[Illustration: She looked like a glorious, slender boy in the riding
breeches and puttees she had thought appropriate for the adventure.]
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THE HIGHFLYERS
By CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND
Author of
"_The Source_," "_The Hidden Spring_,"
"_Sudden Jim_," _etc._
[Illustration]
WITH FRONTISPIECE
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE HIGHFLYERS
Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
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THE HIGHFLYERS
CHAPTER I
Fred la Mothe was speaking. After a certain number of beverages composed
of Scotch whisky, imported soda, and a cube of ice, it was a matter of
comparative ease for him to exhibit a notable fluency. After two o'clock
in the afternoon Fred was generally fluent.
"''Tain't safe,' I says to him. And the wind was blowin' enough to lift
the hair out of your head. 'I wouldn't go up in the thing for the price of
it,' I says, 'and, besides, you're seein' two of it. Bad enough drivin' a
car when you're lit up,' I says, 'but what these flyin' machines want is a
still day and a man that's cold sober. You just let it rest on its little
perch in the bird-cage.'"
Fred refreshed his parched throat while his four companions waited for the
conclusion of the tale. "'You'll bust your neck,' I told him.
"'Ten to one,' says he, 'I round Windmill Point Light and come back
without bustin' my neck. Even money I make it without bustin' anything,'
says he.
"'Dinner for four at the Tuller to-night that the least you bust is a
leg,' I says, and the wind whipped the hat off my head and whirled it into
a tree."
Fred stopped, evidently mourning the loss of his hat.
"Well," said Will Kraemer, impatiently, "what happened? Did he go up?"
"_Him?..._ I paid for that dinner, but, b'lieve _me_, there were times
when I thought I'd have to collect from his estate. Ever see a leaf
blowing around in a gale? Well, that's how he looked out over the lake.
Just boundin' and twirlin' and twistin', but he went the distance and came
back and landed safe. Got out of the dingus just like he was gettin' off a
Pullman. Patted the thing on the wing like it was a pet chicken. 'Let's
drive down to the Pontchartrain,' he says. 'Likely the crowd's there.' Not
another darn word. Just that."
"Trouble with Potter Waite," said Tom Watts, "is that he just naturally
don't give a damn. If he's going to pull something he'd as lief pull it in
the middle of Woodward Avenue at noon by the village clock as to pull it
on the Six Mile Road at midnight."
"No pussy-footin' for him," said Jack Eldredge. "My old man was talking
about him the other night. Day after he cleaned up those two taxi-drivers
out here in front. 'Don't let me hear of you running around with that
young Waite,' he says. 'He's a bad actor. You keep off him.'"
"He's a life-saver," Fred La Mothe joined in. "When dad lights into me I
just mention Potter, and dad forgets me entirely. You ought to hear dad
when he really gets to going on Potter."
"I'm no Sunday-school boy--" said Brick O'Mera.
"Do tell," gibed Eldredge.
"--but I'll say Potter is crowdin' the mourners. _I_ wouldn't follow his
trail a week steady."
The others waggled their heads acquiescently. Even to their minds Potter
Waite traveled at too high speed and with too little thought of public
opinion. About that table sat five young men who were as much a result of
a condition as outlying subdivisions are the result of a local boom. Of
them all, La Mothe came from a family which had known moderate wealth for
generations, but it had grown swiftly, unbelievably, during the past few
wonderful years, to a great fortune. Of the rest, Kraemer and O'Mera were
the sons of machinists who, a dozen years before, would have considered
carefully before giving their sons fifteen cents to sit in the gallery at
the old Whitney Opera House to see sawmill and pile-driver and fire-engine
drama. The automobile had caught them up and poured millions into their
laps. Eldredge was the son of a bookkeeper who, fifteen years ago, had
drawn fifty dollars at the end of each month for his services. For every
dollar of that monthly salary he could now show a million. Watts was the
son of a lawyer whom sheer good luck had lifted from a practice consisting
of the collection of small debts, and made a stockholder in and adviser to
a gigantic automobile concern. And these boys were the sons of those
swiftly gotten millions. They had forgotten the old days, just as Detroit,
their home city, had forgotten its old drowsiness, its mid-Western
quietness and conservatism.
