ON THE OBSERVER’S PLATFORM
Red lunged up, awake in an instant. “What’s that?” he demanded.
“The plans are gone; you were right.”
Red, swearing softly and fervently, commenced to throw on his clothes.
“No use cussing,” said David. “We’ve got to think what to do. I just
left the wheel, and what you said kind of worried me, so I thought I’d
hide ’em. I opened the case, and they were gone.”
“Did you look around?” asked Red.
“Of course; but they are not in the cabin.”
“What’s the time?”
“Three.”
Trouble came scrambling up, curled around in Red’s lap, and commenced to
purr. Automatically Red scratched the small ear.
“Gone!” he repeated. “Well, they have got to be somewhere. Just one
thing to do, Dave. Go to Mr. Hammond the minute he’s up, and tell him
the whole thing. It’s a dirty scandal, of course, but those plans must
be found. Let’s go down.”
“Easy does it,” warned David. “Don’t want to wake anybody.”
Silently, thoroughly, they searched every inch of David’s room. The
plans were not there. They could not sleep, so they sat in the salon and
smoked. There Mr. Hammond found them when, as usual, he came out at
dawn. Briefly they told him what had happened.
“By George,” he said, “that’s a rotten shame! Who on earth would do it?
Whom do you suspect?”
“Well, sir,” said Red grimly, “my brother always says, ‘Don’t ever lose
time suspectin’ anybody. Look for a motive’.”
“There’s a good deal in that, but I confess I don’t see any motives just
now. Wonder if there is any coffee left over. This has upset me.”
“I’ll make some, sir, if you can keep the cook from stabbin’ me later,”
said Red, and he went into the spotless galley.
While Red made coffee, David explained something of the nature of the
device minutely described in the stolen plans, what he had hoped it
would mean to dirigible navigation, and his high hopes of winning the
Goodlow School prize with it. When Red returned with the steaming
percolator Mr. Hammond tested the brew with evident satisfaction.
“Perfect,” he said. “Now I can think. We have been talking this
invention over, Red. Why, it is a great thing! Just what we have been
groping for. If it is a success, it is immensely valuable. The papers
must be found.”
“They must,” said Red, “for it will work. I know it!”
“I wouldn’t have had such a thing happen for anything,” mused Mr.
Hammond. “With the ship full of newspaper correspondents lapping
everything up for copy! But we can’t side-step. We will have a meeting
right after breakfast.”
To avoid crowding the salon, Mr. Hammond divided the meeting. The
passengers, officers, and three engineers met first. Mr. Hammond laid
the case before them, and each man was searched. Afterward the crew and
the rest of the engineers gathered. There was a general demand, led by
Wally, for a search of everybody’s personal belongings. Committees were
formed, every garment was examined, every cushion probed, hangings taken
down, books and magazines gone over leaf by leaf.
The crew’s quarters were searched. Men in their soft overalls and felt
shoes swarmed over the catwalks in the vast hull and looked in every
conceivable place where a packet of papers might have been hidden. A
cloud rested on the Moonbeam. Everyone was anxious and angry.
The case seemed more flagrant on account of David’s popularity. Not a
man of the ship, officers, passengers or crew, who was not wholly
devoted to the young captain. Everyone rejoiced in his success. The
manner in which he had piloted the ship through storm and calm aroused
in them an unselfish pride. They were back of him, ready to do anything.
Yet here someone had stolen from him something more than money. They had
stolen his hopes and his ambitions.
David had spent every leisure hour for months on his invention. There
was a time limit on the entrants for the contest. All papers must be in
the hands of the judges no later than the fifteenth of July, ten days
after they were scheduled to reach Lakehurst. The plans could not be
reconstructed in ten weeks.
During the morning Doctor Sims and David met in the passageway.
“Well, young man, whom are you suspecting?” demanded the professor.
“No one,” replied David. “I’ve been advised to look for a motive.”
“Correct; but there might be several motives. Jealousy, vanity, the
desire for money or fame, revenge—a wide choice.”
“Envy, hatred, and malice all point just one way with me,” said Red,
when David repeated the professor’s words to him, “but it can’t be.
Wally wouldn’t dare do such a thing.”
“Oh, Lord, there you go on Wally again! What in thunder would he do such
a crazy fool thing for? Why, he even owns shares in the Moonbeam.”
“Yeah?” sneered Red. “And what’s it got him, the poor devil? Write-ups
and interviews perhaps, but underneath is the sting of being cooped up
with a bunch of people that can’t abide the sight of him. Can’t you see,
you blind bat, that he’s never on the in with them? Not on the poker, or
pools, or their jokes, unless he butts in. And he feels it. You come
along, and it’s ‘Hi, captain, join us,’ and ‘Come over with us and sit
down, captain,’ and so on. I swear, sometimes I am sorry for him, even
if his grandfather did swap farms with my grandfather.”
