“There's something queer about these aeroplane accidents at Belmore
Park,” mused Kennedy, one evening, as his eye caught a big headline in
the last edition of the Star, which I had brought uptown with me.
“Queer?” I echoed. “Unfortunate, terrible, but hardly queer. Why, it is
a common saying among the aeronauts that if they keep at it long enough
they will all lose their lives.”
“Yes, I know that,” rejoined Kennedy; “but, Walter, have you noticed
that all these accidents have happened to Norton's new gyroscope
machines?”
“Well, what of that” I replied. “Isn't it just barely possible that
Norton is on the wrong track in applying the gyroscope to an aeroplane?
I can't say I know much about either the gyroscope or the aeroplane, but
from what I hear the fellows at the office say it would seem to me that
the gyroscope is a pretty good thing to keep off an aeroplane, not to
put on it.”
“Why?” asked Kennedy blandly.
“Well, it seems to me, from what the experts say, that anything which
tends to keep your machine in one position is just what you don't want
in an aeroplane. What surprises them, they say, is that the thing seems
to work so well up to a certain point--that the accidents don't happen
sooner. Why, our man on the aviation field tells me that when that
poor fellow Browne was killed he had all but succeeded in bringing his
machine to a dead stop in the air. In other words, he would have won the
Brooks Prize for perfect motionlessness in one place. And then Herrick,
the day before, was going about seventy miles an hour when he collapsed.
They said it was heart failure. But to-night another expert says in
the Star--here, I'll read it: 'The real cause was carbonic-acid-gas
poisoning due to the pressure on the mouth from driving fast through the
air, and the consequent inability to expel the poisoned air which had
been breathed. Air once breathed is practically carbonic-acid-gas. When
one is passing rapidly through the air this carbonic-acid-gas is pushed
back into the lungs, and only a little can get away because of the rush
of air pressure into the mouth. So it is rebreathed, and the result is
gradual carbonic-acid-gas poisoning, which produces a kind of narcotic
sleep.'”
“Then it wasn't the gyroscope in that case?” said Kennedy with a rising
inflection.
“No,” I admitted reluctantly, “perhaps not.”
I could see that I had been rash in talking so long. Kennedy had only
been sounding me to see what the newspapers thought of it. His next
remark was characteristic.
“Norton has asked me to look into the thing,” he said quietly. “If his
invention is a failure, he is a ruined man. All his money is in it,
he is suing a man for infringing on his patent, and he is liable
for damages to the heirs, according to his agreement with Browne and
Herrick. I have known Norton some time; in fact, he worked out his ideas
at the university physical laboratory. I have flown in his machine, and
it is the most marvellous biplane I ever saw. Walter, I want you to get
a Belmore Park assignment from the Star and go out to the aviation meet
with me to-morrow. I'll take you on the field, around the machines--you
can get enough local colour to do a dozen Star specials later on. I may
add that devising a flying-machine capable of remaining stationary in
the air means a revolution that will relegate all other machines to the
scrap-heap. From a military point of view it is the one thing necessary
to make the aeroplane the superior in every respect to the dirigible.”
The regular contests did not begin until the afternoon, but Kennedy
and I decided to make a day of it, and early the next morning we were
speeding out to the park where the flights were being held.
We found Charles Norton, the inventor, anxiously at work with his
mechanicians in the big temporary shed that had been accorded him, and
was dignified with the name of hangar.
“I knew you would come, Professor,” he exclaimed, running forward to
meet us.
“Of course,” echoed Kennedy. “I'm too much interested in this invention
of yours not to help you, Norton. You know what I've always thought of
it--I've told you often that it is the most important advance since the
original discovery by the Wrights that the aeroplane could be balanced
by warping the planes.”
“I'm just fixing up my third machine,” said Norton. “If anything
happens to it, I shall lose the prize, at least as far as this meet is
concerned, for I don't believe I shall get my fourth and newest model
from the makers in time. Anyhow, if I did I couldn't pay for it--I am
ruined, if I don't win that twenty-five-thousand-dollar Brooks Prize.
And, besides, a couple of army men are coming to inspect my aeroplane
and report to the War Department on it. I'd have stood a good chance
of selling it, I think, if my flights here had been like the trials you
saw. But, Kennedy,” he added, and his face was drawn and tragic, “I'd
drop the whole thing if I didn't know I was right. Two men dead--think
of it. Why, even the newspapers are beginning to call me a cold,
heartless, scientific crank, to keep on. But I'll show them--this
afternoon I'm going to fly myself. I'm not afraid to go anywhere I send
my men. I'll die before I'll admit I'm beaten.”