One might compare Detroit to a demure village girl, pleasing, beautiful,
growing up with no other thought than to become a wife and mother, when,
by chance, some great impresario hears her singing about her work and it
is discovered that she has one of the world's rarest voices. From her the
old things and the old thoughts and the old habits of life are gone
forever. The world pours wealth and admiration at her feet and her name
rings from continent to continent. So with the lovely old city, straggling
along the shores of that inland strait. She has become a prima donna among
cities. The old identity is gone, replaced by something else, less homely,
but mightier, grander. Her population, which, within the memory of boys
not out of high-school, numbered less than three hundred thousand souls,
was now reported to be thrice that, and, by the optimistic, even more. Her
wealth has not doubled or trebled, but multiplied by an unbelievable
figure, and she has spent it with unbelievable lavishness.
Where once were cobblestone pavements and horse-cars are countless swarms
of automobiles; where once were meadows, pastures, wood-lots, are
tremendous plants employing armies of men, covering scores of acres,
turning out annual products which bring to the city hundreds of millions
of dollars. In the history of the world no city has come into such a
fortune as Detroit, nor has there been such universal prosperity, not to
employer alone, but to employees, and to the least of employees. It seemed
as if the day had arrived when one asked, not where he should get money,
but what he should do with his money. So Detroit spent! It built
magnificent hotels; it created palaces for its millionaires, and miles
upon miles of homes--luxurious, costly homes for those whose handsome
salaries passed the dreams of their youth, or whose fortunes, built up by
contact with the trade of purveying automobiles to an eager world, had not
even been hoped for ten years before. Even the laborer had his home. Why
not, when one manufacturer paid to the man who swept his floors the
minimum wage of five dollars a day?
That was before the war, before a solemn covenant became a scrap of paper
and the world fell sick of its most horrible disease. Then Detroit was
rich, was spending lavishly but not insanely. With the coming of war there
was a halt, a fright, a retrenchment, a hesitation, for no man knew what
the next day might bring. But as the next day brought no disaster, as it
became apparent that the coming days were to bring something quite
different from disaster, Detroit went ahead gaily.
Then came strangers from abroad, speaking other languages than ours, and
men began to whisper that this plant had a ten-million-dollar contract
from Russia for shrapnel fuses; this other plant a twenty-million-dollar
contract for trucks; this other a fabulous arrangement for manufacturing
this or that bit of the devil's prescription for slaughtering men--and the
whispers proved true.
The automobile brought amazingly sudden wealth; munition manufacture added
to it with a blinding flash--and Detroit came to know what spending was.
These five young men, sitting in mid-afternoon in the Hotel Pontchartrain
bar, were a part of all this; their life was the result of it; the
thoughts, or lack of thoughts, in their minds, derived from it inevitably,
remorselessly. They were castaways thrown up in a barroom by a golden
flood.
To four of them a nickel for candy had been an event; now, without mental
anguish, each of them could sign a dinner check which stretched to three
figures, or buy a runabout or a yacht, or afford the luxury of
acquaintance with the young woman who stood fourth from the end in the
front row.
Let them not be chided too harshly. The fault was not theirs wholly, but
was the inevitable result of their environment. They played at work, drew
salaries--but could spend their afternoons in the Pontchartrain, in the
Tuller, on the links or at _thé dansant_. They knew no responsibility to
man, felt but a hazy responsibility to God, and as for their country, they
had never thought about its existence.
They talked of the war, were pro-Ally with the exception of Kraemer, whom
they baited when the fit was on them. Kraemer had been born on Brady
Street. His grandfather was a 'forty-eighter. It was natural that he
should see eye to eye with the land from which he derived his blood. Of
them all, he alone took the war with seriousness, so they baited him at
times, and he raged for their amusement.
