Читать книгу Across the Pacific - J. W. Duffield - Страница 5

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Wonderingly, Ted Scott dropped his tools and took the paper that Hapworth extended to him.

A screaming headline caught his eye:

“Air Mail Stolen. Pilot Unconscious. Plane Gone. Loss Estimated at Fifty Thousand Dollars. No Clue to the Thieves.”

Ted’s pulse quickened.

“Gee!” he exclaimed. “First time I’ve ever heard of anything like that. How did they ever get away with it?”

He read the story eagerly, but had not reached the end of the first paragraph when he broke out:

“Allenby! Ed Allenby! Good old Ed! He was the pilot of the plane.”

“You know him, then?” queried Hapworth.

“Do I know him?” returned Ted. “Know him from the ground up. A pal of mine in the Rocky Mountain section of the Air Mail Service. One of the best. How on earth did that thing happen to him? I cannot understand, for he is a level-headed pilot.”

“Read the whole story out loud,” said Hapworth. “I only glanced at the headlines and hurried out here with it because I knew it would hit you hard.”

Ted read. The story was necessarily based on what the aviator himself had told the government authorities when they questioned him. He had left the airport at Denver on a trip to Pocatello, Idaho, carrying a load of mail that he was told before he started was very valuable. Everything had gone all right until he was about three hours out. Then he had begun to feel sick. His head was dizzy and his eyesight dimmed. He fought against the growing sickness, but the symptoms grew steadily worse and he feared that his senses were going.

He searched for a suitable landing spot and finally brought the plane to earth. He tried to climb out of it. That was the last he remembered.

When he came to his senses he found himself lying upon the ground. He staggered to his feet and looked around for his plane.

It was gone!

He rubbed his eyes. He thought that he must be the victim of an hallucination, that his sickness had affected his brain. But the fact was there. The plane had vanished!

It could not have gone off by itself. Could he have wandered away from it in delirium? But there were the marks the plane had made in landing. If there were any other marks made by a subsequent takeoff, they were not discernible. Nor could he note any other footprints in the vicinity than this own.

Bewildered and still faint from his sickness, he had made his way on foot to the nearest town and telephoned his strange story to the Air Mail authorities. By them it was at once relayed to Washington and the Secret Service officials had got busy.

Up to the time the paper had gone to press no clue had been found to the mystery. The authorities were all at sea. The pilot had not been arrested, but he was being kept under strict surveillance. It was evident that strong doubts were entertained as to the truth of his story.

“Surveillance!” snorted Ted indignantly, as he dropped the paper. “Ed Allenby under surveillance! That means that he may be jugged at any moment. Why, Ed’s as honest as the day is long. I’d trust him with a million dollars, if I had it, and never lose a minute’s sleep over it.”

“That may be,” pondered Hapworth, “and probably it is, since you seem to know him so well. But if it were any fellow you didn’t know, you’d be the first to admit that his story sounds fishy. Own up, now, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does,” admitted Ted reluctantly.

“For what would be simpler,” went on Hapworth, “than for the pilot to be in cahoots with a gang of robbers, bring his plane down at some place previously agreed on where the thieves would be waiting and deliver it with the mail to some one of the gang who knew how to handle the plane and would make off with it. Then the pilot could take an emetic or something that would make him look and act sick for a time and finally come into town with his story. Then, later on, he could get his share of the swag, or perhaps he had been paid in advance. What other theory is more natural?”

“He might have been doped by some of the gang beforehand,” defended Ted.

“Sure,” agreed Hapworth, “but how would the gang know just when and where that dope would take effect and he would have to come down? And if he didn’t come down at the place they guessed, the robbery would have been all off. Allenby is probably as innocent as you think he is, but all the same I’d hate to be in his shoes.”

“So would I,” assented Ted. “Poor old Ed! I know just how he must be feeling. And all he’s got against any accusation is his own unsupported word. I know though that he’s innocent, and just as soon as I get to a telegraph station I’m going to send a wire telling him so.”

“He’s lucky in having so staunch a friend,” replied Hapworth. “But now let’s hustle and get this job done. It’s a beautiful day for flying, and if we have luck we may get to Bromville before nightfall.”

In about an hour the last of the repairs had been completed, and Ted and Hapworth went up to the house to bid their kind hosts goodby.

“I wish I was going with you up in the air,” said Billy wistfully.

A final farewell, and Ted and Hapworth took their seats and the Silver Streak soared into the ether. As a last treat to his hosts Ted gave a breath-taking exhibition of trick flying, and then pointed the nose of the plane toward Bromville.

They crossed the railroad tracks, and Ted could scarcely repress a shudder as he looked below at the scene of what might so easily have been a tragedy.

His heart was humble and grateful at his narrow escape. Had Charity been praying for him, he wondered?

