The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Mystery CrashThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Mystery CrashAuthor: Van PowellRelease date: August 15, 2017 [eBook #55359]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MYSTERY CRASH ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Mystery CrashAuthor: Van PowellRelease date: August 15, 2017 [eBook #55359]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: The Mystery Crash
Author: Van Powell
Author: Van Powell
Release date: August 15, 2017 [eBook #55359]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MYSTERY CRASH ***
He caught the gunwale and pulled himself up and into the boat with Curt’s aid. (Page 21)
He caught the gunwale and pulled himself up and into the boat with Curt’s aid. (Page 21)
THEMYSTERY CRASHBy VAN POWELLAirplaneTHE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANYAkron, OhioNew YorkCopyright MCMXXXIITHE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANYMade in the United States of America
By VAN POWELL
Airplane
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANYAkron, OhioNew York
Copyright MCMXXXIITHE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANYMade in the United States of America
“See that! Look! There’s our mystery!”
Bob Wright pointed from the cabin window of the monoplane. Al, his younger brother, peered toward the ground.
“What? Where? Show me any mystery!”
To make himself understood above the roar of the engine, Bob put his lips close to Al’s ear while Curt, Bob’s closest friend, also a passenger, bent close to catch his words.
“It’s a mystery all right—but you can’t see from here. It was in that cornfield we passed over.”
“What’s the mystery?” Curtis Brown’s eyes snapped with eagerness.
“Why did you say ‘our’ mystery?” Al asked at the same instant. Bob answered both at once.
“The mystery is: Why is an airplane hidden in the grove at the edge of a cornfield? Our mystery because we discovered it and because, ever since we helped father solve his detective cases and took an interest in aviation we have wanted to solve something that connects up puzzles and ’planes!”
“A ‘crate’?” Al stared out. “I don’t see it.” Bob was not there to reply. He moved up to the pilot, Langley Wright, his cousin, who was test pilot for the Tredway Aircraft Corporation and who was giving this beautiful “job” its final test and check flight.
“Lang,” he said, “I saw an airplane in the grove at the edge of that last field we crossed. Circle back, won’t you?” As Lang turned from jotting down some data, Bob added: “The ship hasn’t crashed. It’s in among the trees—backed in. I caught a glimpse of it, and then the trees hid it. I’d like to have another look.”
“Surest thing you know.”
Lang, twenty-one and an expert flyer, grinned at his sixteen-year-old cousin, dipped ailerons, kicked rudder and with a good “bank” as the craft swung its nose around, he deftly counteracted a tendency of the ship to go into a sideslip, jotted down some information on his data board and then looked out of his window.
“There’s the field,” he said. “I don’t see a crate there!”
“That’s why I told Al and Curt it’s a mystery,” Bob replied. “The ship has been hidden! Its tail is in between trees, and the wings are under trees with high branches. I don’t believe it could be seen from the highway that runs by the field. I know it wouldn’t be noticed from the air, except by chance.”
“Hm-m-m!” grunted Langley, “I’ve heard of hidden treasure, but this is the first hidden ’plane——”
“There!” Bob pointed past Lang’s face.
“I see it!” Lang continued to circle, in order to get another sight of the mysteriously hidden ship. As they came around again Al and Curt located it also.
“It’s staked down!” Al, although he was the youngest, not much past thirteen, had the quickest eyes of the group. “I saw the stakes, and rope over the wing-tips.”
“The engine was covered over,” added Curt.
Lang spiraled down to pass as close as the trees would allow.
They saw nothing more, however, and after Lang had refused Al’s impulsive request to “set down” in the small field, the party flew on to the landing field of the Aircraft Corporation where Lang had some alterations to report in the adjustment of the ship’s balance before it could be delivered to its purchaser.
“Let’s get our bicycles and ride out to the field,” urged Al, as the trio of comrades alighted beyond the aircraft plant.
They pedaled the three miles in record time.
