by Van Powell
CHAPTER XXXI
"THE MAN WHO NEVER LIVED"
Through the door came a muffled hail.
"Hello, inside the boathouse!"
According to a plan already made Don tiptoed into a dark corner asGarry went swiftly, silently, to the other, nearest the land side ofthe old building.
Chick, smallest, quickest of the three, crouched close beside theclosed door, pressed tightly against the wall.
A hand fumbled at the latch. The door swung sharply inward. A beam oflight leaped across the enclosed space. Instantly Chick lunged forward:his arms wrapped about a pair of slim legs.
"I've got him!"
As the man toppled forward Garry and Don came like panthers from therespective corners, springing on the figure. Realizing his helplessnesstheir antagonist grunted a surrender.
Don kicked the door shut. Garry saw that his comrade placed his backagainst it, and let go his hold. Chick sprang back, tense and ready forany surprise move.
"Just as I thought," Don said triumphantly. "The air mail flyer!"
"And what of it?" The man got to his feet, as Garry picked up theelectric flash and laid it on the table, still glowing.
He directed its beams on a quantity of objects they had set there,ready for such a climax.
"We'll tell you," Don began. "First, Mister Pilot, you learned from theIndian, John, that there was some treasure hidden somewhere in thisswamp. You went to the Indian village, concealing most of yourself inyour pilot's togs. Then you located the map Ti-O-Ga had, and took apicture of it with a vest pocket camera, came back and used our darkroom enlarging outfit to make the tiny picture big enough to trace outand then you camouflaged that map tracing with wings and other airplaneparts."
Garry turned his light on various objects as he took up the accusation.
"This is the vest pocket camera." He brought it into sharp relief."Chick found it in your cottage room."
"You're crazy! I never owned one."
"No use blustering!" Chick cried. "The whole thing is plain to us! Youwanted a bigger map so you could lay out cross-sectional lines on itand number them. I made a blue-print of the tracing while we had it andby good luck I had picked up two pieces of paper to print on, and thenput one aside, the lower one; but it was clear enough, after we made acontact negative from it on film, and then redeveloped and intensifiedthat! We saw the cross lines, and the figures on the paper checked withfigures on the bottom of the tracing, most of them being checked withpencil checks to show they had been covered."
"And what did I do that for?"
"You laid out a chart of this swamp over the camouflaged map," Don tookup the accusing story, "then you went to Port Washington and bought anamateur movie camera, and a lot of film. Garry knows the photographystore owner, and he got his home, tonight, and learned that a man inpilot's togs who said he was a mail pilot, bought the outfit."
The man was impressed. "Clever, but not true!" he scoffed.
"All through the mystery," Chick cried, "you have been camouflaging!You covered your trail by putting suspicion on others. That tracing, inthis place, puts suspicion on the theatre man, Toby Tew, because he wasone who'd know how to do the ghost trick with an old airplane crashfilm and a projector."
"You put the key to the locker where you hid the projector you used atthe hangars, late at night, in the control chief's vest, because hemight have been able to cast airplane shadows on clouds with thesearchlight beam!" Don spoke crisply, "and--you camouflaged themap--but, then, you overdid it!"
"Yes!" agreed Garry, "you went too far. You wanted to make the tracingseem like a new design, after you saw the control chief's initials onthe tracing he left here! So you drew in on the entering-edge of thewing's a 'slotted-wing' sketch. Now, the control chief knows light, buthe doesn't know that a slotted wing is an invention that helps toreduce 'burbling' in take-off, and lets the 'camber' of a wing changeautomatically--that's too technical for a control man. Only a pilotwould know that, because it's patented and controlled by one Englishfirm."
"And your camouflage showed us that the man we wanted must be a pilot,just by that!" cried Don. "Then we examined the frame-bracing and sawthe little cross-mark you had to show where the map said to look forburied treasure--only you were looking for a ship!"
"All very cleverly worked out--but you've got the wrong man!"
"We'll see! Chick, set off the red, white, and blue signal to theChief," Garry ordered. Chick's move toward the door was arrested by astartling sound under the flooring. They all stood petrified.
Slowly they wheeled to watch the trap in the corner. It opened. Up camethe green-capped, green-masked head, the oilskin shrouded body andrubber-gloved hands of their Demon--the Man Who Never Lived.
"Gosh-a-mighty!" he croaked hoarsely, "but you're bright boys!"
"Toby Tew!" Chick exclaimed, recognizing the phrase. "You!----"
"In the name of all-possessed!" croaked the figure, "who else?"
"You've got your 'nerve' to brazen it out this way!" Garry said; butthere was a strange look on his face; the voice, for all its disguisinghoarseness, seemed oddly familiar--and not that of Toby. "Are you justdoing it to try and save this mail flyer?"
