Van Powell

“ Everdail was triumphant as he threw the life preserver out of his cockpit to Larry. “As I live and breathe, that life preserver ought to be in a museum!” He grinned as he came to the ground. “That’s the flyingest life preserver I ever saw—first it goes joy-riding in a seaplane, then in the ‘phib’ and now it runs off on the Sound and comes riding back with me.” ”

“ No answer rewarded his agile thoughts as Jeff skilfully shot the small field, compelled to come in to one side because of tall trees directly in their line of flight, over which his dead engine made it impossible to maneuver. Nor did he get a solution to his puzzle as Jeff cleverly side-slipped to lose momentum, and to get over the neglected, turf-grown runway down which, a little bumpily but right side up, he taxied to a standstill. ”

“ Dick, Larry and Mr. Whiteside, listening for a call from Sandy, went hurrying along. But no call from Sandy. He had decided that it would be a wiser thing to hide than to risk doing battle with the pilot if he was actually as bad as they suspected; with that in mind he had crawled in through the opening from the back, into the fuselage of the amphibian. There, fairly comfortable, he lay, full length, listening. The open top allowed air to come because a strong, puffy breeze had gotten up, driving great, black thunderclouds before it. ”

“ The life preserver hid the gems. I knew that, and made my sister run off with the wrong preserver, that I took from Jeff’s airplane. I thought the right preserver was in the seaplane, but Tommy was ‘wise,’ and refused to do any more than watch me, and when my sister came to get the emeralds, he tried to prevent me from getting away with it. You can piece out the rest. You’ll never punish me! You’ll never—take me alive!”
Eluding them, he dashed straight down to where Jeff’s amphibian, its prop still turning, stood fifty feet from the end of the runway. ”

“ It went close, just as the swinging lights swerved and were gone.
“Drop another flare!” shouted Larry.
Sandy caught and relayed the suggestion as they retained their swinging curve.
With the glare from the dropped light picking out things in sharp silhouette, they saw a man clamber out onto a pontoon and rescue the floating prize.
“Now, I wonder if that is Mr. Everdail—or if it’s somebody else?” thought Larry, correcting for a tendency of the nose to fall away.
“Whoever it is,” he concluded, “he can’t get away. He has the life preserver. But we have superior speed. And a good tankful of fuel.” ”

“ The propeller blast threw a torrent of dust and as Jeff told him, he mustn’t become that most unpopular of airport nuisances, a “dusting pilot,” whose carelessness flung damaging clouds on airplanes in hangars and people on the fields.
Learning to warm up the engine, to check up on instruments, to keep the ship level while taxiing down the field to head into the wind, to make the turn, either in stiff wind or gentle breeze, so that the wind did not tip the craft and scrape wingtips—these and a dozen other things he acquired in several early lessons. ”

“ Sandy mused, but as they flew along he, with the others, scanned the low clouds for some open rift through which to catch a possible glimpse of the water craft. A slantwise gust of wind crossed the cockpits, giving them new hope. If a breeze came to blow aside the mist they might have better chances to see the yacht.
In steadily increasing force, and gradually coming oftener, the puffs of moving air increased their confidence. ”

“ Larry commented, “Jeff didn’t put the preserver in his fuselage, and Captain Parks could open his safe and no one else knew how, he declared! There are some things I can’t work out and I wish I could.”
“Let’s make whoever knows anything—er—let’s make them work it out for us,” suggested Dick. “Let’s bait a trap with the life preserver—leave it where it is, get Mr. Everdail to call everybody together, and we’ll tell what we found and what we think is in it—and see what we see.” ”

“ Everdail smiled a little teasingly.
“Oh, he’s welcome to it,” Sandy cried. “I’ve turned over a new leaf!”
“How’s that?” Jeff wanted to know.
“I used to take one little thing for a start, and make up my mind that whoever did it was the one I must suspect,” Sandy explained. “But that’s like trying to prove a man guilty because I think he may be.”
“That’s so,” Dick began to chuckle. “Pinning clues onto folks is like the clothing salesman who tried to sell a white linen suit to a man who wanted a dark grey one. ”