It was easy to see why Kennedy was fascinated by a man of Norton's
type. Anyone would have been. It was not foolhardiness. It was dogged
determination, faith in himself and in his own ability to triumph over
every obstacle.
We now slowly entered the shed where two men were working over Norton's
biplane. One of the men was a Frenchman, Jaurette, who had worked with
Farman, a silent, dark-browed, weatherbeaten fellow with a sort of
sullen politeness. The other man was an American, Roy Sinclair, a tall,
lithe, wiry chap with a seamed and furrowed face and a loose-jointed
but very deft manner which marked him a born bird-man. Norton's third
aviator, Humphreys, who was not to fly that day, much to his relief, was
reading a paper in the back of the shed.
We were introduced to him, and be seemed to be a very companionable sort
of fellow, though not given to talking.
“Mr. Norton,” he said, after the introduction, “there's quite an account
of your injunction against Delanne in this paper. It doesn't seem to be
very friendly,” he added, indicating the article.
Norton read it and frowned. “Humph! I'll show them yet that my
application of the gyroscope is patentable. Delanne will put me into
'interference' in the patent office, as the lawyers call it, will he?
Well, I filed a 'caveat' over a year and a half ago. If I'm wrong, he's
wrong, and all gyroscope patents are wrong, and if I'm right, by George,
I'm first in the field. That's so, isn't it?” he appealed to Kennedy.
Kennedy shrugged his shoulders non-committally, as if he had never
heard of the patent office or the gyroscope in his life. The men were
listening, whether or not from loyalty I could not tell.
“Let us see your gyroplane, I mean aeroscope--whatever it is you call
it,” asked Kennedy.
Norton took the cue. “Now you newspaper men are the first that I've
allowed in here,” he said. “Can I trust your word of honour not to
publish a line except such as I O.K. after you write it?”
We promised.
As Norton directed, the mechanicians wheeled the aeroplane out on the
field in front of the shed. No one was about.
“Now this is the gyroscope,” began Norton, pointing out a thing encased
in an aluminum sheath, which weighed, all told, perhaps fourteen or
fifteen pounds. “You see, the gyroscope is really a flywheel mounted
on gimbals and can turn on any of its angles so that it can assume any
angle in space. When it's at rest like this you can turn it easily. But
when set revolving it tends to persist always in the plane in which it
was started rotating.”
I took hold of it, and it did turn readily in any direction. I could
feel the heavy little flywheel inside.
“There is a pretty high vacuum in that aluminum case,” went on Norton.
“There's very little friction on that account. The power to rotate the
flywheel is obtained from this little dynamo here, run by the gas-engine
which also turns the propellers of the aeroplane.”
“But suppose the engine stops, how about the gyroscope?” I asked
sceptically.
“It will go right on for several minutes. You know, the Brennan monorail
car will stand up some time after the power is shut off. And I carry a
small storage-battery that will run it for some time, too. That's all
been guarded against.”
Jaurette cranked the engine, a seven-cylindered affair, with the
cylinders sticking out like the spokes of a wheel without a rim. The
propellers turned so fast that I could not see the blades--turned
with that strong, steady, fierce droning buzz that can be heard a long
distance and which is a thrilling sound to hear. Norton reached over and
attached the little dynamo, at the same time setting the gyroscope at
its proper angle and starting it.
“This is the mechanical brain of my new flier,” he remarked, patting the
aluminum case lovingly. “You can look in through this little window in
the case and see the flywheel inside revolving--ten thousand revolutions
a minute. Press down on the gyroscope,” he shouted to me.
As I placed both hands on the case of the apparently frail little
instrument, he added, “You remember how easily you moved it just a
moment ago.”
I pressed down with all my might. Then I literally raised myself off
my feet, and my whole weight was on the gyroscope. That uncanny little
instrument seemed to resent--yes, that's the word, resent--my touch.
It was almost human in the resentment, too. Far from yielding to me, it
actually rose on the side I was pressing down!
The men who were watching me laughed at the puzzled look on my face.
I took my hands off, and the gyroscope leisurely and nonchalantly went
back to its original position.
“That's the property we use, applied to the rudder and the
ailerons--those flat planes between the large main planes. That gives
automatic stability to the machine,” continued Norton. “I'm not going
to explain how it is done--it is in the combination of the various parts
that I have discovered the basic principle, and I'm not going to talk
about it till the thing is settled by the courts. But it is there, and
the court will see it, and I'll prove that Delanne is a fraud--a fraud
when he says that my combination isn't patentable and isn't practicable
even at that. The truth is that his device as it stands isn't
practicable, and, besides, if he makes it so it infringes on mine. Would
you like to take a flight with me?”
