The Ghost of Mystery Airport

Seemingly unaware that Chick dogged his steps, the control room chief, whose initials, J. V., had proved the baffling tracing to be his property, went from the runways to his to...

"He knew about that film they used," he declared, "and how the picture was thrown onto the smoke. They had a picture projecting machine hidden in the wings, and when the film wa...

"John," asked Garry, "what do these mean? There isn't anything on them but printing. They say, 'Admit bearer' and give the Palace name and they are signed by the theatre manager...

For a brief interval Garry felt his own blood chilling. That spectral shape was very much like the mental pictures he had visualized after he had listened to the story of the pi...

Necessarily he drew further away. That suited their plan perfectly: it gave him distance in which to turn for his approach in a position to come down in a power-stall that would...

"It's only for safety's sake," he muttered. "That young Indian, if he knows the swamp at all, has had time to get across to the Dart. But he might try to fool us, and stop to hi...

Ahead of them, but fully exposed to the blast of the coming tempest, lightning flashes revealed the torn, broken shape of the mail 'plane. If they could get there before the sto...

"I did not throw anything!" the young Indian retorted, cool and quiet, as he steadied his father. "We watched, that is all. Some one else is to blame, not I. And--when I find hi...

Chick, staring with wide eyes, his heart stopped, felt the sway and quiver of the cockpit and convulsively snapped the clasp of the safety belt he had released to operate the pr...

Looking down, Don saw what Garry meant. The mail 'plane lay in a tangled heap of marsh grass at the edge of the lighted space. A flash of lightning picked it out more sharply.

Stunned by the realization that the man who worked around the airport seemed to have betrayed those who trusted him, clinging to the roll of tracing paper that was his evidence...

"Did you notice how that Thing looked while Chick's flare burned?" Garry continued his conversation. "Under the big, bulky body, the helicopter had two things jutting out--I thi...

He gunned the engine enough to bring them close to the old wharf and then let the incoming tide drift them, while Chick, out on a pontoon, sidewise to the piling, caught the rop...

The smoke bomb that Don used was such as pilots employ to show them wind direction. The light was almost instantly gone, being succeeded by the liberation of a dense volume of s...

All that night they remained on guard. Taking turns, first Don in the helicopter and Garry on the shore, then the control chief replacing Garry and Chick taking Don's station, t...

Chick's voice, shrill with terror, died away, and Don, startled for an instant, almost let the glide become a dive; but he caught his stick and gunned ahead, giving up the glide...

A hand fumbled at the latch. The door swung sharply inward. A beam of light leaped across the enclosed space. Instantly Chick lunged forward: his arms wrapped about a pair of sl...

Smelling still of the fumes from the smoke flare, which someone--Doc Morgan probably--had cleared out, the dark room was close and unpleasant as Chick closed its door and, switc...

Landing flares dropped by Garry were still burning as Don cut the ignition of the Dragonfly. From a house adjoining the field they were in, a farmer came running to the airplane.

"Don't be a baby!" he counseled. "Just because you see a cloud begin to look shimmery--the first sign of the ghost, according to all the pilots who have seen it--don't lose your...

Taking their cue from the abrupt, antagonistic attitude of those who could overhear the Inspector's words, the crowd began to mutter and to mill around, held back only by the la...

His story had other interested listeners besides the youthful pilot and Garry. Doc Morgan sat beside Don, Toby Tew occupied a chair by the designing room table, and the airport...

Taking off into the July south-wind, Don waited only long enough to observe the regulation compelling an airplane to be well beyond the airport limits before turning. Then he be...

"That man who tried to make me think he was a spook, calling himself 'the Thing that never was, and the Man who Never Lived,'" he said bitterly, "tore my coat pocket."

Into the intense blackness of the room they crowded, and, by sense of touch Don extracted from the inner spool of the roll, an inch or so of film, while Garry washed out the dev...

Intent on getting their mail pouch to the airport in record time, the eyes of Don, Garry and Chick, in the Dragonfly, were peering forward and downward to locate the wind-cone,...

While he fought the blasts of wind that tried to twist the Dragonfly out of control, climbing to get beyond their influence, Don tried to decide on the best course.

The door thrust the table back, a dark form showed in the rays of the moon that peered from the edge of scattering clouds, and Chick, with a great sense of relief, recognized th...

Staggering, but bravely eager to help a man who was hurt, the youth took his way off the wharf, along the path, into the grass toward the end of the shore that curved out into t...

Soon after Don flew away with his younger chum, Garry was rejoined by the control assistant. They sat talking for some time: then, as Garry's frequent trips to the balcony becam...

Garry saw the utility of the maneuver. They had already executed a half-roll, turning from upside down to level. One after another, in succession, a series of barrel rolls would...

Never had Toby Tew "staged" at his Palace a better "presentation" than the one the chums were about to enact. With the Police Chief aiding, they had worked out a plan that must...