William J. Smith

“ I want to know what human error. I don't think anything happens without a reason. Somehow I feel that it's all there, the answer, in those couple of million details we've pieced together about the plane and the crew and the passengers and it's staring me in the face if I could only see it."
"I agree with you." Brogan raised his hand again in his imperious gesture then dropped it to the desk. "No. I asked to have my say. Now you have yours." He sat patiently.
Kessler grinned. "Thanks, senator. As for the political sabotage possibilities, you've undoubtedly seen a copy of my confidential report. ”

“ Nothing more cooling than good old lemonade. Real lemons, too, not this bottled stuff. You know what they say—you can take them out of the country but you can't take the country out of them!" She laughed breathlessly. "I've been living in the big city for twenty-five years now but I'm still an Ioway girl. Get back almost every year, too, still perfectly at home there. I'll be sitting out on the veranda next month drinking lemonade and shooing flies like I'd never been away!" ”

“ Kessler shifted his chair to face him.
"I won't mince words," Brogan said, "because I think we understand each other. We always have. Thanks to your splendid investigation, and my only little efforts perhaps, we know more about the circumstances of this crash than any other in aviation history. I had exactly your feeling that the answer ought to be there. But I don't see it and you don't see it. We know absolutely everything but one thing. ”

“ She's followed through on this with me all the way but she came down to Washington to meet me today and she says she's going to drag me off when I'm through here."
Brogan smiled his famous smile. "Good girl, Margaret. If she's here and has a leash on you, I know I don't have anything to worry about. There's nothing I admire more than a woman who has a mind and uses it. I'll tell you something else," he said, standing and permitting Kessler to rise this time. "I was truly sorry about Eileen Bennett's death on this plane, but Eileen was getting along like me. ”

“ Kessler said, "there were quite a few real guzzlers on the plane. I don't mean that actor, who was notorious. He'd just lost a part because of his drinking and he was sober for a change. But it's amazing what you'll turn up about respectable people when you start investigating."
"I'm very interested in that aspect, as you may know," Brogan said. "We periodically get bills which would outlaw drinking aboard planes. What are your ideas on that subject?"
"Well, I don't mind a drink aboard a plane myself. Helps me relax. ”

“ Brogan lifted a bushy eyebrow in question. "Maybe you've put your finger on it there?"
Kessler ticked off his reply, holding up one hand. "One former mental patient, pronounced cured ten years ago and apparently perfectly normal; a well-established businessman; a used-car dealer; three currently under psychoanalysis; a college girl twenty-one; a housewife with four children; an injured veteran just out of service. None showed any violent tendencies according to their doctors." ”

“ Kessler said. "Did he drink?"
"Not a drop! I wouldn't have put up with that myself."
"Would you ever have thought he was suicidally inclined?"
She thought about this one. "You mean he might have put a bomb on the plane? Like that fellow did a few years ago?" She shook her head slowly. "I can't believe Bob would kill anybody else just to kill himself. What would be the point?"
"Exactly. He left no one behind him. Didn't even take out an insurance policy. But, of course, people sometimes do crazy things."
Miss Schmitt's plump little face was silent and reflective. "Bob was an odd one. ”

“ Margaret interrupted. She was perfectly at home with Valeria as she sipped her lemonade.
"No, honey." It was girl-talk now and Kessler was happy to let it go on, feeling suddenly very tired. "We worked together as stenographers in Iowa City. I was from right near there, but Bob was from Keokuk. That's where he retired to. Anyway I got this job in Washington during the war—World War II, that is—and I went back pretty often and saw Bob but I was young and foolish at the time and kept putting off and putting off the wedding and then it just never did happen. ”

“ Among the other wild rumors are suggestions that we are being sabotaged by foreign agents or by their tools. Well now, I'd be the last one in the world—you know my record—to deny the possibility of some folks doing this if they thought they could get away with it. If I thought for one moment—or if I thought that you thought for one moment—that there was some international sabotage going on here, I'd say go on with your investigation till you get the answer!"
Brogan flung himself back dramatically in his big chair, throwing out his arms. "Meanwhile, what are you accomplishing? ”

“ Kessler interjected.
Brogan held up his hand again. "Just let me have my say. You know we folks down here in Washington always have a lot to say and we hate being interrupted." He smiled briefly. "This sort of thing has been going on in aviation history for the last fifty years—these unexplained accidents—and there's nothing especially new about this last one. ”

“ What with the flight engineer being a souse and the pilot new to the crew and the co-pilot just back after a two-month layoff because of a ski accident. 'Human error,' that's what I said."
"Ski accident? I thought it was the stewardess that had the ski accident? I'm not going to trip you up in your own bailiwick now, am I?"
"Stewardess?" Kessler frowned. "You must be mistaken, senator."
"I felt quite sure," Brogan said musingly.
"I know your reputation for a fact, senator," Kessler said uncomfortably, "but a stewardess with a ski accident. Oh! Oh, yes. But not recent. ”

“ Brogan said.
"Well, one man was even in another plane crash before. I forget his name."
"Pearlow," Kessler murmured.
"Pearlow, yes. And Dr. Pollitt who was blinded in an accident. I don't really know about your friend Miss Bennett, senator."
Brogan nodded. "She qualifies."
"And the little girl, Barbara? Who had the automobile accident? The veteran? Prewitt, who accidentally killed his brother? At least two of those people were going to psychiatrists. Well, Mr. Spencer had me worried because I didn't know if the mushrooms qualified him as accident prone. ”

“ He showed up for lunch at a girl friend's apartment with a black eye. Made some joke about walking into a door and wouldn't tell her anything else about it. She gave him the drinks at his request, and a big lunch, and put a little makeup on his eye because he'd been pulled from a flight a few months before when he showed up looking as though he'd been in a scrap. ”

“ Heavens, no! Oh, she'd have a drink to be sociable, but it was usually a sherry and half the time she wouldn't finish that. I don't suppose you were envisaging the possibility that she highjacked the plane from four officers and two stewardesses and then wrecked it?" This time he smiled the broad toothy smile that made him a favorite with Washington news photographers. ”