DON TESTS A THEORY
With one accord the trio of youths hurried out of the Palace and paused
just around the corner from its lighted marquee.
"Yes, sirree!" Chick spoke the conclusion of a train of thought that
was clear to his comrades, "Toby Tew is the one!" Don nodded.
"He knew about that film they used," he declared, "and how the picture
was thrown onto the smoke. They had a picture projecting machine hidden
in the wings, and when the film was run through it, with a strong
light, against the background of the dark stage, the visions appeared
on the cloud of smoke."
"That's it!" agreed Garry. "Now that I come to think about it, I
remember that every night the spectre seemed to appear, there were
clouds. In June there were fleecy, fluffy ones, and in July they were
whitish thunderheads."
"We'd better be sure, though," Don argued. "I meant that we may know
how the spectre was made to appear, but that wouldn't be evidence in a
court if we told Uncle Bruce and he had Mr. Tew arrested for trying to
ruin the airport by scaring everybody."
"But the courts accept what they call 'precedents,' I know," Garry
insisted. "If a lawyer says that another case was decided, before, on a
certain kind of evidence, then the judge has to decide the same sort of
case, on the same sort of evidence, in the same way."
"But how does that help?" Don demanded.
"Well--look here!" Garry was very earnest. "I can give you precedents
about pictures on smoke. One night I was taken to a film showing part
of a prizefight, and there were a whole lot of men in the audience who
smoked, so that the hall had a thick curtain of cigar smoke between the
screen and the projecting machine--and the picture showed on the
smoke--and, what's more, the smoke was all glowing between the lens and
where the smoke was so thick that the picture was clear."
"I've read about a picture theatre out in the desert section of the
country," Chick stated. "I read it in a moving picture 'trade' journal
Mr. Tew loaned me--about a dust storm in Kansas, I believe it was,
where the dust was so thick in a theatre that the pictures they had to
show appeared on the dust almost as well as on the screen!"
"What of it?" argued Don. "I'm trying to make you see that proving how
a vision is made to appear doesn't prove who made it show!"
"I see your idea!" agreed Chick. "It could have come from the control
room, if the man on duty happened to have the right kind of apparatus
to use for showing a film and could fix it to use the powerful airport
searchlight."
"Yes," argued Garry, convincing himself. "I see that! And Mr. Vance
could be there alone, any time, any night. He could have a projector
'head'--the thing that snatches the films down in front of the lenses
and then holds them each a fraction of time before the light to let the
image get itself impressed on your eye. He could fix it to use the
search beam, probably. He's a wizard about lighting for night work on
airways and in airports."
"Look!" Don pointed down the street. "There's his car. He was in the
Palace, I think. Even if we didn't see him, that's where he was. Now I
say, let's get our bicycles and hurry down to the airport, and look
around, before he comes back to his cottage to sleep."
They hastened to their respective homes, securing the bicycles. In most
instances somebody gave them a "lift" down to the waterside base, but
each rode well, and was enduring and speedy on the pedals.
"The more I think about it," Garry stated, pedaling swiftly and then
coasting down the inclined road toward the water, "the more I think it
over, the less I believe it's from the control tower, and the surer I
am that Toby Tew is the man who makes spook pictures on clouds."
"He used the helicopter!" Chick contributed.
Don argued his conviction sturdily. How, he proposed, could a man in a
helicopter throw a picture on a cloud without being seen?
"Our Dragonfly and the mail 'plane were the only ones visible--I didn't
see the helicopter at all, the night of the 'spooking,'" he asserted.
"No," Garry admitted, "but, for that matter, we didn't see Scott in the
Dart. In a black sky, with lightning flickering to keep your eyes
altering the dilation of the pupils, we might have missed seeing them;
but the helicopter was there, maybe floating just above the cloud!"
"It couldn't have been!" Don was triumphant. "I drove right into that
cloud!"
Swinging his handlebars to the left to pass down the airport road,
Garry was silent: Chick, though, took up the argument.
"We can soon find out," he declared. "We can search the control room
and see if we find the least thing to back up Don's notion that it's
the control chief we have to blame. I think, myself, Mr. Tew would be
foolish--or brazen!--to show how the thing was done, if he was the
guilty man."
The control tower room was in charge of Vance's assistant, who was busy
taking down air condition reports from a radio with a headset. He
nodded, and went on, concentrating his attention on the weather data
which must be posted--and accurately--on the weather board in the
pilots' assembling room.
With the data typed, the assistant, knowing that Don was trustworthy
and that no scheduled arrivals would ensue, left the room in the young
pilot's charge while he departed to post his notes; and the chance they
longed for was made for them.
The search of drawers in the radio table gave no result.
No other section of the drawer space seemed worth looking into, and
since no visible evidence of any projection apparatus other than the
airport equipment was seen, they felt that prying was useless.
"Nothing for the control chief to use--you see that!" argued Garry.
"I suppose you think he'd have everything standing right out for
everybody to see?" Don spoke witheringly.
"Well, then," Chick seemed inclined to take Garry's side, to suspect
the man who operated a theatre and, thereby, knew most about the
projection of images from and through moving picture films.
Don sent his eyes from wall to wall, from cupboard of spare instruments
to unlocked desk drawers.
"Tew is the one to blame," Chick persisted. "Vance told the truth about
that tracing; he put his initials on it by chance, the way I'd make
little stars in my geography book when I'd try to memorize the capitals
of the South-Central States."
"But--oh, shucks! What's the good. I don't know who it is. I think the
control man is more logical than Toby Tew--and I like Toby best, too!"
