"Why, Peggy, what is the matter with you? You look positively--er--er--dowdy!" exclaimed Jess, gazing at her friend after first greetings were over.
"Yes, where is he? We want him to explain the points of this gasolene turkey-buzzard to us," cried Ed. Taylor, one of the gay party.
"I expect him here any minute," rejoined Peggy, and then drawing Jess and Jimsy aside she related to them, in a voice that shook in spite of herself, the mysterious occurrences of the night, and Roy's total disappearance.
"I'm going right over now and ask Fanning if he knows anything about it," announced Jimsy indignantly as soon as the girl had concluded.
"Oh, don't, please don't," begged his sister.
"I don't think it would be wise to, now," put in Peggy.
But Jimsy was not to be shaken in his purpose. Fanning was outside his hangar smoking a cigarette and swaggering about when Jimsy approached him. Perhaps the self-assertive youth felt a bit alarmed at the look in Jimsy's eye as he stepped up, but he assumed an impudent expression and blew out a puff of smoke which he did not try to avert from Jimsy's face.
"Good morning, Fanning," said Jimsy, bottling up his temper at the other's insulting manners, "can you give me a few minutes of private conversation?"
"Hum, well I don't know. What's it about?" inquired Harding more impudently than ever.
"It's about Roy, Fanning," said Jimsy seriously. "I want you to tell me on your word of honor that you don't know where he is."
"Oh, you do, eh? Well, you have an awful nerve to come to me with such questions. How do I know where he is?"
This question was somewhat of a poser for Jimsy. That impetuous youth had approached the other more or less on an impulse, and now that the direct question was put to him he felt that he could not, for the life of him, put his suspicions into so many words.
"Well--er--you see," he said somewhat confusedly, "I had an idea that you might have seen him."
"Well, I haven't, and what's more I don't want to," snapped Fanning aggressively. He was quite cool now that he saw that Jimsy had nothing definite against him in his mind, but only a vague suspicion.
"You really mean that, Fanning?" rejoined Jimsy earnestly. "His sister is terribly worried. He hasn't been seen since last night."