Facing them was a wide opening, sufficiently spacious to permit airplanes to be rolled through: in grooved slots at either side the door, made of joined metal slats working like the old-fashioned roll-top desk, could be raised or lowered by a motor and cable led over a drum.

Sandy gave in, and as they walked toward the hangar they discussed the stories that had come out in the news about queer, ghostly noises heard by passers-by on the state road late at night, accounts of the fright the estate caretaker had received when he investigated and saw a queer, bluish glow in the place and was attacked by something seemingly uncanny and not human.

The door, when they arrived, was seen to be partially open, lifted about three feet.

“There’s an airplane in there—it looks to be an amphibian—I see pontoons!” Larry stated.

“Let’s go have a look at it,” suggested Dick.

“Don’t!” Sandy spoke sharply. “Don’t go in there!”

Larry and Dick straightened and stared in surprise. It was very plain to be seen that Sandy was not joking.

“Why?” asked Larry, in his practical way.

“Think back,” said Sandy. “When school vacations started and we began to stay around the new Floyd Bennett airport that had opened on Barren Island, Jeff had his ‘crate’ there to take people around the sky for short sight-seeing hops, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” admitted Larry, “and we got to be friendly because we are crazy to be around airplanes and pilots, and Jeff let us be ‘grease monkeys’ and help him get passengers, too.”

“Surely he did! But when we brought them to go up with him, did he take their money and fly them around, the way others did? Or——”

“No,” Dick admitted. “He generally had something wrong with the crate, or the wind was too high, or he had stubbed his left foot and met a cross-eyed girl, or saw a funeral passing, and thought something unlucky might happen from those signs.”

“Do you really believe anybody can be as superstitious as Jeff tries to make us believe he is?”

“Yes. Lots of pilots are—they think an accident will happen if anybody wears flowers in their ‘planes——”

“All right, Larry, 

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