Dave Dashaway, Air Champion: or, Wizard Work in the Clouds

CHAPTER XI
A STRANGE RACE

Dave, busying himself about the Ariel inside the hangar, had caught an echo of the shot outside the fence and the shouts accompanying it. There was generally considerable commotion about the grounds, however, and he paid no particular attention to these demonstrations.

Even the sound of the exhaust of the Scout did not suggest anything out of the ordinary. It was only when a loud cry sounded directly beyond the open doors of the hangar, that the young airman was aroused.

“Oh, Mr. Dashaway!” gasped out a startling voice – “come here! come, quick!”

Dave looked up to discern Rohan, his newly employed watchman. The latter was limping towards the hangar. The light from the inside shone on his face, showing excitement, and a sort of terror.

“Why, Dennis, what is the matter?” inquired Dave, anxiously.

“Your partner, Dobbs – the Scout!” stammered the watchman, so excited that he could scarcely speak. “Hear it? See it? And here are the police!”

Dave hurried out. His first swift glance showed that the Scout was nowhere near. The gathering lake haze formed its usual veil between the ground lights and the upper clear area. A look in that direction told nothing.

A crackling, tearing sound next directed Dave’s glance. It proceeded from the fence. There the uniformed figure of a man was to be seen. He came through a two-foot gap in the barrier. A companion on the outside was just tearing loose a third board. He was pulling it from the bottom, and did not release the top nails. He sprang through after his mate.

“Where is he?” demanded the latter of Dave, and just then Rohan came limping up to the spot.

“Tall man, wearing a buttoned-up frock coat?” he announced in jerks.

“With a fortune in it, yes!” responded the police officer, quickly. “Where is he?” followed the sharp challenge.

“Up there,” answered the watchman promptly, and he pointed aloft.

“Eh, what? Trying to guy us!”

“No, sir,” answered Dennis. “He’s gone, and he’s gone in the little airship. I saw him!”

“Well, I’m flabbergasted!” puffed the officer. “Mate, he’s slipped us. I wish we’d got another shot at him. You mean the fellow has sailed away in one of these balloons around here?”

“I saw him,” continued the watchman rapidly, with a glow of excitement in his eyes. “He dropped to the ground. Mr. Dashaway’s partner here had just got into his machine. The fellow you’re after ran for it. He gave it a shove, jumped onto a side plane, crawled right up to young Dobbs, and put a pistol to his head!”

Dave started. The thought of his chum in peril set his wits at work in an instant.

“The man made some threat to Dobbs,” went on Dennis. “Anyhow, up went the biplane. Then, as the fellow dropped into the cockpit, I heard him yell, ‘West – straight west.’”

“You did?” spoke Dave, questioningly. “That’s a point,” and he made a dash for the hangar. The officers were, indeed, “flabbergasted.” They stood like dummies, dismayed and at a loss as to further action. Dave ran the Ariel out into the field.

“Officer,” he called to the policeman who seemed most to direct affairs, “that man – who is he?”

“Reddy Marsh, the slickest diamond thief in America,” came the response.

“And he’s got a load of the sparklers in his coat right now,” added the other officer. “Padded brick, smashed a lighted show-window in a jewelry store and off he was with a case, with stones in it worth fifty thousand dollars. We thought we’d run him down when he made for the fence.”

“Yes,” put in the other policeman, who was staring overhead in a lost, puzzled way, “and it won’t be a question of hundreds, but of thousands to the person who gets him and his booty.”

“I’m not thinking of that,” said Dave in an anxious way, “but of my friend. He’s clear grit, but the man is armed. Officer, I’m going aloft. If the Scout hasn’t got too far away, I may catch sight of it. I may need protection; assistance. One of you come with me.”

“Hey!” exclaimed the head officer – “you mean in that airship?”

“It’s the only way, isn’t it?” propounded Dave.

“I’ll go,” spoke up the other officer. “This lad must know his business or he wouldn’t be here. It’s in my line of duty – besides, there may be glory in it, and a reward. Go ahead!”

