The Shadow Conspiracy II

by Phyllis Irene Radford

  Uvalde, Texas, April 22, 1896: That Uvalde has been visited by the famous airship that has created so much excitement in Texas...here is no room to doubt. The airship was sighted by Sheriff H.W. Baylor around 10 o’clock Tuesday evening.

  Mr. Baylor’s attention was first attracted by a bright light and the sound of strange voices...in back of his residence. He went out to investigate and was surprised to find there the airship and a crew of three men. They stated they were on a trial trip and did not wish their presence known to the people of the town.

  One of the men, who gave his name as Wilson...inquired for Capt. C.C. Acres, former Sheriff of Svala County who he understood lived in this section. He said he had met Capt. Acres at Fort Worth in 1877 and would be much pleased to meet him again. When told that Capt. Acres was at Eagle Pass in the customs service and often visited this place, he asked to be remembered to the Captain on the occasion of his next visit.

  After procuring water at the hydrant in Mr. Baylor’s yard, the men boarded the ship, its great fins and wings were set in motion, and it sped away northward in the direction of San Antonio.

  Mr. Baylor is thoroughly reliable and his statement is undoubtedly true. His description of the ship does not differ materially from that given by Mr. J.R. Liggin at Bowmont. County Clerk Henry J. Bowles also claims to have seen the airship as it passed up Getty Street north of the Baylor residence. — The Dallas Star

  “Never arrived in San Antonio, though,” said the young man sitting across the table from me. He had been watching my face as I read the story from a carefully cropped page of the Star.

  “The description is enough like DeGear’s Seraph as to be the same ship.” I handed the article back across the table. “Have you sought to interview the men mentioned in this story?”

  Stephen Deering nodded. “Baylor, Liggin, and Bowles, yes — Acres is no longer in the area. All three were...evasive. Which I found surprising considering the statements they gave immediately after the events. Baylor has it that he thinks he was hoaxed — that the machine was a lighter-than-air balloon dressed up to look like something else.”

  “Truly? Odd, that was one explanation that wasn’t advanced in the San Francisco incident.” I took out the article that had appeared under my byline in the Chronicle, handed it to him, and watched him while he read it — as carefully as he had watched me.

  He raised his eyes to mine almost immediately. “Galvanized iron? Not silvered fabric?”

  “It landed heavily enough to have buried its tail section in a cow pasture. I felt the thing with my own hands — it was neither fabric nor galvanized iron — too rigid for one; too light for the other.”

  “What then?”

  “A new alloy, perhaps. Something very thin and light, but metallic in appearance. Whatever else she was, the ‘Angel of the Cow Meadow’ was not lighter than air.”

  “Mr. Baylor never touched the machine,” Deering said thoughtfully. “If there was a machine.”

  “Why would Baylor make up something like this? Why would anyone?”

  “Notoriety? The idea of a few rounds of free drinks will make some men do foolish things.”

  True. “I would like to interview Acres. Consider how odd it is for a man — supposedly on a secret training flight — to announce himself to the first witness who shows up and to plant a name in his ear. Why do that?”

  “I suspect that only Misters Acres and Wilson know the answer to that question. The article says Acres is in Eagle Pass. Are you ready for another train trip?”

  I put the article back into my wallet and finished off my coffee, which was all but cold. “Not at the moment. I’d rather investigate locally.”

  He stood. “What do you have in mind?”

  Sheriff Baylor had thick salt and pepper hair and the build of a grizzly bear. His expression, when he heard of our intent to question him further about the sighting, was also reminiscent of that impressive beast. We’d met in a tavern of Baylor’s choosing; he had not wanted us to come to his house.

  “I told you, Mr. Deering,” he said to my companion, “I was hoaxed. Why, I have no idea. But I saw nothing more than a dollied-up balloon.”

  I was not above pleading. “Sheriff, I’ve travelled all the way from San Francisco to look into this. I beg your indulgence. Please hear me out.”

  “San Francisco? What brings you here from San Francisco?”

