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[Illustration: Transfixed, rooted to his tracks, Chick gasping, stared.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GHOST OF MYSTERY AIRPORT
by
VAN POWELL
[Illustration]
The Saalfield Publishing Company
Akron, Ohio New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright MCMXXXII
The Saalfield Publishing Company
The Ghost of Mystery Airport
Made in the United States of America
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GHOST OF MYSTERY AIRPORT
CHAPTER I
A PILOT WHO LIKED SPOOKS
"Scared?"
"Not a bit!"
Garry Duncan, just behind the pilot who had asked the question,
answered it in his usual, cool manner.
Behind him in the three-place open cockpit biplane, his
thirteen-year-old chum displayed none of his calm.
"I'm scared!" Chick cried as the pilot cut down his throttle. Chick
raised his voice to a tremulous shout, "Scott--turn back."
The man at the controls laughed.
"Don't be a baby!" he counseled. "Just because you see a cloud begin to
look shimmery--the first sign of the ghost, according to all the pilots
who have seen it--don't lose your nerve."
"But--this ghost hunt might be dangerous," Chick began to plead.
"C-can't you--Scott, can't you t-turn and go out on the bay?"
"No. I cut the gun too much and the engine died. We have to glide in,
dead-stick, to the best landing we can." There was no regret in the
pilot's voice. He proposed to carry through his purposes.
"But--" Chick was hopeful as he offered an argument, "in the dark here,
the swamp is dangerous--you might miss water and you'd get the wings
torn in the grass." He added quickly, "or you may get our pontoons
bogged--" As the airport searchlight made a cloud glow he cried,
"Yes--bogged down in the ooze." He expected to see the ship bank,
indicating that his hint was being acted on.
Instead the ship's nose went down. Scott, with a little laugh of
amusement at Chickering Brown's fears, found additional terrors for the
youngest of the pair with them.
"Yes," he agreed, "and then the spectre that always appears in the
clouds might fly down on us and say 'boo!'"
He turned, as they glided, high above the swamp.
"How about it, Garry? Wouldn't that be awful?" Garfield Duncan,
fifteen-year-old student-pilot and assistant to an airport manager's
nephew, answered seriously.
"Terrible!" he agreed, "but it would be Chick's own fault. He was so
interested in the mystery that he vowed he wouldn't be scared."
"Well!" Chick hoped for one means of allaying his fears--light. "Why
don't you throw over a landing flare, Scott! It's pitchy-black down in
the marsh."
"Scott will get us down, even without power." Garry voiced his
confidence in the test pilot who knew the channels and open water
spaces like a book. "Great Scott," as they had nicknamed him, made many
test flights for the American branch of a foreign seaplane
manufacturer; of late, since an airport had been inaugurated in
connection with the seaplane "base," Scott had flown over the marsh at
night, conducting tests of new lighting equipment, spotlight,
searchlight and beacon.
"If you're afraid," he added, "try whistling, Chick, my boy! I've heard
that ghosts won't come around if you whistle."
Usually Garry did not tease his younger chum; but Chick had been so
confident of his own bravery, had so insistently begged to be one of
the "spook trappers," that Chick's terror in the face of darkness--and
of nothing worse, so far--prompted him to be a little sarcastic.
"It's all very well to sneer," said Chick. "I wasn't scared, back in
the design room--but here--" he stopped. They had been filing
blue-prints in the plant of an Italian aircraft building company when
Scott, its test pilot, had come quietly into the blue-print room where
Garry made the multitudes of blue-prints from pen drawings for the many
detailed parts of the company's product.
The secrecy of his entrance had fascinated Garry's more youthful
companion, who filed the blue-prints and sketches. Chick had caught a
hint of something secretive about Scott; it had fired his ready
imagination and he had been so eager to hover close that Scott, after a
moment of hesitation, had included him in the proposal he had made.
"You both realize how serious that Sky Spook scare has come to be," he
had whispered. "I wasn't going to say anything to Chick, because he's
pretty young--" at once Chick had denied the insinuation, "--all right,
Chick," Scott had continued. "Just the same, I wasn't going to include
you--but it may help, at that--if you are 'game' and not scarey."
