CHAPTER XXVIII

THE STORY OF A MAP

Turning away, the red-skinned pilot helped his father to the runway.

The old medicine man was stiff from the cramped position, and somewhat shaken by his "stunting" trip through the air lanes.

Chick, belligerent and impulsive, followed John.

"What did you mean by throwing that smoke flare in on us?" he demanded. "You might have suffocated us!"

"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 him!----"

Garry, seeing his face, felt glad that he was not the target of an emotion that contorted the copper-colored face into the mask of a veritable fury.

"Let's go to the hangar," Don suggested. "Maybe we can talk this out."

"Come!" agreed Ti-O-Ga, moving away.

Doc Morgan, Toby Tew and some of the handlers who had stayed around discussing the exciting night's events, looked disappointed.

"I think I'd like to come, too," observed Toby. "In the name of all-possessed! This is a queer business."

"It certainly is," Doc agreed, and without invitation he ranged himself alongside of the theatre manager as the latter went with the party.

Mr. McLeod and the control chief joined them in the designing room.

Chairs and benches were brought. Everybody found a seat.

Chick, before he sat down, hurried to the developing room, as Don supposed, to estimate the damage done. Chick went in, did something, came out. Water was heard in the washing tanks.

"What did you mean by saying you thought we were the ones who had stolen a map?" demanded Garry, as Chick took his place again.

Readily enough, the Indian began to explain.

"My father has met a good many strange people, because he is so well-known for his cures," he began. "A good many years ago he nursed an old sailor, and when he found he couldn't cure him, Father told him the truth. The man was grateful, though, because he knew Father had done his best. He knew he couldn't live, and he turned over to us a map."

The map, he explained, was old and tattered. It showed, the sailor had claimed, a place in the Long Island swamps where, during a bad gale, many years before that, a pirate brig had been blown at high tide inland so far that it had become caught in the mud, and that ship, thus held prisoner, had been sucked down in a spot even then known as the Devil's Sinkhole.

"And, as the man told us," John continued, "the ship had some chests of jewels and gold and silver aboard." He had been given a map, and the story, by his father. Coming down from generation to generation, the tale and the chart had yielded nothing to searchers.

"Jewels--gold--silver!" Chick spoke in awed tones. "A treasure ship!"

"Yes," the young Indian nodded. "I was a schoolboy then. I went to Carlisle, and then enlisted in a cadet training school for naval pilots, but several years ago, when I was about to be graduated, the hard times struck the world and the navy decided not to take on any more flyers, and I was too young to become a commercial pilot, so I gave up my course and went to work at whatever I could get."

"Many an army and navy cadet has been disappointed by learning he couldn't keep on, after his enlistment term," commented Mr. McLeod.

Garry, who had always felt a respect for the older man, now began to feel a strong liking for the straight-forward Indian, his son.

"I went to work at a Long Island moving picture studio as an extra," John went on. "There I saw a chance to write and sell a story--and we made quite a good amount of money by playing in it."

"We enjoyed your acting in 'Red Blood and Blue,'" Don commented.

"But what about the map?" Chick broke in. "While we were working at Long Island City," John informed him, "I used my spare time to study the swamps, and discovered that there was a spot, near this airport, known as Devil's Sink. I was in the swamp a great deal, but if there had ever been a ship, the mud had covered every trace of it. We gave up, Father and I. But--and this is why I've told you all this--because I took an interest in aviation, I was around the seaplane base that was here before the airport was begun. I met some of the flyers. I suppose they wondered about our investigations, but of course we kept close mouths."

"Any of us would!" agreed Garry.

"Father went back to the Catskills, to continue his doctoring," John completed his astonishing revelation, "I went 'on tour' with the first of our films, making 'personal appearances.' That was before we had the smoke-trick scene thought out.

"When I came home Father told me about several of the airport folks, who had been visiting him. One was a pilot who said he was in the mail and commercial end of it----"

"A mail flyer!" cried Chick. "Well--that's interesting!"

"You mean--Smith?" Don inquired, eagerly.

"That's just the trouble," John stated. "He came while Father was off doctoring a man in the back country. He called himself that. My mother isn't very quick with her old eyes. He had his flying togs on, too, and she couldn't describe him closely except that he was tall, and thin."

"And so was the mail flyer who came in tonight," Chick cried. "The one we scared, so that he turned on us and tried to force the helicopter out of control. We're getting close to something--I think!"

The man they discussed, apparently loitering outside the door, came in.

"Is that so?" he said sharply, defiantly. "I can tell you that you will be getting close to trouble if you start accusing me----"

"What's all the excitement this time?" Scott, limping down the hall, dropped gratefully into a chair that Don vacated. "I see you got the Indians----"

"They got us, you mean!" explained Garry.

