“That takes no effort at all,” agreed Al. His father, knowing Al’s expressive face to be easily read, made no comment.
“While you are at the aircraft plant,” Barney took up the explanation, “you will be working in and around the crates we are building, and you will learn a whole lot about how an airplane is put together, what the parts are for, and how they are assembled. That’s the aviation part.” He emphasized the first syllable, making it “av-iation.” “What do you say?”
“Hooray!” Al was irrepressible.
“Just show us the jobs!” added Bob.
“Of course we will be glad to learn.” Curt was more sober. “That ought to be one of the first things for anybody to do who means to be a pilot.” Mr. Wright nodded and Curt proceeded. “A good grounding in airplane construction will be fine. But—for the detective part—I think we ought to be very serious and consider it carefully.”
“Indeed you should,” agreed Mr. Wright. “There is a deeper mystery to be solved than appears on the surface.”
“I see that,” agreed Curt. “And we must be sure that we will be a help and not a hindrance to you——”
“Fine lad!” broke in Barney.
“Oh, we won’t be a hindrance!” Al was almost bouncing on the divan springs in his eagerness. “We’ll watch, and catch whoever you want caught—maybe learn to fly a ‘crate’ and hop off and fly after him and ride him down and force him to land—and there you are!”
All the party laughed. Al, realizing his childish lapse into silly chatter, laughed, finally, himself, a little ruefully.
“I see what Curt meant, now,” he said, more quietly; but his excitement was hard to hold. “But, anyhow, Mr.——”
“Barney!”
“Anyhow, Barney, we will try to help. We can learn about airplane construction, and that will be fine; but we will give all our minds to watching and listening and doing whatever is wanted of us—we ought to form some kind of club or order, so we would have a head to get orders from father—especially if he is too busy to take part himself.”
“That’s sensible, even if it does seem boy-like to want to have a secret association,” said the older detective.
“Then let’s call ourselves what Barney called us—the Airboys.”
“I don’t like that very much,” objected Bob.
“Well, then, you pick a name.”
“I think the game is more important than the name,” observed the older detective.
“Oh—but with a good name for our band, and a chief, we can know where we are,” urged Al.
“All right,” said Curt. “Let’s humor the youngster!” Al grimaced at him, but subsided as Curt went on. “We are detectives as well as airplane enthusiasts. Why not combine the two in the name of the order we are to form—something about the sky, and something about a police—detective squad——”
“You’ve hit it!” Barney interrupted.
“Hit it? How?”
“Sky Squad!”
“Crickety Christmas!” Curt was as enthusiastic as Bob and Al became on hearing the words. “That’s it!”
“Very well,” Mr. Wright was patient, but a little annoyed. “That being settled, we can take up the important matter of—the case!”
Barney stood up and looked at his watch: also, he frowned a little.
“I wish we didn’t have to waste the time,” he objected. “I’ve went through it all with you, Mr. Wright, and I wanted to take these lads along back to the plant in my car. I wanted to make it look like I just happened on them at the accident—the—well, the accident, and found they were interested in av-iation and brought them back to fill a couple of places in the plant.”
“But how can we solve a case if we don’t know what it is?” remonstrated Bob.
To that Curt nodded and Al bobbed his head rapidly.
“As a matter of fact,” Barney turned to Bob, “I think you would do a whole heap better if you went in to it blind, sort of. If you know all about it, you’ll go out to the plant, all serious and acting like judges or detectives. If you take it the way our youngest friend, Al, does—as a sort of lark—you won’t be suspected so quick.”
“There is something in that,” Mr. Wright admitted. “Al’s face is apt to give him away if he thinks it is really serious. Perhaps——”
“But all the same, Father,” Bob declared, “how will we know what to watch for? How will we know what to report?”
“Watch anything you see. Listen to whatever you hear. Report the whole business!” Barney exclaimed.