“Quick, then!” directed the young aviator. “Now then,” as he guided the unusual passenger to the seat behind the pilot post, “buckle on the straps, keep cool and quiet, and I’ll see what can be done.”

He liked the obedient composure of his passenger. If the latter felt that he was taking a risk, and experienced a little natural dread, he masked it by shouting to his comrade:

“Tell the sergeant I’m off on special duty – joined the airship corps – ha! ha!”

His laugh ended, however, and Dave could catch a series of quivers and sharp short gasps as the watchman gave the ground gear an impetus and the Ariel rose up majestically. The machine pierced the blanket of haze and came up above the lower strata of obscuring ground air. Dave described a slow broad circle. His eye swept in all directions the level they were on.

“If the moon were only up,” he murmured. “Well, the only course is west. Hiram is shrewd and intelligent. If he guesses for a moment that I am after him, soon as he gets his thinking cap on he will find some way to signal, or get the best of his passenger.”

“Don’t see anything,” observed the officer, and, big, brave fellow that he was, there was the tremor of the novice in air evident in his voice.

“They’ve got a start, you must remember,” explained Dave, “and a big field. We can only go on, keeping a sharp lookout. If you should happen to get sight of a black speck against the stars, tell me.”

There was a spell of silence for some minutes after that, Dave paying strict attention to directing the machine, his passenger keeping as keen a lookout as was possible for him under the unfamiliar conditions. Suddenly the officer shouted out:

“There! See, a little way ahead? No, it’s gone. Now, again! Pshaw! – fireflies.”

“Too high for that,” spoke Dave, “I see what you mean. Thanks my friend, this is important!”

Ahead of them, and on a higher level, there was now visible a series of swiftly-vibrating brilliant sparks. They filled a mere tiny spot in space. To the expert young airman they were guiding. Dave set the machine on a swift drift then climbed up several hundred feet. Now the sparks, intermittent but perfectly distinct, were clearer and nearer the faster they went.

“It’s a machine,” soliloquized Dave, “and it must be the Scout. If it is – clever Hiram! He doesn’t dare show the lights, for that man aboard wouldn’t let him. I can guess what he has done – the vibrator.”

Dave, with a perfect knowledge of all the parts and possibilities of the natty little Scout, was at home with every detail of the mechanism of the machine, and guessed what was transpiring. Later on his surmises were verified. The young aviation expert decided that his chum counted on his searching for him. He had loosed the top of the vibrator, probably sending it adrift.

If he awakened the suspicion of the passenger, he could readily make a pretence of watching the sparks jumping from one coil to the other, to see that all the cylinders were working right. Correct or not in his guess, those distant electric points of light were now a direct guide to the eager pilot of the Ariel.

“We’re getting nearer,” breathed the man behind him. “You think it’s the airship we’re after?”

“I am pretty sure of it,” responded Dave. “It’s a race, now, officer. This machine can overtake the Scout and outdistance it within the next half hour. Then the case is up to you.”

“Just get me in reach of Reddy Marsh,” spoke the policeman, “and I’ll do the rest.”

CHAPTER XII
A DESPERATE PASSENGER

“Due west – and no tricks!” the man had ordered who had insisted upon being a free passenger aboard the Scout.

Hiram Dobbs was not frightened. He was simply startled. Most boys would have been unnerved at the leveled weapon of a man who looked so very dangerous. Momentarily taken off his balance, the young airman obeyed the menacing mandate given.

“In case you should think of cutting up any capers,” was spoken next into his ear, “let me tell you I am a desperate man.”

It was humiliating to Hiram, now he had got his second breath, to submit to the dictation of a stranger, and he an intruder, too. Hiram’s natural disposition urged him instantly to drive the machine back to earth. Then common sense assured him that it would be at a risk. He really believed his passenger would shoot. Hiram was a quick thinker. He summed up the situation this way: the fellow aboard the Scout was a criminal, a fugitive pursued by the police. His only way of evading them was by the air route. A spice of reckless love of excitement came into the thoughts of Hiram. His passenger was watching him closely.

“All right, I’ll see the end of the adventure,” resolved Hiram, and the next minute the land mist shut out all further view of the International grounds.

