His cousin gave a whistle.

“Whew! important, if true!” he vouchsafed, tersely.

“That sounds as if you had some trouble believing it?” chuckled Frank.

“Well, considering what I saw myself, I’d have to know the name of this party first, before I’d believe anything he said,” Andy went on.

“Oh!  You know him, alright; fact is, we were speaking of the same not a great while back,” Frank observed, quietly.

“Don’t make me start in guessing, Frank, because we’ve been talking of a dozen people; but tell me right out who it is,” Andy pleaded.

“The pilot of the Mermaid, Andy!”

“Gee!  Do you mean Todd Pemberton?” exclaimed the other.

“Just him and no one else.  Why, he was that anxious to let the police know he had seen an aeroplane steering away straight into the southwest early this morning, that as soon as he warped his boat to the wharf, Todd, like a public-spirited citizen, hiked away for Headquarters as fast as he could run, hardly waiting long enough to understand about the bank being robbed, and Percy’s biplane being used by the thieves as a means of making a quick get-away.”

Andy turned his head and looked in his cousin’s face.

“Public-spirited citizen go hang!” he said, contemptuously.  “After what we saw, Frank, it’s easy for us to understand just what it was made Todd want the police to do all their hunting away off in the southwest.”

“Yes, what do you think was his object?” asked Frank, as he held the aeroplane just about five hundred feet above the level ground, covered by forests, as in most places around to the north of Bloomsbury, though occasionally they ran across farms that looked like oases in the dessert.

“Why, that’s as plain as the nose on my face,” replied Andy, “and nobody ever had any trouble about seeing that, I guess.  Todd wanted to get in a little bit of assistance for his friends, the hoboes who looted the bank; and he could do them the best thing ever by turning suspicion in nearly the opposite quarter.  If Chief Waller could be assured that the last seen of the biplane before it vanished in the distance it was heading into the southwest, of course he’d take all his men off in that direction; and the bank robbers, hiding perhaps around the northern end of Lake Sunrise, would be free to do whatever they wanted.  Do I hit about the same guess that you do, Frank?”

“You’ve just echoed what I had in mind,” returned his cousin, “only I’ve had more time to think it over, and perhaps gone a little further than you could.”

“As how?” demanded the other, promptly, just as Frank knew he would.

“Why, you know, it struck us as queer that these fellows should want to hang out within twenty miles of the town where they’d just made a successful raid on the bank.  It would stand to reason that they’d be only too glad to cut for it, after getting possession of Percy’s fine new aeroplane, and by keeping on north, reach Lake Ontario, and perhaps fly across to Canada, where they’d be safe.”