Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
BILL BOLTON
_and the
Winged Cartwheels_
BY
Lieutenant Noel Sainsbury, Jr.
_Author of_
Bill Bolton, Flying Midshipman
Bill Bolton and the Flying Fish
Bill Bolton and the Hidden Danger
★
THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING CO.
CHICAGO
Copyright, 1933
The Goldsmith Publishing Company
MADE IN U. S. A.
_To_ Ashton Sanborn, who is even a finer fellow than I have depicted,
and who has done even more exciting and more interesting things than
are narrated in this story.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The First Find 15
II Number Fifty-seven 32
III Stolen! 49
IV What Happened at the Dixons’ 61
V Bill’s Hunch 72
VI Heartfield’s 82
VII Beyond the Falls 95
VIII A Near Thing 107
IX At a Dead End 118
X Enter Washington 133
XI The Man with the Wheeze 145
XII Argument 159
XIII Plans 168
XIV A Friend in Need 182
XV The Shooting Flame 200
XVI The Professor Talks 211
XVII Mizzentop 224
XVIII The Elephant Gun 237
Bill Bolton and the Winged Cartwheels
_BY LIEUT. NOEL SAINSBURY, JR._
Chapter I
THE FIRST FIND
“You and I, Bill,” said Osceola, “are on top of the world and throwing
rocks at rainbows!” The young Seminole chief, stooping quickly, picked
something out of the short grass at the side of the Bolton driveway. “A
couple of months ago I was a slave in a cypress swamp without a dollar
to my name. Now I stumble over them!”
“That’s queer,” said Bill, staring at the silver disk in his friend’s
hand. “It’s one of those cartwheels they hurl at you out west instead of
dollar bills.”
“Nobody,” declared Osceola, “ever hurled dollar bills at me!”
“I mean,” said Bill, “it’s queer finding one here. Wake up—don’t let
this new-found wealth cramp your usual technic. You’re in New Canaan,
Connecticut, now—not far away on the western pl—”
“There’s something queerer than that about this cartwheel—look!”
Bill took the extended silver piece and examined it. The coin seemed
genuine enough. Minted in 1897, the head of Liberty was portrayed on one
side and backed by the well-known National Bird, who flaunted a streamer
of E Pluribus Unum in his beak. But this particular silver dollar was no
longer good as “coin of the realm.” Across Liberty’s face a pair of
spread wings was cut deep into the metal, while the American eagle was
defaced by two numerals, 1 and 3.
“Somebody’s pocket-piece, don’t you think?” suggested Osceola.
Bill nodded. “That design and the numerals are diecut. Those wings over
poor old Liberty’s pan look like an aviator’s device.”
“Some cloud-dodger’s mascot, I expect. Thirteen’s probably his lucky
number.”
Bill handed back the coin. “Stick it in your pocket. If we see it
advertised, you can easily return it. In the meantime, the mascot may
help you to keep the luck you were crowing about just now.”
“And why shouldn’t I crow? Instead of having to work my way through my
last year at Carlisle, your father puts me in charge of the foundation
he has inaugurated to help the Seminole Nation. Now, Deborah and I can
get married in the fall. Why shouldn’t I take the count on my worries?
And you’ve got no kick coming. You’re sitting pretty yourself.”
“I sure am,” admitted Bill. “Our Navy’s a swell outfit but I never
expected to stay in after my two years’ sea duty when I’d finished up at
the Academy. Now that the President himself has let me resign and put me
on Secret Service work—well, there’s only one thing I don’t like about
it.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, people—my friends, I mean, think I’m loafing. They don’t understand
why I should suddenly leave the Navy. And of course I can’t tell them.
This other job must be kept a secret. The President said so.”
“I don’t believe anybody thinks you’re a quitter or a loafer,” argued
the chief, “—not after the three big stunts you’ve pulled off this
summer, and all the newspaper publicity you’ve had out of them. You’re
talking through your sombrero, old son. Bill Bolton is front page news
from Maine to California. If you keep hitting any more bullseyes,
they’ll slap your phiz on a postage stamp!”
“Oh, yeah? Speak for yourself, John—or words to that effect. Looks like
a dead heat to me. How about it?”
Osceola abruptly changed the subject. “If this silver dollar was lost by
an aviator,” he observed, fingering the coin, “he never dropped it out
of an airplane, I know.”
“And so what?” Bill was mildly interested.
“Well, the fool thing was lying on a leaf—and the leaf was only slightly
bruised—”
“Maybe it bounced or rolled onto the leaf after it fell onto the
driveway?”
“Not this cartwheel. There’s not a scratch on it, except for the wings
and the number thirteen. Six bits to a counterfeit two-cent piece with a
hole in it, the yap who owns this has a hole in his trousers pocket!”
