CHAPTER XI

A TRAIL AND A FLIGHT

Twisting his handlebars sharply, Bob sent his bicycle into brush at the end of the aircraft plant grounds where the fence turned; he wanted to get out of sight.

The pair at the gate were having some sort of argument and probably had been too excited and absorbed to notice him, Bob decided.

He dropped his wheel and crept back to the corner of the fenced enclosure to watch.

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, Bob guessed, from the man’s violent gestures and appearance of “laying down the law.”

Presently a small, flat package came into view.

Bob recalled that he had seen Griff wrapping exactly that sort of parcel earlier.

The man took it, put it rapidly into his coat pocket, inside. With a quick look up and down the deserted highway he swung and crossed to a car parked on the opposite side of the road. Climbing in he speeded up his engine and drove away at constantly increasing speed.

“So they are dividing the ‘spoils’—or Griff was giving him money.” Bob, unable to see Griff, not daring to emerge from his concealment, made the deduction under his breath. “Well, now shall I follow that man? No, because his car is too fast. I can’t catch him on my wheel.”

He decided to wait where he was, to see what would happen. To go in at once might alarm Griff. He might realize that Bob had been near enough to see what had occurred; he might suspect. Bob wanted to keep his presence unknown; Griff had already been warned by Lang; he would jump to the conclusion that Bob was watching.

Almost at once Bob thanked his good sense for holding him concealed.

Griff, as he watched, ran wildly out into the road and began to wave and shout after the receding car.

Its driver did not turn around.

Griff, while Bob stared, dashed back into the gateway. For a moment Bob wondered where the watchman was, then he saw the man, in a small ice-cream and soda water shack, a little distance down the road opposite the fenced property. Griff, Bob guessed, had offered to watch the gate while the man refreshed himself.

Bob hesitated. Where had Griff gone? What was he doing?

The last question was answered by the pop-pop of a motor. Bob knew that Griff rode a motorcycle. He was getting it started. He meant to pursue that car for some reason. Something had caused him to want to talk again with the car driver, Bob mused.

While he watched, keeping all but his head concealed, the motorcycle, with Griff mounted on it, came sputtering into view.

Never glancing around, opening his throttle, he pelted down the road after the car.

Bob, without hesitation, rushed his bicycle into the highway and pedaled after the motorcycle for all he was worth. Griff was too intent on his purpose to notice, he felt sure.

It would be a losing race, Bob feared, unless Griff overtook that rapidly receding car very soon. Muscles could not endure against a machine! Nevertheless Bob rode as fast as his pedals would turn.

As he sent the wheels spinning along it crossed his mind that Lang would be arriving at the plant almost any moment but he kept on all the same.

“It will take Lang awhile to warm up the engine, and, anyway, if I don’t go with him I know another way to communicate with father,” he decided.

The car was almost out of Bob’s sight, the motorcycle was rapidly overtaking it.

At that instant Bob’s heart almost stopped beating!

Far ahead, on a cross road, he saw a huge truck come into view. It was not only between the car and its pursuer; it was also well onto the road and almost directly in front of the motorcycle.

“Griff!” Bob shouted, without thinking that his voice would never be heard. He instinctively cried a warning. If the rider had his head low over his handlebars!——

His coaster brake jammed on, Bob slowed, alighted, his muscles refusing to function for the instant.

But during that instant Griff evidently saw the huge obstacle and swerved. In making the wild curve to go around the rear of the truck Bob saw the youth and cycle go off the road into the ditch.

Evidently unaware that anything had happened the truck driver kept on down the cross road. Bob, remounting, pedaled for all he was worth toward the scene of the accident. As he rode swiftly he saw other figures approaching.

At the point where the motorcycle lay on its side, he was met by Al and Curt, who had been approaching from the opposite way, up the side road. “We decided to come and see Lang hop off,” Al explained as the trio ran toward Griff.

He was sitting up, a little shaken, a little dazed, when they approached. Bob, seeing that he did not appear to be seriously hurt, caught Curt’s arm. “Look here,” he said quickly, “I want to go with Lang. Don’t say I was following—you know—keep it quiet. I must get to see father and tell him——”

“All right. Don’t waste any time. Get out of sight. I’ll tell Al.”

Bob hurried off, as though he was in search of aid, and he felt, as he pedaled back toward the field, that Griff probably had been too much shaken to notice that Bob had come from the direction he had been riding, or deduce that Bob had followed him.

The watchman, and several others from the soda stand came running down the road. They called out as he approached and with a brief explanation that there had been a “spill” but that he thought it was not serious, Bob rode on.

He found Lang riding toward the plant, and swung his bicycle in at the gate and set it against the fence.

“What’s the trouble, up there?”

“Griff took a spill going around the back of a truck that came out of the side road. I think he’s all right.” Bob called out his answer to Lang’s shouted inquiry and saw his cousin ride on to investigate.

Bob, with some idea in his mind that he might crawl into the fuselage of the small speed ’plane, and, thus stowed away, be carried to the city from which his father had telegraphed, changed his mind. The close, smothery fuselage, subjected to the most violent rolling and heaving of the airplane’s progress, would probably make him ill. He preferred to stay outside, to see what happened, and to compel Langley to take him as a passenger.

Watching from the gateway he saw that Griff had been lifted to his feet and had apparently found himself only rather badly shaken. This was Bob’s decision because he saw a passing car driver help the shaken youth into his car, tumble the motorcycle out of the grass and turn it over to the plant watchman to be trundled back, and drive off to take Griff home, it seemed.

Bob met Lang beside the propeller of the little speed craft.

“Get the ignition key from Griff?” he asked.

“I did.”

“Climb in. I’ll give the prop a twist for you.”

Langley got himself set.

“Gas on?” called Bob.

