The Ghost of Mystery Airport

by Van Powell

  CHAPTER XX

  DON TESTS A THEORY

  With one accord the trio of youths hurried out of the Palace and pausedjust around the corner from its lighted marquee.

  "Yes, sirree!" Chick spoke the conclusion of a train of thought thatwas clear to his comrades, "Toby Tew is the one!" Don nodded.

  "He knew about that film they used," he declared, "and how the picturewas thrown onto the smoke. They had a picture projecting machine hiddenin the wings, and when the film was run through it, with a stronglight, against the background of the dark stage, the visions appearedon the cloud of smoke."

  "That's it!" agreed Garry. "Now that I come to think about it, Iremember that every night the spectre seemed to appear, there wereclouds. In June there were fleecy, fluffy ones, and in July they werewhitish thunderheads."

  "We'd better be sure, though," Don argued. "I meant that we may knowhow the spectre was made to appear, but that wouldn't be evidence in acourt if we told Uncle Bruce and he had Mr. Tew arrested for trying toruin the airport by scaring everybody."

  "But the courts accept what they call 'precedents,' I know," Garryinsisted. "If a lawyer says that another case was decided, before, on acertain kind of evidence, then the judge has to decide the same sort ofcase, on the same sort of evidence, in the same way."

  "But how does that help?" Don demanded.

  "Well--look here!" Garry was very earnest. "I can give you precedentsabout pictures on smoke. One night I was taken to a film showing partof a prizefight, and there were a whole lot of men in the audience whosmoked, so that the hall had a thick curtain of cigar smoke between thescreen and the projecting machine--and the picture showed on thesmoke--and, what's more, the smoke was all glowing between the lens andwhere the smoke was so thick that the picture was clear."

  "I've read about a picture theatre out in the desert section of thecountry," Chick stated. "I read it in a moving picture 'trade' journalMr. Tew loaned me--about a dust storm in Kansas, I believe it was,where the dust was so thick in a theatre that the pictures they had toshow appeared on the dust almost as well as on the screen!"

  "What of it?" argued Don. "I'm trying to make you see that proving howa vision is made to appear doesn't prove who made it show!"

  "I see your idea!" agreed Chick. "It could have come from the controlroom, if the man on duty happened to have the right kind of apparatusto use for showing a film and could fix it to use the powerful airportsearchlight."

  "Yes," argued Garry, convincing himself. "I see that! And Mr. Vancecould be there alone, any time, any night. He could have a projector'head'--the thing that snatches the films down in front of the lensesand then holds them each a fraction of time before the light to let theimage get itself impressed on your eye. He could fix it to use thesearch beam, probably. He's a wizard about lighting for night work onairways and in airports."

  "Look!" Don pointed down the street. "There's his car. He was in thePalace, I think. Even if we didn't see him, that's where he was. Now Isay, let's get our bicycles and hurry down to the airport, and lookaround, before he comes back to his cottage to sleep."

  They hastened to their respective homes, securing the bicycles. In mostinstances somebody gave them a "lift" down to the waterside base, buteach rode well, and was enduring and speedy on the pedals.

  "The more I think about it," Garry stated, pedaling swiftly and thencoasting down the inclined road toward the water, "the more I think itover, the less I believe it's from the control tower, and the surer Iam that Toby Tew is the man who makes spook pictures on clouds."

  "He used the helicopter!" Chick contributed.

  Don argued his conviction sturdily. How, he proposed, could a man in ahelicopter throw a picture on a cloud without being seen?

  "Our Dragonfly and the mail 'plane were the only ones visible--I didn'tsee the helicopter at all, the night of the 'spooking,'" he asserted.

  "No," Garry admitted, "but, for that matter, we didn't see Scott in theDart. In a black sky, with lightning flickering to keep your eyesaltering the dilation of the pupils, we might have missed seeing them;but the helicopter was there, maybe floating just above the cloud!"

  "It couldn't have been!" Don was triumphant. "I drove right into thatcloud!"

  Swinging his handlebars to the left to pass down the airport road,Garry was silent: Chick, though, took up the argument.

  "We can soon find out," he declared. "We can search the control roomand see if we find the least thing to back up Don's notion that it'sthe control chief we have to blame. I think, myself, Mr. Tew would befoolish--or brazen!--to show how the thing was done, if he was theguilty man."

  The control tower room was in charge of Vance's assistant, who was busytaking down air condition reports from a radio with a headset. Henodded, and went on, concentrating his attention on the weather datawhich must be posted--and accurately--on the weather board in thepilots' assembling room.

  With the data typed, the assistant, knowing that Don was trustworthyand that no scheduled arrivals would ensue, left the room in the youngpilot's charge while he departed to post his notes; and the chance theylonged for was made for them.

  The search of drawers in the radio table gave no result.

  No other section of the drawer space seemed worth looking into, andsince no visible evidence of any projection apparatus other than theairport equipment was seen, they felt that prying was useless.

  "Nothing for the control chief to use--you see that!" argued Garry.

  "I suppose you think he'd have everything standing right out foreverybody to see?" Don spoke witheringly.

  "Well, then," Chick seemed inclined to take Garry's side, to suspectthe man who operated a theatre and, thereby, knew most about theprojection of images from and through moving picture films.

  Don sent his eyes from wall to wall, from cupboard of spare instrumentsto unlocked desk drawers.

  "Tew is the one to blame," Chick persisted. "Vance told the truth aboutthat tracing; he put his initials on it by chance, the way I'd makelittle stars in my geography book when I'd try to memorize the capitalsof the South-Central States."

