[Illustration: Lawrence went through the secret manoeuvers but there was
no response and he found his anxiety growing.]
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AVIATOR SERIES VOLUME 3
DANGEROUS DEEDS
OR
THE FLIGHT IN THE DIRIGIBLE
BY
CAPTAIN FRANK COBB
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CHICAGO AKRON, OHIO NEW YORK
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Copyright, MCMXXVII, by
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
AVIATOR SERIES
1 BATTLING THE CLOUDS,
Or, For a Comrade's Honor
2 AN AVIATOR'S LUCK,
Or, The Camp Knox Plot
3 DANGEROUS DEEDS,
Or, The Flight in the Dirigible
Made in U. S. A.
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DANGEROUS DEEDS
CHAPTER I
A heavy fog pressed down upon the city of Washington. To the boy
watching it from the vantage point of the window in the top floor of the
apartment in which he stood, it spread as mysterious and as sodden as a
flood, enveloping streets, parks, houses, indeed all but the tops of the
highest structures, the domes and roofs of public buildings and spires
of churches, and here and there a dark, drowned mass of foliage.
The apartment stood on a height and as the boy looked he saw a glow in
the east, followed quickly by thin banners of red and orange. Then the
Sun rose and turned the domes and spires swimming on the sea of mist
into fairy flotillas wrought of pearl and gold.
Just as a churned and angry tide swirls into some still cove and seems
to melt and dissolve into transparency, the opaque-fog slowly vanished.
Buildings and statues seemed to lift themselves out of it and finally,
broad and placid in the desertion of dawn, the streets themselves
appeared, winding here and there in the wonderful curves designed by the
master-mind which make Washington one of the beauty spots of the world.
Because he had looked down on most of the cities of the world, because,
young as he was, he had seen thrilling shy views of towers and spires
and mosques and temples lifting under many skies, the boy stood looking
at the beautiful Capitol of his native land with a swelling heart.
Suddenly from somewhere, everywhere, nowhere came a faint, peculiar
humming. Louder and louder it grew. The boy flung open the window and,
leaning far out, scanned the cloudless sky with practiced gaze. Far away
in the west appeared a thing of wings and sound flying far above those
other birds, the troubled buzzards, that dipped and swayed and hung so
easily in the invisible tides of the air.
As the boy watched, another and still another airplane appeared, close
in the wake of the first, until eleven of them, all light biplanes,
dashed headlong across the sky. Then, their pace slackening somewhat,
they formed in twos and again strung out to compose the wide V of
migrating geese.
The eleventh plane detached itself from the others which now swung wide
and swept around in a graceful circle, while the single one, an
instruction plane, commanded the manoeuvers by means of wireless
telegraphy. Twice the ten planes circled. Then the leader, turning
sharply, led the others in the direction of Mount Vernon until they
vanished. The single plane, lazy as the buzzards below, hung almost
motionless, waiting, effortless and serene, until once more with a faint
hum the planes returned, lined up and hung at attention for a moment,
when the instruction plane turned and in a wild rush of speed led its
charges away in the direction whence they had come.
Not until distance had stilled the final hum of the last motor did the
boy realize that he was clinging precariously to the hard granite facing
outside the window, while leaning far out, too far out for safety even
for a young aviator who felt no dread of falling.
"A great bunch of students," he reflected, withdrawing and turning to
look at the room in which he stood. It was the usual "beautifully
furnished bachelor apartment" of commerce. Wall paper dark, in order not
to show soil, odds and ends of well-worn, not to say shabby mission
furniture, a table, chairs, a desk with a soiled blotter firmly skewered
down on its flat top, a crex rug. Beyond was a small bedroom, and out of
that any sleuth of a de-tec-a-tive would have guessed there was a
bathroom if he had taken time to listen to the mournful drip, drip of a
leaky faucet.
Lawrence Petit looked the bare, unpretentious, unhomelike room over with
a smile. He had never been so "well fixed," as he said, but he did not
approve. Like everything else, the apartment was an incident, a
stepping-stone to something better.