“That does seem wise,” Mr. Wright agreed, rising also. “Boys, let’s emphasize the Sky part of your order, and let the Squad side rest awhile. Barney wants to get back to the plant—he is the Manager, I meant to explain. He ought to be at the end of a telephone wire. Let’s say only this: There is a double mystery. First of all, valuable parts have been missed, from time to time, from the plant. That is a minor matter, at present, but your first puzzle is—where have the missing parts gone and who took them? But, as I said, that is a minor affair, because——”
“Somebody has tampered with some of the finished crates,” broke in Barney. “Why, and who—that’s the second puzzle!”
“Suppose you take that as enough for the present,” suggested Mr. Wright. He turned to Barney. “Now these three young lads are alert, obedient, and they will follow instructions to the letter, if you give orders,” he explained. “You have already seen how——”
“How quick they are in emergencies! Yes sirree! All right. I know I can depend on them. Sorry you can’t investigate in person, Mr. Wright—but maybe this way will work out best. Anyhow, nobody at the plant will get suspicious of these boys. They won’t have the brains of older men, like you and me, but they will have quick eyes and wide ears,” he laughed, and beckoned, “come on, lads.”
A little disappointed, feeling that there was more behind the mystery than Mr. Wright had disclosed, but accepting his “lead,” Bob, Al and Curt caught up their caps from the hall rack and followed Barney into the car.
As he drove toward the large manufacturing buildings, the administration offices and the assembling rooms, “dope” rooms and testing field that formed the Tredway Aircraft Corporation plant, Barney kept away from talk about the mysteries.
Instead, he questioned them about the plan for their new organization, suggested secret codes, urged them to elect a “Boss Pilot” and really fired their imaginations to such a point that when they came in sight of the aircraft plant they had almost forgotten their disappointment at not being taken fully into his confidence.
“Well,” he said, when they turned in at the gateway in the high board fence that kept curious wanderers out of the grounds, “here we are, Sky Squad—ready to begin to learn how a crate is started, what the design means, and why certain things have to be planned for—and then, what goes into construction and why, how she’s put together, and then, how to fly the finished crate.”
Sensing from his tone that he wanted them to concentrate, at least outwardly, on airplane construction and to let the other part of their activity be kept quiet, the three comrades agreed by assuming an interest that was by no means hard to pretend, when he took them into the offices, introduced them to some of the men working there, and explained that he was going to put them to work “to learn to build crates from the prop to the tail skid.” Barney, on the way, had learned their special interests. Therefore he put Bob into the engine assembling division where he could learn more about radial engines and the experiments being conducted with oil-burning types. Curt, who was methodical, cool and careful, was assigned to work, at least for awhile, in the wing assembling rooms. Al, being rather young for too much technical understanding, was assigned as helper to a “rigger,” who had been grumbling for some time at the laziness of his present assistant.
Everything was so new and so interesting that the trio forgot the seriousness with which Mr. Wright had assembled them that morning; but as they rode their bicycles toward home at lunch time, Bob imparted information that both startled them and turned their minds back to the serious business really underlying their work.
“I heard some talk, this morning,” Bob told his brother and Curt. “It’s serious, fellows! Missing parts aren’t half the puzzle—and tampering with airplanes isn’t all the rest.”
“What is, then?” demanded Al.
“They think, in the wing assembling room,” Curt put in, “that the airplane fell this morning because something went wrong with Mr. Tredway. The plant owner was delivering that craft himself. They all argue that he must have had a heart attack, or something of the sort, because the airplane was tested and gone over thoroughly. They say he must have been taken sick and lost control. Is that what you mean?”
“I heard some ‘mechs’ saying they think he deliberately made away with himself because of money trouble or something they don’t know about,” added Al. “Maybe trouble with his family, one says.”
“That isn’t it,” Bob said soberly.
“What is?”
“The talk in the engine plant was that some enemy deliberately tampered with that airplane because—because he knew the owner was to fly it.”
“But—” Curt was astounded, “but, Bob—that would be——”
“Yes,” admitted Bob, very gravely, “yes—it would!”
“That makes the puzzle about missing parts and the rest unimportant,” Curt commented, thoughtfully.
“But it still gives us two puzzles to solve,” Al began.
