A "FLYING FILM"
Up to the dark room Don hurried with Garry.
At their knock a muffled voice came through the panels, hardly to be
understood because of the weather-stripping used to make the joining of
door and frame light-tight.
"He says he can't let us in," Don caught the faint murmur and
interpreted it.
"Taking the film from the tank, I guess," Garry responded. "We'll have
to wait."
Five minutes passed. Then the door was opened.
Chick, with hands stained by contact with pyro and other chemicals,
showed a disappointed face.
"No go!" he greeted his chums. "The hangar light fogged the film. It
was light-struck, all right."
"How about another test, from the inner end of the roll?" Garry
suggested.
"We can try that," agreed Chick.
Into the intense blackness of the room they crowded, and, by sense of
touch Don extracted from the inner spool of the roll, an inch or so of
film, while Garry washed out the developing tank used for the films
they took of new craft for making half-tone engravings, pictures for
circulars, catalogues and "trade paper" illustrations.
Chick, mixing a fresh charge of pyro, with sodium sulphite and the
right amount of carbonate, from ready-prepared packets, enclosed the
film in a roll of rubber-edged material that let the developer seep in
but keep the fabric from touching the delicate film surface.
"Get the tank lid tight," he warned Garry after the solution had been
mixed and poured in, the film container being swished up and down to
get the film full impregnated. "I have to light the bulb to time it and
get the temperature of the mixture by the thermometer you just had in
the tank."
"Go ahead--it's tight."
They allowed twenty minutes for development; then the light was
extinguished and the door, opened for ventilation, was closed.
In darkness Chick removed the film, handling its container gingerly as
he immersed it in the hypo fixing bath to "set" the image. They gave it
about half a minute of darkness in the fixing bath.
"Now we can see it," he decided. "Switch on the----"
The door swung sharply outward.
There came a blinding flash, and with it the dense smoke of some
pungent, gas-reeking chemical. Eyes smarted and watered. Staggering
back from the surprise attack, totally unexpected, Don, Garry and Chick
took an instant to cower back against the wall, shielding their faces.
There was the play of a flashlamp about the room.
Then, before either of them could recover from astonishment and from
the choking smudge enough to move, there came the clank of some metal,
and the slam of the door.
"Oh!" Chick gasped, and then said no more, choking in the smoke of the
bomb or whatever poured its dense, stifling smoke up, filling the
small, almost airtight compartment.
It took Garry, nearest the door, half a minute of choked, almost
suffocated effort, fumbling in the dark, to get the handle of the door
and twist it. The door was not locked; but, as he dragged Chick out and
Don leaped over the fuming, pungent smoke-flare that had been ignited
and dropped in the dark room, Garry saw that the rubber catch-all mat
on the floor was burning.
The designing room, with its unreplaceable, valuable files, was
adjacent to the dark room. Below, in the workshops, "dope" and other
dreadfully inflammable materials lay stored. In the hangar next it were
airplanes worth thousands of dollars, including a fourteen-ton,
double-bodied seaplane that had been ordered by the Mexican Government.
"One go one way, the other to the bank stairway--or the fire escape!"
he screamed to Don and Chick.
Himself, ignoring the lost film--knowing well that was what had
vanished in the hands of their adversary--Garry raced for a fire
extinguisher.
Choked, blinded, staggering, Don and Chick heard, but had difficulty
getting their bearings.
Garry ran, full speed, back, to upset the chemical fire extinguisher so
that its contents, mixing, would generate a gas to drown out the small,
but menacing fire that had already touched the matting running from the
designing room corridor across that side of the space.
Don staggered to the window, drawing in great lungfuls of fresh air.
Gasping, choked, he strained his eyes toward the grounds outside.
Chick, at the corridor door, looked up and down, bracing against the
dizziness that swung him on his unsteady legs.
Garry drenched the matting, the smoking flare, the floor and walls in
danger.
The fire out, he dropped the extinguisher, and turning, raced, with Don
and Chick, recovering rapidly, at his heels. He, too, was choked; but
at the first opening of the door Garry had, fortunately, thrown a
sleeve protectingly across his face, so that he had breathed less of
the fumes than his companions.
Up to the control tower balcony raced Garry. Don went down to the
hangars. Chick took the midway corridor, searching each office.
"There he goes," shouted a voice.
Garry, rushing to the balcony, saw a fleet figure running across the
grounds, out of the good light, but discernible. Into the searchlight
Garry ran, while Don and Chick, hearing his shouts of response to the
voice from below, went, careless of risk to limb, down the stairways at
front and back of the big building. Garry, struggling to get the
searchlight turned in the proper direction to pick out the fleeing
figure, to identify it in a flare of vivid light, explained swiftly to
the control chief on duty.
By the time the light was in position, on the roof, and its mechanism
adjusted, the beam probing the velvety dark night picked up a scene of
swift action.
Don and Chick, close to the hangars, were running, full tilt, out of
the grounds, along the roadway.
A hundred feet beyond them were two heavier figures, pounding along at
a slower pace, so that Don and Chick soon met, passed and out-stripped
them.
Just beside the cottages that were boarding places and providers of
furnished rooms for airport mechanicians, shop workers, pilots and
others, a fleetly running, light form swerved out of the light just as
Garry got to the balcony again.
Behind a house the figure vanished.
It had some round object clutched in the crook of an arm, Garry thought.
Standing there he watched until Don and Chick reached the spot.
In the bright rays of the light they soon returned, waving arms in
dismay. While they stood, undecided, a window of the nearer cottage
flew up.
Garry could not hear the voice, but he recognized Scott.
He watched as Don and Chick, calling upward, waited, received an
answer, turned and raced back toward the hangars.
The upswung arm of Don, the upward pointing finger of Chick, told Garry
what was wanted.
Down the stairways he plunged.
"Quick! Henry--help me!" he shouted, running toward the Dragonfly.
Don appeared at the door.
"That's right!" He saw Don pushing at the tail of the aircraft.
"What's it all about?" demanded the mechanician, to whom all this
in-and-out pushing of the "busses" was mystifying.
"Scott called down to us. He was dozing when the light woke him. He got
a glimpse of the man running away," Don informed him.
"It was the Indian--John Ti!" contributed Chick, putting his weight
behind the wing of the ship as he helped get it through the doors.
"Well--then he went into the swamps!" the man said. "That's the only
place he could get to from back of that house."
"I know it!" puffed Garry.
"What do you want this crate for, then? You don't expect to see a
single, Indian kid, hiding in a pitch-dark swamp!"
"No!" gasped Don, "we don't. But--Henry--we left the Dart tied there!"
"Get all the flares you can find!" Garry urged Chick, himself busy
looking over the fuel gauges and oil supply.
Chick raced away, fully recovered.
They got the Dragonfly into the air in short order.
Three determined youths, each tightly strapped in place, each with a
supply of signal flares, of rockets, of flash bombs, of white, red,
blue and green Verey lights, went forth into the sky lanes, determined
that their clue, considered important by Scott, should be recovered.
In the swamp a lithe figure, watching, seeing the ship coming over,
muttered.
"He shan't get away!" Don whispered, half aloud, to himself, in the
Dragonfly.
"He shan't get away!" muttered the lithe figure swiftly untying the
Dart beside the boathouse wharf.
To which an older, more deeply copper-colored form grunted agreement,
whirling the fight propeller to "contact!"
Then began a most peculiar sky chase!