Don said, morosely. "But what's the good of a theory, any way you look
at it, unless everything fits."
The helicopter didn't fit in with the idea of the control room man
projecting a moving scene on a cloud, he argued against his own ideas:
at the same time, the helicopter failed to connect a theatre owner and
boatman with such an idea. The picture on a cloud could have been
evolved by either, since both knew about the angles of projection and
the properties of light, concentration, angle and diffusion. But Doc
Morgan had also acted in a suspicious manner, and certainly knew about
the treasure, which, in itself, failed to fit in with the theory of Tew
trying to ruin airport business for spite against its executive.
Coming back, the control assistant asked Don if he would stay until the
assistant slipped across the runways to his boarding place for a ten
o'clock cup of coffee and some cold lunch. Don agreed.
Getting his coat, the assistant caught his arm in an older garment
hanging on a peg, and it fell to the floor.
They all heard the clink and jingle of some metallic object as it flew
out of the vest hung under the coat and also dislodged.
The man bent, picking it up.
"What's this?" he wondered aloud. "The Chief ought not to have keys
loose like that in his old duds--Doc might knock them down the way I
did and be too busy mooning over something to hear the noise--and a key
would be lost."
"Golly-to-Chriminety!" exclaimed Chick, running across to him, "let's
see that key, Chubby! It might be that it fits the cabinet where I keep
the blue-prints--the one the blue-print of the ship plan was taken out
of."
"Oh, no! The Chief isn't that sort. Anyway he lost a tracing, too!"
"I don't accuse him of that!" there was a hidden meaning in Chick's
tone, "but somebody might have put this where you found it!"
"That's right! Here! Try it!"
Don remained on duty, allowed the man to depart, and then waited
expectantly while Chick rushed away on his errand.
Garry, on the balcony, using the binoculars to try and locate the
helicopter's upthrusting blades, heard his name called.
"Garr--ry!" The hail came from the lower floor.
He raced down the stairway.
Don, waiting, impatiently tried to hear the words that seemed to come
up in excited, quick calls of amazement.
Soon his comrades came stamping up the stairs.
"The key didn't fit the cabinets!" Chick set down the large black
leather case he had been dragging along, and puffed for breath.
"But--it--did--fit--one--of--the lockers--in the pilots' locker room!"
"Oho!" Garry came after his smaller companion, dragging a compact and
intricate-looking mechanism. Don, staring, recognized it.
"That's a projector 'head!'" he said excitedly. "And you found it, in a
pilots' locker--whose?"
"Oh! I don't know that," Chick argued. "I think it's a spare one. What
does it matter! The key was in the chief's vest, the one he puts on
when he is working around in here. What more proof do you want! You
argued that he was guilty of throwing the spook pictures! Well----"
Don, examining the projector apparatus, which comprised an upper
canister, or flat magazine, into which a reel of film could be placed,
a film guide, a 'gate' and aperture, with mechanism for snatching the
film through, and its lower guide and magazine, looked up.
"Open that leather case."
It was only snapped shut, not locked. Chick and Garry got back the lid
in short order.
"Here's a roll of film." Chick drew it out, opening the tin container
protecting the celluloid material from drying out or from chance of
fire. "It's--an--aviation scene----"
"And the key to the locker was in the chief's vest!" chanted Garry.
"Your theory was right, Don."
"I'm not so sure!" Don looked from the film to the projector. "It looks
black for him, but--Garry how would you concentrate enough light from
the big, open spot lantern here, onto the aperture of the projector
head? See! The lens in that spot lamp is at least eighteen inches
across, and that's the diameter of the beam it throws. The part of the
projector that the light has to concentrate on is less than two inches
across! How about it?"
"I can't tell you."
"It was your theory, Don," Chick reminded him. "Now you've got
'evidence.' You find out how it's used."
"I will!" Don accepted the challenge.
Studying the situation, the lighting conditions, and the materials at
hand, he jumped up, turning an excited face to his comrades.
"This is how I'll prove my theory--or test it, anyway," he asserted.
"Chick, rush down to the designing room, and get the big focusing cloth
you use to cover your head when you have to focus the enlarging camera
for detail print enlargements. Bring it up."
Chick was back very soon with the big, rubberized square of black.
"Now," Don came from an adjoining room where they had discarded flying
togs that morning, "I'll take the Dart, and go aloft--and fly out over
the swamps. Chick, you and Garry adjust that focusing cloth over the
projector head so it cuts off all the stray light that the beam lens
won't concentrate on the aperture plate. Then, when I set off a green
Verey light, and it goes out and I have time to get my eyes used to the
dark again, you open up the beam, and start turning the projector, with
this film in it, trained on a cloud near where I am. We'll soon test my
theory."
He got a mechanician, half asleep in the lonely hangar shops, had his
help to start up the refueled Dart, warmed up the light ship, and
signaling for the "mech" to release the tail he had been steadying
against propeller blast, on the runway, Don sent the small craft into
the water, taxied along its gently ruffled surface, got on the step and
with full gun went soaring up to test a theory.
Short was his turn and abrupt his wingtip bank, to get himself headed
for the marshes.
There, with a chosen altitude that he judged to be right for the angle
of projection, he made ready to see if the tower beam had sufficient
concentration and intensity to make a ghost of a film picture show on
the cloud its beam might strike.
The green Verey flashed out, burned and died.
Gliding, watchful, Don's eyes accustomed themselves to the dark.
A moment passed. Then, as he banked to come back, he saw it.
From a luminous cloud the spectre ship flew out at him!