by Van Powell
CHAPTER XIX
A CLUE IN SMOKE
After a somewhat disappointed study of the three yellow picture theatrepasses, Garry turned to the Indian youth.
"John," asked Garry, "what do these mean? There isn't anything on thembut printing. They say, 'Admit bearer' and give the Palace name andthey are signed by the theatre manager. But there isn't any help there,unless something is written on the backs in disappearing ink."
"Maybe, if we heated them, or wet them, something would come out,"suggested Chick hopefully, "as they stand, they are just three passes."
John, with a quiet smile on his copper-colored face, replied curtly:
"My father is a clever man. He put this with that, and know much. Youtry doing that."
"Personally," Mr. McLeod was a trifle sceptical, "I think they are partof the plot to confuse you and the rest of us. No doubt the old'medicine man' is clever--clever enough to be involved in some way andto try to pretend that he is a helpful chap when his whole attention isto throw out a smoke screen to protect himself and--" he frowned at theyoung Indian, "--his son."
Garry put them back in the skin bag, slipped it into his pocket andswitched in the current to back the launch around.
"You might try using those passes," the control chief suggested, as theboat moved down the channel.
Garry nodded.
"We will," he agreed.
With the ignition key and a carburetor needle and float removed, thehelicopter, tied once more to its stakes, was in no danger of beingremoved. They felt that they could safely leave it: no one would beable to use it with parts so vital missing. If the owner had a spareswitch key, it was totally unlikely that the carburetor parts wereduplicated.
Don's plan, quietly communicated to his two friends and to Mr. McLeod,was to be tried.
They would leave the disabled helicopter as it was, go back to theirdaily tasks in the designing department of the aircraft plant and theairport, and keep a watch on the control chief, on Doc Morgan, and onthe swamp, from the control tower balcony, with strong binoculars.
No garage, accessory store or hardware shop could replace the specialcarburetor parts for some time; after instructing their own shopforeman to report any application for the parts that might be made tohim, Don rode in to Port Washington with his uncle and visited everyshop, garage and other place where such things were available, toldenough to enlist attention, without disclosing any of their suspicionsabout the tracing and its possible meaning, and secured a promise tohave a report made of any request for carburetor floats and valves ofthe unusual type they had looked up in the catalogues.
"Now," remarked Don, as their sedan returned to the airport, "if anyspook, or man who calls himself a thing that never was, comes around toput his helicopter into commission, we can grab him, for we will knowthat no one else would be after floats like the one we removed."
His uncle nodded, morose and uncommunicative.
Rejoining his chums, Don explained his recent activities.
"I found that the blue-print files had the lock picked," Chick toldhim, "and the blue-print I made of the sketch was gone."
"I've just come down from the tower balcony," added Garry. "Thehelicopter hasn't moved. I just barely made out the blades above thegrass. The way they are kept when it isn't being used, the blades aresideways to the line of sight from the control tower. That's why noneof us, especially since we weren't looking for it, ever saw the thing."
"Probably Mister Spectre-Man had it there all during the hauntingtime," Chick remarked.
"But what did he use it for--and how did he use it?" objected Don. "Thespooky airplanes were biplanes, old-timers, and there never was ahelicopter in sight."
"I suppose he used it to get to his other ships, and then flew thembetween a cloud and a light, so the shadows appeared, just as theshadow of your Dart showed to us the first night we tried being AirlaneGuards," Garry suggested.
"But why should he hide it in the swamp, and need it at all? If he hada biplane, he could take-off from miles away," Chick argued.
"It's as much of a puzzle as that mixed-up affair of a chart that maybe an airplane design, or a camouflaged drawing of a privateer orold-fashioned brigantine that has treasure hidden in it," Chick mused."Now, we'd better get to our watching. Doc is my assignment. He'seating breakfast, so I'll go and get some, too."
"Control Chief Vance has gone to bed," Garry said. "I won't have veryhard work keeping track of the cottage he lives in, from the platformwhere I watch the helicopter. Don, you'll be free, then."
"Well, I'll work on the inking in of the new tracings," the young pilotdecided. "Wouldn't it be odd if my study of airplane design had somegood effect in clearing up our mysteries?"
"It certainly would!" agreed Chick, moving away.
While he used square and compass, drawing pen and India ink, making theperfect outlines and shading on tracing paper which perfected themultitude of parts' designs, before the working blue-prints were madeby Chick and Garry, Don kept that idea in the back of his head.
It would be fine, he mused, to be able to use the knowledge he hadgained, especially about airplane construction and the creation of theoriginal plans for new models, to solve the puzzling, baffling set ofunexplained circumstances.
The possibility seemed far-fetched, though.
"How can it help that I know about streamlining the body, and thestruts, and even the flying wires?" he asked himself, "or what can Imake of wing-taper, and camber, and all that?"
He completed the application of India ink to the drawing of a seaplanebody, in outline, showing the many braces and their points ofattachment to the longitudinal "keel."
He put it away, with others, in a folder when it was dry.
"I guess knowing about designs won't help, any more than knowing how tofly a ship was of any use to the Airlane Guard," he murmured, layingthe folder aside for Garry's later use.
"If we only had the 'ignition key' so we could make 'contact,'" hesmiled at his application of aviation terms to their puzzle, "it wouldbe easy to give it the gun and fly a straight course to the solutions."
When dusk came on and the chums gathered to compare notes, the dayproved to have yielded blanks all around.