He went to his suitcase and took out a pocket portfolio and with a look
of distaste at the soiled blotter, sat down at the table, tried his
fountain pen and commenced to write. And while he is busy, we will
glance at the past of the young aviator.
His own beginning he did not know. His first remembrance was of a
sordid, poverty-stricken cabin where, with a group of other children, he
played and quarrelled and starved, and where a slatternly woman gloomed
or passed from one screaming rage into another until quieted by a black
bottle brought her by an evil looking, leering man at whose approach all
the children scattered and hid themselves. The children, when they spoke
to the woman at all, called her Moll. Lawrence could not remember a time
when the question of his parentage had occurred to him. At this period
of his life he was little more than a healthy little animal, content to
sleep and play and fight for the scanty food he was given, and, that
failing, to steal from the more fortunate neighbors.
In the woodshed, back of the shanty, a lean-to scarcely worse than the
house itself, stood a broken-down bureau crammed with odds and ends of
rags and clothing too unspeakable for use. In this one day, while Moll
was digging through its confusion, she chanced on a worn, black shopping
bag. She tossed it to Lawrence, known wholly at that time as Snooks.
"That's yourn," she said. "You keep a-hold of that and don't let those
kids git it." Then on second thought she snatched it away from the child
and hung it on a rafter far out of his reach. For a little it tantalized
him, then it was forgotten until a memorable morning when the welfare
worker appeared with a couple of officers, a patrol wagon and an
ambulance. Into the ambulance Moll was hurried, to the children's
amazement. They had failed to distinguish the ravings of fever from the
outcries attending the frequent visitation of the black bottle. The dark
man had disappeared.
As the welfare worker rounded the reluctant children into the patrol
wagon, Snooks ran back and with a long stick knocked down the handbag.
"What's that?" asked the welfare lady.
"It's mine," said Snooks in his hoarse, unchildish voice. "Moll she give
it to me and said to keep it because it's mine."
The welfare worker scented one of the strange clues that often lie
hidden for so long before they appear to clear up a mystery, but the
bag, a very shabby, cheap affair, held nothing but a small photograph
wrapped up in a piece of newspaper, and on another piece that had
evidently been about some small change as the shape of the money still
marked the scrap, was the name Lawrence, written over and over as though
to try a pen point.
Snooks was put in a home and once more the bag passed out of his
possession into the keeping of the authorities who had him in charge. A
name was needed, and Snooks was asked to find one for himself, a feat he
was incapable of doing. So one of the teachers, remembering the scrap of
paper, called him Lawrence and added Petit as the child was so very
small.
So Snooks, dirty, unkempt and blankly ignorant, became Lawrence Petit, a
ward of the city of Louisville.
Bathed, clipped, and neatly clad, the boy changed almost at once. He
seemed possessed by an overpowering ambition. He learned rapidly,--so
rapidly that he forged ahead of all his classmates. Lectures on health
and strength that bored the other children held him spellbound. He
became quick and wiry as a cat, with lean limbs and perfectly trained
muscles. As time passed, he heard stories of homes and of mothers and
fathers that filled him with sick longing, but finally he accepted his
fate and as he grew older made up his mind that he must remain Lawrence
Petit, with no people, no home, no age, no past; just a nameless waif in
an orphanage.
Two great passions consumed the boy. He was bound to fly; he was bound
to succeed in life.
If any of us want a thing badly enough and long enough, we always find
that we are given a chance to get it. There was a young teacher in the
Home who spent much time with Lawrence and made it possible for him to
read everything that was written about airplanes and balloons and all
sorts of aircraft. When an aircraft factory was started in Louisville to
supply the growing demands for private machines, this teacher secured
employment for Lawrence, and soon he was dismissed from the Home as
perfectly able to care for himself. With him went the shabby bag; and
now for the first time the boy took time to look at its contents. He had
had no desire to do so before. He looked long at the scrap with the name
Lawrence scrawled over it, and the other scrap around the photograph he
read carefully, but evidently it had been torn from the advertising page
of a newspaper and had to do with "Help Wanted, Female."