Assured of Chick's absolute bravery and perfect gameness the test pilot
had suggested that he wanted to "get to the bottom--or top--of the
spook business."
"Ever since the first pilot cracked up," he had said, "and explained
that he thought he saw a spooky-looking crate flying straight at him
out of a cloud, I've thought he was trying to 'cover up' his own
carelessness with that story. The next one to see 'it' must have caught
the scare and had an overdose of imaginittis. But it has gotten into
the newspapers and they call the new airport 'Mystery Airport.' It's
ruining business for Don McLeod's uncle, and I'd like to help him out
by proving that there isn't any ghost ship flying in and out of the
clouds to make a pass at every pilot whose firm gives the new airport
its business."
Garry had agreed with Scott's theory that some hidden enemy was trying
to ruin the airport's business, and hamper its growth. Readily he had
consented to help Scott with his simple plan, which required that with
Scott the two youths would fly, that night, inviting the appearance of
the ghostly, or human apparition, at which time Scott felt confident
that he could run down the culprit and end the scare before it further
harmed the morale of the flying force or resulted in the loss of
contracts for air line hangar space and landing and take-off fees.
The eagerness with which Chick had seconded the plan, his pleading to
be included in the airplane's passengers as an observer and signalman,
his stout declarations of his complete fearlessness, had suddenly
become empty boasts when the three-place ship had reached the vicinity
of the swamps adjacent to the airport but not yet drained and prepared
for filling in. Eventually the greater part of the swamps would be
changed into good ground. Engineers were already preparing to drain
away the salt tides flowing in from Long Island Sound and Little Neck
Bay. Unless the unexplained mystery of the spectral sky denizen could
be settled, it seemed unlikely that the swamp land need ever be
reclaimed for airport expansion.
Scott, for years the hangar supervisor and chief test pilot for the
airplane construction plant and seaplane base which had existed before
the airport project in combination with them had been started, was very
anxious, it seemed, to end the ghost scare.
With his two youthful aides, confident Garry and shivering Chick, he
made a good descent to the surface of a wide sheet of enclosed, shallow
water, let the amphibian craft, which could make either earth or water
landings, run out of momentum, and then sat back, loosening his helmet
chin straps.
"Here's the full plan," he turned around in the cockpit in the dark,
salty-smelling marsh, silent except for the plash of a leaping fish or
the cry of a gull seeking a belated dinner, "I didn't want to be seen
talking too long at the plant. You never know who 'might be'--you know!"
"I understand," admitted Garry. "Let's hear it all."
"I went to Don as soon as I left you--and he's managed to get Mr.
McLeod to let him go aloft in the Dart." He referred to a light, fast
two-seater, the personal property of the airport manager, which his
seventeen-year-old nephew had secured for the evening. "Now, Don is as
good an amateur pilot as you'll find; but he lacks stunting experience.
He will come here, set down, and then I'll take the Dart and keep it
warmed up and ready, while Don, with you two for observers, will go up
and cruise around--and invite Mr. Ghost to come at you!"
Chick shivered and muttered under his breath. "If Mr. Spectre shows up,
you signal to me----"
"I know." Garry recalled arrangements used in other night
communications, during night tests. "If the spook appears in the
clouds, we set off a red flare. If 'it' takes off from the ground, we
give you a green Verey signal and you'll be able to catch anything
slower than greased lightning in that Dart--and drive down the ghost
and prove it's only some human person, after all."
"Well, that's what I hope to do."
"Sup--supposing it isn't a h-human being?"
"That would tickle me to pieces, Chick, old top," laughed the pilot.
"I'd sort of like to have it turn out that way. Why? Because I never
shook hands with a ghost, and it ought to be a right nice experience."
"He--it would scare you out of your togs!" scoffed Chick.
"Oh, no!" Scott assured him. "Spectres, if they really do exist, can't
hurt you. It's only your fear that can do you any harm. Now, I like
spooks!---"
"Yes?" Garry pointed up toward the July night sky. "Well, there's one!
Go up and get acquainted. We'll wait here!"
He had meant to joke, to terrify Chick; but he became silent and a
trifle awed.
There was--something!--black against a luminous Summer cloud!