“Well,” corrected Curt, “not two separate puzzles—but a double puzzle, all the same.”
“A double puzzle? I don’t quite see——”
“It’s all one problem,” Bob explained to his younger brother. “But it has two sections. First—was the airplane tampered with as an act against the aircraft corporation or against Mr. Tredway in person?”
“And second?——”
Al did not let Curt complete his deduction. Al had one of his own.
“And second—who did it?”
Full of their horrifying suspicions, Curt and Bob rode on. Al turned off on a side street to deliver a parcel at the home of his new boss, “Sandy” Jim Bailey, the rigger. Al wanted to “make himself solid” with the sandy-haired man whom he already liked and whose grumbling was over now that he had, as he said, “a willin’ and brainy helper.”
Curt ate lunch with Bob. Both were disappointed when Bob’s mother told them that his father had been called out of town on his case, accepted earlier.
Riding back, to rejoin Al, who was waiting at the gate of the plant ground, Bob accosted his brother in some surprise.
“Aren’t you going to have lunch?” he asked.
“I had it,” Al told Bob and Curt. “I delivered that package for Mr. Bailey, and met his son, Jimmy-junior. He’s just about my age, and an awfully nice fellow. He invited me, so I stayed.” He dismounted and set his wheel inside the enclosure. “You ought to see the model airplanes he builds. They’re great!”
“Well, we can’t stop to talk about them now. Mr. Barney Horton left word with the gate-man we are to come into the administration offices to see him.” Bob led the way as he gave the information.
“It will give us a chance to look over the office staff,” Curt explained.
“Be careful, Al,” his brother warned him. “See that you don’t let anybody guess that you see any suspicious things. You show everything on your face, you know.”
“All right.”
Barney greeted them in his private office and introduced them to Mr. Tredway’s partner, Mr. Parsons, who was there.
If his manner was somewhat abrupt and his mind preoccupied, Bob made allowances for that. The man was overcome by the mishap and its sinister outcome.
His restless, seemingly uneasy, and almost furtive actions, however, were not so easy to account for. He seemed unable to meet the eyes of the comrades directly, and appeared to be nervous—even more than the circumstances justified, Bob thought.
Almost on top of the introductions he hurried out, “To get out there where the airplane cracked up and see what’s what!” he explained.
“He takes it mighty hard, he does,” Barney told the youths. “No wonder. He’s Mr. Tredway’s partner.”
“But there isn’t any real certainty that anything terrible happened to Mr. Tredway,” asserted Curt. “He might have jumped clear.”
“Yes, and maybe he was hurt, and managed to swim off to some part of the shore and wasn’t able to go any further. They haven’t searched every possible spot have they?” Al was hopeful.
“I’m afraid they have,” Barney replied. “Furthermore, there are so many soft, muddy sink-holes in Rocky Lake——”
“Do you agree with what the people in the plant are saying?” Al asked.
“I don’t know, my lad. You see, it’s a good idea, having you here. When I’m around the people shut their mouths. But you hear things. What are they saying?”
“They think it’s something worse than missing parts and damage done to the ‘crates’,” Al answered and explained, calling on Curt and Bob for their versions of the talk.
“Hm-m-m. Well, Al, I think—if I were you—I wouldn’t listen to the talk around the plant too hard. Pick it up, of course, but don’t go making any theories of your own out of it.” Barney explained that people buzzed like a lot of flies every time anything happened, and that many of the less sensible ones, liking to be “in the limelight,” worked up almost idiotic theories. Usually, if they were accepted, they led to unjust suspicions, he argued.
“Those scatter-brains only want an audience to listen to them,” he declared. “I’d advise you to listen and let it go out the other ear. Otherwise you may get off onto the wrong notion. Better watch out for suspicious actions, and leave the theories to Mr. Wright.”
“But he’s away,” argued Al.
“Only temporary, I guess. Anyhow, you can tell me what you hear and see, and let it go at that. I’ll communicate with Mr. Wright, and if he thinks there is anything as bad as you say, I can tell you how to go on.”