“I was right,” commented Bob, as they left the wheels beside the highway and climbed over the high rail fence enclosing the stubble where corn had recently been cut down. “You can’t see the airplane from any place along the highway——”
“Unless it’s gone,” interrupted Al.
“No!” Curt was a little ahead. He waved his arm. “There she is!”
They crossed the rough field, toward the mysterious, silent object of interest.
“I can see from here it hasn’t cracked up,” Curt declared. “Not a scratch on it and the landing gear is perfect.”
“Whoever flew it must be clever,” declared Bob. “Look at the narrow strip of open, smooth ground he had to ‘set down’ on. If he hadn’t been able to shoot the field so as to get in on that long, smooth side, with only a few feet clearance, he’d have come down in rough stubble.”
“Yes, he must have been good,” agreed Al. “And it proves that he was forced down. Any sane pilot would have gone on to a better spot.”
They reached the airplane, a two-winged model with a radial motor and small wings; it was a speed ship, trim and mystifying with its dark, brown body and airfoils freshly done.
Curtis, whose age was midway between Al’s thirteen and Bob’s sixteen, clambered onto a landing wheel and observed the instruments on the dash. “Plenty of gas, and oil,” he remarked. Then his companions saw his face change.
“Look!” As he called he leaped from his perch so that Bob could occupy it; Al was up on the other side, and it took no explaining to show what had caused Curt’s exclamation. Both youths saw the small square of paper pinned to the folded parachute on the seat.
“Dare we look?” questioned Bob.
“‘I can read it from here,” Al said, and reported. “It says, ‘Everything O.K.’”
“Crickety Christmas!” Curt resorted to his favorite expression. “‘Everything O.K.’ Then it wasn’t a forced landing.”
“No,” agreed Bob. “It didn’t seem like one, somehow. The ship is too carefully tucked away. And, now—this note. Who is it to? Who put it there? Does it mean the ship is all right—or something else? I was right when I said—‘there’s our mystery.’”
“You were!” admitted Curt.
“But what can we do about it?” objected Al. “Take turns watching? Wait to see who comes back, and what he does?”
“I think not,” counseled Curt. “It may be a mystery why the crate is here, and all that! But it isn’t any of our business—is it?”
“No,” admitted Bob. “Let’s go home, and see what father thinks of it. There is probably some easy explanation we haven’t thought of.”
“All right. We can ride out here first thing—early—tomorrow.”
They could not consult the private detective whose success had been so pronounced that cases came to him from distant cities: he was out of town that night.
When they rode out to the field the next day, at sunrise, looking for the mysteriously deserted airplane it was gone!
“Where is your mystery now?” Curt was inclined to poke a little fun at Bob. “As the sleight-of-hand performers say, ‘Now you see it, now you don’t!’”
“Anyway,” Al who was poking about in the grass under the trees, bent and then exhibited a damp, crumpled paper, “here is the note. Now, what do you say if we have a session of the old Master Sleuths, and see what we can deduce from this paper?”
A year before, asked to do a little investigating for Mr. Wright, when he was handling a case where youths would be least likely to arouse suspicion by shadowing, the trio had become intensely interested in detective work and had termed themselves the Master Sleuths, more in fun than in earnest. However, when they had become “air minded” the term had been dropped. Al, reviving it, won a grin from Bob.
“All right,” Bob agreed. “The paper is damp. It has been out in the dew. Under the trees it would take a good while for it to get as soggy as it is. The writing has smudged—it’s sort of purple——”
“It was written with an indelible pencil,” remarked Curt.
“Then all we have to do is to find a man with an—” Al was not allowed to finish. Bob broke in, as older brothers like to do.
“Yes—get ‘the man in the gray suit!’ How many indelible pencils do you suppose there are in this country?”
“All right!” Al took the matter good-humoredly. “Anyhow, if a man wrote it and a man read it and threw it away—two hands have handled it.” He put it carefully in his pocket. “There may be fingerprints.”
“What good will they do?” asked Curt. “The mystery is all done with.”
