CHAPTER II
THE AIRPLANE GUARD
Shuddering, terrified, Chick clung to Garry's steady arm as he gazedupward.
One of the clustered clouds seemed to be picked out from the others bya phosphorescent glow: it was luminous but not fiery; whitish in tintrather than ruddy.
Out of it came a silent, gliding, dark shape--an airplane!
For a brief interval Garry felt his own blood chilling. That spectralshape was very much like the mental pictures he had visualized after hehad listened to the story of the pilot who had cracked up because of asimilar apparition.
Then the real explanation flashed into his mind.
He gave a relieved laugh.
"Hooray!" he cried in the still, dark cockpit seat, "the ghost of theskies is explained."
"So it is!" agreed Scott, the pilot.
"Don't--" began Chick; but his own words died as he saw that they werenot facing any supernatural appearance.
The light died out of the cloud as the airplane, a lightly-built andfast-moving craft, came steadily lower, closer. It was real!
"It's Don!" said Garry, reassuringly.
"Yes, it is Don, all right," agreed Chick, his own fears gone.
Garry watched the light ship make its approach, silent but genuine andthen gave Chick a brief lecture.
"I'm glad you came, after all--aren't you?" he remarked. "Now you cansee for yourself that every scare that seems to be started by spooks isall in the way you judge what you see."
"It's that way just this time," admitted Chick grudgingly. "Thedarkness, and the swamp, and all the talk made me think I saw a ghostship coming out of a lighted cloud."
"Certainly," agreed Garry, "and you thought that, because you heardsomebody else say that was how the ghost appeared. But it turns out tobe Don in the Dart, coming down out of the sky just when the controlman at the airport had his searchlight switched on and turned it pastthe clouds."
"For my part," Scott informed the two chums, "I don't think the firstcrack-up happened because the pilot saw a real 'bus."
"I do," argued Garry.
The talk ceased as the light ship came swiftly down, across the marsh,dropping lower, leveling off, setting its pontoon body lightly into thewater.
If not as experienced, in point of years, as Scott, theseventeen-year-old junior flyer at the Dart's controls was as expert.Landings in daylight, night conditions, or in darkness, were easy forDon: because of a season of timidity concerning "getting down," at thestart of his flying practice, the youth had determined to break himselfof his timidity before it interfered with his rapid progress. Alone inhis uncle's Dart, he had made practice take-offs and landings in everysort of weather and under all imaginable conditions, until he was sosure of his ship that he had no uneasiness about setting down. Herealized that the modern airplane is so well stabilized, so welldesigned, that it does just what its pilot wants it to do--that inevery case where some part has not failed, the pilot's mental conditionand its resulting reaction on the handling of the ship is what makesthe difference between safe flying and accidents that result in injuryor worse.
The small, wide-winged craft sent out a split crest of foam, comingswiftly closer to the Dragonfly; but it lost speed and Don maneuveredit to a point close alongside the larger craft and with his own wingsjust a little behind those of the biplane. Gliding up to its stop, theDart rested quietly in the still, rather murky water.
"Hello!" its pilot greeted the others. "Did I give you a solution ofthe Mystery of Mystery Airport!"
"You certainly did!" Garry admitted. "Chick thought you were the flyingphantom----"
"Just as the first pilot to crash thought some chance ship, lighted upby a flash of some beacon, was the ghost," Don interrupted.
"I'm not so sure of that," Scott spoke, taking up the thread of astatement he had been about to make before the Dart came down. "I'vebeen interested in the mystery--I like spooks, you know----"
"More than I do!" broke in Chick, gloomily. Scott, laughing, agreed.
"Every fellow to his taste," he quoted. "Anyhow, I've been reading upon ghosts, and talking to some of the 'old inhabitants' around themarsh. Want to know what I dug up?"
All three eagerly chorused agreement. "Away back in the days whenairplanes were tricky to handle and the pilots knew less aboutaerodynamics than they do today," he stated, "a flyer was over thisswamp, on just about this sort of night," he indicated the clustered,slow-moving, fleecy groups of clouds, some assuming the pyramid shapeof thunderheads, "one of the clam-diggers at the edge of the swamprecalls it very plainly. He was out at low tide after clams when--ithappened!"
"What!" asked Chick, forgetting his uneasiness and the gloomy, spookyenvironment in his suspense.
The aviator had appeared suddenly, coming down, through a cloud, asScott repeated the tale told him by an old man who earned his meagreliving with a clam-hoe and bucket; at the same instant another ship,diving swiftly in apparent oblivion of the first, came into view.
"It must have happened in the flick of an eyelid," Scott went on. "Asold Ike tells it, he heard the engines, looked up, saw one ship for asplit second, saw the other, and then--saw them come together!"
"Oh!" exclaimed Garry, "collided, did they!" Scott completed his storyquickly, after admitting that Garry had diagnosed the accidental smashcorrectly.
"Right-o! And they never found one of the ships. It must have gone downin Devil's Sink." He referred to a portion of the marsh either of thequicksand bottom sort or very similar in the softness of its muddyshallows. "And---"
"That's--why they found--a skeleton, there!" Chick shivered as he spokein a hushed voice.
"Maybe."
"But--" Don objected, "what connection is there between an accidentyears ago and the excitement that has gotten into some of thenewspapers and made a reporter call our new development 'MysteryAirport?'"
"Ever read the 'Proceedings' and other books of the Society forPsychical Research?" Scott questioned in turn.