“All right,” agreed Curt.
Bob and Al added their own agreement to the suggestion.
The designer and the engineering staff were introduced and several hours were devoted to discussions between them, for the benefit of the trio, about airplane design and the things that had to be taken into consideration.
“If my young friends are going to learn airplane building,” Barney asserted, “it will be better if they know how important it is to figure stresses, safety margins, stability and so on, before ever a design gets on paper.”
“I thought all those things came out in the tests, after the airplanes are built,” Al contributed.
“Oh, no,” the designer said. “The tests show us how well we figured and how good the designs are that we created. But we work everything out up here before ever an engine part is cast, a fuselage built or a wing assembled.”
“Any other way would be hit or miss,” Bob agreed.
While they learned the many sections into which an airplane design is divided, and how carefully every curve, streamline, distribution of weight, lift of wing and drag of body must be calculated, Bob decided that no one in the office—at least no one with whom he came in contact—was acting in any suspicious manner.
Able to do nothing about the accident, the staff went on with its accustomed work, sadly, more seriously, to be sure, but steadily.
However, when Bob returned to his engine assembling work, he met a new character, and one of whom he at once formed an unsatisfactory opinion.
By association of ideas Griff Parsons fell under his suspicion because the youth, about eighteen or nineteen, was the son of the man Bob had seen in Barney’s office—Mr. Parsons. Griff, whose handclasp was flabby, whose eyes were even more shifty, whose manner was still more uneasy than his father’s had been, did not impress Bob favorably at all.
He had something on his mind, Bob decided.
Assigned by the engine department foreman to help Griff fit piston rings onto the small pistons, to fit the piston assembly into the cylinders, before the final assembly was made, Bob learned much, and somewhat more about Griff than about the nice adjustments of machinery.
If he turned suddenly, Griff almost jumped, having hard work to control his muscles.
When he spoke of the morning’s accident, Griff, with a scowl, told him to “Keep your mind on what you’re doing! That other ain’t any of your business!”
Bob had hard work not to show his antagonism to the gruff, snappish young man; he was grateful when a summons took him out into the yard.
“I think it is a good idea to have you fellows treated as though all you are here for is to learn about airplanes,” Barney greeted him. “Your Cousin Langley is going to take up the sister ship to the cracked up Silver Flash, this afternoon, and I’m sending all three of you with him. It will give you a chance to understand what the designer told you about how carefully he had estimated the shape and weight of the new type longerons and how some mistake that he hasn’t been able to figure out yet makes the new crate tend to slip off sideways too easily. Langley will show you how he checks and reports, and then you will understand how every one of us works in harmony with every other one, to build our ships airworthy, safe and steady.”
When they joined Lang, who was busy checking his dashboard instruments as the engine warmed up on the line, Bob, Curt and Al did not hook safety belts on. They had every confidence in Lang’s ability to handle the ship, and they were more anxious to be near him so they could talk than to sit along the cabin sides unable to communicate their news to him over the roar of the engine.
As soon as Lang sent the powerful engine into speed, racing down the runway into the wind, lifting the elevators to catch the propeller blast and tip upward the nose, then flying level, just above the ground for those essential few seconds in which flying speed was regained before the climb, Al opened the conversation.
“Lang,” he cried, pitching his voice to offset the noise about them, “did you know what they are saying about the accident?”
Langley nodded.
“This seems to be a test flight,” he said. “But I’m really flying over to the airport, in the city suburbs—Barney wants you along to scatter and pick up talk there.”
“What’s the airport got to do with the mystery?”
“Barney thinks that mysterious crate we saw in the field might have something to do with it,” Lang responded to Curt’s question.
“But Barney told us not to go building theories,” Bob objected.
“He’s older, and better able to see things clearly,” Lang reminded him. “So we will climb pretty high, as if for test dives and slips, and skids, and barrel rolls—you’d better be sure to snap your safety belts—not right now, though. This crate slips pretty sharp. But——”
“I think we’re wasting time,” declared Bob, “flying to the airport.”
“Why?” asked Lang.