"Gosh-a-mighty!" the figure retorted, "no! Time's passed for trying tocamouflage, that's all. You think you read that traced chart? Youdidn't! That cross telling where treasure was hid, now! I put it on thetracing to keep you away from the real spot, same as I bought an old,discarded skeleton from a hospital and had it discovered to startpeople looking in that locality--far away from where I dug and scoopedin mud."
"Well," Chick cried, "you are caught! The swamp is watched. When youleft the Chief, he had you watched."
"Gosh-a-mighty! No such thing! He left us all go. All I had to do wasto go home, start to go to bed, get these togs, walk down to theseaplane landing stage, tell the detective on guard I was a specialofficer assigned by the Chief to patrol the swamp shore--then in I gotin that crash boat--and here I am, with good tail-winds and everythingmy own way!"
"You're not Toby Tew!" Garry exclaimed.
"Toby doesn't talk about 'seaplane landing stages' and 'tail winds.'Those are aviation and he's a boatman as well as a theatre man--and hecan't fly!"
"Then it's Doc!" cried Chick.
"No!" Don had caught the expressions and rightly judged them. "Doccouldn't draw an airplane tracing: certainly the only other man besidesthis mail flyer, who knows about slotted wings and can make them is----"
"Scott!"
As Garry shouted it the disguised man nodded.
"But--Scott flew us here at the first," Chick expostulated."Besides--he's injured!"
"Camouflage!" laughed the man, brazen and triumphant. "I got you to flyhere to make sure you wouldn't suspect me. Besides, it helped me getthe ship here, so I could go in a dory to my helicopter, and 'put on mysky show.' Then--with the storm coming, I had the Dart to get back in:I used these oilskins, while I dug. I had the tracing made to guide myaerial photography, and as soon as I located the buried chest I leftthe tracing where it would get Doc suspected. I left a key where itmight incriminate the control chief. The more people you suspected themore I could work. I had to burrow for that treasure--but--now--I'vegot it all loaded and ready to fly to a place where a boat can take meout to the twelve mile limit. There a rum-runner will ship me for partsunknown. As far as being hurt by the 'prop' goes, I pretended that toget out of flying that night--I knew the Indians were after me. Andnow----"
"You can't escape!" taunted Chick. "The swamp is surrounded."
"But the police left some very powerful arguments where I could getthem--and they'll help me escape instead of catching me."
Then the figure on the ladder snatched a round, queer object from underits oilskins.
Instantly the reference to police supplies became clear to Don.
"Look out!" yelled Don. "Tear-gas--don't breathe--run!"
The bomb flew, dropped, burst. Garry
and Chick, their sleeves held overtheir faces, leaped toward the doorway; but the bomb, flung at Don'sfeet spread its fumes swiftly. The trap door slammed to the roar ofexultant laughter.
The pilot, off guard, stumbled against the table and fell. There came acry and a cough--and silence. Choked, gasping, with smarting eyesstreaming with tears, the chums staggered out.
"In case you might wonder--" Scott's voice floated to them from thehumming electric launch, "I left the hospital the same night Ipretended to be injured by the propeller--I knew the Indian was goingto try to drive me down, and pretended to be laid up. But I could runfast enough to come back, smoke you out and get the film--it had apicture on it I didn't want seen--and I flung it out into the swamp andwent back to my room--put the things that you found in that mailflyer's room where you saw them--and came back to stay with the Chieftill he sent me off to bed--only, I came here to load the treasure.Now--good-bye. It flies in five minutes!"
"Not much it doesn't!" muttering, choking, coughing, Don gasped orders.Flares to signal, as soon as Chick and Garry got the pilot out of thehouse. His job was to start the Dragonfly. He staggered to thewharf-side, dropped into the craft--saw that the ignition wire was cut!
CHAPTER XXXII
A FLYING FINISH
Feverishly Don worked with spare cable to wire around the ignitionswitch and get his engine going.
From the boathouse staggered Garry and Chick, coughing, their eyesstreaming. They dragged, by the shoulders, the unconscious pilot.
"His head must have struck something!" gasped Garry, dabbing at hiseyes. Suddenly something snapped into his mind.
"Chick!" he choked and gasped, then turning, stuttered, "my firstaid--kit! I left it--on--path--promontory--when--mail 'plane went down!"
Staggering, but bravely eager to help a man who was hurt, the youthtook his way off the wharf, along the path, into the grass toward theend of the shore that curved out into the inlet, making the waveringline of the channel on one side.
The roar of an airplane engine came--but it was in the air!
Don looked up. There was the Dart, coming over, shooting the waterlanding, making its approach, coming in, setting down!
He recognized, at its controls, as he flung aside his helmet, the pilotwho had been injured in the first crack-up, the night they saw theapparition: he had been driven down from the farm by its owner and wassufficiently healed in his arm to handle stick and throttle.
With him was the Police Chief.