“Those officers will never take me alive again,” spoke his passenger. “If they get the two of us it will be two dead ones, mind you, that.”

“My! but you’re a wicked one, aren’t you now?” observed Hiram in a tone of raillery.

“Don’t you talk too bold, youngster – it mightn’t be healthy for you,” growled the other. “You obey my orders and you shan’t want a reward.”

“I don’t want money for helping a criminal to escape,” retorted Hiram spicily – “which I take you to be.”

“We all have our special business to attend to,” coolly announced the man. “Yours is running an airship. Mine is picking up what careless people don’t watch close enough. We’ll both be in the papers to-morrow. It will make a good story, on your part. That will help, you see?”

Hiram, as he later explained it to his chum, was “mad all over,” but he saw no safe way out of the dilemma. He preserved a stubborn silence, but thought steadily.

“If I know anything about Dave’s ways,” he soliloquized, “he won’t let any grass grow under his feet. He’ll think and act. A man ran up as this fellow aboard here pushed up the machine. I think it was Dennis, the watchman. The police broke in through the fence, too. Oh, yes, Dave will soon be aloft, and looking for me.”

So convinced of this was Hiram, that he immediately put in operation a plan suddenly suggested to his mind. He reached out one hand and began loosening the screws that held in place the plate covering the vibrator. His passenger was alive to every move he made and was watching him intently.

“Hey, what you up to?” he snarled and then, as if through accident, Hiram shifted the plate so that it went whirling down through space, leaving the mechanism of the vibrator entirely exposed.

“I guess I’ve got to see if the cylinders are sparking right; haven’t I?” snapped Hiram.

“I don’t like that game!” growled the man behind him.

“Say,” jeered Hiram impatiently, “if you don’t take to my way of running this machine, suppose we change places?”

“Oh, of course, I’m no sky pilot” – began the other.

“Then allow me to run this biplane in my own fashion. You’ll have to, I guess,” added Hiram, “or drop. You may be desperate, but I’m in no very good humor myself, drifting around to suit your fancy, and you’ll leave me alone, if you’re wise.”

The passenger relapsed into silence now. Probably a realization of the fact that he might unnerve the pilot, or actually drive him to some rash action, caused him to assume a less forceful attitude. They must have gone fully thirty miles before Hiram spoke again.

“See here,” he demanded sharply, “how long is this flight going to keep up?”

“The further the better,” was the indefinite response. “You know what I’m after – to get us far and fast as possible from the people I don’t want to see. Hey – what’s that?”

Hiram uttered a quick cry of joy. Of a sudden a swaying flash of light moved over and beyond them. A radiant, searching pencil of brilliancy wavered and dilated.

“It’s a biplane searchlight,” thought Hiram, holding his nerves as steady as he could, and not daring to look behind him. “It’s the Ariel– it’s Dave!”

“Say, what’s that now?” muttered his passenger, fidgeting about and straining his neck.

“It’s an airship, like our own,” replied Hiram.

“They’re chasing us!” exclaimed the man.

“I can’t help that,” retorted Hiram, coolly.

“Well, aren’t they?” persisted the passenger. “See! they’ve got us in their focus, and they’re keeping us there. You take a look and see if that isn’t so.”

Hiram ventured a glance backwards. It was swift and fleeting. It persuaded him that he was not wrong as to the identity of the biplane.

“There are so many craft around here,” he said, “that one might be a trailer, or setting a pace, or trying to dazzle and play with us, or half-a-dozen such things.”

“Oh, they’re after us – I feel it – I know it!” declared the passenger anxiously. “How far are they from us, do you think?”

“Perhaps a mile, perhaps two,” answered Hiram grudgingly.

He could catch low mutterings, as though the perturbed passenger were communing with himself. Then the latter poked him on the arm.

“They’re getting nearer, and they’re after us,” he spoke quickly, and with a queer thrill of excitement in his voice. “See here, young fellow, I’ve got no money with me, but I’ve got what is worth money. Give me your name, and I promise you, if you help me to get away from whoever may be after me, I’ll send you something, as soon as I realize, that will pretty nearly make you rich.”