"Well--any way you want it. Did you recover--the film?"

"No!"

"Didn't they have it!"

"No!" John turned to answer courteously, "we had no film."

"You're interrupting a thrilling treasure story," warned Don.

He and Garry, with interruptions from Chick, quickly put the pilot who liked spooks in possession of most of the important points.

"Well! It's wonderful!" Scott commented. "We'll soon have that gibbering spook in the open. I'll keep still, though. Go ahead, Mr. Ti."

"There isn't much more," the young Indian stated. "A mail flyer came to our place, while my father was away, and wasn't very easy to describe, because of his flying togs. But one thing Mother did tell us--"

"What?" Chick was on the edge of his seat. "He had a little vest-pocket camera!"

"He took pictures," commented Garry. "I wonder what for?"

"If you want my guess," Don spoke up, "he wanted to get the locality clear in his mind, to study out how to go back--and--get the map."

"Worse than that!" the young Indian told them. "Father thought little of the camera side of his visit until, first Doc Morgan, and then Mr. Toby Tew, and then Mr. Scott, came up, doctoring or for some reason that was covered by that excuse. He began to wonder, and wrote me. I cancelled my picture house engagements and went home--just before you two young chaps came along with the injured pilot." Don and Garry nodded.

Their arrival, and the story he gathered about the swamp, and the odd apparition haunting the air, had made the old, wise medicine man wonder, John added. He had deduced, sagely enough, the real motive for the apparition. It was, as the Indians believed, no ghost-scare devised to ruin the airport owner and his venture.

"We decided," John stated, "the ghost was being made to create a big scare among pilots and to keep them away from the swamp!"

"I think you are right!" Garry exclaimed. "I see it, now! If the flyer wanted to study that swamp--he'd do it from the air. He wouldn't want other pilots coming along to catch him flying to and fro--but, at that--how would he know what to look for--and where?"

"The camera!" the Indian said. "Father went to his cupboard, where the map was stored, and found that while it had not been stolen, actually, it had been displaced. He had it under some other papers----"

"Was he sure he remembered just how it had been left?" asked Don.

"I got memory--never forget!" the old medicine man remarked briefly.

"Yes," John agreed, "Father knew just how it had been--and it was not the same. It had been found--the look showed scratches where it had been picked, and then re-locked. That pilot had taken a picture of the chart!"

"That accounts for the tracing on thin paper!" Chick saw a clue. "He had to enlarge it, to study it, if he made the picture with a vest-pocket camera. That film isn't much larger than the film in a motion picture camera--he enlarged it, and from the enlargements on tracing paper, he copied it--and then camouflaged the map on the tracing by adding the wings and struts and frames. And--then he slipped in the hangars and removed the tracing from Mr. Vance's drawer, and took the blue-print I had made--so we haven't got far, after all."

"No," Garry agreed, and turned once more to John.

"What did you do about it?"

"Came here, kept quiet, watched. I kept sending Father word, and tonight, early, somebody told me that mail pilot who had been up at our place once was flying the mail! I lost my self-control. I was in a rage, I hated that fellow. He had cheated, falsified his errand, imposed on my mother's good nature----"

"Just a minute," Scott broke in, "who told you he was coming in?"

"I got the call at the theatre--just before the 'presentation' was on the stage," John stated. "He called me up--told me the flyer who had been at our place--and he knew I was looking for the man, he said--was flying in the mail."

"Did he say who was calling?" Don was excited.

The eyes of the young Indian turned, covered the group.

They rested on Doc Morgan.

"You're crazy!" The-man-of-all-work leaped from his chair. "I won't stand for that, I won't. You shan't accuse me. I never called--I did not!"

"You did--I think I recognize the voice!" cried John.

"And was it you who flew over in the helicopter, out of the swamp, and tried to drive us out of control with rockets?" demanded Garry.

"Yes. My father was in the moving picture theatre, in the room with the projectors, and he wheeled the spot lamp across to a window, and used it to light up and blind you! But I thought you were the man who had taken our property."

"So that's how the queer searchlight came into our eyes!" snapped Chick. "You know what sort of crime that is? Endangering flyers!"

"We thought you were the mail 'plane," John said regretfully. "Just as I thought you were the culprit trying to get away just now when I used the Dart to drive you down. But--I'm sorry."

"You'd better be sorry you've accused me, too!" stormed Doc Morgan.

"Yes," Scott agreed, "I'm not sure that isn't all made up! What were you doing at the airport, just before the film was stolen from our young friends? I saw you--running!"

Chick sprang up.

"It doesn't matter!" he cried. "Let's stop accusing--and find out! The pieces we saved are about washed by now. Come on--Don-Garry!"