“ Sandy muttered.
“That seaplane is coming fast!” mused Dick. “What a race! It will be a wonder if there isn’t a smash when they all come together!”
It took only seconds for the race to conclude.
With a warning cry that was drowned by their engine noise, Larry saw that the amphibian was in such a line of flight that it must be crossed by the course of the hydroplane—and from the respective speeds, as well as he could judge, there might be either a collision or one of the craft must alter its course. ”

“ Larry looked up.
“I don’t know what to think,” Dick admitted. “No ghost does those things. A real person has some reason for doing them. Who? And why?”
“The only way we’ll find out is by going there, at night, and watching,” Larry declared.
“Not for me,” Sandy said, surprising his chums. “We were ‘kicked out’ once. If we were to be caught on the place we’d be trespassers—and if the clever news reporters are watching and don’t find anything, how can we?”
“I’m going to be too busy earning money to finish my flying lessons to bother, anyway,” Larry decided. ”

“ When Sandy waved in an excited gesture, twenty minutes later, and Larry’s keen eyes saw the amphibian, a tiny dot, moving over the Sound, he felt sure that the missing life preserver had been found.
Taking a quick glance at gas gauge, altimeter, tachometer and his other instruments, he nodded.
“All right,” he told himself. “We’ll follow them and see what they do and where they go.” ”

“ Jeff’s hand was quietly coming down.
“It’s stuck!” Larry began to tug, with his hand in his inside pocket where he pretended the jewels were.
“No monkey shines!” warned the stranger, watching closely.
Jeff’s hand flashed down, the wrench, with a twisting, underhand fling, spun through the air. Jeff dropped into the cockpit. The wrench struck, hitting the man’s arm and deflecting the muzzle of his weapon as it exploded—but he did not drop it.
In that split minute of time Larry was on the cockpit seat—and plunged, in a swift, slantwise leap, down upon the man in the dory. ”

“ Before the chums were clear of the runway, Tommy set down his ship, tumbled out and let the woman with him—the yacht stewardess—get out as best she could. “What do you mean, double-crossing me?” screamed Tommy at detective Whiteside. “Why have you tried to get the emeralds after you promised me half of them?”
“The man has gone crazy,” said Whiteside.
“They are all in it together, Mr. Everdail,” Tommy shouted, turning toward the millionaire.
“What are you doing with that stewardess?” demanded Larry. “She joined you on the lawn when you came from behind the trees.” ”

“ The fellow who played ghost must be searching for something. What can it be?”
“The emeralds?”
“But he was there before they were lost, Dick,” Larry objected.
“That’s so, Larry.”
“Here’s something that just came to me.” Sandy bent forward in the lounging chair. “Nothing has happened at night, for ten days. But all that time, Mr. Whiteside has been on the ‘day watch,’ as he calls it.”
“Golly-gracious!” Larry exclaimed. “Do you think?——”
“When Jeff flew us there, the first time, there seemed to be somebody in that hangar when we started in,” Dick added to Sandy’s idea. ”

“ It would have been, Larry thought to himself, if Sandy had made it. Was the youngest chum jealous of Dick, displeased because it was not his own discovery that led to the hiding place of the jewels—if they were right?
“You thought of the life preserver as a hiding place?” asked Dick.
Sandy nodded.
“Where else?” he argued. “Captain Parks couldn’t get a better or safer place, right in front of everybody and never noticed. If the life preserver was thrown into the sea—it would be recovered.” ”

“ Mr. Whiteside began to chuckle as he led them toward the dark loom of the hangar, “Or—even if it turns out to be—me!—”
“Did you walk under a ladder, today, sir?” asked Sandy seriously.
“No. Why?” The man stared at him through the night. “What makes you ask?”
“Because Jeff did—he walked under a ladder where a man was pruning a tree as he came to the gate of the estate next door.”
“Hm! Then—if he’s as superstitious as he makes believe,” Larry laughed, “he’d better watch out.” ”

“ Larry answered. “He offered us a joy-ride.”
“But why did he come so far out on Long Island, and then get a dead stick so handy to this old estate that hasn’t been lived in for years and that has everybody scared so they won’t come near at night?”
“‘Then get a dead stick!’” Larry shook his head. “Why, Sandy! I know you read detective stories until you think everything is suspicious——”
“So do you read them—and Dick, too!”
11
“But we read to try to guess the answers to the mystery,” Dick declared. “You’ve got the idea that real life is like those wild stories. ”