Dear old Charity! And Eben, who was equally dear! How much he owed to them! What would he have become if they had not taken him under their protecting wings? They had indeed been father and mother to him.

His thoughts reverted to his own father and mother, whom he could not remember ever having seen. Both were now sleeping their last sleep. He rejoiced that he had been able to vindicate his father’s memory.

His earlier talk with Hapworth about Australia recurred to him. His pulses quickened at the thought of that distant continent on the other side of the earth. He envied the aviators who were planning to make that tremendous jump. That would be a feat that, if it were successfully accomplished, would set the whole world talking.

While he was immersed in these reflections the Silver Streak had been fairly eating up space. Ted had let the gallant plane out to the limit, and she was traveling at the rate of a hundred and twenty miles an hour.

“I guess you made a good job of that wing,” said Hapworth. “The plane seems to be as good as ever.”

“She’s a daisy,” affirmed Ted enthusiastically. “She knows that she’s on the way home and is eager to get into her hangar. And at this rate she’ll get there before sundown.”

His prophecy was confirmed, for while the sun was still shining that evening the Silver Streak was hovering above the air field at Bromville, preparing to make her landing.

It was quitting time at the Aero plant and the men were pouring out. There were excited gesticulations as they pointed at the Silver Streak, for they knew whom it carried.

Ted Scott had come home again!

And that was always an event in the life of the town. For Ted had “put Bromville on the map.” Because of Ted and his wonderful exploits the place was better known and more in the news than any place of equal size in the United States. Ted was far and away the town’s “first citizen.”

So that when the Silver Streak came down in long, swooping spirals and came to a stop after a perfect landing, Ted found himself surrounded by an enthusiastic crowd of his townspeople, all anxious to shake his hand and show him how much they thought of him.

“So you’ve been down in Mexico,” exclaimed Mark Lawson, as he clapped Ted on the shoulder. “How many bandits did you kill?”

“None whatever,” grinned Ted, “though some of them came near making an end of me.”

“That was a pretty neat trick you played on us,” put in Breck Lewis. “Making us think you were going North when all the time you were heading for the South!”

They chaffed and jested for a little while and then Ted, after seeing that the Silver Streak was safely bestowed in her hangar, hurried off, accompanied by Hapworth, to the Bromville House.

As he came in sight of it he stopped, startled and delighted at the change that had been wrought in the old place.

“Gee!” he exclaimed to Hapworth. “Look at that! Rather swagger, what?”

“The old folks have surely been busy while we were gone,” smiled Hapworth.

A complete new wing had been added to the structure, the veranda had been broadened and ornamented with ferns and flowering plants, the wooden steps had been replaced by handsome ones of white stone and a landscape gardener had worked wonders with the lawns and flower beds, in the center of which had been placed a tinkling fountain. The old place had been entirely rejuvenated.

But Ted was too eager to meet his foster father and mother to spend much time in studying what could be put off till later. He hurried up the path, took the steps three at a time and found himself enfolded in the arms of Eben and Charity, who had been waiting for him, for the news of his landing had spread rapidly through the town.

“My dear, dear boy!” exclaimed Eben as he embraced him.

“Thank the good Lord for bringing you back to us!” quavered Charity, clinging to him as though she would never let him go, while happy tears gathered in her faded eyes.

There was a rapid fire of questions and answers, and Hapworth, too, came in for a cordial greeting, for he was a prime favorite with the old folks.

“My, how swell we are!” laughed Ted, after the first excitement was over. “I hardly dared to believe my eyes when I caught sight of the old place.”

“Not so bad,” said Eben carelessly, though it could be seen that he was fairly bursting with pride.

“Just wait till you see the inside,” beamed Charity. “We’ve got lots of new furniture, so fine that I declare I’m almost afraid to sit down on it. And lots of new bathrooms an’ everything. I keep tellin’ Pa that we mustn’t get puffed up, ’cause it’s all the Lord’s doin’s, blessed be His name.”

Ted gave the dear old lady an extra hard hug.

“If anyone on earth deserves it, it’s you and Dad,” he said. “And now let’s see all these fine things you’re so stuck up about. I’ll sure have to wipe my shoes on the mat before I come in after this.”

Proudly they led him through the house, and Ted’s sincere and exuberant delight at all he saw put the capsheaf on their pleasure. It had been a bard and weary road that the old folks had climbed, but they had reached the heights at last, and Ted’s happiness was equal to their own.

Charity had prepared a royal supper in honor of Ted’s return and it was served in their own private dining room with Hapworth as a guest. Afterward they sat up till midnight, while Charity listened shudderingly to the thrilling details of Ted’s Mexican trip, wiping her eyes at the story of his near hanging and the narrow escape from collision with the freight train.

It was late the next morning when Ted awoke, and after a leisurely breakfast he went out on the veranda with Hapworth to look over the morning paper.

Something he saw there made him sit up in his chair with a jerk.