  “Three months ago in a pasture outside of town I saw something very much like what you described in your original account. The chief difference being that I was able to lay hands on the machine and know it to be of heavier construction than a hot-air balloon.”

  Baylor reddened. “That’s as may be, but what I saw...well, it must have been a balloon.”

  I leaned forward in my chair, elbows on the table. “I’m curious, Sheriff, about the man, or men, involved in this...hoax. Who would repeatedly perpetrate such a prank? You spoke to one of the men in the craft?”

  “Indeed I did.” He eyed me suspiciously.

  “He gave his name as Wilson?”

  He nodded.

  “The fellow I met called himself J.D. DeGear.”

  His lips twitched. “Name’s not familiar to me.”

  “Mr. Wilson asked after a C.C. Acres?”

  Again the terse nod.

  “An acquaintance of yours?” asked Stephen Deering with a meaningful glance at me. Getting answers out of Henry Baylor was like trying to extract teeth from a chicken.

  “He was Sheriff before me. I was his deputy.”

  Deering swirled his beer glass about in the watery track it had left on the table. “How did Wilson come to speak to you?”

  “He approached me while the other two gentlemen were attempting to disentangle the craft from the branches of a cottonwood tree and asked if I would pass along his greeting to Captain Acres.”

  “Captain?”

  “Ex-cavalryman.”

  “So Mr. Wilson took you aside,” I said, “out of hearing of the others?”

  He frowned at that, his ferocious white brows colliding over the bridge of his nose. “Yes — our conversation was private.”

  “Then he just...flew away.”

  He flushed again. “Floated. Look, this isn’t a welcome subject for me. I looked a fool.”

  I held up my hand to stay him a moment more. “One last thing: did Mr. Wilson give a first name, by chance?”

  Again, the twitch of lips. “Initials only — J.D.”

  “You think Wilson’s behavior is significant,” Deering observed.

  We were seated in a passenger car of the San Antonio Railroad speeding southwest to Eagle Pass.

  “J.D. DeGear dropped the name ‘Darius Green’ in my ear,” I returned. “Very deliberately, it seems to me. Just as it appears J.D. Wilson dropped another name on another witness some time earlier.”

  “Let’s assume for a moment that DeGear and Wilson are the same man. Why the name dropping? Let’s suppose he intended you to try to find Darius Green. The man is dead.”

  “Is he?”

  “I visited his grave before I left Topeka. Spoke to the parson who spoke over him. Someone is buried there.”

  “I think DeGear/Wilson intended Sheriff Baylor — or someone he spoke to — to be intrigued enough to try to locate C.C. Acres. And if that’s the case, then he most likely intended me to go off looking for Dr. Green — dead or alive. The question is: what was I supposed to find?”

  “Me?”

  An interesting thought. Deering and I had both been at the end of our respective roads when I contacted him. Yet, here we both were — chasing dropped names by rail.

  In the thirty years since the War, Eagle Pass had recovered well, notwithstanding its violent history and its onetime occupation by Confederate troops. The relatively new railroad connection had helped what had been a dying town in the 1850’s become a bustling hub of trade.

  We found the Customs office without trouble and soon were behind closed doors in the Captain
’s office. Acres was a short, wiry fellow with black hair that had gone silver at the temples. His skin was the color of the local sandstone and of similar texture.

  His intense grey eyes did not so much as waver when I explained our mission to him by saying that we were trying to locate J.D. Wilson and that both of us had seen what we supposed to be his “air-craft,” and had talked to Baylor.

  “And Baylor sent you to me?”

  “Not exactly. Mr. Baylor seemed quite embarrassed by the whole thing and resisted discussing it. He was willing, however, to discuss J.D. Wilson. We’re hoping you will be, as well.”

  “That entirely depends on what you ask me about him.”

  “Then he’s not a figment of Sheriff Baylor’s imagination,” said my companion.

  “Not at all. I became acquainted with him during my Army days at Forth Worth in ’76.”

  “Had you known Mr. Wilson was experimenting with flight?” I asked baldly.

