OUTWITTED!
From their cockpits Sandy and Dick watched the hydroplane. At cruising
speed their airplane made nearly three miles to the hydroplane's one.
Its mysterious occupant must know that they were trailing him, but he
held to a straight course so that his lights were never in a different
place as their craft above swung to show its observers the red and then
the green.
"He's making straight for Greenwich, on the Connecticut side," Dick
decided, knowing a good deal about the Sound ports.
"How are you fixed?" Jeff spoke to their youthful pilot through his
tube.
Briefly Larry swung his head, nodding.
"We'll be getting tired of turning to the left all the time," Jeff
suggested. "Think you could follow a sort of zig-zag, flying slantwise
across the course of that-there boat, then coming around an angle and
flying slantways back to the other side?"
Larry nodded emphatically.
"Good! Here we go--to the right. Get your eye on that Fall River Liner,
coming up the Sound--that's about the point of our first leg.
"Now, touch of right rudder and right aileron--and stick back to
neutral. There! She's level. Keep moving stick and rudder a bit,
steadily. Now she's banked and turning. Neutralize! That's the ticket.
"There! The nose is on that steamer. That's it--don't let her swing off
that point for awhile--and watch that you don't nose down--that's right,
back a bit on that-there stick, up she comes, stick back to neutral."
Thus directed, and admonished, Larry managed to give the airplane a
swinging, zig-zag course, so that its greater speed was used up in the
longer legs of its slanted progress, and since the hydroplane did not
try any tricks or change its path, the Sound was being crossed in the
wake of the steamer by the boat and in a corkscrew path by its aerial
bloodhound.
"I think I know what is going to happen," Sandy decided, as they crossed
the course of the hydroplane so that its two tiny colored beams showed
at the same instant. "He'll wait till we get closer in to the
Connecticut shore line and then he'll 'douse the glim' and leave us with
nothing to watch."
Bending forward Dick began to rummage in a compartment built in his
section of the seating space.
He believed that he could outwit any effort to escape by taking
advantage of the landing flares, attached to small parachutes, which
Jeff carried as a precaution during his former night hops to the old
estate.
"Better cut the gun and glide down a couple of hundred feet," Larry
heard Jeff's voice in his earphones. "If he tries any tricks----"
"That's queer!" Sandy exclaimed to himself, as he stared down and saw
the small, swift boat open a vivid, glowing eye at the bow.
The helmsman had switched on its searchlight.
"What's that for?" Dick wondered.
Jeff, warned by the trail of light on the water below, took a quick
look.
"He must be looking for his landing!" Sandy called.
Larry, holding the airplane in a moderate glide, saw the beam glowing
out beyond the airplane's nose, felt that he was as low as he dared be
with land ahead, and drew back on the stick to bring up the craft to a
level keel, opening the throttle as the glide became a flat course about
three hundred feet higher than the water.
"He's swinging the boat out to open water again!" cried Sandy.
"There it goes around!" shouted Dick, unheard, excited, as the beam of
the hydroplane swung in a wide arc from shore, heading once more back
toward Long Island.
"He's going back!" Sandy exulted. "We'll get him!"
"Good boy," Jeff spoke to Larry. "You made that turn without a hitch.
With that searchlight to guide you, I don't need to talk through
this-here thing any more."
Larry had no trouble following the boat with the white beam as a guide.
It puzzled Sandy, and he swung around to look questioningly back at
Dick. The latter, unable to see his expression, but guessing his idea,
shook his head.
"It's time to find out what's what!" he muttered.
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.
To Larry's disappointment, they were so far to one side and behind the
hydroplane that the flare failed to disclose its occupant.
He held up a hand, and pointed ahead, then opened the throttle, came
onto a straightaway course over the hydroplane, rapidly overhauled it
and got well ahead. Then, cutting the gun and gliding, as it came up
under them, he signaled, and Dick, waiting, ignited a second flare.
All four of the Sky Patrol members gasped as the light blazed out.
Larry looked back at his companions, amazedly.
"It's--empty--nobody in it!" he cried.