“Tell me, have you learned anything new since we left?” he asked.

“Why, yes, we’ve just had a man in here, who had heard about the robbery, and that it was suspected the thieves had escaped by means of the biplane belonging to the Carberry boy.  He thought as how we might be glad to know that he’d sighted a flying machine just after daybreak.”

“Why, yes, that ought to be an important piece of news,” remarked Frank, wondering whether it would corroborate that which the farm hand, Felix Boggs, had already contributed to the fund of knowledge concerning the movements of the fleeing yeggmen.

“I thought it was; and I’m only waiting right now to forward it to the Chief, as soon as he calls me on the wire from Hazenhurst, or some other place where he’s apt to turn Up,” came over the wire from the home town.

“Don’t cut me off, yet, Central!” called out Frank, hastily, as he thought he detected an uneasy movement, which was doubtless a sigh given by the girl, who possibly had her ear to the wire, drinking in what was being said:  “I’m not near done talking yet.  Hello!  Joe!”

“Yes, I’m here, Frank; what more do you want to ask me?” came from miles away; and in imagination he could see Officer Green crouched at the telephone stand, as he remembered it at Police Headquarters in Bloomsbury, feeling the importance of his relations with the public as a genuine guardian of the peace.

“Why, it’s of considerable importance to us to know in which direction the aeroplane was going at the time this party sighted it,” Frank went on to say, “and I hope he told you that.”

“Which he did without my asking,” replied Officer Green, quickly, “though you may be sure I would have done the same before letting him leave, because I was on to the fact that it would be a pretty good pointer.”

“Oh! he thought of it himself, did he?” the young aviator shot back, “well, that was pretty bright of him, and shows that he was a fellow to take notice.  And now, please tell me what he said about the direction in which the biplane was headed, at the last instant he could see it far away in the distance.”

“Exactly southwest, Frank!”

This gave Frank a sudden jar, because it upset the theories he and Andy had been forming concerning the escaping bank robbers.  They had believed the two men had gone almost directly north!

“Southwest, you say, Joe?” he asked, wishing to make assurance doubly sure.

“He said exactly southwest; and as he kept repeating that word a number of times there isn’t a bit of chance that I’d get it mixed.  You can depend on it, Frank, and if you’re away up at Rockford, seems to me you’ll have to make a big change of base right soon, if you want to get in touch with them raskils.”

Frank’s mind was in somewhat of a whirl.  He wondered whether the farm hand, Felix Boggs, could have been mistaken in what he had said; though Andy, too, had seen the biplane, and noted the direction of its flight.  But perhaps this farmer, or whoever he might turn out to be, had discovered the fugitive flying machine at a much later time, after the two men had changed the course of their flight.