The Ghost of Mystery Airport

by Van Powell

  CHAPTER VI

  "THE THING THAT NEVER WAS"

  Stunned by the realization that the man who worked around the airportseemed to have betrayed those who trusted him, clinging to the roll oftracing paper that was his evidence of that betrayal, Chick faced DocMorgan in the dark hovel until the next flash of celestial fire showedhim a lantern standing on the small, rickety table at one side.

  Hastening over to the table Chick fumbled on it, and in the drawerwhich remained partially open.

  He found a card of paper matches.

  Quickly lifting the lantern slide and turning up the wick, Chickignited a match, applied it to the burner and adjusted his light.

  "Listen here--" Doe Morgan, in his corner, struggled up to a sittingposture, groaned again and then took up his own refutation of Chick'saccusation. "Listen, Chick! I ain't a traitor, no such thing I ain't!"

  Turning, in the feeble glow of the lantern as its wick burned with aqueer, fitful light, Chick's face showed his antagonism and unbelief.

  "No, sir," the man contended, "Doc Morgan, he may be 'queer' but heain't no such a thing as a traitor, not him!"

  "Look at this!"

  Chick waved the rolled tracing.

  "----And this!" He indicated the overturned bottle that reeked ofalcohol of the cheapest kind, lying on its side at the edge of thetable.

  "You thought you'd celebrate getting away with the plans of the newall-metal ship, and nobody would know about it, off here in the marsh!"Chick accused Morgan fiercely. Treachery was hateful to Chick. The manhad been allowed to stay around the aircraft building plant and the newairport because he was a harmless sort of scatter-brain, able to dosimple chores, willing enough, and always "doctoring" people with hisherb remedies, coming to the swamps for the peculiar forms of seagrasses and weed that he contended had medicinal value. He had beentrusted.

  "How can you say you aren't a traitor?" Chick challenged, motioningwith the paper he clutched, keeping the table between himself and theman he no longer trusted, watchful, alert, angry.

  "What's that, you got there?" asked Doc, making an effort to get to hisfeet. He fell back, groaning, and Chick, in some surprise, noted thatthere was a handkerchief made into a rude bandage about his head.

  "You know, well enough!" Chick spoke through the rumble and thud ofthunder whose echoes reminded him of heavy cannon balls rolling alongon cleats fastened to an inclined trough, as thunder was simulated inthe local motion picture house for one of its "sound effects."

  "I never saw that, what you got, no I never!" declared Doc. "Here Icome in the swamp, I do, for salt water weed to mix my herbs, and I seea storm coming fast, I do, and shelter here."

  "That's good!" scoffed Chick.

  "It's truth, it is so! I come here, I do, and--" his face, in thespectral yellow gleams from the lantern, and the contrasting glare ofintermittent lightning showing through the door, looked pale and weird,"--and I see--something I never thought I'd see outside of a nightmare,so I do----"

  Chick's attention was arrested.

  "What do you mean," he demanded. "'See what you wouldn't see outside ofa nightmare!' What is that!"

  "I can't tell you, that I can't! It was--too awful!"

  Quickly Chick recovered from his momentary dismay. The man was tryingto divert him from his accusation, he decided.

  He made a gesture toward the emptied bottle.

  "That's what made you see whatever you think you saw!" he declared.

  "No!" Doc got slowly and unsteadily to his feet. Chick watched. "No,"Doc reiterated, "I never touched that till after I saw--It! I come inhere, I did, I declare--to shelter. Then I saw--It. It was in thecorner, and I saw it, I did so! Terrible, it was! Green in the hair,and green in the face! And greenish hands! And all slimy and terrible,like it had come up out of the ooze, it was so!"

  Chick crushed back his tendency to believe, and to be startled.

  "After--you'd emptied that!" he insisted, gesturing toward the oldbottle.

  "No! No such thing. I knocked that over. It set there, it did, and Ihit it, I jumped so. I hit the table, and I must either of got upsetstumbling over my own feet or--It--hit me! That's when I tookthat--what was left in the bottle, to steady me, I did so!"

  Chick, disgusted, unwilling to be hoodwinked, realizing that he hadmore important things to consider, refused to listen any longer.

  The Dragonfly lay tied to the wharf piling: the wind was rising. Hischums were off in the dark waters of the swamp on a rescue errand.

  "I can't bother with you," he snapped. "Tell it to Don's uncle, when weget out of this."

  Doc remained silent, steadying himself by resting a hand on the wall,holding his seemingly aching head with the other.

  Keeping the table between them, and braced against the ruse of a pushagainst it to upset him, Chick opened an end of the tracing andverified his earlier guess.

  The tracing certainly looked like the rough sketch for an airplane,with most of the bracing and internal structure of the fuselage inkedin heavily, with the wide-spanning, thin, speedy "slotted" wingssketched in more lightly, with the tail assembly marked on, and withinnumerable sets of figures, in ink, underneath the drawing.