“Gas on.”

“Switch off?”

“Switch off!”

Bob gave the propeller a couple of revolutions.

“Contact!” he cried, leaping aside to avoid the flailing, knife-like edges of the blades. The engine caught on the touch of spark to compressed gas mixture.

While Langley opened the throttle and warmed up his engine, Bob unconcernedly began to clamber into the after cockpit seat.

“You’re not going!”

“Oh, yes, I am.”

“Get out of there!”

“Listen, Lang,” Bob leaned close to Lang’s ear to carry his message above the noise of the radial engine, “which suits you best? To have me with you, to tell dad what I know before your face—or to have me telegraph him while you’re on your way, and let you explain to him what I have to tell?”

Lang, at first furious, presently saw the logic of Bob’s position.

“Oh—all right!” he grunted and “gave her the gun” in somewhat vicious spurts.

Bob, fitting on the “crash helmet” kept in the ’plane by Griff for him that afternoon, and the leather jacket and gloves, smiled.

He was progressing as a Master Sleuth, doing his share creditably for the Sky Squad.

As soon as the engine was sufficiently warm and methodical Lang had checked all his instrument readings, the trim little ship taxied down the smooth field to head into the wind which Bob saw, from the “windsock” blowing out from its mast on the office building, was from the south, a nice, light, Summer evening breeze.

The watchman, coming in, put aside the slightly damaged motorcycle and strolled across to the hangars, into one of which he stepped to throw a switch, lighting the flood light by which they could see to take off. He did not question Lang’s right to use the craft because Lang must have gotten its ignition key from Griff, its owner.

As they took the runway, and increased speed to the throaty roar of the engine, Bob felt that sense of the ship getting “light” which indicates to the pilot that she is ready to take the air. He saw the elevators tip, glancing around swiftly to check the safety of the way ahead, and then saw the lighted earth dropping, contracting into a spot of vivid light against a field otherwise dark; then the watchman shut out the floods to avoid confusing them in the air, and the ship climbed into dark night.

They had climbed several thousand feet and were headed into the north, so that Lang could “pick up” the lights of the airway along which his night flying would be easiest, when Bob saw him double unexpectedly.

For an instant the craft’s nose went almost straight down and Bob was glad he had strapped himself in; then Lang evidently caught control, and the stick, thrust forward as he doubled, with some unexpected convulsion or “stitch,” was pulled back and brought the ship out of the dive gradually.

“What happened?” Bob screamed above the engine noise, the song of wind through wires caused by their dive.

“Cramp!” called Lang, cutting the gun as he held a glide for a moment, turning a white face toward Bob. “Listen. Bob—oh!——”

He bent again. “The fish—too much fish—” Bob guessed, and had he known that Lang’s delay in reaching the field had been due to further refreshments, he would have said, “Fish—and ice-cream!”

At least that was a far more reassuring thought than Bob’s first idea, that some one had tampered with some control of this craft.

“Oh—” Evidently Lang was very ill.

Suddenly, as he saw his companion in the forward seat double, Bob felt the stick waggle against his leg.

In an interval between his spasms of violent pain, Lang held up his two hands alongside his helmet.

It was a signal for Bob to take control.

“All right!” he called, and, with a steady hand, he clutched the stick of the controls in his cockpit, set his feet against the rudder bars, and eased his throttle open to regain speed.

He was not in the least nervous or flurried. He pitied Lang’s cramped stomach and evident suffering, but did not permit it to influence his steady nerve. He had been given enough lessons to know how to hold the craft in level flight. While night flying was not as safe and easy as daytime work, he knew that if he followed the ribbon of lighted highway that ran toward the beacons of the nearest airway, he could always “set down” on the asphalt, if worst came to worst, and if he did smash the trucks, the landing gear, he did not think he would do any more serious damage.

“Had I better set down?” he shouted, gliding for speed as he cut out the engine roar. Lang shook his head and gestured forward. Evidently he was not afraid of any immediate physical collapse and preferred to go on flying to see if he would recover. Bob held on.

He picked up the beacon and, watching Lang’s gestures, swung in a long, banked curve, to head across the wind down the unconfined airway, whose second beacon he could see, far away.

By habit looking around to be sure no other ship was close as he turned, Bob, startled, saw the flying lights of another craft pursuing.

It must be pursuit! It came from the direction they had come. It turned as they turned, only in a more sharpened bank, so as to cut off part of the distance, it seemed to Bob, to close the gap between them.

“Lang!” he shouted, and waggled the stick.

Lang looked around.

Bob’s arm pointed backward and upward.

Lang, leaning out of the cockpit, to see around the wing-tip, stared.

“The cabin ’plane!” he cried. “I know it. Golden Dart.”

“After us?”

“I don’t know!”

But as Bob opened the throttle to regain flying speed without having to dip down too low, there came from the other ship a red flare.

It was, as Bob realized, a signal—not of danger but of command.

“Land!” it commanded.

Bob looked at Lang.

Lang considered. As he hesitated Bob guessed his thoughts. Some one from the small field, some member of the plant staff, probably Mr. Parsons, finding the ’plane belonging to Griff gone, and hearing from the watchman who had taken it, had taken off in the cabin monoplane to stop what he probably considered a prank of Lang and Bob—some night-flying lark.

What would Lang say? Set down? Or—go on?

They could outfly that cabin ship in the speedy, easily maneuvered sport craft—or, they could, with Lang at the controls. But Lang was badly upset in his stomach. What would he decide? Bob mechanically looked around for the best spot to set down.

When he looked up again his heart leaped with exultation.

Lang’s arm pointed straight ahead!

“Go on!” he gestured.

Bob opened the throttle joyously. Here was adventure, pursuit, thrill enough to suit anyone!