"The Indian told the truth," Garry reported. "Your uncle has engaged aprivate detective and he checked up. John and old Ti-O-Ga are 'playinga split week' engagement at the Palace, starting Saturday--today. Thehelicopter hasn't been moved. A private detective is there, watchingit, and one is in the hangars."
"We can go to the movies, then," suggested Don. "Let's see if the old'medicine man' meant anything by giving us passes, and telling us totake them out of the bag after seven days."
"He might, at that," Garry became more animated. "That connects up,because after seven days he knew he would be here, with his son."
"I hadn't seen it that way," responded Don. "Let's go!"
They found the Palace, on a side street, fairly filled when theypresented the three yellow slips to the door man. Large "cut-out"figures of Indians, in various poses, and posters, from "one-sheets" to"flash twenty-four sheets," decorated the theatre and billboardsnearby, showing in blatant coloring the scenes from "Red Blood andBlue."
The doorman, to whom the chums were well and favorably known, chuckledas he accepted the "dead-head" tickets.
"Papering the house, eh!" he chaffed, referring to the method by which,issuing free tickets, a manager sometimes made it appear that histheatre was well patronized. "Well, you won't like the show."
"Why?" Chick demanded.
"It's the old story that the fellow who comes in free does all the'knocking,'" responded the doorman, "I ought not to let you in at all,by rights. Passes aren't good on busy week-end nights; but these aregood any time--specials from the boss. How'd you get them?"
"In the most 'charming' way you could think of," Garry made a hiddenreference to the Indian's "magic bag." "They were 'gave' to us."
"All right. Go on!"
In they went, finding a trio of seats about the center of the small andrather old-fashioned theatre.
A comedy was just reaching its end, and the jet silhouettes of afantastic kitten, gyrating across the screen from a kick, punctuatedtheir arrival with a gale of laughter from the audience.
They were just in time for the "presentation," preceding the mainattraction.
The heavy draperies of the softly lighted curtain swung down,concealing the stage until the screen was taken away.
Softly the small orchestra began a weird musical number, while from theprojectors that threw the pictures onto the screen, their lensesshowing colored lights instead through tinted isinglass disks, came acombined rose and blue that gave the stage, as the curtains opened, theeffect of dusk coming on just after sunset.
Weird tom-toms thudded gently from the enclosure which pictured aforest background. Before this, around a small "practical" fire, wellprotected, sat some supers, made up as Indians.
"There's John Ti," murmured Chick to Garry.
"He's going to sing!"
As Garry spoke the young Indian broke into a chant, with a melodiousvoice, standing against the soft light supposed to be the dying sun'safterglow over the sea, to one side of the stage.
Three white people came into the scene, watching, all evidentlycampers, from their dress. They were extremely modern, both inpantomimic actions and in their garments. One was a girl, the other twowere men, and their attentions to the girl spoke clearly of greatinterest in her.
To the increasing rapidity of the music after the song, thosemake-believe warriors seemed to be caught by the spirit of some oldmood, and they rose, moving about, presenting a colorful, barbaricpicture as they began a dance, to the thrum of the piano and the songof violins, while dull drumbeats punctuated the music.
From the wings, as the music became more wild, appeared the old Indianin blanket, feathered head-dress and other marks of his chieftainship.
One of the men began to make motions calculated to show his feeling ofsuperiority toward the stalking old man, and the girl turned from himin a sort of distress, then the other man caught her hand, whereuponhis rival glowered, and his hand moved toward his hip.
At once the old chief stretched out an arm--the dancers drew back andsquatted, the chief approached the fire, beckoning to the girl.
She approached slowly, fearfully, and the music became low as thechief, squatting, drew out a bag, extracted from it some herbs which hethrew into the fire.
At once a great pillar of whitish, dense smoke rose, straight upwardtoward the wings.
"Clever, isn't it?" whispered Garry. "They must have a fan under thetrapdoor of the stage, just below that fire, to make those flames leapand the smoke go straight up."
"It makes me feel sort of creepy, and as if it was real!" Chickresponded. Then they watched, in surprise.
In that white, thick, ascending pillar of smoke, as though on a screen,there slowly appeared a vision!
There was the girl. There were two men. But they were Indians.
A quick pantomime in the moiling, upcurling smudge revealed hatredbetween the men, and fury when the girl chose the rival.
Into that vision blended another so that as one vanished the other wasvisible. It showed the two men, again with the girl, but as theyactually stood on the stage, almost the same in appearance, as near asthe men engaged by the theatre could be matched to the vision.
That picture of hatred was again enacted in the new garb, and thevision was once more displaced by another--and the chums gasped.
In that smoke column, black against white, two biplanes flew one afterthe other toward the audience--they seemed to merge, to blend, tovanish, and then--as Chick made an involuntary little scream ofamazement--the smoke was filled by the vision of two black, bi-wingedshapes coming together.
The drone of their arrival filled the theatre: so realistic was theeffect that the planned scream of the girl on the stage was echoed bywomen among the watchers--to the rumble and roar was added theculminating contact.
The vision died as the translucent screen through which it had all beenobserved was gradually lighted by the first scenes of the real picture,showing the events of the story which began at the crash.
"Well!" muttered Don, "did you see what I saw?"
"The very same as the spectre in the cloud!" agreed Garry.
"Yes," Chick contributed, "and I see the clue in the smoke, fellows.Every time that spook has appeared--it has been a cloudy night!"
"That's it!" Don agreed. "The cloud acted as a screen--and now we knowwhat was done--a picture was thrown on a cloud. But how--and by whom?"He paused. The theatre manager, passing up the aisle, gave them apleasant salute--and all three mentally answered Don's query!
