A FLYING FINISH
Feverishly Don worked with spare cable to wire around the ignition
switch and get his engine going.
From the boathouse staggered Garry and Chick, coughing, their eyes
streaming. They dragged, by the shoulders, the unconscious pilot.
"His head must have struck something!" gasped Garry, dabbing at his
eyes. Suddenly something snapped into his mind.
"Chick!" he choked and gasped, then turning, stuttered, "my first
aid--kit! I left it--on--path--promontory--when--mail 'plane went down!"
Staggering, but bravely eager to help a man who was hurt, the youth
took his way off the wharf, along the path, into the grass toward the
end of the shore that curved out into the inlet, making the wavering
line of the channel on one side.
The roar of an airplane engine came--but it was in the air!
Don looked up. There was the Dart, coming over, shooting the water
landing, making its approach, coming in, setting down!
He recognized, at its controls, as he flung aside his helmet, the pilot
who had been injured in the first crack-up, the night they saw the
apparition: he had been driven down from the farm by its owner and was
sufficiently healed in his arm to handle stick and throttle.
With him was the Police Chief.
"Get him?" hailed the officer, as the gas was cut and switch put off,
and as Don shook his head, shouting his explanation, the Dart ran up
close to the wharf.
"The swamp is surrounded," the Chief cried. "We let them all go, as you
had planned. Didn't the culprit walk into the trap?" Don told him
breathlessly what had happened, urged that the Dart go aloft and scout.
The Chief urged Don to occupy his place, while he attended to the man
over whom Chick was working incompetently.
Don hesitated: they might need to use the Dragonfly, also, he
protested. The newly recovered pilot suggested that Don fly the Dart,
reconnoitering, as it was the less stable ship and in his condition he
preferred the steadier, more easily controlled craft. They began the
exchange, listening for a motor. No sound came.
Garry, recovering his strength, if still teary-eyed, blundering along
to find his abandoned first aid kit, saw the Dart go in, and felt that
for all his bravado, Mister Spook was almost as good as captured.
He broke through the tall grasses, near where the path ended.
His eyes saw an amazing sight! There, where the mail 'plane had gone
into the mud, fresh planking had been laid across the mud, and on it
rested the airplane, the boards concealed by wings and a camouflage of
cut grass: its broken hull had been re-covered, freshly doped. It had
no pontoons; but on each side of the fuselage slanted auxiliary wings
of thin boards had been attached by wire. If it could be started and
raced off the board support, he saw, the slanted planks would serve to
lift it higher with each gain of speed, as a boat of the speed type is
lifted by its side-flanges. And--in his disguising garments, Scott was
working feverishly at the motor. Garry leaped forward. Scott tore off
his mask to show a face of fury and dismay.
"Stand back!" Scott lifted a small missile. Garry knew the tear-gas and
its effect. He hesitated.
"Shame!" he cried. "You can't escape. Even if you did fool us by taking
us to look for your own self, at the start, you can't fool us any
longer." He was talking against time, getting his feet set.
"Come and turn that prop, or I'll--throw this!"
Garry changed his tactics; meaning to leap, ducking the missile, he
altered his plan. "All right!" he agreed, docile with pretended fear.
He moved toward the propeller, stepping on the edges of the boards.
He saw the electric crash launch floating just beyond the nose of the
ship. Menaced with the tear-gas, he nevertheless made his leap, across
the water, from the planks, that gave under him, to catch the coaming
of the boat's cockpit. The missile flew through the air after him, but
Garry, in the channel, went down, until his feet touched mud; holding
his breath he swam under the launch, coming up on the other side. He
trod water, concealed.
To his dismay he heard the man, discarding his disguise, twist angrily
at the propeller of the repaired airplane. It caught on a firing point
of the engine, swung rapidly. The man rushed along the planks.
Drowned by the noise close at hand, Garry failed to hear the Dart rev
up its engine, turning to get into the wind.
In it was Chick and at its controls was Don. Garry disregarded all
danger, clambered into the boat, tumbling in close to the wheel and
switch. He tore at the latter, sending current into the motor. With a
howl of rage Scott drove his airplane off the makeshift runway and
straight at the launch. He hurled a missile. It did not strike the boat.
Garry backed water, up the channel. The airplane had to take the air or
foul its wings in grass. It rose. A bomb dropped--Garry, full speed
astern, avoided it and backed up the channel. He could not turn.
Up soared the Dart. It came around. Don saw the mail ship turning to
cross the bay. Full-gun, he took up pursuit, heedless of the Chief's
warning that their tear-gas, brought in case the swamp yielded the
culprit, had been taken, must be in the hands of the escaping Scott.
Seeing that the Dragonfly's pilot had trouble with his arm, Don knew he
alone stood between Scott and escape.
The Dart was fast. So was the mail ship, once free of the water.
Garry, backing up the channel, saw Don fly over. He kept on, until he
reached the wider sheet of water, backed around, swung close to the
Dragonfly, climbed aboard, and feverishly begged to have a chance at
the controls. The other pilot, not too strong, yielded. The Dragonfly
started.
Don climbed, losing some advantage; but he knew that it would be a long
chase--wanted it to be so. The man in the mail ship, with his bravado
serving to the end, lifted and showed strings of jewels that flashed
vividly in the first rays of the rising sun.
Don saw that Scott meant to cross to Connecticut. It would be a run
across Long Island Sound. Don did not want to drive down the ship over
water--he would lose the treasure.
He saw, far behind, the Dragonfly.
The crossing was made in record time, and then Don, in a ship easily
maneuvered, raced up above the other. Then Chick screeched a warning.
Up toward them came one of those missiles--a tear-gas bomb.
Don made a quick barrel-roll. It caused the bomb to miss him.
Falling, the missile was in the path of the mail ship. Straight into
it, as it fell, Scott raced. It smashed in his cockpit.
Doomed by his own act, he lost control, and in a slanting, catapulting
dive, struck just beyond the shore line, on firm earth.
And thus the Ghost of Mystery Airport passed.