I looked at Kennedy, and a vision of the wreckage of the two previous
accidents, as the Star photographer had snapped them, flashed across my
mind. But Kennedy was too quick for me.
“Yes,” he answered. “A short flight. No stunts.”
We took our seats by Norton, I, at least, with some misgiving. Gently
the machine rose into the air. The sensation was delightful. The fresh
air of the morning came with a stinging rush to my face. Below I could
see the earth sweeping past as if it were a moving-picture film. Above
the continuous roar of the engine and propeller Norton indicated
to Kennedy the automatic balancing of the gyroscope as it bent the
ailerons.
“Could you fly in this machine without the gyroscope at all?” yelled
Kennedy. The noise was deafening, conversation almost impossible. Though
sitting side by side he had to repeat his remark twice to Norton.
“Yes,” called back Norton. Reaching back of him, he pointed out the way
to detach the gyroscope and put a sort of brake on it that stopped its
revolutions almost instantly. “It's a ticklish job to change in the
air,” he shouted. “It can be done, but it's safer to land and do it.”
The flight was soon over, and we stood admiring the machine while Norton
expatiated on the compactness of his little dynamo.
“What have you done with the wrecks of the other machines?” inquired
Kennedy at length.
“They are stored in a shed down near the railroad station. They are just
a mass of junk, though there are some parts that I can use, so I'll ship
them back to the factory.”
“Might I have a look at them?”
“Surely. I'll give you the key. Sorry I can't go myself, but I want to
be sure everything is all right for my flight this afternoon.”
It was a long walk over to the shed near the station, and, together
with our examination of the wrecked machines, it took us the rest of the
morning. Craig carefully turned over the wreckage. It seemed a hopeless
quest to me, but I fancied that to him it merely presented new problems
for his deductive and scientific mind.
“These gyroscopes are out of business for good,” he remarked as he
glanced at the dented and battered aluminum cases. “But there doesn't
seem to be anything wrong with them except what would naturally happen
in such accidents.”
For my part I felt a sort of awe at the mass of wreckage in which Browne
and Herrick had been killed. It was to me more than a tangled mass of
wires and splinters. Two human lives had been snuffed out in it.
“The engines are a mass of scrap; see how the cylinders are bent and
twisted,” remarked Kennedy with great interest. “The gasoline-tank is
intact, but dented out of shape. No explosion there. And look at this
dynamo. Why, the wires in it are actually fused together. The insulation
has been completely burned off. I wonder what could have caused that?”
Kennedy continued to regard the tangled mass thoughtfully for some time,
then locked the door, and we strolled back to the grand stand on our
side of the field. Already the crowd had begun to collect. Across the
field we could see the various machines in front of their hangars with
the men working on them. The buzz of the engines was wafted across by
the light summer breeze as if a thousand cicadas had broken loose to
predict warm weather.
Two machines were already in flight, a little yellow Demoiselle,
scurrying around close to the earth like a frightened hen, and a
Bleriot, high overhead, making slow and graceful turns like a huge bird.
Kennedy and I stopped before the little wireless telegraph station of
the signal corps in front of the grand stand and watched the operator
working over his instruments.
“There it is again,” muttered the operator angrily.
“What's the matter?” asked Kennedy. “Amateurs interfering with you?”
The man nodded a reply, shaking his head with the telephone-like
receiver, viciously. He continued to adjust his apparatus.
“Confound it!” he exclaimed. “Yes, that fellow has been jamming me for
the past two days off and on, every time I get ready to send or receive
a message. Williams is going up with a Wright machine equipped with
wireless apparatus in a minute, and this fellow won't get out of the
way. By Jove, though, those are powerful impulses of his. Hear that
crackling? I've never been interfered with so in my experience. Touch
that screen door with your knife.”
Kennedy did so, and elicited large sparks with quite a tingle of a
shock.
“Yesterday and the day before it was so bad we had to give up attempting
to communicate with Williams,” continued the operator. “It was worse
than trying to work in a thunder-shower. That's the time we get our
troubles, when the air is overcharged with electricity, as it is now.”
“That's interesting,” remarked Kennedy.
“Interesting?” flashed back the operator, angrily noting the condition
in his “log book.”
“Maybe it is, but I call it darned mean. It's almost like trying to work
in a power station.”
“Indeed?” queried Kennedy. “I beg your pardon--I was only looking at it
from the purely scientific point of view. Who is it, do you suppose?”
“How do I know? Some amateur, I guess. No professional would butt in
this way.”
Kennedy took a leaf out of his note-book and wrote a short message which
he gave to a boy to deliver to Norton.
“Detach your gyroscope and dynamo,” it read. “Leave them in the hangar.
Fly without them this afternoon, and see what happens. No use to try for
the prize to-day. Kennedy.”