“I wouldn’t take it,” declared the young pilot of the Scout. “You must be up to something bad, talking and acting as you do.”

“Land – land!” suddenly shouted the passenger. “Where you see that rise. Do it, don’t you delay, or I’ll knock you over, and risk running the machine myself!”

The urgency of the speaker was caused through the direct play of the headlight of the Ariel upon them. Dave had gained on the Scout materially within a very few minutes’ time. In truth, Hiram, understanding the situation, had been “playing” with the Scout, purposely deferring direct forward progress, bent on giving the Ariel an opportunity to come up with them. His passenger either discovered or suspected this now.

“No fooling, youngster,” he spoke sternly, and Hiram felt against his shoulder the pressure of the weapon with which the man had previously threatened him. He knew that his passenger was watching him as a cat would a mouse. He could think of no subterfuge to delay matters. Hiram chuckled, however, as he noticed the ever increasing nearness of the Ariel.

“Right over on that hill – where the grove of trees is,” directed his passenger. “We can make it first. No delaying, now! I won’t stand it!”

The searchlight of the Ariel was kept directly upon the Scout, except when a curve, or turn, made this impossible. As Hiram started a drift landwards, he realized that the Ariel was not far behind in the race.

His passenger had slipped loose the seat belt, and showed eager suspense.

“Why don’t you land – why don’t you land! those fellows will be right on our heels in a minute,” he shouted.

“I can’t drop into the tree tops, can I?” challenged Hiram – “well!”

The rebound of the biplane told him that it had been lightened of a burden. His environment demanded his strictest attention to the machine. However, he shot one rapid look back and down. It was to see his passenger risking a ten foot drop directly into a nest of tree branches. They bent with him like a rubbery surface. Hiram sent the Scout in a rising circle so as to keep the man in view.

The headlight of the Ariel had kept pace with his sensational movements. The man soon reached the ground, dropping recklessly from branch to branch. The arrow of light revealed him running towards a thick copse. Then it lost sight of him. A minute later, however, the dazzling glare took up the trail again. The fugitive had darted into a thicket, out of it, into another, out of that one, and the last Hiram saw of him he was dashing down the edge of a gully.

The Ariel, fast descending, kept its boring eye of radiance squarely upon the man. Hiram fancied he could guess about where it would land and decided to join its company. Then something happened that thrilled Hiram. The fugitive stumbled and went headlong over the edge of the gulch.

CHAPTER XIII
A REMARKABLE EXPLANATION

The Ariel had found a landing place where some short crisp grass covered a spot bare of trees and rocks. Hiram brought the Scout to a halt not twenty feet away. He shut off the power, leaped out and approached Dave. The latter stood by the side of his machine watching the police officer who had run to the edge of the gully.

“Dave, this has been a startler; hasn’t it?” exclaimed Hiram.

“You are one of the wisest boys in the world,” spoke the young airman. “Without that spark signal we should never have got a start on your trail.”

“Has it done any good, after all?” questioned Hiram. “My passenger has got into deeper trouble; hasn’t he?”

“It looks that way,” answered Dave. “We saw him stumble over that ledge yonder.”

“Maybe it was a trick,” suggested Hiram. “He’s a bad one, I can tell you.”

“Here comes the policeman. Any trace of him, officer?”

The recent passenger of the Ariel looked serious. He held in his hand a dark lantern, the rays of which, the others had noticed, he had been flashing over the edge of the gully.

“Got a rope?” he asked.

“I have one, in the Scout. Always carry it,” volunteered Hiram briskly and he ran to his machine and returned with the coil in question.

“The fellow won’t run any further away from us this time,” advised the policeman. “He’s lying on a shelf of rock about twelve feet down. Both of you can help me.”

The boys followed him. They took a look over the edge of the gully as their leader flashed his lantern down. There, plainly visible, was the recent passenger of the Scout.

“He’s insensible, or dead,” spoke the officer in a callous, professional tone. “He must have landed head first. We must get him up here. I want a look at those sparklers.”

The man’s word grated harshly on both Dave and Hiram. They proceeded, however, to follow the directions of the officer. The rope was not heavy, but was very strong, being reinforced with strands of flexible wire.

