WATCHFUL WAITING
Moodily walking back toward their airplane, around which a group of
handlers and mechanics watched one assigned to make sure the cable
splice was entirely safe, Curt spoke quietly.
“Bob, maybe we should have waited to hear what Langley said to Griff.”
“No!” Bob was almost snappish. “No!”
“I hate to suspect your cousin of anything wrong,” Curt assured the
brothers earnestly.
“Not any more than I hate it,” Al retorted. “But you’ve got to look at
what you see and hear what comes to your ears.”
“All the same,” counseled Curt, hoping to lighten the burden of
unhappiness for his chums, “I’d go slow. You know—they may be just
friends, close ones. There may not be anything wrong about Griff. We are
likely to be suspicious, because that’s what we are there for.”
“But look!” objected Al. “The cable snaps. Now that’s almost a
spick-span new crate. That cable ought not to fray apart—it could never
wear so soon. It was—filed or scraped.”
“But that doesn’t involve Griff,” urged Curt, hoping, if he lightened
their suspicion of Griff the cousin who was his friend would be less
suspected. “He works in the engine department. Anyhow, he knew his
friend, your cousin, would fly the ’plane. He’d never——”
“Sh-h-h!” warned Bob.
Langley, looking very glum, came up to them.
“I talked to Griff,” he said. “Told him what had happened. He was
flabbergasted.”
“You ought to have reported to Barney—or to Mr. Parsons,” Bob declared.
“Why did Griff have to know anyhow?” Al was impulsive and did not care
if he started a fresh quarrel or not. The conclusion he jumped to was
that an angry Langley would disclose “secrets.”
“I wanted to warn him against—you!”
Langley walked away. But they did not let him get far ahead of them as
they approached the airplane.
The mechanic who had been in the cabin greeted them.
“Funny about that cable,” he stated. “How did it ever get so much use
that it wore through? You must kick rudder every two seconds.”
“Was it worn through—or—” Al began. Curt prodded his ribs very sharply.
As Al became quiet Curt asked a louder question to distract the man from
pursuing that “or—” and learning their fears.
“Or did it break at the rudder bar?” he asked.
“It chafed against the transverse brace it ran under,” the mechanic
responded. “They ought to have an eyelet or something for a guide—a
small pulley would be best, with an eyelet to keep the cable from
slipping out of the groove and chafing on the solid part of the pulley.”
“We’ll report that,” said Curt. “A rudder is pretty important.”
“I’ll say,” replied the mechanic.
The plates had been fastened back into their light frame, being of
sturdy construction and not permanently attached, they had come away
clean and were put back easily. Only the cracked hole in the panels gave
outward evidence of the recent near catastrophe.
“Suppose we let on that was an accident, that I put my foot through the
panel,” suggested Curt. “Repairing it only means putting in a new
section there—it ought not to cost much and I have some money in my
savings account to pay for it.”
“Let’s all put together,” urged Al.
“Why not tell the truth?” snapped Langley.
“Don’t you want to find out who endangered you and the rest of us?”
Lang considered Bob’s sharp phrase. “Yes,” he said finally.
The best way to do that, argued Curt, was by watchful waiting, not by
putting the possible malefactor on his guard. “They could,” Al declared,
“see who makes the repair, and I can watch, being out near the ’planes,
and see if anybody takes a special interest in the floor and the
cables.”
Langley agreed rather bruskly and went off to take up his inquiries
about the brown airplane they had seen in the field.
“Watchful waiting!” repeated Bob, thoughtfully. “That’s a good slogan.
Let’s ‘watchful wait’ to see what Griff does—and how Lang acts—and if
either of them acts queerly when they are with Griff’s father.”
“Just what makes you suspicious of him—the father?” Curt asked, more to
check up his own theories than for information. “He’s Mr. Tredway’s
partner, you know.”
“I suspect him,” Al declared, “because he’s the kind that looks
suspicious, with his quick action and his sharp talk and his shifty
eyes.”
“And Griff is exactly the same in every way,” supplemented Bob.