Osceola dropped to his knees and studied the short grass at the edge of
the drive. “Yep, just as I thought—” He stood up and flecked a dab of
mold from his immaculate flannels, “here’s the fella’s spoor. He wore
rubber-soled shoes.”
“I thought,” said Bill, “that Dorothy Dixon was the one and only
Sherlock Holmes in this village. You certainly run her a close second,
though. What did the aviator who didn’t aviate do next? Keep on out to
the garage and scratch his initials on that new de luxe roadster you
bought last week?”
“Not on this hop, he didn’t. He—wait a sec till I get a squint at this.
Yes! by Jove! it wasn’t me he was interested in, but your own sweet
self.”
“How do you get that way so soon after breakfast?”
“Listen, you blind paleface, even from here I can see that his tracks go
straight over to the house. He climbed up to the farther window of your
room by way of that leader, and the ivy. Several pieces of the vine are
lying on the grass where he broke them off getting up or down! Even you
ought to be able to see that the wire on that window-screen has been
tampered with. If you don’t believe me, shin up there and take a look!”
“Oh, I’ll take your word for it.” Several times before, in his career,
Bill had encountered evidence of the young Seminole’s truly marvelous
eyesight. “Do those scintillating orbs of yours tell you _when_ all this
occurred?”
“They most certainly do, you mole.”
“When, then?”
“Between nine and nine-thirty last night!”
“Sure it wasn’t quarter to ten?”
“Quite sure,” smiled Osceola.
“I know,” said Bill, “that you can spot anything in daylight, or in the
dark, for that matter, but when you claim to turn yourself into a human
time clock, I ha’e me doots—”
“Oh, yeah? Well, listen, kid, and I’ll prove to you that Red Men aren’t
as bad as they’re painted. Last night I left you with the girls over at
the Dixon’s, and walked in the front door just as your hall clock was
striking nine-thirty.”
“That’s right. You came over here to work on some figures for your new
Seminole schools.”
“O and likewise K. I went straight up to my room and took my work out on
the sleeping porch, where it was cooler. You found me there when you got
back at eleven, didn’t you?”
“That’s all right, too. But what’s that got to do with the climbing
aviator?”
“Why, just this. From nine-thirty until eleven-thirty I was out on that
porch with the light going. Then I went to bed there and slept till this
morning. And let me tell you, Bill, old son, that the man has yet to be
born who can shin up a rainpipe thirty feet away from me and I not know
it, awake or asleep!”
“Maybe he came before nine.” Bill was already convinced that his friend
knew what he was talking about, but he wasn’t hauling down his flag
without a last struggle.
“It wasn’t dark last night until nine o’clock, daylight saving time,”
Osceola explained patiently. “Also, last night there was a heavy dew,
even _you_ can see it on the grass still, and—”
“And the silver dollar was wet while the leaf remained bone dry, showing
that said cartwheel was dropped early in the evening!”
“You certainly are the boy to ring the quoits,” mocked the chief. “But
now that we know all about it, we really aren’t much forwarder. I don’t
suppose you’ve missed anything in your room? You haven’t said anything
about it.”
“No,” Bill said thoughtfully, “I haven’t noticed anything, but we’d
better go in and have a look. I wonder who that bird was and what he
wanted. Funny! Nothing was disturbed so far as I can remember.”
The two tall lads turned back toward the house.
“And there’s where our second-story aviator swung off the grass on to
the drive when he was going home,” exclaimed Osceola, pointing to a thin
spot on the gravel which bore a well-defined footprint, pointing toward
the road. “If it was worth while, which it isn’t, we could probably find
the tire-marks of the car he drove off in beyond the stone fence down
yonder.”
Bill grunted. “When you say ‘second story,’ you probably hit the nail on
the head. In future we’ll substitute worker for aviator, if you don’t
mind. There are a lot of bum flyers with licenses, and a lot of bums who
fly, but I wouldn’t insult the worst of them by classing him with a
cheap sneak thief.”
“Maybe,” remarked Osceola, “he wasn’t so cheap at that. But we’ll soon
find out.”
They went up the front veranda steps, into the house and upstairs to
Bill’s room.
“I don’t run to jewelry,” observed Bill, his eyes travelling around the
bedroom, “but he hasn’t touched my silver-backed brushes, or that string
of cups on the mantelpiece. And the maids didn’t report any silver
missing downstairs, either. I wonder what in thunder he was after.”
“Got anything of value in that drawer?” his friend inquired, pointing to
a flat-top table desk between the windows. “Somebody’s been fooling with
the lock. I can see the scratches on the wood—”
“Nothing but some papers, worth nothing to anybody but me. Old newspaper
clippings, Navy orders, my honorable discharge and the like. By gosh!”
he cried, “the lock’s busted! And somebody’s messed up the entire
drawer. Look here—these things were in piles with rubber bands around
them. Now they’re scattered all over the place—”
“Anything gone?”