“No it isn’t!” cried Bob, holding up his hand.
“Listen!”
From above came the drone of an airplane engine.
“I hear it!” exclaimed Al. He ran out onto the turf that had been used as a runway, probably, when the airplane took off.
“So do I,” agreed Curt, following him. “But I don’t locate it.”
Bob, craning his neck, staring up toward the great banks of clouds which the early sun was painting with rosy fire, looked puzzled.
“Come to think of it,” he said, “we ought not to hear it at all.”
“Why not?” demanded Curt.
“He ought to be too far away.”
“How do you make that out?” Al was incredulous.
“Easy! Lang came home a little before daybreak. He had been at the airplane plant all night, with the ‘mechs’ because Mr. Tredway wanted to get that Silver Flash ready for delivery in a rush. I didn’t go to sleep again. I got up, and dressed and went out to tighten the handlebar on my bicycle. I glanced up, just as day broke, at the little windsock I have on our roof.”
“The wind was directlyWest.”
“I don’t see—” began Al; but Curt, wetting the back of his hand, tested the air in various directions.
“You use your head, Bob,” he said admiringly. “The breeze is pretty strong, and it has shifted aroundto South, straight from the Equator.”
“Are you two trying to be mysterious?” Al was a little bit annoyed.
“I thought you wanted to be a Master Sleuth, last year,” remarked Curt. “Use your eyes and your brains.”
“Um-m-m—the airplane must be gone a long time because the wind was West and now it’s South—um-m-m. Oh!”
“‘Ah-ha!’ cried Shawkhaw,” Bob mocked, twisting the famous Hawkshaw title as he made fun of his brother.
“This turf runs East and West.” Al ignored Bob’s mockery. “That biplane was a speed model and it would have to get up higher speed than the average to take off. The runway is too short to give it a good run, so it couldn’t very well have hopped off in time to get over the trees unless it took full advantage of the wind! Isn’t that it, Bob?”
“That’s it. The wind changed about the time we left our meeting point with Curt. So that airplane ought to be well on its way, wherever its way leads.”
“But this engine is getting louder,” stated Curt.
“There it is!” cried Al, pointing toward the South. “It’s only a speck. But you see it, don’t you, Curt?”
“Yes.”
“So do I,” added Bob.
“It looks as if it is spiraling down—yes, it is!”
“And it isn’t the biplane we saw here, at all,” Bob said. “Curt, do you know what?——”
“Yes. It’s the very ’plane we were in yesterday, with Lang. He gave it a final check-up and said if they worked on it all night it would be ready to take off today. That’s it, all righty! The biplane was brown, and——”
“This is the Silver Flash! I can see it glisten against that dark cloud,” added Al. “I think it’s coming down.”
“It’s diving.”
“No!” cried Bob. “It’s out of control! It’s falling!”
“Right over Rocky Lake!” shouted Curt.
“Come on!” urged Al, scrambling over the short stubble in the field, in haste to reach his bicycle and pedal toward the picnic grounds, less than a quarter of a mile away, in which Rocky Lake was situated.
“Wait!” counseled Bob.
“No! Come on!” Curt agreed with Al. The airplane was out of control. It was diving, straight toward the amusement ground around the lake. “It’s a crack-up!”
“There it goes!”
Behind the trees, out of sight, like a silver streak, a comet, the airplane fell. Three hearts went cold as the ship was lost to view behind the foliage. While they could not see the craft strike, any spot in Rocky Lake Park was bad for a landing: dense trees, whole groves, alternated with stands, pavilions, and the deep, boulder-studded water of Rocky Lake and the rivulet which fed it.
Three minds worked as one, three pairs of legs tumbled their owners over the stile, onto the roadside turf, up to the bicycles.
Pedaling like madmen they made short time of the trip to the edge of the amusement spot.
“I think it was directly over Rocky Lake!” Curt, in the lead, called over his shoulder.
Dropping their wheels by the roadside they ran, winded but determined, towards the picnic grounds.
“There—there—in the lake!” gasped Bob.