They began the sport now.
"If the Kaiser only had the grand duke," said La Mothe, "he might stand
some show. Look what he's done and what he had to do it with! I don't
figure it'll last much longer. Everybody's lickin' Germany."
Kraemer banged the table. "You'll see," he said, passionately. "The war
would be over now if it wasn't for the _neutrality_ of the United States.
This country's just prolonging the agony. If it wasn't for the munitions
the Allies get from here, we'd be in Paris and London and St. Petersburg.
Devil of a neutrality, ain't it? Look here...."
"Rats!" said O'Mera. "Where's Potter, anyhow?"
"Haven't seen him to-day. Ought to be driftin' in."
"He's over at police headquarters," said a new voice, and Tom Randall
beckoned a waiter and sat down at the table.
"Pinched again?" came in chorus.
"No, but he'll probably get himself pinched before he's through with it.
Know the von Essen girl?"
"Hildegarde, you mean? Sassy one? Swiftest flapper that ever flapped?"
"That's the darlin'. Well, she drives that runabout of hers down Jefferson
again, doin' nothin' less than forty-five and makin' real time in spots.
Seems she's been fined pretty average regular. Well, traffic cop gets her
and makes her haul up to the curb and crawls right in beside her. Uh-huh.
And off they go to the station, her lookin' like she could bite off the
steerin'-wheel. Well, Potter and I are comin' along in _his_ car, and we
see the excitement and tag after. You know Potter?"
"We do!"
"'It's that von Essen kid, isn't it?' he says to me, and I agree with him.
'She's been caught too regular,' he says. 'They'll be nasty. Better trail
along and see if we can help out.' So we did. Got to the station
simultaneous and adjacent to them, and out jumps Potter.
"'Afternoon, Miss von Essen,' says he.
"'Mr. Waite,' she says, cool as a _bisque tortoni_.
"'Pinched?' says he.
"'Ask him,' she says, and jerks her head toward the cop, who is clambering
down.
"'She is,' says the cop, 'and this time she gits what's comin' to her. She
been a dam' nuisance,' he says, 'and this here time I'm goin' to put her
over the jumps. Git out and git inside,' he says to her.
"Well, Potter sort of edged up to the cop and looks him over and says, 'I
don't really see why this young lady has to go inside. You can make your
complaint, and that about ends your usefulness.'
"'She stays,' says the cop, 'and if I got anything to say about it, she
sleeps on a plank.'
"'You wouldn't care to do that, would you, Miss von Essen?' says Potter,
with that grin of his, and I made ready to duck, because when he grins
that way--"
"We know," said the boys.
"'Now you listen to reason,' says Potter. 'A police station is no place
for a young lady. It doesn't smell pleasantly. So she doesn't go in. If
bail's necessary or if anything's necessary, I'm here for that. But omit
the stern policeman part of it.'
"'Git out and come in,' says the cop to the girl.
"'You and I are going in, friend,' says Potter, and he took hold of the
policeman's arm. '_We'll_ fix this up--not the young lady. Come _on_,'
says Potter, with his left fist all doubled up and ready.
"The cop knew Potter, so they parleyed, and then they walked under the
porch--you know the entrance to the station--and in a couple of minutes
out comes Potter, looking sort of sneering and shoving a roll of bills
into his pocket.
"'Seems there was some mistake,' he says to Miss von Essen. 'It wasn't
_you_ who broke the speed ordinance; it was I. I've arranged the mistake
with the officer. Now, for cat's sake, cut it out. You'll be breaking into
print _good_ one of these days, and there'll be the devil to pay ... or
breaking your neck. You'll get yourself talked about if you don't ease off
some.' And," said Randall, "he hardly knows the girl. Some line of talk
for Potter to ladle out!"
"What did she say?"