“Wait, I’ll see.” Hurriedly he sorted out his possessions, then shook
his head. “Not a thing. What under the sky-blue canopy do you suppose
that dollar-dropping buzzard was after?”
“You haven’t said anything to anyone about the new job, have you?”
“You and Dad are the only ones outside of the people in Washington who
know about it.”
“But this doesn’t look like it, Bill.”
“You don’t mean that the goop who got in here last night was in the
know! Why, I haven’t been assigned any work yet. What could he expect to
find among my papers?”
“Perhaps,” mused Osceola, “he, or whoever sent him, has an idea that
you’ve been put to work already, and they want to know how much you’ve
found out or what your instructions are.”
“Some gang the government is after, you mean?”
“It’s quite possible.”
“But how could they learn that I—”
“A sieve,” said Osceola sententiously, “isn’t the only thing that leaks.
Someone in Washington has spilled the goldarned beans, inadvertently or
not.”
“If you’re right, Osceola, this is serious business.”
“Of course it is. What are you going to do about it?”
“Wait, watch and listen. I’m due in Washington next week to receive my
orders. Until then, I shall do nothing.”
“And I guess you’re right, at that. My surmises may be all wet, though I
doubt it. Just the same, we’ve nothing concrete to go on except that a
lad climbs in the window and goes through your desk.”
Bill closed the drawer. “Let’s forget it, then,” he suggested. “At least
for today. You and I, old Rain-in-the-face, have a heavy date. Had you
forgotten it?”
“Not likely. When you’re engaged, a fella can’t think of anything else
but the next date!”
“You’ve sure got it bad,” grinned Bill. “Thank goodness, I’m still heart
whole and fancy free!”
“What about Dorothy Dixon?”
“Aw, shucks! We’re just good pals, and you know it.”
“Says you!”
“Says both of us. I’m seventeen, and she’s a year younger. Neither of us
is thinking about getting married, or anything like that.”
“Gee, I forget you’re really only a kid,” laughed Osceola. “Well, let’s
shove off. The girls are going up there in Dorothy’s plane. They said
they’d bring lunch. Where is this place we’re going to picnic, anyway?”
“Up in the hills beyond Danbury. It’s quite near the far end of
Candlewood Lake.”
“Was it up that way you and Dorothy corralled the New Canaan bank
robbers?”
“Yes, quite near there. That’s how we learned of the wood lot. It’s
secluded, there’s a good spring, and it’s really a peach of a place for
a picnic.”
“Well, let’s get goin’ then.”
“Coming, Romeo—coming!” Bill followed his impatient friend out of the
room. “What’s eatin’ you? It’s early yet.”
“Maybe it is, but—well, laugh if you want to, I’m uneasy as blazes about
those girls!”
Bill caught up with him as they ran down the steps of the side porch and
headed out to the hangar.
“It must be awful to be in love. The girls are all right. Dorothy is an
A-1 pilot. I ought to know. I taught her myself.”
Osceola said nothing more until they had passed the garage and stables
and were crossing the flat meadow where the Bolton hangar was located.
“Thank goodness, Frank has run out that Ryan of yours,” he exclaimed as
they came into view of a two-seater monoplane parked before the open
doors of the converted haybarn.
“Getting lazy in your old age, are you?” jeered Bill.
“No, but I’ll admit the sooner we’re off and up in the hills, the better
pleased I’ll be.”
“Well, you can hop right in, old fuss budget. While you were working on
your school plan, early this morning, I came out here and went over the
bus from nose to tailplane. Pull out those wheel blocks and carry them
into the rear cockpit with you. Meanwhile I’ll show you how the new
inertia starter I’ve rigged her with can swing a prop. Make it snappy,
big chief—this is an emergency patrol—the women must be saved at all
costs!”
Bill adopted a mock-heroic attitude and roared with laughter at
Osceola’s disgust. Twenty minutes later, Bill, at the controls of the
Ryan, sighted a rectangular patch of light green framed in the darker
green of the Connecticut hills twenty-five hundred feet below the
speeding plane. He clapped a pair of glasses to his eyes and the woodlot
sprang up at him. It seemed he could almost reach out and pluck the
flowers that dotted the high grass. Then he turned his gaze to the upper
corner of the field.
There lay Dorothy Dixon’s small amphibian, parked near the road which
wound up the wooded valley. Close by, a motor car was drawn up at the
edge of the field. For a moment he failed to sight either Dorothy, or
her pretty Seminole friend, Deborah Lightfoot.
“Under the trees beyond the plane!”
Osceola’s shout almost broke Bill’s eardrums, coming as it did through
the close-pressed receivers of his headphone set. Automatically, he
dropped the glasses, caught at his safety-belt to see if it was fastened
and shoved forward.
The Ryan bucked into a nosedive and dropped earthward with the speed of
a shooting star.
Osceola’s premonition of danger had been a wise one. Beneath the trees,
Dorothy and Deborah were struggling with two men.