“It crashed, all right!” panted Curt.
“It’s half buried in the water.” Al puffed along a little to the rear. “I hope the pilot——”
“It wasn’t Lang, was it?”
“No!” Bob responded to Curt’s question. “It must have been some other pilot—I can’t think who, though.”
“Hurry!” urged Al. “Hello—hello!” he called, passing the pavilions. “Is anybody around! Wake up—somebody! Help! Help! A ’plane has cracked up in Rocky Lake!”
“See anything of the pilot?” Bob turned to Curt. Gasping for breath they had reached the shore of the lake, by a small wharf where rowboats were hired during the day.
Curt scanned the surface of the lake.
Quite near the shore, and on the rocks, with one crumpled wing, and with her nose and cabin buried in soft, oozey mud, the smashed monoplane lay with its pitifully useless tail assembly sticking up into the air. The “flippers” had carried way with the impact and hung by the control cables.
Bob turned a serious face toward his companion.
“I hope—I wonder”— He could not finish. The thought flitted through his mind that unless the pilot had been extremely quick and very clever, he could not have gotten out of the cabin—in time. The falling craft had been close enough so that had any figure leaped, especially with a parachute, they should have seen it clearly.
No such figure had leaped—in time.
“Maybe he—crawled out when it struck,” said Curt, hopefully.
“Anyhow, let’s get a boat, and try to get to it.”
“Al,” called Curt, “stop calling for help! There isn’t anybody here. Run to the farmhouse across the road—no, that’s empty. Ride back down the road, till you see an automobile and send it to town for help. If you don’t meet one, stop at the first house and telephone.”
Al, for all his natural eagerness to be at the scene, to share in their experiences, saluted without a word of remonstrance and hurried away. Meanwhile Bob, realizing that the oars for the boats were locked in the small pavilion on the wharf, determined to break in, feeling that the emergency removed any taint of robbery or pillage from the act.
Fortunately he found the old, rusted lock not caught. He slipped the rusty padlock, slipped the hasp free, and ran back to the dock where Curt had a boat untied and ready. In this, pushing off, they rowed out to the airplane. The weight of its engine was very slowly driving its nose deeper into the soft ooze of the marshy ground at that end of the lake.
“Hurry!” begged Curt, as Bob bent to his task.
Suddenly Bob rested on his oars.
“What’s the matter?” cried Curt, and as he saw the expression of Bob’s face he, too, became intent.
“There it is again!” panted Bob. “A call—a call for help?” he questioned.
“I don’t know. But row!”
Bob rowed.
“There comes the call again!” whispered Curt. “It was ‘help!’”
Bob sent the boat through the mirrorlike water. He headed for the immersed nose of the airplane and as they rounded the cabin, part of it sticking up forlornly, Curt lifted a hand to point.
“Look! There is the parachute, partly inflated, floating on the water.”
“It looks as though the pilot tried to get out of the cabin, and either pulled his ripcord too soon, or else some part of the harness caught and held him—until too late!”
Sobered and worried, wondering just what to do and who had called, they sent their eyes questing here and there—into as much of the cabin as they could see from the window just under the transparent surface of Rocky Lake, but without result.
“I thought he might be caught in the cabin,” said Bob. “But I can’t see any——”
“There he is—see! Out on the lake!” Curt pointed. “He’s swimming.”
Bob pushed away from the fuselage of the sinking craft, and with a sweep brought the bow of their boat around.
“Oh!” he caught sight of a head bobbing in the water, “oh, Curt—I’m so glad!”
Rowing hard, he sent the boat toward the swimmer.
“So am I.” Curt’s voice was relieved. “The pilot escaped.”
“But—it can’t be the pilot, Curt.”
“Why not?”
“He has been swimming toward the ’plane, from out in the lake.”
“I know, Bob, but he may have seen us.”
“But he’d have part of the parachute harness on,” Bob objected.