“Then we have two suspects to keep tabs on,” agreed Curt.
“Three,” corrected Al.
“Let’s leave Lang out,” urged Curt.
“All right—we won’t watch him. But it’s bad, because we can’t talk over
plans and tell him everything. There will be—a—a——”
“Strained relationship,” suggested Bob.
“Yes,” agreed Al.
“Well, pretend to be the same as ever, but keep your ideas to yourself,”
Curt begged. “And—we’ll be watchful waiters.”
During the next week that was the only policy they would have been able
to adopt. Nothing happened at all.
Al still carried parcels, on occasion, for rigger Sandy Jim Bailey, and
improved his acquaintance with Jimmy-junior.
Mr. Wright’s absence from town during the entire week prevented them
from consulting that detective. The comrades were thrown on their own
resources.
“I don’t see that watchful waiting has gotten us very far,” commented Al
as they rode home for lunch, Curt with the brothers, at noon on
Saturday. The day’s work was over.
“We know a little more than we did,” Curt reminded him. “I’ve had talks
with some of the boys I know, and I’ve found out that the ones Griff
associates with aren’t thought well of. And Bob has trailed him, several
evenings, in spite of Lang’s warning to Griff, and Bob has told you that
Griff always gets away on his motorcycle and goes somewhere that we
can’t locate yet. But we know his character isn’t very high class, and
his father still acts uneasy and preoccupied. So we have gained that
much.”
“What good is it?” Al was unconvinced. “It doesn’t say what happened to
Mr. Tredway. It hasn’t told us who is taking airplane parts. It doesn’t
explain who tampered with the rudder cable in the Golden Dart—or why.”
“No,” Bob admitted. “That’s true, it doesn’t. But it’s the best we can
do, for the present. And we never know when something may ‘break.’”
“Let’s keep on learning airplane technique,” suggested Curt. “We know
we’ve gained there, anyhow.”
“Yes,” Al nodded. “I can name the different parts of a biplane without
stumbling over any of them.” He did, “—fuselage; engine; propeller;
upper and lower wing; cockpit and its cowling; struts and landing and
flying wires; stabilizer, fin, elevator, rudder; ailerons; tail skid;
and landing gear that Sandy calls the ‘trucks.’”
“Correct,” agreed Curt. “And they comprise five groupings, each one
having a special purpose—the fuselage, the supporting structure for
everything else. Everything is attached to that. Then——”
“The second group,” Bob cut in, “is the supporting surfaces, the wings.
They sustain the whole weight in the air, and the flying wires take the
lift of the wings as the air sustains them, and communicates it, with
the struts helping, to the body.
“Well, in a way,” Bob changed the statement slightly. “The flying wires
are to take the stress, and if it wasn’t for them the wings would tilt
up at the ends or tips, like a ‘V.’ The flying wires take the stress in
flying the same as the landing wires take the weight of the wings in
landing; without the landing wires, when the ship came down the wings
would crumple down over the crate like the two slanting sides of a tent
or like the ‘V’ upside down.”
“Yes,” Al showed his knowledge, “and then there is the control group,
the ailerons at the backs or trailing edges of the wings, to be moved
upward or downward, to tilt the ship; and the rudder, to turn it
sideways—and if it’s flying on its side the rudder is performing the
office of the elevators and they of the rudder, because when it’s flying
level the elevators are to tip its nose up for a climb or down for a
glide; then there’s the fin and the stabilizers that give it balance and
help to hold the whole ship in whatever position it is placed by the
movable controls I just mentioned.”
“And with all those you have a glider,” agreed Bob. “The engine, and its
‘prop’ are for motive power, and the landing group, either wheels for
the earth, or pontoons for the water, or both, combined, in an
amphibian, for land-and-water use——”
“We know some things,” agreed Curt. “But we don’t know where Mr.
Tredway’s body went—or——”
“What Griff is going to do with his Saturday afternoon,” commented Bob.
“I’m going back to the plant, and pretend to finish up work, and see
what happens there while it’s supposed to be closed down.”
The others agreed. Something might “break.” Actually, something did!