Hildegarde von Essen sprang boyishly out of her roadster at the door to
Potter Waite's hangar. She looked like a glorious, slender boy in the
riding-breeches and puttees she had thought appropriate for the
adventure--not like an ordinary boy, but rather like some princeling out
of a fairy-tale. There was that air about her--the air of a prince who
trafficked with fairies and would ride forth to battle with giants and
dragons. Her eyes danced with excitement and anticipation; she was charged
with eager life until it seemed to radiate from her and to form a tingling
aura about her.
Potter appeared in the doorway and stopped abruptly as his eyes found her.
It was the sincerest tribute. He felt as if some potent current had darted
out from her to touch him with its mysterious force--almost as if it
arrested his heart an instant and made it skip a beat.... That was the way
she looked; not dazzlingly beautiful; the effect was not that of beauty,
but of something more compelling, more thrilling. It was rather as if
Youth in person advanced to meet him--throbbing, eager, glowing Youth;
neither masculine nor feminine, but the personification of everything
young, ardent, breathless, fearless.
"I'm early," she said, "but I _had_ to come. I hardly slept all night for
thinking about it."
He advanced, finding that he very much wanted to take her hand, and she
looked up into his face and laughed impishly, for it was plain reading to
her that she had startled this young man and unsettled his equilibrium.
"Come in," he said, rather stupidly. "We've been tinkering, but we're
nearly ready now, I guess." He knew it was hardly the thing to say to such
a magical creature, but it was the best he could do.
She walked to the machine and patted the tip of its wing. "We're going to
be friends, aren't we?" she said to it, and smiled up at Potter again.
"How do I get in? Where do I sit?" Her voice was eager.
It had been in his mind before she came to try to persuade her against the
flight; to show her the inadvisability of it, especially in the face of
her father's attitude toward him. He did not make the effort now. It
seemed futile, not to be considered, so he helped her to her place
silently. "Ready?" he asked one of the men in overalls who were going
fussily about the 'plane, touching wires, testing braces.
"Ready, sir."
Potter looked at Hildegarde. No trace of fear or nervousness was visible,
nor was she calm. Her eyes danced with excitement, her face was alight
with gay eagerness. "I don't suppose I could drive it, could I?" she
asked.
"Well, _hardly_," Potter said.
"I'd love to. I'm sure I could."
"This is your excursion," he said, disregarding her manifest desire to
become pilot of the craft. "What part of the earth shall we fly over?"
"It's to be a good, long fly, you know," she said. "Not just up and down
like those twenty-five-dollars-a-ride things we had here last year. I want
to go miles and miles.... Let's go right across the lake to the Flats and
then swing around and come home over Mount Clemens. Can we do that?"
"I have made that circle."
"What do I do?"
"Sit still and hang on. There's no promenade-deck to this ship--no
orchestra and no dancing."
"Are you a dancing-man?"
"Far from it. The _thé dansant_ is too dangerous for me. I don't speak the
language."
"I _love_ to dance," she said. "I don't know that the language is more
difficult than the one you speak while we dance on the floor above.
'Waiter, another round of cocktails.'"
Potter climbed up and settled himself in his seat. "You're not going to
quarrel because I don't like dancing?" he asked.
"I'd forgive you 'most anything this morning. Let's start. I'm crazy to
know how it feels."
The engine started with a tremendous throbbing roar and the
hydro-aeroplane was trundled out on its rails and down the incline to the
smooth waters of Lake St. Clair. For an interval it scudded along, neither
floating nor flying, like a wild duck frightened and beginning its flight;
then the water dropped away, and they were mounting, mounting into the
clear, cold spring air.