The picture was that of a most beautiful young woman. Perfect features
and masses of glorious hair made the face seem almost unreal, but its
chief charm was the look of happiness that filled it.
"Who can she be?" the boy Lawrence asked himself. She did not seem over
fifteen or sixteen years of age. Lawrence put the bag and its contents
back in his trunk but could not forget the lovely, laughing face. He
buckled down to work with a new ambition. Past he had none. He
determined to make for himself a future that he could be proud of. And
because he had no one, actually no one in the whole world to call his
own, he adopted the picture for his "folks." He never named her sister
or mother; he just worked for her and looked at her when the way seemed
hard.
As time passed he developed a perfectly amazing sense of balance and
direction, coupled with more common sense than falls to the lot of most,
and one day he left the factory and went out to the nearest aviation
field as assistant mechanician. From this he rose by bounds until he was
accounted the best airman on the field. After he found that most of his
time was to be spent far above the earth, he commenced to worry about
the picture. What if his things should be burned up? What if the picture
should be stolen? So, cutting a piece of cardboard the exact size, he
went down and bought a leather pocket case in which he placed the
picture, and always after that he wore it buttoned securely in his
pocket. He felt better then; his "folks" were with him. Back of the
picture he placed the two scraps of paper, and with this frail safeguard
spread his wings and took flight courageously toward the goal he had set
for himself.
Five years had passed since the signing of the Armistice and many of the
wounds of that unforgettable war had healed. Many things had happened,
both in America and abroad.
Aircraft had changed both in nature and construction. Mufflers were in
widespread use, indeed were required by law, and now the wing-filled sky
did not rattle and reverberate with the roar of engines unless on
special class or instruction work. Traffic machines went with silent,
steady directness along their uncharted courses, while dainty troops of
pleasure craft flitted everywhere, their brightly painted wings and
hulls glistening in the sun.
To Lawrence Petit the upper air seemed his home. He remained on the
earth only so long as it was positively necessary; and now, writing
busily on his tablet, he felt that he was on the eve of an adventure
which promised to carry him higher and farther than any which he had yet
attempted. He referred to the letter before him. It was long and
typewritten on handsome paper. Hamilton Ridgeway, the writer, was one of
the greatest powers in the United States. It was in obedience to his
summons that Lawrence had come to Washington and was now waiting
impatiently for the hour of his interview with the great man.
Young as he was, Lawrence had learned to respect that powerful
personality who numbered the kings and princes of the earth as his
friends, who handled millions as other men handle pennies, who always
stood ready to finance any great national undertaking, yet who was so
simple and kindly that he never failed to send back a cheery hello to
the newsie who happened to know and speak his name. Hamilton Ridgeway
had been told of the remarkable feats of the young aviator, and with his
shrewd ability to pick men he was about to interview the boy to see of
what material he was really made.
It was an ordeal that would have made most boys so nervous that they
would have appeared ill at ease, but Lawrence, as he noted that it was
almost time to start for his appointment, calmly put up his writing,
brushed his hair, glanced at his wrist watch, and seeing that he still
had five minutes to spare, sat down by the window and opened the pocket
case. Long and tenderly he gazed at the pictured face.
"I will do the very best I know, just for you," he said, smiling back at
it. "I don't suppose I will ever know who you are, but we belong to each
other somehow, don't we? And I am going to make good just so I can
always like to look at you. Gee, you are sweet! You must be old enough
to be my mother because you have looked just like you do now ever since
I first saw you back there at Moll's. Too bad she died! I always thought
she could have told me something about you, you Pretty, but I reckon I
will never get to know any more of you than I do now."
He shook his head sadly. "You are so pretty," he murmured. "A fellow
would do anything for a mother like you; live clean and keep straight,
and work his head off besides, to make you proud of him. Tell you what I
will do, Pretty. I am going to make believe that you are waiting for me
somewhere, and I have got to make good before we meet. How's that? A
bargain?" he smiled back at the smiling pictured eyes and, placing the
case carefully in his pocket, put on his hat and overcoat and started
off to meet Mr. Ridgeway.