“Probably he slashed it off. Maybe he saw it was too late to get out, that the ’chute was too low, and he slashed himself free and started to swim across the water——”
“No. He’d have come to this closer shore, and landed on the wharf.”
They watched the man, treading water as he saw them coming.
Across the water a call floated clearly to them.
“Did you hear—a call—for help?”
“We thought we did,” Bob called back, and, as they came closer the man spoke less loudly.
“I don’t see anybody.”
“Then you aren’t the pilot?”
“He can’t be!” Curt commented when the man failed to reply, being busy clearing water from his eyes to look around the lake again.
“Haven’t seen anybody at all,” the man spoke as he caught the gunwale and pulled himself up and into the boat with Curt’s aid. “Heard a shout, though. Row back boys, to that thing.”
They went back over the course. The stranger, studying the aircraft, seemed very much disturbed and worried. He had a hand ready to catch the struts of a wing as they swung under the tilted airfoil: while Bob stowed the needless oar on that side he drew the boat forward.
“We didn’t see anything in the cabin. We looked, before,” Bob explained.
“Untie that painter,” the stranger ordered. “I’m going down under the nose, and the mud might hold me—so, if I signal, you pull.” As Curt unknotted the tying rope and threw it to him, the man looped an end under his arms, knotting it swiftly, flung the short coil to Bob and lowered himself, disappearing into the water, his descent stirred up mud, moiling the water. Down he went, hidden almost at once in the murky disturbance.
Paying out the rope until it grew slack, Bob took a turn around a rowlock, and they waited breathlessly. Some bubbles floated up and broke. Then came a tug on the rope.
Curt, who had already come to the midships section, helped Bob tug and haul in the wet manilla strands. The stranger came up through the murky water, emerged, shook himself free of the liquid, caught the boat and shook his head.
“Not in the cabin—only thing I can think of is—if he tried to jump and got under the thing.”
Very soberly the youths helped him back into the boat.
People were arriving on the bank, shouting to one another, calling for information, shipping oars in boats. Al, having met several motorists, had spread the alarm, and then had ridden on to telephone the police and to report the crash.
Al, having returned, was in the second boat to arrive by the slowly sinking craft.
Bob gave him a concise report while they pushed away from the place to enable a deputy sheriff to take command and to jot down the stranger’s explanation and their own, from Curt.
“I wish you boys would row me across the little bayou, here,” the man said. Al had transferred to their boat by that time.
“Take me to that point, over there,” the man added. “It’s closest to where I dropped my motorcycle when I saw the thing happen.”
Bob nodded. The presence of the motorcycle beyond the lake, where it was nearest to the road, explained why they had seen the man swimming toward them. He must have heard and seen the airplane, watched its descent, and then rushed to see what he could do.
“But won’t the police want you to testify, or whatever it is?” asked Al.
The man shook his head.
“No,” he replied. “If they do, they can find me soon enough. I’m off to get into dry duds. I didn’t waste time riding around the end of the lake. I dropped my motorcycle and ran in to see what I could see.” He smiled, sadly. “I guess I was too late, even at that.”
Thanking them as he climbed onto the rocky shore, he pushed the bow of their boat into the stream again, and watched them turn in the still water.
“You can tell the police I didn’t think they’d need me right away,” he called. “I’m passing through this section, and I don’t want to be held up and kept here for any sort of investigation. You saw as much as I did. Well—goodbye!”
He turned, and as they heard the “crash ’bus” arriving from the airport in a nearby city of which they lived in the suburbs, Bob rowed his two young companions back toward the airplane.
The police came, and many others with them and after them.
Preparations were made to drag under the craft, and to lift it, if tackle could be gotten into suitable position, to see if any trace of the missing pilot could be discovered.
Nothing further developed, however, and one of the “mechs” with the airport ’bus told Bob it would be afternoon before they got the monoplane out. The three comrades had given the police lieutenant all the information they could. There was a healthy appetite making itself felt among them.
“Let’s go home,” Bob suggested.
“Wait, all of you,” urged the reporter for a small suburban daily. “I’ll make heroes of you yet.”
