The Mystery Crash Sky Scout Series, #1

From that position he could see the man, but only part of Griff’s coat and an arm. The man, as he saw, was vigorously arguing. Griff must have been either pleading or arguing, B...

With unexpected promptness, startling his companions, Al flung the door inward so that it banged against the wall. Instantly he leaped into the room. His chums followed. Startle...

“Get out o’ the way,” the youth grunted, to Al, and gave him an angry push with his free hand. Al, his balance disturbed, stumbled forward—into the arms of Mr. Parsons at the door.

Full of their horrifying suspicions, Curt and Bob rode on. Al turned off on a side street to deliver a parcel at the home of his new boss, “Sandy” Jim Bailey, the rigger. Al wan...

While the quintet waited for the taxicab which Mr. Parsons summoned from town, Griff put the money back in the safe, thankful for his escape. Bob, Curt and Al expressed their el...

Without a struggle Bob gave up. In the dark he did not know who his captor might be; but he reasoned that if it turned out to be Barney resistance would be less sensible than ex...

“You forgot where you were, didn’t you, when you spoke about the——” he lowered his voice, glanced around, spoke carefully, “—the ex-pilot as the one who had a motive for injurin...

Pulling Al further back out of the light, around the little dark jog beside the door jamb of the supply room, Bob put his lips close to his brother’s ear.

Although the aircraft manufacturing plant observed a forty-four hour week, closing down on Saturday afternoons, when the three members of the Sky Squad returned, about two o’clo...

By the time Curt and Al got their bicycles and pedaled to the vicinity of Rocky Lake, Bob’s flare was out and they had no means of ending their suspense until they had looked ar...

When the sun peered through dispersing Summer storm clouds it saw three alert, wide-awake youths, a little tired but very tense, in the testing field of the Tredway aircraft plant.

Bob sent the boat through the mirrorlike water. He headed for the immersed nose of the airplane and as they rounded the cabin, part of it sticking up forlornly, Curt lifted a ha...

When Al and Curt, riding easily, reached the region of the Rocky Lake Park, they hid their wheels in the well remembered field, preferring to advance on foot, to spy out conditi...

Realizing that the watchman did not know what he meant by “the mystery crate,” Bob hurriedly told of the earlier experiences: all the while he talked his mind was busy, undernea...

Al, of a more nervous type, was still trembling in his after-cockpit seat, but his excitement was changing from that of the recent adventures to the thrill of sky-riding at nigh...

“Those books are off my mind,” Curt reflected as he pedaled slowly toward the aircraft plant, “but my legs aren’t. I’d go to bed and rest for a week if it wasn’t for seeing what...

“All the same,” counseled Curt, hoping to lighten the burden of unhappiness for his chums, “I’d go slow. You know—they may be just friends, close ones. There may not be anything...

“Barney—Mr. Horton—” he corrected his own familiar allusion to the manager of the aircraft plant, “—says please hurry the work on this sport biplane. The man who’s buying it is...

“Maybe some revengeful pilot Mr. Tredway had discharged,” suggested Curt. “At any rate there must have been some motive to make a man do anything as terrible as that. But how ar...

Entering Mr. Wright’s library, which the detective used as a reception room for clients, Bob, Curtis and Al could hardly repress their excitement. To share in the possible solut...

“That’s what I was coming to,” defended Al. “Let Griff stay here with you, Bob, while Curt and I ride out to The Windsock. We can call up as soon as we arrive, and then wait out...

Bob slowed up his pedals, permitting the bicycle to coast along as the modern, free-wheeling automobile runs when the foot is removed from the accelerator pedal. Curt caught up...

To make himself understood above the roar of the engine, Bob put his lips close to Al’s ear while Curt, Bob’s closest friend, also a passenger, bent close to catch his words.

“Yes, it is,” Bob agreed, “and, what’s more, it fits tightly. As soon as the stranger paid his fare he recognized Mr. Parsons who was halted on the roadhouse veranda, watching....

“Did you ever see so many people to suspect and so many clues that don’t lead anywhere?” asked Curt when Al had told his story and had shown his evidence.

For Al the trail ended abruptly after a walk of a mile. The stranger, whose face, with its heavy beard, Al could not dare get close enough to identify—even if he knew it!—hailed...

Bob’s mentality was of that type. Whether his mind worked through what is called instinct, or whether he put together many things he had learned about airplanes, or whether he w...

“Easy! Lang came home a little before daybreak. He had been at the airplane plant all night, with the ‘mechs’ because Mr. Tredway wanted to get that Silver Flash ready for deliv...

“I wish we didn’t have to waste the time,” he objected. “I’ve went through it all with you, Mr. Wright, and I wanted to take these lads along back to the plant in my car. I want...

More startling than Bob’s fresh information was the revelation given by Barney, the information which had brought him, flying, to consult the detective he had engaged to solve t...

While Griff, who handled an airplane expertly, was executing dives and slips, barrel rolls and figure eights, and a loop or so to demonstrate his skill, Bob, in the rear cockpit...

The speed craft he and Lang occupied had much the best of it on a straight flight, but, against that, he had to set his inexpert handling. The smaller craft could out-climb, out...

Roaring across the runway, Bob’s one purpose was to use the airplane as a missile, to run it into the other before Sandy Jim could rise. In that he failed. The other ship was up...