“Look at my hand,” said David absently. A broad purple stain spread
across the palm.
“How did you get that?” asked Red.
“It’s indelible lead. I must have spilled some leads out of my suitcase
when I was turning over things to find that envelope. I was on my hands
and knees, and must have pressed my hand down pretty hard. My palm was
moist, and the darned thing spread the way it always does. Beastly
stuff! It won’t wash off.”
“Mechanic’s paste ought to fix it,” said Red. “Where is the pencil?”
“Clipped to my lost notebook. ‘Anyone returning plans may keep pencil,
and no questions asked’,” David said ruefully.
Things went badly all that day. The ship lagged along in a head wind,
all five engines going at top speed, every engineer at his post. It was
generally known, now, that David had no copy of the lost plans. So the
thief could make the invention public under the name of an accomplice.
Mr. Hammond stayed in the chart room, watching the indicator as it
ruthlessly registered the speed of the ship, the conviction growing
steadily that they would never be able to beat the record of their great
predecessor, the Graf Zeppelin.
David hovered over the wheel. He was sick at heart. Little things
bothered him. The blue stain on the palm of his hand annoyed him. The
mechanic’s paste had not worked very well.
After luncheon Mr. Hammond instituted another search for the missing
plans, but in vain. Just one more night, and they would reach Los
Angeles, and the plans would walk off for good. Mr. Hammond decided to
search every man before he left the ship.
When afternoon tea was served, Dulcie coaxed David from the control
room.
“You haven’t spoken to me for days,” she said.
“I’m rather upset, Dulcie,” he replied, “and pretty poor company.”
“You are always good company, Davie,” she said, comfortingly. “Some good
hot tea will pep you up. Cakes?”
David sipped his tea in silence.
“I wish you wouldn’t worry,” Dulcie said presently. “Dad thinks he can
advertise it so the thief won’t dare to use your plans at all.”
“That won’t work, Dulcie. You see, every scratch I had ever made on the
subject was in that envelope, and it would only be my word against his.”
“Couldn’t Red swear he had seen it?”
“Yes, and then some pals of the thief could swear that they had actually
helped construct it.”
“Dad’s going to search every man as he gets off the ship at Los
Angeles.”
“What’s to keep him from weighting it, and tossing it out of the ship
some good place outside the city? He could easily go back for it.”
“My word, David, what an awful thought!”
“I think the plans are gone for good, Dulcie, but if they are, I’m not
going to crab over it. My luck holds yet. Nothing can ever take away
from me the fact that I have been captain of the Moonbeam. I have
learned a lot, and I have made some good friends.”
“I come in there, Davie,” said Dulcie decidedly.
David flushed, then looked at her squarely. “You are the best of all,
Dulcie. The best little pal; the truest, squarest kid. All I hope is
that you won’t forget me when we get back to Ayre.”
“Don’t you worry,” Dulcie said grimly. “You can’t escape, poor dear! I’m
a big, rough woman, Davie. Didn’t you see daddy, all six-feet-three of
him, trying to sneak off in the Moonbeam without me? What happened, I
ask you?”
David laughed. “Gosh, you would have scared anyone.”
“Well, then, have another cup of tea, to celebrate.”
As he reached for the cup, Dulcie pointed to his palm. “What’s that blue
smudge?” she asked.
“Off an indelible pencil,” David answered carelessly.
“Oh, won’t it come off? Wally has one on his hand, too. He asked me what
would take it off.”
“Mechanic’s paste takes some of it off,” David replied.
Presently David went back to his cabin and lay down on the bunk. He had
spent a sleepless night, and the day had been a hard and depressing one.
He half dozed, but his subconscious mind worked busily on, and presently
he seemed to hear Dulcie speak.
“Wally has one on his hand, too.”
Wally! David lifted his hand and looked at the aniline stain spreading
across the palm; the stain where he had rested his hand on the broken
bit of indelible lead. There had been a splash of water on the floor. It
must have softened the lead. Indelible pencils were always like that.
Wally had a stain on his hand, too, did he?
David got up and, squaring his muscular shoulders, buttoned his coat.
The action was automatic—the gesture of a man buckling on armor. He
went to the control room, gave a brief order, then went swiftly to
Cram’s door, knocked, and turned the knob. Wally was reading.
“Cram, you have never been up on the observer’s platform, have you?”
David asked smoothly.
“Oh, hello, Ellison,” said Wally. “No, I’ve never been up in flight. I
went up there back in Ayre before the Moonbeam was finished.”
“It’s a great sight over the ocean, especially now, at sunset. Come
along, won’t you? I’m going up for a minute. There’s just time before
dinner.”
