Second entry in series of teen aviation stories, filled with lots of scientific jargon, a jewel heist, and adventure. Van Powell is a pseudonym of early Hollywood screenwriter, Ardon Van Buren Powell.
By : Van Powell (1886 - 1958)
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“Steady, all! Engine’s quit and left us with a dead stick! No danger.”
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.”
Dick, who saw something to make light of in any situation, turned with his plump face cracked by a broad grin.
“I always said whether you fly a crate full of passengers or handle one full of eggs, you get a good break sometimes!”
Larry nodded in his calm, half-serious way.
Only the youngest member of the trio, as the craft nosed into a gentle glide and banked in a turn to get in position to shoot the private landing spot on the old estate, took the occasion as anything but a lark.
Dick joked, Larry admired the skill of the pilot.
And Jeff, chewing his gum casually, justified their confidence.
Sandy Maclaren, with narrowed eyes and an intent frown, bent his gaze on the pilot’s back and muttered under his breath.
“That engine didn’t die. I saw what Jeff did. He was as quick as a cat—but he didn’t fool me.”
His expression altered to a puzzled scowl.
“But why did he shut off the ignition and pretend the engine had stopped—so handy to this old, abandoned estate?”
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.
“Well,” Jeff said, with a grin, swinging around in his seat and drawing off his helmet, “here we are!”
“If I ever get the money to take flying lessons,” Larry said, “I know the pilot I’m going to ask to give me instruction! When I can make a forced landing like that one, Jeff, I’ll think I’m getting to be a pilot.”
“If ever I get taken into my uncle’s airplane passenger line,” Dick spoke up, “I know who’ll be Chief Pilot—until Larry gets the experience to crowd Jeff out.”
Sandy, his face moody, said nothing.
The tall, slim pilot, grinned at the compliments and then went on working his jaws on the gum he habitually chewed.
“Guess I’ll have to trace my gas line and ignition to see if a break made this trouble.” Jeff began removing his leather coat. “Say! By golly! Do you know where I think we’ve set down?”
“Yes,” Sandy spoke meaningly. “This is the old Everdail estate—the one that’s been in the newspapers lately because the people around here claim the hangar is haunted.”
“I believe it is!” agreed Jeff. “Why don’t you three take a look. Yonder’s a hangar and the roll-door is lifted a little. Maybe you’d spot that there Mister Spook and clear up the mystery while I work.”
“I’d rather go down by the water and see if it’s cooler there,” Sandy said, trying to catch Larry’s eye. “Since we got down out of the cool air it’s the hottest day this June.”
“I’m for the hangar!” voted Dick. “If there’s any specters roaming through that hangar you’ll get more chills there than you will by the Sound.”
“I could stand a shiver or two,” commented Larry, leading the way toward the large, metal-sheathed building at the end of the runway.
Facing them was a wide opening, sufficiently spacious to permit airplanes to be rolled through: in grooved slots at either side the door, made of joined metal slats working like the old-fashioned roll-top desk, could be raised or lowered by a motor and cable led over a drum.
Sandy gave in, and as they walked toward the hangar they discussed the stories that had come out in the news about queer, ghostly noises heard by passers-by on the state road late at night, accounts of the fright the estate caretaker had received when he investigated and saw a queer, bluish glow in the place and was attacked by something seemingly uncanny and not human.
The door, when they arrived, was seen to be partially open, lifted about three feet.
“There’s an airplane in there—it looks to be an amphibian—I see pontoons!” Larry stated.
“Let’s go have a look at it,” suggested Dick.
“Don’t!” Sandy spoke sharply. “Don’t go in there!”
Larry and Dick straightened and stared in surprise. It was very plain to be seen that Sandy was not joking.
“Why?” asked Larry, in his practical way.
“Think back,” said Sandy. “When school vacations started and we began to stay around the new Floyd Bennett airport that had opened on Barren Island, Jeff had his ‘crate’ there to take people around the sky for short sight-seeing hops, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” admitted Larry, “and we got to be friendly because we are crazy to be around airplanes and pilots, and Jeff let us be ‘grease monkeys’ and help him get passengers, too.”
“Surely he did! But when we brought them to go up with him, did he take their money and fly them around, the way others did? Or——”
“No,” Dick admitted. “He generally had something wrong with the crate, or the wind was too high, or he had stubbed his left foot and met a cross-eyed girl, or saw a funeral passing, and thought something unlucky might happen from those signs.”
“Do you really believe anybody can be as superstitious as Jeff tries to make us believe he is?”
“Yes. Lots of pilots are—they think an accident will happen if anybody wears flowers in their ‘planes——”
“All right, Larry, let that go. But why did Jeff bring us here?”
“He said, this morning, we had helped him a lot and he didn’t have money to pay us,” 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!”
“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. Everything looks as if it had some hidden mystery behind it—I know what will be your new nickname——”
He chuckled to show there was no malice as he stated the new name.
“Suspicious Sandy!”
“That’s good,” Larry smiled. “Suspicious Sandy thinks a pilot gets a dead stick to make us land near a haunted hangar——”
“I saw him cut the ignition switch!” declared Sandy defiantly.
“You thought you did!”
“I know I did—and, what’s more, here we are at a spot where nobody comes because of the ghost story—and he tells us to go into the hangar and—the door is left up a little way——”
“Oh, Sandy, you’re letting wild imagination run away with you!”
“Am I? All right. You two go on in—and be held for ransom!”
“Ho-ho-ho-ho! That’s good. Suspicious Sandy—is that somebody inside the hangar?” Dick changed his tone suddenly, dropping his voice to a whisper as he stooped and saw something move behind the old amphibian at the back of the building.
“I thought I saw—but it’s gone!” Larry retorted, lowering his voice also.
By a common impulse of curiosity they stooped and went in. Sandy, his own impulse following theirs, was inside almost as quickly.
“There isn’t anybody!” Larry’s eyes became used to the duller light that filtered through the thick dust on the roof skylight.
To their startled ears came a muffled clang, a queer, hollow sound—and as they turned to run back under the rolled-up door, it slid rapidly down in its grooves, dropping into place with a hollow rumble.
“Good gracious golly!” gasped Dick.
“That’s queer!” Larry was a little puzzled.
Sandy, half frightened, half triumphant, spoke four words:
“I told you so,” he whispered.
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