Let it ride that way.

Would you think, just to look along this ledge, Mary V, that a real military tractor was cached away in it?
Talk about luck! You wait till you see the place I've got for it." Mary V seemed unimpressed.

"If I might venture to advise you on a subject that has no personal interest for me," she countered primly, "I would suggest that you hide most of that gas in one of these niches, and take only one can at a time to wherever your aeroplane is.

I tell you, Bland Halliday is _not_ to be trusted.

You say he was broke and had lost his machine in a wreck or something, and was beating his way to the Coast.
The truth probably is that he lost it some other way--maybe borrowed money on it and couldn't pay it back.