“In the first place, the airplane was carefully hidden. No one at the airport would know anything about it. In the second place, I can’t see how it could link in with the crash——”
“Unless its pilot was higher than Mr. Tredway, and flew over him and forced him down—” Al was excited at his deduction. He felt puffed up.
“We would have seen him,” objected Curt, crushing Al’s inflated vanity.
“By the way,” Bob broke in, “let’s talk about something else. If Barney sent you for information, that’s that. Never mind what we think. What I want to do is to get a line on that fellow named Griff—Griff Parsons.”
“Why?” Lang swung in his seat, catching the shift of the crate with almost automatic movements of stick and rudder bar. “What about him?”
“He’s the son of the superintendent, isn’t he?” asked Curt.
“Yes,” Al broke in, “and what’s more, I suspect that ‘super.’ He looks like the sort who could do tricky things. Did you see his eyes?”
“Yes,” agreed Curt. Lang cut the motor, and glided gently, to hear better.
“But what has that to do with Griff?”
Bob, surprised at the sharpness of Lang’s tone, frowned.
“He looks like the same type as his father—same shifty eyes, same restlessness—furtiveness!”
“Say! See here!” Lang became suddenly angry. “You let that young man alone and keep your unfair suspicions off him.”
“Is that so?” Al was angry, too, all at once. “Who are you to give us orders?”
“I’ll let you know who I am if you go on suspecting innocent people. What’s more, I’ll have Uncle Fred yank you out of there so quick——”
“What makes you so hot under the collar?” demanded Bob. “What is it to you if we suspect Griff? Is he an angel that we have to keep our minds off him?”
“He’s a mighty good friend of mine!” snapped Langley.
All of them were angry. Curt, not related to the others, felt that he ought to intervene between the quarreling cousins, but something in the unreasoning fury of Lang’s next words stopped him.
“See here!” Lang forgot he was piloting an airplane, and swung around on his seat, his face working. “If you keep on, if you bother Griff, or try to trail him, or anything—I’ll have Uncle Fred yank you out of there so quick——”
“Oh! Look out!”
Forgotten, the airplane, with no guide, answered automatically to the thrust of Lang’s foot on the rudder bar as he whirled on his cousins. The shift of the rudder swung the nose, and Lang’s instinct made him operate it to make the ailerons bank the ship, but she had almost lost flying speed, the all important velocity which gives the wings lifting qualities.
Sickeningly the airplane tilted. Al, Bob and Curt, not strapped fast, tumbled sidewise, and the unstable craft tipped down.
Abruptly, realizing the slip and the danger, although they were quite high, Lang “kicked rudder” sharply.
To his dismay, there came a dull, snapping thump and one end of the rudder bar worked free.
The cable had either come loose or had snapped!
And, with its unstrapped occupants in a huddle, on the side which was lowermost, the lower wingtip turned straight downward, the other pointed toward the sky, the windowed sides were in the position of floor and ceiling—and the airplane began to fall!
“Three thousand feet,” Lang’s eyes consulted the altimeter. “Three——”
Momentarily he lost his “nerve” and faltered.
Bob, on the instant, acted!
In an emergency, thoughts leap through some minds quicker than lightning crosses the sky.
Bob’s mentality was of that type. Whether his mind worked through what is called instinct, or whether he put together many things he had learned about airplanes, or whether he worked through a chain of reasoning from beginning to end in a fraction of a second does not matter.
The important thing was his action.
In an airplane which is falling with wingtips toward sky and earth, the ailerons which usually tilt it are practically useless, because it has no forward movement sufficient to bring the air against the leading edges of the wings for lift, or to press against the ailerons to cause them to function properly.
Furthermore, when the ship is falling “on its side” the elevators which in level flight serve to lift or to drop the nose, are no longer elevators; they, because of the position of the ship, are really the rudders, while the rudder, because it is then parallel to the ground, assumes the position and functions of the elevators.
But Bob knew, in a flash, from the action of the ship, from the free movement of the rudder bar, that the rudder cable had come loose or had snapped.