Potter directed their flight out over the lake, presently veering to the
northward and heading toward a small black blot resting distantly on the
glittering expanse of water. Hildegarde's cheeks were flushed, her eyes
excited, brilliant. She sat drinking in the sensation of flight, and
watching with childish joy and wonder as the lake spread its beautiful
panorama beneath and on all sides of them. It seemed but a moment before
the distant blot became the familiar light-ship, and, looking ahead, she
could see dimly the parallel lines which she knew must be the ship-canal
which opened a passage for the largest freighter through the bars and
shoals into that channel of the delta of the St. Clair River which has for
a generation been a marvelous playground for the Lake region, a playground
rising on a ribbon of spiling--a sort of hem binding the raveling edge of
the great marsh.
Slow as the 'plane was, compared with those miracles of speed with which
the chivalry of the air hold their tournaments in the lists of the sky, it
seemed to eliminate time and space. Distances which the swiftest vessel
passed laboriously in an hour seemed to withdraw themselves as at a magic
word of command. Abreast of the light-ship they passed an up-bound
freighter. Its deck seemed a mammoth gridiron as Hildegarde looked down
upon it--a gridiron whose cross-bars were battened hatches. It was
traveling its fifteen miles an hour on its way to Duluth or Superior--but
they left it behind. It dropped away from them almost with the swiftness
of a falling stone.
They flew low over the piers, and then mounted. Beneath them lay the
familiar, rambling structures of the Old Club. They continued to mount,
for Potter wanted to spread before her the great reaches of the delta--a
world of close-growing wild rice and reeds, a universe of wild birds,
myriad tiny islets, with here and there a strip of land high enough above
the water to supply a foothold for wind-bent, scraggling trees. Here and
there wound a maze of channels, some navigable by small boats, and to the
northward another gleaming river, the North Channel, up which the fleets
of the Lakes had been compelled to pass before the construction of the
ship-canal.
Before them stretched the interminable line of summer cottages and hotels,
untenanted now. To the right and left of it were loneliness,
desolation--yet a certain arresting beauty. Hildegarde felt a sudden
loneliness.
Potter veered to the left over huge Muscamoot Bay, a bay whose waters were
hidden by reeds and rice--a hundred square miles of reeds and rice and
shallows. One could wade almost the length and breadth of it. Hildegarde
picked out a tiny island in the midst of the waste, and the thought came
to her that here one could hide in security if all the world joined in the
hunt.
She became aware that the motor no longer roared in perfect rhythm. It
seemed to pant and labor, to snort in disgust. It was missing, and she saw
that Potter was intent upon it. Suddenly silence fell. Hildegarde had not
known that silence could be like this. It was as if the end of all sound
in the universe had come, as if life had been extinguished, and they two,
soaring in the sky, were alone left of all the teeming millions of the
earth's population....
She was not frightened, but looked at Potter's face for its expression. It
was one of irritation, not of alarm.
"We'll have to 'plane down while I tinker," he said. "This is a _fine_ day
for something to go wrong."
"It'll be fun," she exclaimed. "Imagine being cast away down there--in an
aeroplane!"
"It won't be such a picnic if I can't get her going again. Hotels and
mechanicians and telephone service are moderately scarce below."
All the while they were sliding down an invisible hill, swiftly, smoothly.
A narrow ribbon of open water lay below them, and Hildegarde imagined
Potter to be heading for it as a place of landing.
"Why," she exclaimed, "there's a house!"
Potter did not turn his head; he was busy now with the 'plane.
"There are a few scattered in the bay--squatters and summer folks. Muskrat
trappers and French fishermen.... Mighty lonesome, _I'd_ say."
A puff of wind caused the 'plane to swerve and rock. Hildegarde saw Potter
suddenly in feverish action. They were swerving away from the ribbon of
water, which was now close below, veering toward the island upon which she
had been astonished to see a house.... The 'plane would not obey. It swept
on and down.... Almost in a winking of the eye the solid land was before
them ... a tree.... Hildegarde felt a wrench, a shock, heard a crash, and
saw the planes at their right side crumple and shatter as they were
sheared off in collision with the willow-tree.... The crippled 'plane
careened sickeningly--and there was a frightful shock....
Potter, half blind, dizzy, suffering agonies, crept out of the wreckage.
