His face was pouchy and heavy, although the whole appearance of the man
was by no means ill-looking. His cheeks and chin were clean shaven, the
close-cut beard showing bluely under the coarse skin. For the rest, his
hair was black and thick, slightly streaked with gray, and heavy eyebrows
as dark in hue as his hair, overhung a pair of shrewd, gray eyes like
small pent-houses. The man was Eugene Mortlake, the brains of the Mortlake
Company. The individual who had just descended from the automobile,
throwing a word to the chauffeur over his shoulder, was a person we have
met before--Mr. Harding, the banker and local magnate of Sandy Beach,
whose money it was that had financed the new aeroplane concern.




CHAPTER II.

MR. HARDING DECLARES HIMSELF.


Readers of the first volume of this series, "The Girl Aviators and The
Phantom Airship," will recall Mr. Harding. They will also be likely to
recollect his son, Fanning, who made so much trouble for Peggy Prescott
and her brother, culminating in a daring attempt to "bluff" them out of
entering a competition for a big aerial prize by constructing a phantom
aeroplane. Fanning's part in the mystery of the stolen jewels of Mrs.
Bancroft, the mother of Jess and Jimsy, will likewise be probably held in
memory by those who perused that volume. The elder Harding's part in the
attempt to coerce the young Prescotts into parting with their aerial
secrets, consisted in trying to foreclose a mortgage he held on the
Prescott home, with the alternative of Roy turning over to him the blue