  He fixed me with a level gaze. “Jack Wilson was obsessed with flight and had been since before I met him. He was a balloon man. The Army found his specialty of potential benefit.”

  “Balloons only? No...heavier-than-air craft?”

  That raised Acres’ eyebrows. “Heavier-than-air? Mr. Cranfeldt, if something is heavier-than-air, is it logical to suppose it will fly? I’ll allow Jack did go on about something he was working on. Something he said would astonish the world — but I supposed it related to aerial navigation.”

  “Did he ever discuss with you his involvement in the war effort?”

  Acres looked at me strangely. “Jack Wilson? He was all of twenty and four when I met him. That would have made him twelve when the War started. As far as I know he entered the Army at Fort Worth the year we met. From conversations we had, it wouldn’t surprise me that, having succeeded in solving whatever navigational problem he was working on, Jack would hunt me up to crow about it.”

  “Then you trust Sheriff Baylor’s account of his sighting?”

  “I’ve known Sheriff Baylor for many years, gentlemen. His statements may be relied on as correct.”

  “Yet,” said Deering, “he now believes himself to have been hoaxed. If true, that means you are a victim once-removed. You say Wilson was a man of means; have you known him to use those means to perpetrate elaborate hoaxes?”

  Acres frowned. “How elaborate a hoax?”

  “It appears that not once, but at least twice, Wilson — or someone fitting his description — constructed a craft that had no hope of flying and pushed it off the top of a hill for reasons that remain a mystery.”

  He grimaced. “Jack had a goodly store of bravado, possibly even a flamboyant streak. It’s certainly more reasonable to suppose that he committed these hoaxes than to believe he flew such a machine as you describe.”

  Acres’ extreme care with words was not lost on me. “Can you speculate as to why he should do this?”

  “I suppose it’s possible he failed to succeed in his intent and has found it necessary to resort to elaborate pranks to redeem his reputation as an inventor.”

  “Ah, but here’s the odd thing: none of these pranks was played out before an audience. The ‘crashes’ are always in relatively remote places at odd hours of the night, and attended by mere handfuls of people. What sort of prankster wastes his efforts for so small a return?”

  Deering asked: “You said Mr. Wilson was obsessed with flight — do you mean that literally? Was he...mad?”

  When Acres didn’t respond, I added wryly: “I was told he had been captured by the Confederates and forced to work on the design of the CSS Hunley, which sank with all hands. Needless to say, your Jack Wilson was too young to have been the same man. Clearly, the account was fictional. So, I feel compelled to ask: was Mr. Wilson unstable?”

  “I’d call Jack eccentric, whimsical even. But unstable? I’d hate to think it. But what else is there to believe?”

  “Have you ever heard of a J.D. DeGear or a Darius Green?” asked my colleague.

  Acres became very still. “What do you know of Darius Green?”

  “What do you know of him?” I countered.

  “He was stationed at Fort Riley outside of Topeka, Kansas, at the same time I was — about three years ago. That was just prior to my...retirement from military service.”

  “I met Professor Green,” Deering told him, “in a manner of speaking. I saw him unconscious and strapped into a metal machine that he had apparently attempted to fly. He was later described to me as a fraud. A dead fraud; I was told he succumbed to injuries.”

  Acres rose as if remaining seated was suddenly impossible. He moved to the window of his tiny office, where he gazed out into the street. I first thought that he meant simply to gather his thoughts, but realized he was looking for something there.

  He turned back to us. “What do you expect me to tell you?”

  “Was it a hoax?” Deering asked, sitting forward in his chair. “Green’s machine?”

  “He intended it to fly,” Acres said tersely. “It did not.”

  “And J.D. DeGear’s machine in San Francisco?”

  “I know nothing of that.”

  “I’m convinced my J.D. DeGear and your J.D. Wilson are the same person,” I said. “And...I’m more than half convinced they are both Darius Green.”

  He said nothing, so I pressed him. “Is Darius Green dead?”

  “Let us say the man I knew has ceased to exist.”

  “Why?”