Bob knew, furthermore, that unless he could drop the nose, “give her the gun,” and thus—by partly diving instead of falling sideways, and by partly using the propeller pull—could regain flying speed, Lang could not get the craft under control and save them from a crash.
There were seconds, not more, between them and eternity!
That rudder must be operated.
It must be done before they came too close to earth to make the maneuvers, necessary to a safe landing, possible.
Even as he called to Lang, “Give her the gun!” his hand smashed through the thin side of the cabin wall, down where it came together with the sturdy, but light plates of the flooring.
Because the airplane fell on its side, the side he smashed was under him, the flooring was at his side, acting as the sidewall.
He knew that if the lower of rudder cables in the ship’s present position was broken he could get it there; if the upper one was severed its end would have dropped down, perhaps caught on a longeron or on a longitudinal fuselage brace; he might be able to catch hold of it.
It took but a second to thrust his hand through the cabin wall, to grip the edge of a floor plate, to rip it from its temporary fastenings which were not completed until the tests made it sure that no further adjustments under the flooring would be necessary.
Thus disclosed, he could see the under framework of that part of the fuselage.
Braced so that his body would not crash down through a window, he looked, and grappled for the cable end. His fingers touched cable!
For all the exigency of their desperate situation he tugged very gently and was glad. That cable was fast! It might lead to the elevators, the ailerons. Anyway it was not the right strand.
Again he felt under the edge of what was in the ship’s position, the plate above the one ripped away. His fingers touched a loose strand.
“We’re all right!” he panted, grasping the plate and tugging it partly free so that his arm could go further in and secure in his gripping fingers the loose cable end.
In the brief time that this had taken, Lang had obeyed the call for gas to be fed to the engine. Idling, it roared into its power pulsations.
There was an instant of fear in Bob’s mind.
If the cable he held were pulled and it depressed the rudder, which would act in their position as an elevator or “flipper” acts, all would be well. In that case, the propeller blast striking the rudder airfoil would push the nose downward, and the ship would begin to dive; then the air, rushing against the leading edge of the wings, would cause them to be operative, even in their sidewise position, and with the dive and the engine pull giving flying speed, they could then maneuver.
But if the rudder went upward, it would lift the nose. Already deprived of all but the little speed the engine had picked up, the blast on the rudder, lifting the nose, would cause another stall, and they would perhaps fall too far to get the other side of the rudder cable before he could help it.
“I’ve got the end of the cable,” he cried. “Set yourself, Lang!”
Lang, with a swift glance toward the windows, which faced the earth, saw the ground seeming to leap upward toward them. Above was the silent sky. There was a little margin of time—if——
“Pull easy!” Lang shouted.
“Pull easy!” Instantly Curt relayed the message.
“Easy!” cried Al.
Bob tensed his muscles, braced himself, gave a gentle tug and held it.
The nose lowered.
“Hold it!” shrilled Al, relaying Lang’s relieved cry.
The rudder had sent the nose a little downward, the drop changed into a dive.
“Can you pull the rudder further?” The message came swiftly from Lang, through Curt and Al, to Bob, almost out of one mouth before the other said it, so quick was the response.
“Yes!” Bob did so.
Slowly the ship swung onto a more level keel, and while Bob clung with fingers that were growing numb from his excitement, the ship got flying speed, in a sort of descending spiral, the elevators could again be made to lift the nose as flying speed was attained, and the ship was in control.
The signal to ease off did not come at once. Lang preferred to hold his present bank and circle, while he looked over through the lower cabin windows to sight their position.
In that brief time Curt, also keyed up, had located the loose end of the cable that led from the rudder bar; with a piece of strong twine he made a splice, securely reaved onto the loose end, led it to the free end in Bob’s fingers, and, since the rudder was hard down and could be held there by grasping further along the cable, Bob shifted his grip until Curt was able to get his twine, doubled, fast on that part of the cable also. Then, while Lang held his rudder bar steady, Curt tightened gently until the ends of the severed strand were almost touching, made several knots that could not slip—and the entire control of the ship was in Lang’s hands again!