"Get him?" hailed the officer, as the gas was cut and switch put off,and as Don shook his head, shouting his explanation, the Dart ran upclose to the wharf.
"The swamp is surrounded," the Chief cried. "We let them all go, as youhad planned. Didn't the culprit walk into the trap?" Don told himbreathlessly what had happened, urged that the Dart go aloft and scout.
The Chief urged Don to occupy his place, while he attended to the manover whom Chick was working incompetently.
Don hesitated: they might need to use the Dragonfly, also, heprotested. The newly recovered pilot suggested that Don fly the Dart,reconnoitering, as it was the less stable ship and in his condition hepreferred the steadier, more easily controlled craft. They began theexchange, listening for a motor. No sound came.
Garry, recovering his strength, if still teary-eyed, blundering alongto find his abandoned first aid kit, saw the Dart go in, and felt thatfor all his bravado, Mister Spook was almost as good as captured.
He broke through the tall grasses, near where the path ended.
His eyes saw an amazing sight! There, where the mail 'plane had goneinto the mud, fresh planking had been laid across the mud, and on itrested the airplane, the boards concealed by wings and a camouflage ofcut grass: its broken hull had been re-covered, freshly doped. It hadno pontoons; but on each side of the fuselage slanted auxiliary wingsof thin boards had been attached by wire. If it could be started andraced off the board support, he saw, the slanted planks would serve tolift it higher with each gain of speed, as a boat of the speed type islifted by its side-flanges. And--in his disguising garments, Scott wasworking feverishly at the motor. Garry leaped forward. Scott tore offhis mask to show a face of fury and dismay.
"Stand back!" Scott lifted a small missile. Garry knew the tear-gas andits effect. He hesitated.
"Shame!" he cried. "You can't escape. Even if you did fool us by takingus to look for your own self, at the start, you can't fool us anylonger." He was talking against time, getting his feet set.
"Come and turn that prop, or I'll--throw this!"
Garry changed his tactics; meaning to leap, ducking the missile, healtered his plan. "All right!" he agreed, docile with pretended fear.
He moved toward the propeller, stepping on the edges of the boards.
He saw the electric crash launch floating just beyond the nose of theship. Menaced with the tear-gas, he nevertheless made his leap, acrossthe water, from the planks, that gave under him, to catch the coamingof the boat's cockpit. The missile flew through the air after him, butGarry, in the channel, went down, until his feet touched mud; holdinghis breath he swam under the launch, coming up on the other side. Hetrod water, concealed.
To his dismay he heard the man, discarding his disguise, twist angrilyat the propeller of the repaired airplane. It caught on a firing pointof the engine, swung rapidly. The man rushed along the planks.
Drowned by the noise close at hand, Garry failed to hear the Dart revup its engine, turning to get into the wind.
In it was Chick and at its controls was Don. Garry disregarded alldanger, clambered into the boat, tumbling in close to the wheel andswitch. He tore at the latter, sending current into the motor. With ahowl of rage Scott drove his airplane off the makeshift runway andstraight at the launch. He hurled a missile. It did not strike the boat.
Garry backed water, up the channel. The airplane had to take the air orfoul its wings in grass. It rose. A bomb dropped--Garry, full speedastern, avoided it and backed up the channel. He could not turn.
Up soared the Dart. It came around. Don saw the mail ship turning tocross the bay. Full-gun, he took up pursuit, heedless of the Chief'swarning that their tear-gas, brought in case the swamp yielded theculprit, had been taken, must be in the hands of the escaping Scott.
Seeing that the Dragonfly's pilot had trouble with his arm, Don knew healone stood between Scott and escape.
The Dart was fast. So was the mail ship, once free of the water.
Garry, backing up the channel, saw Don fly over. He kept on, until hereached the wider sheet of water, backed around, swung close to theDragonfly, climbed aboard, and feverishly begged to have a chance atthe controls. The other pilot, not too strong, yielded. The Dragonflystarted.
Don climbed, losing some advantage; but he knew that it would be a longchase--wanted it to be so. The man in the mail ship, with his bravadoserving to the end, lifted and showed strings of jewels that flashedvividly in the first rays of the rising sun.
Don saw that Scott meant to cross to Connecticut. It would be a runacross Long Island Sound. Don did not want to drive down the ship overwater--he would lose the treasure.
He saw, far behind, the Dragonfly.
The crossing was made in record time, and then Don, in a ship easilymaneuvered, raced up above the other. Then Chick screeched a warning.
Up toward them came one of those missiles--a tear-gas bomb.
Don made a quick barrel-roll. It caused the bomb to miss him.
Falling, the missile was in the path of the mail ship. Straight intoit, as it fell, Scott raced. It smashed in his cockpit.
Doomed by his own act, he lost control, and in a slanting, catapultingdive, struck just beyond the shore line, on firm earth.
And thus the Ghost of Mystery Airport passed.
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