Protesting that they had done nothing heroic and that they did not want to be “put in the paper” for doing their duty, Curt and Bob refused to answer any questions. The police, Bob said, might not want information published. He did not know, but he would prefer not to talk. “Oh, I see—there is a mystery, then!” the reporter declared. “Well, if you won’t talk—” he began to write swiftly.
“If we won’t talk,” Bob commented as the trio walked toward their bicycles. “He’ll write something anyhow.”
“It’s queer that there isn’t any trace of the pilot.” Al’s mind returned to the tragic part of the crash.
“Maybe he jumped clear, got away and went into the water, and then, coming up, got to land. He may be on shore, somewhere, hurt, or too weak to make himself known.”
Curt’s explanation renewed their hope.
“Let’s hope it’s that way,” said Bob. “Well, we’ve got a long road to breakfast. Mother will be just about wild. I left a note, but she will worry about Al and me, just the same. If we go to the ball park and don’t get home within half an hour after the game, she frets.”
“Excuse me, boys.” A pleasant voice behind them caused the three to wheel around. They saw a pleasant-faced man, beside an automobile, parked close to the bicycles they were disentangling. “If you want to get home in a hurry, pile the bicycles in that little comfort station over there, and tell the attendant ‘Barney’ said to look out for them. I’m from the aircraft plant, and as long as I can’t do anything here, if you’ll hop into my car I’ll ride you home while you give me the facts as well as you know them about this smash. It’s a bad thing, and I want to get as straight as I can what happened.”
They were very grateful to Barney, who neglected to furnish any other name. He waited until they had stowed away the bicycles, and while he drove them toward the village he questioned them rapidly.
“I think you are all very brave, and quick, and fine,” he commented, after they had, in turn, recited their adventures. “You acted splendidly and I thank you very much.”
Al looked surprised.
“We did our duty,” he replied. “But why are you thanking us? I know it was one of the Tredway airplanes because we were in it, with Lang, yesterday on check-up. But who was in it, and what do you think happened—really?”
“The owner of the manufacturing plant was in it,” said Barney, very soberly and sadly. “Mr. Tredway was flying it himself. He wanted to deliver it in person—for a reason.”
“For a reason?” Bob repeated, inquiringly.
“Yes,” said Barney. “There is a mystery behind that crack-up—it’s more likely it’s a ‘washout.’ Anyhow, there is something behind the smash, and—I’ve heard there is a private detective, a Mr. Wright, at Forty-one Elm. If you can tell me the quickest way to get there, I’ll appreciate it. I want to consult him—on this case.”
Bob, Curt and Al stared.
“That’s father!” said Al.
“Indeed! Then I am glad I offered you a ‘lift.’”
They directed him, and eventually he drew up the car before the neat, cozy cottage. Curtis, accepting the invitation to stay for their somewhat belated breakfast, sat, with Bob and Al, in the cheerful breakfast room, finishing up a stack of pancakes thickly syruped, when Bob was sent for.
Returning, after a few minutes, he showed his younger brother and his best friend a face of elation.
“There is a mystery, all righty,” he declared. “And you’re to come with me——”
“Why?” asked Curt.
“Because,” retorted Bob, “we’re—in—on—it!” As the others jumped up he added, “Father’s home and he’s taken a real air mystery case!”
Entering Mr. Wright’s library, which the detective used as a reception room for clients, Bob, Curtis and Al could hardly repress their excitement. To share in the possible solution of a real mystery of the airlanes was more than they had really dared to hope for.
Seated opposite Mr. Wright, smiling pleasantly, was the man who had given no other name than Barney.
“Good morning, Mr. Wright.” Curtis Brown greeted the quiet, but cordial father of his two chums. Al added a salute to his father.
“Sit down,” suggested the detective. Bob, Curt and Al ranged themselves along the leather upholstered davenport at the side, where the light was on their faces. Mr. Wright had his room so arranged that only his own place beside the desk enabled him to keep his face in the shadow; clients and other visitors had to show every expression in the light from the two sunny windows.