We sauntered out on the open part of the field, back of the fence and to
the side of the stands, and watched the fliers for a few moments. Three
were in the air now, and I could see Norton and his men getting ready.
The boy with the message was going rapidly across the field. Kennedy was
impatiently watching him. It was too far off to see just what they were
doing, but as Norton seemed to get down out of his seat in the aeroplane
when the boy arrived, and it was wheeled back into the shed, I gathered
that he was detaching the gyroscope and was going to make the flight
without it, as Kennedy had requested.
In a few minutes it was again wheeled out.
The crowd, which had been waiting especially to see Norton, applauded.
“Come, Walter,” exclaimed Kennedy, “let's go up there on the roof of the
stand where we can see better. There's a platform and railing, I see.”
His pass allowed him to go anywhere on the field, so in a few moments we
were up on the roof.
It was a fascinating vantage-point, and I was so deeply engrossed
between watching the crowd below, the bird-men in the air, and the
machines waiting across the field that I totally neglected to notice
what Kennedy was doing. When I did, I saw that he had deliberately
turned his back on the aviation field, and was anxiously, scanning the
country back of us.
“What are you looking for?” I asked. “Turn around. I think Norton is
just about to fly.”
“Watch him then,” answered Craig. “Tell me when he gets in the air.”
Just then Norton's aeroplane rose gently from the field. A wild shout
of applause came from the people below us, at the heroism of the man who
dared to fly this new and apparently fated machine. It was succeeded by
a breathless, deathly calm, as if after the first burst of enthusiasm
the crowd had suddenly realised the danger of the intrepid aviator.
Would Norton add a third to the fatalities of the meet?
Suddenly Kennedy jerked my arm. “Walter, look over there across the road
back of us--at the old weatherbeaten barn. I mean the one next to that
yellow house. What do you see?”
“Nothing, except that on the peak of the roof there is a pole that looks
like the short stub of a small wireless mast. I should say there was a
boy connected with that barn, a boy who has read a book on wireless for
beginners.”
“Maybe,” said Kennedy. “But is that all you see? Look up in the little
window of the gable, the one with the closed shutter.”
I looked carefully. “It seems to me that I saw a gleam of something
bright at the top of the shutter, Craig,” I ventured. “A spark or a
flash.”
“It must be a bright spark, for the sun is shining brightly,” mused
Craig.
“Oh, maybe it's the small boy with a looking-glass. I can remember when
I used to get behind such a window and shine a glass into the darkened
room of my neighbours across the street.”
I had really said that half in raillery, for I was at a loss to account
in any other way for the light, but I was surprised to see how eagerly
Craig accepted it.
“Perhaps you are right, in a way,” he assented. “I guess it isn't a
spark, after all. Yes, it must be the reflection of the sun on a piece
of glass--the angles are just about right for it. Anyhow it caught my
eye. Still, I believe that barn will bear watching.”
Whatever his suspicions, Craig kept them to himself, and descended.
At the same time Norton gently dropped back to earth in front of his
hangar, not ten feet from the spot where he started. The applause was
deafening, as the machine was again wheeled into the shed safely.
Kennedy and I pushed through the crowd to the wireless operator.
“How's she working?” inquired Craig.
“Rotten,” replied the operator sullenly. “It was worse than ever about
five minutes ago. It's much better now, almost normal again.”
Just then the messenger-boy, who had been hunting through the crowd for
us, handed Kennedy a note. It was merely a scrawl from Norton:
“Everything seems fine. Am going to try her next with the
gyroscope. NORTON.”
“Boy,” exclaimed Craig, “has Cdr. Norton a telephone?”
“No, sir, only that hangar at the end has a telephone.”
“Well, you run across that field as fast as your legs can carry you and
tell him if he values his life not to do it.”
“Not to do what, sir?”
“Don't stand there, youngster. Run! Tell him not to fly with that
gyroscope. There's a five-spot in it if you get over there before he
starts.”
Even as he spoke the Norton aeroplane was wheeled out again. In a minute
Norton had climbed up into his seat and was testing the levers.
Would the boy reach him in time? He was half across the field, waving
his arms like mad. But apparently Norton and his men were too engrossed
in their machine to pay attention.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Craig. “He's going to try it. Run, boy, run!”
he cried, although the boy was now far out of hearing.
Across the field we could hear now the quick staccato chug-chug of the
engine. Slowly Norton's aeroplane, this time really equipped with
the gyroscope, rose from the field and circled over toward us. Craig
frantically signalled to him to come down, but of course Norton could
not have seen him in the crowd. As for the crowd, they looked askance at
Kennedy, as if he had taken leave of his senses.