It took them nearly fifteen minutes to lower the policeman and hoist, first the injured man and then the officer, to the surface. As the fugitive lay extended motionless upon the grass the officer inspected him with the aid of the dark lantern.

“None of his limbs seem broken,” he reported, “but he got a terrific crack on his head. I’ve seen a good many cases of such hurts, and I guess this fellow has run his last race.”

“Can’t we do something for him?” asked Dave solicitously.

“Say,” broke in Hiram, “I see the lights of a settlement over to the west there. It can’t be more than a mile away.”

“You had better reach it, then,” suggested Dave.

“Yes, and get them to send a wagon, or an ambulance, for this man,” added the policeman.

Dave helped his assistant get the Scout off the ground, its pilot marking with his eye closely the main points in the landscape. Thus he would be able to pretty accurately direct those who came after the injured man. The minute the officer was satisfied that nothing could be done to add to the comfort or safety of their charge until aid arrived, he proceeded to examine the pockets of his insensible prisoner.

The young aeronaut considered this rather a heartless proceeding, but realized that the officer was acting in pursuance of his duty. Twice he went over every pocket and possible secret hiding place in the clothing of the fugitive. He finally arose to his feet with a baffled and angry expression of face.

“He’s beat us!” he growled. “I fancied he was getting away with his booty – but it was getting away from me and my partner that he was after.”

“But what has become of the diamonds you spoke about?” queried Dave.

“Got rid of them to some partner, I suppose, before we finally ran him down,” was the explanation. “It’s too bad to miss the big reward that we’d have got.”

Hiram returned in half an hour. He had made a brief and rapid trip.

“A sheriff and his men will soon be here with an auto,” he reported, and a very few minutes after that the machine in question halted near the spot. A surgeon had accompanied the village officers. He shook his head as he looked over his patient.

“He won’t live the night out,” he announced with professional certainty. “Concussion of the brain, and a very serious case.”

The city policeman accompanied the auto back to the village. Before he did so, however, he wrote something on a card and handed it to Dave.

“If you will take that card, and your bill for the clever work you’ve done, to police headquarters, they’ll treat you right,” he said.

“Queer about those diamonds, isn’t it, Dave?” spoke Hiram as they found themselves alone with their machines. “Maybe the man dropped them in running, or they went over into that gully.”

“It would be like hunting for a needle in a haystack to try and find them,” declared the young airman.

Excitement and trying work at the wheel had worn them out considerably, and they were glad when they crept into their beds at headquarters an hour later. Hiram overslept himself. He awoke late the next morning, in the room they occupied jointly at the grounds clubhouse, to find his chum missing. He hurried his breakfast and was soon at the hangar. As he neared it he noticed some one seated on a stool inside it. Dave had the Ariel outside and was tanking up with “juice,” as they called the gasoline.

“Some one to see you, Hiram,” he announced, nodding his head towards the garage.

“Who is it?” asked his mate curiously.

“He didn’t give his name, but he’s a boy. Says he knows you.”

“Is that so?” returned Hiram musingly, and advanced towards the garage. Then his face expanded in a welcoming good natured way. A lad about his own age was seated with his back to the door and seemed to be eagerly inspecting the little Scout and the mechanical accessories belonging to it. “Why, Bruce Beresford, hello!” Hiram shouted suddenly.

“Eh – oh, excuse me, yes, it’s me,” answered the visitor, springing up with a nervous start, and his anxious face brightened as Hiram gave his hand a friendly shake.

Hiram drew back a step or two, and with apparent admiration looked over in a quizzical way the lad he had so signally befriended in the past.

“Well,” he observed, “you’re looking more prosperous than when I last saw you.”

“Oh, yes,” replied Bruce Beresford, his whole face lighting up. “I’ve had such wonderful luck!”

“You look it, and I’m glad,” said Hiram. His friend of the swampy island certainly showed a great improvement, with good shoes on his feet, and wearing a neat suit of clothes. When Hiram had first met him Bruce had worn a big cap pulled closely down over his ears, clear to the nape of his neck. Just now, too, Hiram observed that his head back of his cheeks was well covered up. It gave Bruce a rather uncouth appearance and the young pilot of the Scout wondered why.