While Mr. Wright seemed to be deciding how to disclose his plans, Curt compared the two men.
They were of very distinct types. Fred Wright would make anybody think of an ordinary, everyday business man, fairly prosperous, quiet in his manner, affable and cordial in his speech. His calm, serious face was neither severe nor too soft; and while its steel-gray eyes were kindly, they could look through a person, it seemed, and find out, almost, what that one was thinking, or, perhaps, trying to conceal.
Barney, on the other hand, made one think of a working man who had risen to a position of prosperity and influence without being able entirely to shake off his servile, unpolished manner. Although his clothes were expertly tailored, he seemed a little ill at ease in them. What was more, he gave the impression that he knew it!
He was a trifle blustery to cover his feeling of inferiority, Curt decided; and he had a habit of interrupting when another person was speaking. However, this might be due to excitement, Curt thought charitably.
Glancing sidewise, he sensed that much the same comparisons were passing through Bob’s mind. Al gave no thought to character. His whole attention was bent on the possibility of “action!”
Curt, who liked to look for good points more than for the other sort, checked up Barney’s dark eyes, almost black, and decided that they were only serious because of the gravity of the situation. They could twinkle with fun, he guessed; also, the mouth was so shaped that Bob admitted to himself that Barney smiled oftener than he scowled.
“I have told Mr. Horton about you three young aviation enthusiasts,” Fred Wright began. “Also I have explained that you used to be very fond of ‘detecting’ in a decidedly amateurish way, of course.” He smiled across the desk toward Barney, whose face broke into a broad, pleased grin, immediately suppressed because of the seriousness of his errand.
“I’ll say we were amateurish,” chuckled Bob. “Why, Mr. Horton——”
“Call me Barney—just Barney,” the visitor interrupted.
“If you say so, sir. Well, Barney, then! We were crazy to be great detectives, because father is one,” he paid the compliment whole-heartedly and only his father smiled and shook his head deprecatingly, “but we let our enthusiasm take the place of brains,” Bob added. “I was not much help because I let vanity get the best of cool, common sense——”
“I was a failure because I am too impulsive,” contributed Al.
“I was so short-sighted, in my mind, that I forgot to look at the whole of a case and pinned my nose down onto every little clew,” Curt grinned sheepishly, “so I kept going around in circles.”
“All the same,” Mr. Wright looked over at Barney, “in such work as boys could do—they were a few years younger then—these three helped me a great deal in handling two quite important cases.”
The trio lowered their heads modestly.
“However,” the detective continued, “they turned from being Master Sleuths, as they termed themselves, to aviation——”
“Airboys!” chuckled Barney.
“Why, yes. That is an apt expression.”
“But we didn’t give up wanting to be detectives, really!” exclaimed Al, earnestly. “We were looking for a way to mix the aviation with the detecting—only we haven’t gotten into either one.”
“Then here’s your chance.” Barney said it very seriously.
“How?”
“Barney has brought me a very baffling case,” Mr. Wright explained. “Unfortunately, I am so deeply involved in another matter that I cannot drop it.”
“But you can give some time to this, you said.” Barney was earnest.
“Not personally. That is, I shan’t be able to investigate in person,” the detective replied. “That is where our three assistants will figure——”
“And be Airboys and Master Sleuths, both at the one time,” Barney interrupted.
“Hooray!” Al clapped his hand to his knee, unable to restrain his enthusiasm. Mr. Wright, although with a tolerant, if brief smile, shook his head at his younger son.
“This will be a serious affair,” he stated, forcefully.
Al immediately became sobered.
“How can we combine aviation and detective work?” asked Curt, the most practical of the chums.
“By going to the aircraft plant to work as mechanics’ helpers, or whatever positions Barney sees fit to put you in,” Mr. Wright told them. “That takes care of the detective work because you will have to keep eyes and ears open and without appearing to do so.”
“We can do that easily,” said Bob.