One leg dragged helplessly. There was a wrenching pain inside. Dumbly he
looked for Hildegarde. She lay at a little distance--without movement. She
was stretched at full length, her face pillowed on her arm as if she had
lain down on the grass for a nap. Peacefully, gracefully she lay--but very
still. Potter dragged himself toward her, reached her. Then he was
conscious that a man was running to them, was stooping over them. He
looked up into the man's face. It was very confusing. He seemed to know
the man, yet it was impossible the man should be there....
"How do you do, Cantor?" he said. "Did you--bring--your letters?..."
Then his arms failed him and he slumped downward, his face resting on
Hildegarde's knees.
The man Potter had called Cantor turned the young man over gently, wiped
the blood from his face with his handkerchief, and grunted. He opened
Potter's clothing and laid an ear to his breast. The heart was beating
feebly.... Hasty examination showed him Hildegarde was alive, too.
"Start the boat," he called over his shoulder. "Be quick about it." He
lifted Hildegarde and carried her past the house to a tiny dock and handed
her aboard a narrow, cabined motor-boat. "Two of you get the man," he
said.
"What will we do with them?" a man asked, in German.
"To the hospital in that town--Mount Clemens," the man in authority
replied, in the same language. "They're badly hurt. I doubt if he lives to
get there."
"So much the better," growled the man. "Do you go with us?"
"I remain.... You found them on the shore ten miles from here. Don't be
definite. To-night we'll get the wreck of this machine across and out of
the way."
"What was he doing here, Herr?"
"Nothing for you to worry about.... The chances are he'll never regain
consciousness. If he does he won't be able to remember anything.... Make
haste, for he's more valuable alive than dead."
The motor-boat swung into the channel and sped away. Once in open water,
it showed an astonishing gift of speed as it made for the mouth of the
Clinton River.
Not as they wound their way up the narrow river, not as they touched the
wharf, did Potter or Hildegarde betray a sign of returning consciousness.
The man in charge leaped ashore. He had chosen his landing with judgment,
for the spot was deserted. For ten minutes he disappeared, returning with
two men from a near-by office.
"We found them on the shore ten miles up," said the man who habitually
spoke in German, but whose English was acceptable. "They fell with an
aeroplane."
"Who are they?"
The man shook his head. "I don't know anything.... We found them, that's
all."
Presently the authorities who had been telephoned for arrived, and Potter
and Hildegarde were lifted gently and carried away. In the haste and
excitement the men who had brought them to the spot were not questioned,
as they might have been in a city more accustomed to the handling of
accidents. As the two inert bodies were carried away the motor-boat
quietly moved away from the dock and headed down the river. No one thought
to hold it. Presently it disappeared....
At the hospital Potter was quickly identified by the contents of his
pockets. There was no clue to Hildegarde's identity. The news of the
accident to his son was telephoned to Fabius Waite, and local
correspondents of Detroit papers saw that the story went where it should
go. In two hours city reporters were on hand, for the thing promised to be
that desirable thing known to newspaper men as a "big story."
The early editions carried brief accounts of the accident to Potter Waite
and an unknown young woman.... Identification came later, and in the
morning papers the names of Potter Waite and Hildegarde von Essen were
coupled in a manner not likely to give satisfaction to the girl's father.
Reporters set out to find the smashed aeroplane, but their search was
futile. It was not found until noon next day, when a farmer on the shores
of Baltimore Bay telephoned that it lay against a tree on his farm, near
the shore. Reporters viewed it, and from its position were able to
describe accurately how the thing had happened. "Must have been pickled
again," was the consensus of their experienced opinion, and they did not
hesitate in their accounts to impart this view to their public. Also the
morning papers reported that Potter would not live through the day.
Hildegarde was still unconscious, but hopes for her recovery were
entertained by the surgeons in charge.
Altogether it was looked upon as the inevitable--and fitting--termination
of the reckless career of a vicious and depraved youth. It was an affair
to be reveled in by the sensational press. They made an orgy of it.