“We — er — hid the body,” Simon remarked; “if we’re lucky they won’t find it till the spring.”
Side by side they walked down the cart-track, and turning into the road set their faces to the north. “I’ll say we’re lucky today anyhow,” Van Ryn threw out; “if it had snowed last night we’d not make a mile an hour without snowshoes, as it is the going won’t be too bad on the frozen crust.”
They trudged on for a long time in silence; there was no traffic on the long, empty road, and the intense stillness was only broken by a hissing “plop”, as a load of snow slid from the weighted branches of the firs, and the steady drip, drip, as the hot sun melted the icicles hanging from the trees.
It must have been about half past nine when Rex suddenly stopped in his tracks — he gripped the others tightly, each by an arm, as he exclaimed: “Listen — what’s that?”
A faint hum came to their ears from the westward. “’Plane,” said Simon, quickly. Even as he spoke Rex had run them both into the cover of the trees at the roadside.
“It’s a ’plane all right,” he agreed, “but that engine’s like no other that I’ve ever heard — and I know quite a considerable piece about aeroplane engines.”
All three craned their necks to the sky from the cover of the larches — the deep, booming note grew louder, and a moment later the ’plane came in sight. It was a small, beetle-shaped affair, flying low and at very high speed; it turned north when it was over the road, and passed over their heads with a great roar of engines. In a few seconds it was out of sight, and in a few minutes out of hearing.
“The hunt is up, my friends,” laughed the Duke, a little grimly. “These will be more difficult to throw off the trail than bloodhounds.”
“Somehow, I never thought of being chased with ’planes,” Rex admitted. “That certainly puts us in some predicament!”
“We must stick to the forest,” Simon answered. “Follow the road as long as there are trees, and leave it when there aren’t.”