Wally hesitated, then rose with evident reluctance. “All right,” he
said. “I suppose I ought to be able to say I’d been up there in flight,
but it’s the last thing I’ll care for, I bet.”
He followed David into the hull, through devious ways up ladders and
along narrow catwalks.
“This doesn’t appeal to me,” he growled when at last he crawled through
the trap and emerged on the small platform on the dizzy top of the ship.
The platform was surrounded by a strong wire railing, but it looked
unstable to Wally, who tested it with his hand as David followed through
the trap.
This platform is seldom used, except in war time. David stepped up and,
slamming down the trap door, stood upon it and faced Wally. The last
exotic colors of the Pacific sunset reddened the illimitable space in
which they seemed to swing along—the two men cut off from all else
living. David was silent.
“Well, I don’t like it,” Wally admitted after a moment. “Too darned much
sky! You get a roll up here that you don’t feel in the ship, too. And
it’s cold. Why isn’t this railing higher? It isn’t safe; just comes to
my waist. So if you’ll just step off that trap, Ellison, we’ll go down.”
“Not yet, Cram.” David spoke quite gently. “I don’t want you to miss any
of this. We are riding high—higher every minute. I ordered the ship
sent up a mile or so, and we are climbing fast.
“Imagine,” he went on, “how easy it would be for a good husky chap, like
me, for instance, to heave another chap over. He’d go bouncing down the
side of the ship, clutching, but finding nothing to grab. Then—well,
that would be about all. I wonder how long you would have to think, to
remember, before you lost consciousness.”
“Lord, what a morbid mind! You want to watch out for yourself,” said
Wally with a forced laugh. The sunset shone full on his face. He was
chalk white. A sickly fear was spreading through him. “Come on, Ellison,
let’s go down. Thanks for the view. I’ve had enough of it. Come on.”
“No hurry,” said David. He stood against the sunset. That or the fact
that there was nothing to measure him by, no familiar scale of size,
made his big muscular figure look gigantic to Wally’s horrified gaze.
For Wally was suddenly tasting a terror past his comprehension. The man
was mad. Ellison was mad—mad—mad—mad. The words filled his brain like
the beat of a drum.
“Come on, Davie, old chap, let’s go down,” he coaxed.
“No!” thundered David. He took a single step toward Wally across the
little platform. With one hand he caught him by the lapels of his coat,
and shook him gently.
Wally screamed.
“Stop that!” said David. He took up Wally’s right hand and looked at it.
He nodded at the purple stain he saw there. “Where is it?” he asked.
“Where’s what?” chattered Wally.
“You know. The envelope—my plans.”
“How do I know?” cried Wally shrilly. “You think I took them? Well, I
didn’t. What would I want with your plans? Let go of me!” He pushed at
David’s hand. It was a grip of steel. “Let go, I tell you! I want to go
down!”
“No,” said David. “Where is the envelope, Cram? You know.”
“I don’t know anything about it, you fool!” cried Cram. “I’ll fix you
for this! Open that trap!”
“Where is the envelope with my papers? If I have to ask you that again,
I’ll fight you, Cram, right up here—”
“You mean you’ll murder me!” Cram suddenly screamed. “Help! help!” His
voice, thin and shattered, was torn to tatters by the wind and drifted
into space. He suddenly slumped at David’s feet, writhing.
Strangely, David’s anger turned to pity. He pulled the cringing object
upright. “Come, Cram,” he said.
“I’ll tell, I’ll tell!” Cram screamed. “Let me down! The envelope is
stuck under the bottom of the love birds’ cage,” he was panting. “In
Trigg’s room. I took it! Go look! It’s there!”
“Is this the truth?” demanded David.
“I swear it,” groaned Cram. “God’s own truth!”
“You will have to pay for this, Cram,” said David, tightening his grasp
on Cram’s arm. “You will do just what I say. If you don’t, I shall make
you wish that you were dead.” Anger rose in him again. “You poor
thieving cur, you! I ought to—”
“Oh, don’t, David, don’t! I can’t stand any more! I’ll do anything you
say, only take me down from this place.”
David stooped, opened the trap, and still keeping a hand on his
shoulder, shoved Wally down the ladder, along the catwalk, down the rear
ladder into the passage that led into the cabins and the salon. The
sound of voices came to them. Everyone was at dinner.
David pushed his prisoner into Doctor Trigg’s room. The awakened love
birds scolded softly as Cram felt under the floor of the cage. It stood
on the table on four short brass legs. He fumbled a moment, then thrust
something into David’s hand. It was the missing envelope. David glanced
inside. The papers were undisturbed.
“Come on,” he said grimly.
He shoved Cram before him into the salon, and stopped. Everyone looked
up. There was a silence. He held up the envelope, and at the same time
pushed Cram forward.
“This man has something to say to you,” he said.