The Girl Aviators and the Phantom Airship Part 30

"Oh, Peggy!" cried Hester, running to her side.

"See here," began Fanning, swaggering forward threateningly toward the two girls.

"My brother is just 'round that corner," said Peggy, boldly; "he'll be here in a minute. If you don't wish to be arrested for what you did the other night you had better get away from here, Fanning Harding."

A scared look crossed Fanning's face and he turned and fairly took to his heels.

"Now, Hester," said Peggy, kindly, "come with me to my car. It's just 'round the corner."

"Oh, Peggy, I've been a bad, wicked girl, but I'm not a thief. Truly I'm not."

"I believe that," said Peggy, "but what do you know about the disappearance of the diamonds?"

"That I have them all here. Not one is gone," was the amazing reply, and Hester, drawing a handkerchief from her bosom, unfolded it and displayed to Peggy's amazed eyes a glittering collection of gems. In the midst of the flas.h.i.+ng gems gleamed the big ruby which Peggy had once seen Hester so carefully conceal.

"Hester, you have a duty before you," said Peggy slowly; "get in my car and come with me to my home and then tell me all about this mystery which has puzzled us so long."

But the girl shrank back.

"I can't. Oh, Peggy, with you it's different, but before, the others.

Your brother----"

"Poor fellow, he has been under unjust suspicion on account of these very jewels," Peggy reminded the agitated girl.

"Oh, give me time. Not now. I----"

"No, it must be now," said Peggy, with gentle insistence. "Come!"

Something in her manner seemed to strike the girl.

"You'll promise no harm will come to me or my father through this?" she said.

"Is your father very deeply implicated in the matter?" asked Peggy seriously, looking straight into the other's eyes.

"No. On my word of honor, no," was the response.

"Then I'll promise," said Peggy.

"Very well, then, I'll tell you all I know about the matter," said Hester, as the girls got into the car.

An hour later, in the library of the Prescott's home, Peggy, Roy, Jimsy and Jess were gathered listening to Hester's story. Her eyes were red from crying and she hesitated frequently, but her manner showed that she was telling the truth.

On a table lay the glistening jewels. Jess had counted them and found that they were all there.

"I didn't find out about the jewels till one night Fanning, who has always said he admired me," said Hester, with downcast eyes, "gave me that big ruby there. At least he didn't give it to me but he said I could wear it. Of course I had heard about the disappearance of the jewels from the auto, but somehow I didn't a.s.sociate this token of Fanning's with it.

"It was not till a week ago that I learned the true state of affairs. I overheard a conversation of Fanning's with my father in which he threatened him with arrest if he, father, didn't give him some money Fanning said he had h.o.a.rded up. I knew dad didn't have any and I asked him after Fanning had gone to tell me all about it.

"He isn't such a bad man at bottom and when I pleaded with him he told me the whole story. On the day of the jewel robbery, for it was a robbery, Morgan and Giles----"

"Our butler and groom!" cried Jess.

"Yes. Well, they were taking a stroll in the fields and happened along just as the car was wrecked. They knew from servants' gossip that you had been to town to get the gems and when they saw you lying unconscious and the wallet near at hand, the temptation was too much for them and they stole it.

"They determined to hide it in some woods near my father's place; but as they entered them Fanning Harding came along on his bicycle. He saw them enter the woods and became suspicious. Leaning his bicycle against a tree he followed them and saw them bury the gems under a tree which they marked.

"He noted the tree, too, and then, without their seeing him he remounted his motor-cycle and came on to see my father about that business of the hoax aeroplane. He said he wanted to bluff you into selling the b.u.t.terfly to him.

"Well, father agreed, for a fair sum of money, to help him, and we started right into town. At that time I thought it was a good joke, and we were both laughing as we came in sight of the scene of the accident."

"So that's what they were laughing at," thought Roy, recollecting how mystified he had been when he saw them together.

"I don't know whether it was Fanning's manner or what," said Hester resuming, "but my father began to suspect that he might know something about the jewels, and one day he followed him into the woods when he went to see if the jewels were still under the tree. Father made him own up when he caught him red-handed like that, but in the meantime Morgan and Giles also had arrived. Well, the four of them were all equally guilty, so they agreed to stick together and say nothing till the excitement about the loss had blown over. But Fanning in the meantime said that he must have the ruby to let me wear.

"I guess he wanted to show me that he was as rich as he was always pretending to be.

"A few days later they had a terrible fright. Morgan, who carried the leather wallet in his pocket for lack of a better place to put it, dropped it on the porch of the Bancrofts' house where, as you know, it was found before he realized his loss and could recover it.

"When Fanning came back from the aviation meet and began boasting of the mean tricks he had played you and how he had kidnapped Roy, I began to see what a despicable fellow he was. Then, too, he was always threatening dad, and so I decided to make a clean breast of it all and save poor dad any more trouble, for Fanning has dictated to him ever since they shared the secret.

"I went to the wood and found the marked tree I had heard them talk about so often and with the jewels in my hand I started for your home, Peggy, for I didn't dare to go to the Bancrofts'. But Fanning, it seems, had got suspicious, and followed me. He overtook me at the spot where you encountered us."

"Does he know you have the jewels?" asked Roy.

"Not yet," rejoined Hester; "I believe if he had he would have been violent."

"Well, Hester," said Peggy, as the girl concluded her strange narrative, "you have cleared up a puzzling mystery."

"Did you ever hear such a yarn in all your born days?" asked Jimsy.

"And every one of the jewels is there," cried Jess. "I tell you what I'll do, I'll just call up the house and tell mother about it. Won't she be pleased?"

But Mrs. Bancroft was not at home, and----

"Oh, miss," gasped the servant, who answered the 'phone, "we're all upset. Morgan has run off, miss, and so has Giles. They took some of the silver with them. Mary and me tried to stop 'em but they pointed a pistol at us and scared us inter high strikes."

"I'll 'phone the police at once," cried Jess, indignantly. "They might have got off if it hadn't been for that."

But although a good description was furnished, Morgan and Giles were not captured and Mr. Bancroft was not ill pleased.

"They will not venture into this part of the country again," he said, "and we are well rid of such rascals."

Hester, in whom Mrs. Bancroft took an interest after the girl had told her with her own lips her strange story, is now at a girls' boarding school, having been sent there at Mrs. Bancroft's expense.

As for Fanning Harding, his father sent him West soon after the lad's innate rascality had been revealed, and from reports Fanning is working hard to redeem the past and make himself a good and useful man.

"And so the mystery of the phantom airs.h.i.+p and the missing jewels is all cleared up," said Peggy to Jess one day a short time after the events just described had transpired.

"Yes," rejoined her chum, "and the air seems clearer and fresher somehow.