CHAPTER XI

THE CHARM SEEMS TO WORK

When Don and Garry, leaving the pilot to mend his bones and recuperate in the farmhouse, brought the mail down, they found Chick fairly bursting with his adventures.

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 owner, Bruce McLeod, shared a wall bench with the control room operator, a close-mouthed, black-eyed man who was none too well-liked by the personnel of the new venture.

Everyone gave close attention while Chick related his adventures.

"In the name of all-possessed!" exclaimed Toby, "if that was put in a movie, I'd be able to pack the Palace when I showed it. I didn't hear all that, last night, Chick-o!"

"I was too excited to remember all the details," Chick responded. He turned to Garry.

"You and Don got lost, didn't you?"

Don nodded, smiling.

"Garry had all the adventures," he said.

Pressed for his story, Garry told about the Indian, his strange insight into the youth's mind, what he did, and what he gave.

"I claim you ought to put that in your movie, I do," Doc told Toby. "I know old Ti well. He learned me, he did, all I know about herb doctoring."

"I went up there, not long since," Toby stated. "Wanted to hire him to make a 'personal appearance' on the stage of the Palace with a film that was made up Catskill way, with him in it. Couldn't make any deal with him, though. But--Gosh-a-mighty! Think of him mesmerizing Garry! In the name of all-thunderation! That's queer!"

"It isn't any more queer than the chart--the tracing you say is a drawing of an old-time brigantine," declared Don. "Let's see that, now."

Chick went to the filing cabinets devoted to storage of accepted design tracings, hunted through a folder, kept under lock and key, and put the tracing on the table.

An exclamation caused them all to turn.

The control room operator was staring, astonished and pleased: he leaped to his feet.

"So that's what you found!" he exclaimed, moving quickly forward. "Brigantine-nothing! That's a sketch I--er--mislaid. I guess it got mixed up with the regular stuff and was brought in here--but how did it get to the swamps?" Chick watched him with narrowed eyes.

"A sketch," Chick thought. "Oh, yes! Part of it in faded ink and part of it in India waterproof ink, the sort they use here!"

He did not voice his suspicion. It came to his mind that the control room man would bear watching. Through him, Chick decided, they might get some clue to the mysteries they had encountered.

"Before I touch it," the man continued, "Mr. McLeod, just take a look at the lower, left-hand corner and see if my initials are put in the angle of what is meant to be the bow of a new-shaped fuselage."

"Yes," admitted the airport manager, with a glance at the sketch. "J. V.--John Vance. Take it, and let's get out of here so the boys can go to work. They'll be paid by the aircraft company, and it's a good thing. They'll be paid! If any more trouble comes to our airport, I guess Doc, and Scott, won't draw any pay checks."

Scott, coming in from the adjoining office, laughed.

"I'll 'haunt you' if I don't!" he chuckled.

"I wish we could solve the mysteries!" Garry spoke earnestly: he felt sorry for the harassed man who had put all his available capital into the new airport, who had enlisted his friends' savings in the swamp draining and expansion project. The engineers, Garry knew, had been "called off" and their activity in the marsh had been stopped. It was of no use to add further expense, increase available runways or hangars.

"Solve the mystery of how I am going to meet unpaid bills," growled Bruce McLeod. "You'll please me enough if you do that!"

"Uncle," Don jumped from his seat on the table edge, "it was partly my fault that the mail was held back all night---"

"Oh--no!" The older man shook his head.

"It was, in a way!" Don insisted. "I should have flown straight here and tried to beat the storm, but I prevented the mail from coming in by going above the storm and getting lost. Won't the steamship company give us another trial?"

"I don't know. Haven't bothered them."

"Why not try again?" Garry suggested. "All pioneer work has to fail before it succeeds. They ought to let you have another chance."

"I suppose they would."

"See!" urged Don, "Scott could meet the ship. He'd never dive for any ghost," with a grin. "He likes spooks!"

"I'd like to bring in the ocean mail, too," Scott agreed.

"Well----"

"You're elected!" Chick exulted. "It's as good as done. And with, the chart tracing identified and claimed, it doesn't make any difference how it got into the old boathouse. Maybe I ought to apologize to Doc for accusing him. I do! I jumped to the notion he had taken it but he is proved innocent because he wasn't anywhere near the control room--and we don't know but what the paper blew out a window and was picked up by some visitor to the airport who went on a crabbing trip and put the paper down there by chance."

Chick felt that his explanation was rather lame, but he made it in an attempt to show Doc Morgan that he was no longer suspected of being a traitor to his employers.

For some strange reason it began to seem as though the Indian's mysterious pouch had some virtue.

At any rate, everything became quiet around the airport.

The seventh day arrived, and on its night the chums watched the dark skies without reward.

No apparition of an airplane appeared: no pair of phantom ships materialized to enact their collision and disappear.

With the spectre of the skies inactive, the rest of the mysteries also dropped into the background of attention. Don was busy with his work on the tracings for the all-metal airplane which he was helping Scott to create.

Garry studied airplane design while he prepared and photographed the multitudes of blue-prints that had to be made for each new model the aircraft corporation planned to try out.

Chick was kept fully occupied: tabulating, filing and procuring for the builders such blue-prints as they required, engaged his whole time.

His amateurish effort to watch the control room man had brought no fruit: after a day or two Chick had given up that activity.

"Well," remarked Don, as the trio stood on the control tower balcony, about to leave after a futile vigil, with no developments to report, "the seventh night has come, Friday, the thirteenth is almost past--and we can----"

"Your uncle wants to see you--right away!" Doc Morgan interrupted.

"What's the matter?"

"Scott was to fly out to meet the _Caledonia_--to pick up the mail and fly it in! Scott's been hurt by a prop that flew off its hub----"

Three excited faces turned to the stairway.

"He might want you to fly the mail!" cried Chick.

"I hope he does!" Garry told Don. "What a chance!" Don kept his hope unvoiced. But he did hope!

Unaware that their excitement made them join Don to answer a summons not meant for them, Chick and Garry were at Don's heels when he entered his uncle's private office.

"What a break!" the harassed airport executive grumbled. "I took your suggestion, as you know, Don. The _Caledonia_ is bringing special mail pouches from Liverpool. Scott was warming up the Dart. Just when we need the ship and the pilot most--the propeller hub loosened, the casting broke or it wanted oil and burned out. Whatever happened, Scott's out of the running, and so is the Dart. I sent for you----"

"Mr. McLeod!" Chick broke in, forgetting manners in his excitement, "we went over the Dragonfly today! She's in apple pie order. Can't Don take her aloft? Can't he fly the mail?"

"Can you?" The man turned to his nephew.

"I can--but how does Scott pick up the mail?" The maneuver was explained to him.

"Can't Garry and Chick go along?" begged Don, generously including his comrades. "They could help a lot, and maybe make up by helping me for the slower speed of the Dragonfly."

It was arranged.

Eager, excited, with a possible contract for mail flying at stake, three earnest airlane enthusiasts got their flying togs and necessary articles from the disabled Dart, signal lights to identity the new ship, warmed up the Dragonfly, and were ready to take off.

"I'll radio the _Caledonia_ about the change," Mr. McLeod said. "Now--boys--do your best--and be--careful!"

"Oh, we will!" Chick waved a hand from the cockpit. "Anyhow--we've got to come through. We carry a charm to clip ghost wings, you know!"

Chick always boasted a trifle too early!