They did not feel like going on to the airport, but Curt, always cool, generally far-seeing, urged that they do so.
“If we go back, we’ll have to tell about this, and create new excitement and talk,” he counseled, and Lang saw the good sense of the idea.
“We’ll go on, and land at the airport,” he agreed, above the sound of his motor. “After we get over our excitement we can think better.”
When they got there, and Lang telephoned the aircraft plant, the trio, outside the booth, heard him ask for Griff.
Moodily, sorrowfully, with common consent, they moved away.
One and all they linked Griff’s uneasiness and Lang’s curious anger and immediate call to the one he called “a very good friend.”
It was bad enough to suspect Griff. But Lang—Bob’s cousin——
That was dreadful!
Moodily walking back toward their airplane, around which a group of handlers and mechanics watched one assigned to make sure the cable splice was entirely safe, Curt spoke quietly.
“Bob, maybe we should have waited to hear what Langley said to Griff.”
“No!” Bob was almost snappish. “No!”
“I hate to suspect your cousin of anything wrong,” Curt assured the brothers earnestly.
“Not any more than I hate it,” Al retorted. “But you’ve got to look at what you see and hear what comes to your ears.”
“All the same,” counseled Curt, hoping to lighten the burden of unhappiness for his chums, “I’d go slow. You know—they may be just friends, close ones. There may not be anything wrong about Griff. We are likely to be suspicious, because that’s what we are there for.”
“But look!” objected Al. “The cable snaps. Now that’s almost a spick-span new crate. That cable ought not to fray apart—it could never wear so soon. It was—filed or scraped.”
“But that doesn’t involve Griff,” urged Curt, hoping, if he lightened their suspicion of Griff the cousin who was his friend would be less suspected. “He works in the engine department. Anyhow, he knew his friend, your cousin, would fly the ’plane. He’d never——”
“Sh-h-h!” warned Bob.
Langley, looking very glum, came up to them.
“I talked to Griff,” he said. “Told him what had happened. He was flabbergasted.”
“You ought to have reported to Barney—or to Mr. Parsons,” Bob declared.
“Why did Griff have to know anyhow?” Al was impulsive and did not care if he started a fresh quarrel or not. The conclusion he jumped to was that an angry Langley would disclose “secrets.”
“I wanted to warn him against—you!”
Langley walked away. But they did not let him get far ahead of them as they approached the airplane.
The mechanic who had been in the cabin greeted them.
“Funny about that cable,” he stated. “How did it ever get so much use that it wore through? You must kick rudder every two seconds.”
“Was it worn through—or—” Al began. Curt prodded his ribs very sharply. As Al became quiet Curt asked a louder question to distract the man from pursuing that “or—” and learning their fears.
“Or did it break at the rudder bar?” he asked.
“It chafed against the transverse brace it ran under,” the mechanic responded. “They ought to have an eyelet or something for a guide—a small pulley would be best, with an eyelet to keep the cable from slipping out of the groove and chafing on the solid part of the pulley.”
“We’ll report that,” said Curt. “A rudder is pretty important.”
“I’ll say,” replied the mechanic.
The plates had been fastened back into their light frame, being of sturdy construction and not permanently attached, they had come away clean and were put back easily. Only the cracked hole in the panels gave outward evidence of the recent near catastrophe.
“Suppose we let on that was an accident, that I put my foot through the panel,” suggested Curt. “Repairing it only means putting in a new section there—it ought not to cost much and I have some money in my savings account to pay for it.”
“Let’s all put together,” urged Al.
“Why not tell the truth?” snapped Langley.
“Don’t you want to find out who endangered you and the rest of us?”
Lang considered Bob’s sharp phrase. “Yes,” he said finally.
The best way to do that, argued Curt, was by watchful waiting, not by putting the possible malefactor on his guard. “They could,” Al declared, “see who makes the repair, and I can watch, being out near the ’planes, and see if anybody takes a special interest in the floor and the cables.”
