch before supper, for which Lang would not stay, looked after him in silence.
“Do you know what I think?” Curt broke the thoughtful pause. “I don’t mean to criticise, and I don’t want you fellows to get angry, but I have a feeling that Uncle Fred is wrong to have us drop all our suspicions and try to find a crate that could be five hundred miles away, in any direction. My theory is that if we locate the airplane it will be by ‘luck’ and I don’t believe in ‘luck’ because if you think ‘luck’ is going to help, you don’t have to do anything yourself, and if you believe it is going to hinder, there’s no use in doing anything. So,” he grinned, “I believe that everything comes out right only when we do everything we can to make it so—and as long as there isn’t any way to start hunting that brown crate, let’s——”