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CHAPTER V
PREPARATIONS
When it was all over I read in the papers that I had been planning a trans-Atlantic flight for a year. I read much else that was equally imaginative. In fact, the press introduced me to an entirely new person. It appeared that I was a demi-orphan; my father, I learned, had been dead four years—I saved that clipping for him. One day I read that I was wealthy, the next that the sole purpose of my flight was to lift the mortgage from the old homestead—which there isn't any—I mean homestead.
The truth about the chance to fly was as amusing as the journalistic scenarios. The opportunity came as casually as an invitation to a matinee, and it came by telephone. As a matter
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