Langley agreed rather bruskly and went off to take up his inquiries about the brown airplane they had seen in the field.
“Watchful waiting!” repeated Bob, thoughtfully. “That’s a good slogan. Let’s ‘watchful wait’ to see what Griff does—and how Lang acts—and if either of them acts queerly when they are with Griff’s father.”
“Just what makes you suspicious of him—the father?” Curt asked, more to check up his own theories than for information. “He’s Mr. Tredway’s partner, you know.”
“I suspect him,” Al declared, “because he’s the kind that looks suspicious, with his quick action and his sharp talk and his shifty eyes.”
“And Griff is exactly the same in every way,” supplemented Bob.
“Then we have two suspects to keep tabs on,” agreed Curt.
“Three,” corrected Al.
“Let’s leave Lang out,” urged Curt.
“All right—we won’t watch him. But it’s bad, because we can’t talk over plans and tell him everything. There will be—a—a——”
“Strained relationship,” suggested Bob.
“Yes,” agreed Al.
“Well, pretend to be the same as ever, but keep your ideas to yourself,” Curt begged. “And—we’ll be watchful waiters.”
During the next week that was the only policy they would have been able to adopt. Nothing happened at all.
Al still carried parcels, on occasion, for rigger Sandy Jim Bailey, and improved his acquaintance with Jimmy-junior.
Mr. Wright’s absence from town during the entire week prevented them from consulting that detective. The comrades were thrown on their own resources.
“I don’t see that watchful waiting has gotten us very far,” commented Al as they rode home for lunch, Curt with the brothers, at noon on Saturday. The day’s work was over.
“We know a little more than we did,” Curt reminded him. “I’ve had talks with some of the boys I know, and I’ve found out that the ones Griff associates with aren’t thought well of. And Bob has trailed him, several evenings, in spite of Lang’s warning to Griff, and Bob has told you that Griff always gets away on his motorcycle and goes somewhere that we can’t locate yet. But we know his character isn’t very high class, and his father still acts uneasy and preoccupied. So we have gained that much.”
“What good is it?” Al was unconvinced. “It doesn’t say what happened to Mr. Tredway. It hasn’t told us who is taking airplane parts. It doesn’t explain who tampered with the rudder cable in the Golden Dart—or why.”
“No,” Bob admitted. “That’s true, it doesn’t. But it’s the best we can do, for the present. And we never know when something may ‘break.’”
“Let’s keep on learning airplane technique,” suggested Curt. “We know we’ve gained there, anyhow.”
“Yes,” Al nodded. “I can name the different parts of a biplane without stumbling over any of them.” He did, “—fuselage; engine; propeller; upper and lower wing; cockpit and its cowling; struts and landing and flying wires; stabilizer, fin, elevator, rudder; ailerons; tail skid; and landing gear that Sandy calls the ‘trucks.’”
“Correct,” agreed Curt. “And they comprise five groupings, each one having a special purpose—the fuselage, the supporting structure for everything else. Everything is attached to that. Then——”
“The second group,” Bob cut in, “is the supporting surfaces, the wings. They sustain the whole weight in the air, and the flying wires take the lift of the wings as the air sustains them, and communicates it, with the struts helping, to the body.
“Well, in a way,” Bob changed the statement slightly. “The flying wires are to take the stress, and if it wasn’t for them the wings would tilt up at the ends or tips, like a ‘V.’ The flying wires take the stress in flying the same as the landing wires take the weight of the wings in landing; without the landing wires, when the ship came down the wings would crumple down over the crate like the two slanting sides of a tent or like the ‘V’ upside down.”
“Yes,” Al showed his knowledge, “and then there is the control group, the ailerons at the backs or trailing edges of the wings, to be moved upward or downward, to tilt the ship; and the rudder, to turn it sideways—and if it’s flying on its side the rudder is performing the office of the elevators and they of the rudder, because when it’s flying level the elevators are to tip its nose up for a climb or down for a glide; then there’s the fin and the stabilizers that give it balance and help to hold the whole ship in whatever position it is placed by the movable controls I just mentioned.”