  "But--oh, shucks! What's the good. I don't know who it is. I think thecontrol man is more logical than Toby Tew--and I like Toby best, too!"Don said, morosely. "But what's the good of a theory, any way you lookat it, unless everything fits."

  The helicopter didn't fit in with the idea of the control room manprojecting a moving scene on a cloud, he argued against his own ideas:at the same time, the helicopter failed to connect a theatre owner andboatman with such an idea. The picture on a cloud could have beenevolved by either, since both knew about the angles of projection andthe properties of light, concentration, angle and diffusion. But DocMorgan had also acted in a suspicious manner, and certainly knew aboutthe treasure, which, in itself, failed to fit in with the theory of Tewtrying to ruin airport business for spite against its executive.

  Coming back, the control assistant asked Don if he would stay until theassistant slipped across the runways to his boarding place for a teno'clock cup of coffee and some cold lunch. Don agreed.

  Getting his coat, the assistant caught his arm in an older garmenthanging on a peg, and it fell to the floor.

  They all heard the clink and jingle of some metallic object as it flewout of the vest hung under the coat and also dislodged.

  The man bent, picking it up.

  "What's this?" he wondered aloud. "The Chief ought not to have keysloose like that in his old duds--Doc might knock them down the way Idid and be too busy mooning over something to hear the noise--and a keywould be lost."

  "Golly-to-Chriminety!" exclaimed Chick, running across to him, "let'ssee that key, Chubby! It might be that it fits the cabinet where I keepthe blue-prints--the one the blue-print of the ship plan was taken outof."

  "Oh, no! The Chief isn't that sort. Anyway he lost a tracing, too!"

  "I don't accuse him of that!" there was a hidden meaning in Chick'sto
ne, "but somebody might have put this where you found it!"

  "That's right! Here! Try it!"

  Don remained on duty, allowed the man to depart, and then waitedexpectantly while Chick rushed away on his errand.

  Garry, on the balcony, using the binoculars to try and locate thehelicopter's upthrusting blades, heard his name called.

  "Garr--ry!" The hail came from the lower floor.

  He raced down the stairway.

  Don, waiting, impatiently tried to hear the words that seemed to comeup in excited, quick calls of amazement.

  Soon his comrades came stamping up the stairs.

  "The key didn't fit the cabinets!" Chick set down the large blackleather case he had been dragging along, and puffed for breath."But--it--did--fit--one--of--the lockers--in the pilots' locker room!"

  "Oho!" Garry came after his smaller companion, dragging a compact andintricate-looking mechanism. Don, staring, recognized it.

  "That's a projector 'head!'" he said excitedly. "And you found it, in apilots' locker--whose?"

  "Oh! I don't know that," Chick argued. "I think it's a spare one. Whatdoes it matter! The key was in the chief's vest, the one he puts onwhen he is working around in here. What more proof do you want! Youargued that he was guilty of throwing the spook pictures! Well----"

  Don, examining the projector apparatus, which comprised an uppercanister, or flat magazine, into which a reel of film could be placed,a film guide, a 'gate' and aperture, with mechanism for snatching thefilm through, and its lower guide and magazine, looked up.

  "Open that leather case."

  It was only snapped shut, not locked. Chick and Garry got back the lidin short order.

  "Here's a roll of film." Chick drew it out, opening the tin containerprotecting the celluloid material from drying out or from chance offire. "It's--an--aviation scene----"

  "And the key to the locker was in the chief's vest!" chanted Garry."Your theory was right, Don."

  "I'm not so sure!" Don looked from the film to the projector. "It looksblack for him, but--Garry how would you concentrate enough light fromthe big, open spot lantern here, onto the aperture of the projectorhead? See! The lens in that spot lamp is at least eighteen inchesacross, and that's the diameter of the beam it throws. The part of theprojector that the light has to concentrate on is less than two inchesacross! How about it?"

  "I can't tell you."

  "It was your theory, Don," Chick reminded him. "Now you've got'evidence.' You find out how it's used."

  "I will!" Don accepted the challenge.

  Studying the situation, the lighting conditions, and the materials athand, he jumped up, turning an excited face to his comrades.

  "This is how I'll prove my theory--or test it, anyway," he asserted."Chick, rush down to the designing room, and get the big focusing clothyou use to cover your head when you have to focus the enlarging camerafor detail print enlargements. Bring it up."

  Chick was back very soon with the big, rubberized square of black.

  "Now," Don came from an adjoining room where they had discarded flyingtogs that morning, "I'll take the Dart, and go aloft--and fly out overthe swamps. Chick, you and Garry adjust that focusing cloth over theprojector head so it cuts off all the stray light that the beam lenswon't concentrate on the aperture plate. Then, when I set off a greenVerey light, and it goes out and I have time to get my eyes used to thedark again, you open up the beam, and start turning the projector, withthis film in it, trained on a cloud near where I am. We'll soon test mytheory."

  He got a mechanician, half asleep in the lonely hangar shops, had hishelp to start up the refueled Dart, warmed up the light ship, andsignaling for the "mech" to release the tail he had been steadyingagainst propeller blast, on the runway, Don sent the small craft intothe water, taxied along its gently ruffled surface, got on the step andwith full gun went soaring up to test a theory.

  Short was his turn and abrupt his wingtip bank, to get himself headedfor the marshes.

  There, with a chosen altitude that he judged to be right for the angleof projection, he made ready to see if the tower beam had sufficientconcentration and intensity to make a ghost of a film picture show onthe cloud its beam might strike.

  The green Verey flashed out, burned and died.

  Gliding, watchful, Don's eyes accustomed themselves to the dark.

  A moment passed. Then, as he banked to come back, he saw it.

  From a luminous cloud the spectre ship flew out at him!