"Her eyes just _glittered_ at him. She's a handsome little cat, but I'll
bet she can scratch. 'Coming from _you_,' she says, 'that advice is
_thrilling_.' Her engine was still running. She slammed into gear, stepped
on the gas, and _shot_ over to Randolph Street.
"Potter looked after her and chuckled. 'Promising kid,' he said. 'You
chase along, Tom. They want me inside.' So here I am. Guess he can take
care of himself."
"Here he comes," said La Mothe. "Didn't get locked up, anyhow."
A tall young man who did not need padding in the shoulders of his coat was
making his way between the tables. He wore a plaid cap jauntily on his
yellow hair. He was not handsome, but at first glance one was apt to call
him handsome--if he were in good humor. You liked his face, except at
times when he was alone, or thoughtful. Then it distressed you, for you
could not make out the meaning of its expression. Then his blue eyes,
which were twinkling now, looked dark and brooding. He had a way of
looking dissatisfied--and something worse, more disquieting--something not
to be defined. Ordinarily his face was such as to draw men to him, even
older men who quite disliked him and used his mode of life as a text for
dissertations on what the young man of to-day was coming to.
One thing might be said with safety--he possessed personality. When he was
one of a group he dominated it. He was not a boy to leave out of the
reckoning.... When one of his "fits," as his friends called them, was dark
upon him, even those who knew him best and regarded themselves as closest
to him were a bit uneasy in his company. The most hardy and reckless of
them was moved at such times to go away from there, for Potter Waite
usually set out on some mad enterprise when that mood was on him. He would
set a pace few cared to follow.
"You never know what he's thinking about," Kraemer said, frequently. It
was true. But you did not know that he _was_ thinking, and that he could
think. Also he never followed, he _led_. For him consequences did not
exist. If he set out to do a thing, he did it, and let consequences take
care of themselves. And, as the boys complained, he went his reprehensible
way with a brass band. The idea of concealing his escapades seemed not to
occur to him.
"What'll you have?" called Randall, whose waiter had come to him.
"A stein, a quart of Scotch, and a bottle of soda," said Potter.
"What's that, sir?" said the waiter.
"Deliver it as ordered," said Potter, with a boyish smile that got him
quicker and better service than other men's tips.
The waiter obeyed and the boys watched with interest. Potter poured a
generous half-pint into the stein upon the ice, and filled the stone mug
with soda.
"I'm goin' to _git_," said Jack Eldredge. "Somethin's goin' to bust loose
around here."
Potter sat back comfortably and sipped from his stein. He appeared
unconscious that, from other tables, glances were directed toward him, and
that men standing at the bar mentioned his name and pointed him out to
companions. He began chatting pleasantly.
"Not pinched, eh?" asked Randall.
"Suppose I'll get mine in the morning," Potter said, without interest.
"I'd 'a' let her take her medicine," Randall said. "It wasn't any of your
funeral.... Didn't even say thank you."
Potter looked at him musingly. "That was the best part of it," he said,
presently. "Sort of proves she's being natural; not four-flushing like
some of these girls. They'd have burbled and kissed my hand--stepped out
of character, you know. She didn't."
A boy came into the room with an armful of papers. What he called could
not be heard distinctly above the din of the place. Potter raised his hand
and the boy threw a paper before him. The young man glanced at it, seemed
to stiffen. He sat back in his chair while the others watched him,
arrested by something in his manner, something portentous.
He stood up and looked from one to the other of them. Then he laid down
the paper slowly.
"The _Lusitania_ has been torpedoed," he said, in a quiet voice, "without
warning. Hundreds of Americans are lost--women and children." He stopped
and repeated the last words. "Women and children." For a moment he stood
motionless.... "It means war," he said.
Every eye was on him. He held them. He stopped them as if they had been so
many clocks with their hands pointing to this fateful hour. He made them
feel the event.
Nobody spoke. Potter turned very slowly and surveyed the room, then, still
very slowly, he walked out of the room without a word or a nod. His stein
was left, scarcely touched, before his chair.