  “I am unable to say.”

  “Because he designed balloons for the military? Because he is a brilliant engineer given to wild pranks? Or because, as Captain Reddy would have me believe, he’s mentally unbalanced and repeatedly proves it?”

  “Reddy!” He gave me the full intensity of his eyes. “He was with Reddy?”

  “You know Captain Reddy, sir?” asked Deering.

  Acres collected himself with obvious effort. “I do. He has for some time been my friend’s...amanuensis. Reddy is a...dedicated soldier.”

  Amanuensis? The man had behaved more like a commandant. “Captain Reddy represented himself to me as the Professor’s guardian.”

  Acres snorted. “Perhaps that’s as good a word as any.”

  “The Captain indicated to me that his charge was mentally unsound, and in fact, DeGear all but corroborated it when I interviewed him some hours after the crash. He apologized for leading me to believe the vessel had actually flown some distance and —”

  “Flown?” Captain Acres said, again focusing the full force of his gaze on my face. “He claimed it had flown? How far?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. He merely said that they’d been flying along at about two hundred feet when suddenly they went down. Then later, with Reddy present, he recanted the statement and disappeared. Along with his flying companion.”

  When he said nothing, I asked bluntly: “Who is our Professor of many names?”

  He relented. “He is, as you suggest, a brilliant engineer and inventor. The Army has invested much in his ideas and has reaped some benefit. A craft that can fly above cloud cover to drop ordnance on an enemy army is quite a powerful weapon to have in one’s arsenal.”

  “Brilliant, but unstable?”

  Acres gave me a particularly direct look. “He could have had no connection to the Hunley, Mr. Cranfeldt. He could not possibly have served in the War. Let alone been captured by Confederates. He was too young.”

  I conceded that. “Brilliant, but given to outrageous jests?”

  “You said it yourself — for whose benefit? Who perpetrates a grandiose hoax for an audience of Holsteins?”

  “Ah. You’re familiar with the San Francisco incident after all,” I observed. “I never mentioned the cows.”

  He smiled. “You’re good, Mr. Cranfeldt. I suspect you may have a long career ahead of you as a newspaper man...if you don’t affront the wrong people.”

  “Are you threatening us, Captain Acres?” Deering asked.

 
“No sir. I am warning you that some questions are best left unanswered.”

  “I’m not certain I can agree,” I said. “But let me ask just one more: If he’s not of unsound mind and he’s not setting up a monumental hoax — perhaps against journalists as a breed — then why is he dropping clues and names all over the country? In the guise of J.D. DeGear, he told me about Darius Green, which prompted me to contact Mr. Deering. In the guise of J.D. Wilson, he dropped your name on Sheriff Baylor — one assumes to induce him to contact you. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know where he might be?”

  “To continue in this course could be extremely foolhardy, gentlemen.”

  “Then we are fools.”

  Acres returned to his chair. “About twelve miles northeast of here on an old farm road is a long mesa you may find of interest. Folks around here occasionally tell tales about it.” He opened his mouth as if to say more, then shook his head. “I’ve already said more than I should have under the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances would those be?” I asked, but he declined to answer.

  Outside of Eagle Pass on a thoroughly miserable excuse for a road there was, as Captain Acres had said, an elongated mesa reminiscent of a bluff outside of Topeka Stephen Deering had once visited. It was oriented south to north — the northern end being a precipice.

  This formation also had a distinctive feature the Captain had not mentioned: it was cut off from its environs by a fence. A prodigious fence, it seemed to enclose the entire mesa and the shallow valley that lay at its foot.

  We left the road and trotted our horses to the top of a smaller mesa a handful of miles to the southeast, and from this vantage point surveyed the land. The first thing we noted was that the valley was not empty. Along the base of the mesa lay a clutter of low buildings, including a peculiar structure that looked like an oversized Iroquois longhouse.

  We followed the fence with our field glasses, finding no egress but a hard-packed track that led up to a guardhouse. In and about this building were several soldiers whose unenviable job it was to stare endlessly at the unmoving landscape.