  Swiftly he rolled it up and put it back into his upper coat pocket,being sure that it could neither shake nor be dropped out by folding itover, jamming it down as far as he could, and snapping a safety pin hesaw in the drawer across the pocket top. Doe watched him with awoebegone look, as Chick judged it to be.

  "I don't know what you're hiding, I don't that! Nor why you say I'mwhat I declare I ain't no such a thing--a traitor. But I'm going onhome, and doctor me up myself some."

  "Go on!" Chick braced for a rush, a surprise.

  None came.

  Moodily, with head bent, Doc walked to the doorway and out. Followinghim, Chick saw him, picked out by the flashes, cross the planks anddisappear in the winding path.

  "Who was that?"

  Scott, coming around the side of the hovel from the wharf, made hispresence known, asking the question sharply.

  "Doc Morgan," Chick responded. "I found him here. He had finished off abottle, and he had some tracings. I guess I forgot and left them out onthe designing room table when we were talking about our plan fortonight."

  "Tracings! You don't say? Let's see them!"

  "In the morning!" said Chick, eagerly. "You ought to go and help Donand Garry. Where's the Dart?"

  "Over in the shelter of the grass, across the water, there. What arethe other two doing?"

  Quickly Chick told him where Don and Garry had started for in the dory.They scanned the water. The dory, invisible, hidden and held by thewind among the weeds, told them no story of its abandonment.

  "I guess they're at the crack-up," surmised Scott. "Light two red flaresignals, Chick. Get those two back here. If I don't get back to theDart she'll never get above the storm in time. The same for theDragonfly. Get those boys back here! If Don hurries he can get up aloftin time." Moving away he added, "After the storm we'll search."

  Chick climbed to the struts over a rocking, tossing wing of thetethered Dragonfly, secured signals from the fuselage, and as he sawthem set and ignited Scott hurried off to get his own lighter ship outof the danger area. Chick refused to go along, preferring to risk Don'sless experienced piloting. He would not desert his chums.

  "By gracious!" he exclaimed to himself, "I wonder if there are any moreof those plans in the drawer of that table? Doc might have tried tohide them, stopped to celebrate, got too 'tight' to know what he wasdoing, and struck his head when he staggered and fell. That wouldaccount for the drawer being open so the paper could blow out--I'll goand have another look!"

  He hastened back into the hovel, investigating by the flicker of thelantern, wind-blown, but staunchly holding its own.

  "Funny!" commented the youthful searcher. "Why did he have only theleast important plan--the sketch? Maybe he has the others on hisperson! I ought not to ha
ve let him go. But I was so----"

  He paused, his words choked back into his throat by a strange sound.Had something struck the hovel? A blown limb, crashing against theside, could have made that heavy, but dull thud, hard to locate.

  To his horror, before he could locate the source of the crash, a low,sepulchral voice spoke!

  "Go!--Go!--I am the Thing That Never Was--the Man Who Never Lived!Go--or I take you with me--down--down--down-n-n-n!"

  Chick whirled to face about. In a corner, behind him, half out of thefloor, as it seemed, was the shape of the Thing--terrifying, and yetsurprising. Green, dull and glistening, as if of plastered seaweed orwet rubber was its head. Heavy, glistening, ooze-covered was thecovering upon its partially disclosed torso. Green, glistening, butdripping with slimy weed were its waving, beckoning hands.

  Transfixed, rooted to his tracks, Chick gasping, stared.

  Seen in the unearthly, fitful flashes of lightning, the yellow lanternflicker and the dull refracted red from the burning flares outside, theapparition was horrifying enough.

  But Chick felt his muscles unchained as the figure grew in height andadvanced toward him, its long, glistening, weed-spattered armsoutstretched. Like a streak of fleeing terror Chick raced out of thedoor.

  There he paused, uncertain. It was safer in the open than in the room:the signals and the brighter light outside the cabin would enable himto see better that Thing of Fear if it came forth.

  Out it came, speaking no word. Terrified, Chick ran. But for all itsflapping encumbrance of weird draperies, it was swift. It caught theyouth. Terror chilled his blood but he struggled. Then his courage camewelling to him. If those hands could grip they must be human, and ifshins kicked in desperation could evoke human growls of dismay, hefaced no spectre, but a flesh-and-blood creature.

  The man, in his horrid garments, was searching with exploring fingerswhile he tried to hold the squirming, kicking Chick who strove to befree, to escape.

  There were shouts from the other side of the hovel; suddenly Chick felthis inner pocket ripped open, and the Thing--or man--was away over theplanking, running fleetly and with sure steps. He knew that way!

  After him went Chick, into the twisting, swamp-bound paths.

  Nor did he return until long after that!