“ Everdail watched the sailors and servants to note the effect of his story. Sandy, without doing it openly, watched Jeff. Larry’s eyes covertly observed Tommy Larsen and his associate and Dick noted the action and expression of Captain Parks.
“There’s some one who knows something!” Larry decided as he saw the passenger of the cracked-up seaplane bend forward, intent, but without a trace of expression. He had the sort of face that can completely conceal its owner’s emotions. ”

“ As Larry banked and came around on a new slant across the hydroplane’s path, which seemed not so true to the straight line as it had been, Dick secured a parachute-equipped landing flare, sent it over safely past the wings, and watched the white glare light up the surface of the water. ”

“ Neither sixteen-year-old Larry Turner nor Dick Summers, a year his junior, had any more fear than had Sandy Maclaren, hardly thirteen and seated just back of the pilot who, in flying the four-place, low-wing airplane, had called back reassuringly.
“Jeff’s a war ace and knows his stuff,” Larry mused, “and the engine couldn’t have died in a better spot. We are high enough and within gliding distance of that old, abandoned private field.” ”

“ As soon as it got under way again and took up its climb, the amphibian, coming to their level, showed its pilot holding up the life preserver, as the flare still settled toward the water. In the glow they recognized the triumphant, smiling millionaire.
The flight back to the landing field was without event. Larry made the landing first, and his companions tumbled out to join the waiting cluster of people while they all “took hold” to run the airplane out of the way so that the spiraling amphibian, its wheels down, could shoot the flare-lit field, and land. ”

“ Jeff spoke into the tube of the Gossport helmet Larry still used.
“There it is, just off our left wing, buddy. That’s right—stick goes to the left and a touch of left rudder, but when you moved the stick sidewise to adjust the ailerons you neglected that-there bit of forward movement to tip us down into a glide. Remember, it’s the double use of the stick that works ailerons and elevators both.”
Larry had overlooked that point for the instant. It was his only difficulty in flying, to recollect always to control all the different movements together. ”

“ Dick grinned.
“Dye!” he chuckled. “If you want special food or drink you have to dye-it!”
“To diet!” Jeff caught the pun. “That-there’s a hot one!”
“It leaves me ‘cold’,” Larry came back at him. “But I’m interested about this ice.”
“Why?” asked Mr. Everdail, curiously.
“It’s simple enough,” the youngest member of the Sky Patrol broke in. “They pour some of the lemonade into the compartments in the ice-trays and freeze that. It is better than plain ice because it doesn’t weaken the lemonade at all.”
“That’s right,” Larry agreed. “Why, Mr. Everdail, I was only curious. ”

“ Unexpectedly, from the water of the inlet, and yet in a muffled, unnatural tone, there came the sputtering roar of a motor.
“What’s that?” cried Dick.
“One of the airplanes—somebody’s in the hangar——”
“No, Sandy, it’s from the water.”
“But there’s no boat out—the only boat with an engine is the hydroplane——”
“The yacht tender’s tied to the wharf,” Dick reminded Larry.
They raced down the sloping woods path.
“Where’s the guard—where’s everybody?” Sandy shouted.
The men came running. ”

“ By agility and a good deal of scuffling with some damage to the doped fabric of the seaplane, he got into the partly sunken pilot’s seat and from that, climbing up, sent a quick glance over the cockpit, tracing the fuel lines.
“Right as can be!” he called. “Now if I can find a wrench and get loose some brass tubing——”
“Can I help?”
Jeff, bent down in the pilot’s seat, lifted his head, shaking it.
“Stay where you are,” he called. “Two might push the crate down into the mud too fast for safety. She’s half a foot deeper in than when we were here before. I’ll manage.” ”

“ The airplane, with a more powerful engine and better flying qualities, could go higher than the amphibian which was both slower and more clumsy. To that argument he added the information that if the binoculars they had first used were still where Dick had put them, in the airplane pocket, they could find the ship’s “ceiling”—the highest point to which power would take it and the air could still sustain it at flying speed—and from that height, in one look downward discover the truth or falsity of their theory. ”