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{{frabfp178.png}} || eagles of the sky ||

conspirators so earnestly talking and gesticulating.
From time to time Jack and his chum would
cast further glances in the quarter where the trim
aircraft lay anchored, bobbing up and down like
a restive horse eager to be off.

What did they fetch on their voyage through
the upper air lanes, coming from some unknown
port--hardly "case stuff," Jack told himself,
since space aboard the Lockheed-Vega crate
would be limited--then it must be either yellow
Chinks trying to crash the gates of the country
that banned some of their race as undesirable
aliens, or possibly the winged courier carried a
batch of precious stones from far-away Paris,
forwarded in a round-about, surreptitious way
and intended to reach a ready market in the
wealthiest country in the world, of course, without
paying the usual heavy customs duty--which
saving alone would likely reach well into six
figures.

The trio seemed to have finished their discussion,
whatever its nature might have been,
for they sauntered down to the edge of the water
where the man in the dungarees proceeded to
embark by means of a small boat that he could
leave secured to the mooring rope of the
amphibian when he took off.

"Making off to pick up another cargo, I
reckon," Jack ventured. "And so this is where

[[178]]

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