"I saw some of them in a bookstore," Garry admitted. "They were toodull and prosy for me. Just old stories collected by scientific men whowere trying to find out whether ghosts existed or not."
"What did they decide?" Chick spoke eagerly.
"Nothing very definite," Scott informed him. "But I've gone over a lotof the dry 'case-histories' and I firmly believe that if somebody hasdone something wrong, he has to haunt and stay around the place."
"Like a criminal 'haunting' the scene of his crime," chuckled Don. "I'msurprised at you, Scott. I believe, in every case, if you could get tothe bottom of it you'd find that the ghost is either produced by fraud,or else some perfectly natural things are misjudged----"
"Chick thought you were the sky spook," broke in Garry.
"I believe that's so in most of the cases," Scott agreed. "But thistime I think the ghost is restless, because he was careless in comingalong through the clouds where he couldn't see ahead far enough to beable to avoid other ships--and he may have caused the other ship to godown into the Sink. That makes his spirit hang around, and of coursewhenever it appears, it lives over all the terrible scenes of thesmash!"
"But I just proved--" began Don.
"Yes, you proved that people can be mistaken," Scott was serious. "Youdidn't prove that any ship was near at the other times that pilots haveclaimed they saw the ghost."
"One caught the fever from another," argued Garry. "The first one sawsomething--or he tried to get out of culpability for carelessness inmaking his crack-up, by saying a spook put him out of control. The restwere all superstitious and the story got headway. The next pilot to seea flicker of Summer lightning and a bird flying or anything at all, wasquick to twist it into a spectre, and come down to tell his story andgive everybody chills and shivers."
"I think we'll soon find out," Scott spoke quietly.
Surprised, the others clamored for his reason.
"This is just the sort of night tha
t the three other pilots had, whenthey claimed to see the ghost of an airplane coming out of luminousclouds," Scott stated. "It's close, humid--storm-breeding July weather.
"Well, then, for another thing, if you check up you'll find that thespook has appeared every seven days--and this is the seventh nightsince this last time!"
"Let's go home, Don," whispered Chick, across the narrow span of water.Don laughed.
"No, sirree!" he retorted. "In the first place, if it is pure chance,nothing will happen, because it isn't reasonable that a beam of lightfrom the control room search-lamp would strike a cloud every seventhnight and four successive weeks. Besides, it isn't possible that anairplane would be flying around just at the same time that light came,and that no other ship would be noticed."
"No," declared Garry. "My opinion is that it's some real person whoflies out of the clouds, after seeing a ship coming. Then he goes upinto another cloud and is lost, and because of the first fib the pilottold to protect himself from censure by the Board of Inquiry sittingabout the crack-up, all the rest believe they see a spook."
"I think he is trying to use the ghost scare to drive business awayfrom Uncle," Don asserted. "Uncle has several people he can name whoare none too fond of him. Any one of them might be doing the'spooking.'"
"In that case," Garry was practical, "if we go up, scouting, thatperson will know it, and won't 'appear' tonight."
"That's why I liked Scott's plan when he suggested guarding the sky,"Don agreed. "It's important, too--because Uncle Bruce is expecting toget a big airline to contract for space for its ships, servicing andall that, take-off and landing, and fuel and oil. It will mean a lot tohim not to lose that contract. If we prevent any 'spooking' tonight,there won't be any newspaper scarehead stories tomorrow to make the menhesitate about signing up."
"Then let's get up out of this stagnant water!" urged Chick, fired bythe realistic explanation of the spectre. "We'll be a sort of SkyWatchman."
"An Airlane Guard!" suggested Garry.
"That's it--an Airlane Guard!" Scott agreed. "Well, come in here, Don,take this Dragonfly aloft and cruise around. If you see signs of anyother ship than the mail 'plane--it's due soon--let Garry send over agreen flare if it's in the air, or have Chick fire a red Verey if itgoes up off the earth or water--and you go around on wingtip to pointto it and start after it, and I'll come up on a slanting course, and wecan corner the fellow, and end the mystery of the Spectre in theClouds."
"Why not come up in the Dragonfly, and let Don fly the Dart, too?"Garry suggested.
"The Dragonfly isn't fast. The Dart is. If the 'spook' pilot sees youyoung lads cruising around, he'll think it's just a joy-hop. If hehappened to see you start out--with me--he'll suppose we are testingthe visibility of the new airport lighting system--and he might try toscare up a little excitement for us, as he'd suppose. Then, if Don flewthe Dart, taking off first, to surprise him, the 'spook' might dostunts and I'd rather be the one to handle the Dart in the night timeif stunting is in order. As far as both ships flying around isconcerned, what self-respecting ghost, or sensible enemy of Mr.McLeod's, would give us a chance to drive him down and capture him ifhe saw two ships in the airlane waiting for him?"
They saw the logic in his reasoning and agreed to abide by Scott'soriginal plan.
The Dragonfly was warmed up.
Don, in its pilot's seat, waved a hand to Scott who had shifted to theother craft, opened his throttle carefully to avoid unnecessary airdisturbance as he drove away from the Dart, and then got his pontoons"on the step," so that take-off would be easy, and lifted thethree-place Dragonfly into the night.
Garry felt a thrill of expectancy. He loved the mysterious, but of thepractical, worldly brand; he had no belief in supernatural things. Thiswould be a chase against a human enemy of Bruce McLeod, airportdesigner and airways development specialist. Don, steady but hopeful,felt much the same.
Chick, for his part, snapped his safety belt with a little tremble ofhis fingers. He anticipated something fearful.
His premonition was fulfilled.