“I hope I’m not acting as if I was imposing on you, coming in on you in this way, and so soon,” began Bruce.

“Didn’t I invite you to do just that?” challenged Hiram.

“I know, but it looks sort of – well, cheeky, following you up when I owe so much to you as it is.”

“Don’t bother about that,” advised Hiram. “Tell me about that luck of yours. I’ll be interested.”

“Well, you know how I got little Lois comfortably settled at that children’s home at Benham. Then I started in to work. It was surprising how many little odd jobs a fellow can pick up who tries. I was just delighted, until the second day of my work when I happened to see a newspaper from Hillsboro – that is the town where Martin Dawson, the man who abused us so terribly, lives. There, in the paper, was an advertisement offering a reward for a runaway boy.”

“Meaning yourself, I suppose?” questioned Hiram.

“No one else. It scared me, I tell you, because – because,” and the speaker flushed up, and Hiram noticed that he ran his hand over the back of his head in a conscious sort of a way and seemed embarrassed. “Well, because there was a very good description of how I looked,” was added in a quick short breath.

“Thought they’d be after you, eh?” asked Hiram.

“I knew they would and that I wasn’t safe in that section,” proceeded Bruce. “I felt sure that sooner or later some one would suspect or identify me. It wasn’t safe for my sister. I didn’t know what to do, for what little I had earned wouldn’t take us far. Then came my big luck,” and the face of the speaker became radiant.

“Tell it,” directed Hiram, on the edge with curiosity.

“Some one had stolen an automobile from the village banker,” went on Bruce. “I had heard of it. I had read the posters giving the number and make of the machine, and offering a hundred dollars as a reward for its recovery. Just think of it! that very day an invalid lady I had chopped some wood for, asked me if I could get her a bunch of water lilies. I made a few inquiries of some boys I met. They directed me to a swamp about two miles from the town. I found a fine bed of the lilies, and was wading out with an armful, when down among a nest of reeds, where it had been run by the ride-stealers was the missing automobile.”

“That was fine,” remarked Hiram. “I guess you got back to town on the double quick.”

“I did for a fact,” agreed Bruce. “And inside of two hours I had the reward in my pocket. Oh but I felt rich! I went to the matron of the home and told her my whole story for the first time. She not only thought I had better get Lois to some safer place, and further away from Hillshore, but gave me a letter to a relative living on a farm near Chicago. I got some new clothing for my sister and myself, left Lois with the kind-hearted lady who was only too glad to take her in at two dollars a week, and her help around the house, and hunted down the address you gave me. You see – you see,” concluded Bruce longingly, “I wanted advice.”

“What about?” inquired Hiram.

“Well I’ve got over fifty dollars to invest. There’s a good deal moving around this place. You spoke of a friend, a Mr. Dashaway, and I thought – ”

“Yes, that’s my chum, Dave,” interrupted Hiram proudly, – “the most level headed fellow who ever lived. Dave!”

Hiram called his chum and there was an introduction. An explanation followed. The pilot of the Ariel soon had a knowledge of all the circumstances of the case. He and Hiram had seated themselves on a bench opposite their guest. It was warm weather and both threw off their caps. Bruce hesitated and then followed their example, but in an awkward and confused way.

“Why,” exclaimed Hiram with a start, as he noticed that under his cap their visitor wore a close fitting skull cap – “what’s that for?”

Bruce Beresford fidgeted. He seemed at a loss for an explanation. Then he scanned the friendly face of Dave, and the good natured one of his assistant.

“Well, it’s my ears,” he said, slowly, evidently embarrassed.

“Your ears; what about them?” asked Dave, curiously.

“They’ve been cut,” explained the orphan. “And they’re not healed yet. I keep them covered up to keep out the germs the doctor said were floating in the air. But they’re getting better now.”

He took off the skull cap and showed where both ears presented a red surface.

“How in the world did that happen?” asked Hiram. “Have you been playing football?”