Читать книгу Doris Force at Raven Rock - Julia K. Duncan - Страница 7

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“Don’t worry! The plane won’t pull out without you!”

Dave laughed as he shouted his greetings to the quartet—quintet, if we include Wags—as Marshmallow’s auto roared to a halt in front of the airport’s administration building about twenty minutes after Doris’s ’phone call. It was a small brick structure dwarfed by the two hangars which flanked it on either side.

“We’d have caught you at the next stop,” growled Marshmallow amiably, as he switched off his shuddering motor. “Where can I stow this car until we come back?”

“Oh, one of the mechanics will shove it into a corner of a hangar,” replied Dave, his dark eyes sparkling as he helped Doris descend.

“This way, folks. Here, give me those bags!” Thereupon the tall young aviator, topping everyone else in the party by at least a head, strode into a hangar, a grip in either hand and a suitcase under one arm.

There was only one airplane in the huge shed, a two-place pleasure craft with open cockpits, and at the sight of it Mrs. Mallow’s knees slumped once more.

“No, sir!” she said as firmly as her trembling chin permitted. “I won’t crowd into that little plane for such a long trip.”

“That isn’t our ship, Mrs. Mallow,” laughed Dave. “Wait till you see her. She’s a beauty!”

He continued through the hangar to the flying field on the other side, and even Mrs. Mallow gave a gasp of admiration at what they saw there.

Poised on the ground like a giant silver dragonfly was a tri-motored all-metal monoplane, its aluminum paint flashing like silver in the morning sun. The three propellers were revolving idly.

“Isn’t that the grandest sight human eyes ever rested upon?” Dave exclaimed. “Except you, Doris,” he added under his breath to the lovely girl beside him. If Doris heard she gave no sign.

“It—it looks very competent,” Mrs. Mallow admitted.

“Come over and look inside,” Dave urged. “Pete is just revving up the motors a bit.”

A little group of admiring mechanics and hangers-on moved respectfully aside as the party approached the plane.

Dave opened a door in its side, half way between wing and tail, and pulled out a folding stepladder.

“Hi, Pete!” he called. “We’re all here!”

A moment later a slight, pink-cheeked young-looking man, for all the streaks of gray in his blond hair, appeared in the doorway and climbed down to the ground.

Dave made the introductions.

“Pete Speary, one of the best pilots ever to leave the ground,” he concluded.

“I’ll have to agree to that myself to make you all feel more comfortable when we are up,” Pete laughed, bowing.

Then they all climbed in, Mrs. Mallow warning the pilots not to take off without giving her one more chance to put her feet on the earth.

Everyone marveled at the luxurious interior of the plane. Walls and ceiling were covered with green mohair, as were the four swiveled bucket seats, two on either side and each opposite a window. A hinged lap-table was folded back under the windows.

“It’s marvelous, but there are only four seats,” Doris said. “Where do we all sit?”

“Oh, I ride in the engineer’s cab up forward,” Dave replied, pointing to a glass-walled compartment in the nose of the ship, about three steps higher than the passenger compartment.

“See, she has dual controls,” he indicated, as Doris and Kitty peered inside.

“What are all those dials and clocks and gadgets?” Kitty demanded.

“In simplest terms, they tell how fast we are going, how level we are flying, if we are drifting sideways, the gas and oil pressures and other tips on the mechanical condition of the ship,” Dave told her.

They all climbed out of the plane again, and Pete excused himself to attend to some final details in the administration building.

“I don’t know, it all looks solid enough,” Mrs. Mallow sighed. “Too solid to fly up in the air with us all. But I don’t like your Pete.”

“Pete? Why, he’s the salt of the earth,” Dave exclaimed. “Why don’t you like him?”

“I can’t trust a man who smiles on only one side of his face,” Mrs. Mallow declared firmly.

“Pete can’t help that,” Dave protested. “That side of his face he doesn’t smile with was all smashed up during the war and had to be rebuilt. The doctors made him as good looking as he ever was, but they couldn’t make the muscles work as well.”

Immediately Mrs. Mallow was all concern and sympathy, ready to mother the hero.

“I think he’s handsome,” Doris said. “And a real, live hero, too.”

Dave scowled.

“That doesn’t help him as a pilot,” he said. “It isn’t my fault I was only a child when the war ended, or that I was blessed with the complexion of an Indian.”

“Indian!” Doris exclaimed. “Oh, Dave, please—” Then in a whisper, “Walk over this way with me as if you were talking about the airplane. Why, I think you are mighty good-looking, you big ninny, if that makes you feel any better. Now let’s be sensible, Dave. Are any other planes leaving from here for the West today?”

“No planes scheduled to leave for anywhere,” Dave said. “Only private ships are left. Why?”

Doris told him of the conversation she had overheard in the telephone booth.

“The man exactly fits the description of one of the thieves who attacked Uncle Wardell,” she added.

Dave whistled.

“I’ll run over and telephone to your uncle and to police headquarters,” he said. “We can’t lose any time hanging around ourselves, that’s clear.”

He dashed over to the office, passing Pete who was returning. That person, still wearing his lopsided smile, lifted the baggage into the plane and stowed it away in a padded compartment in the tail of the fuselage.

“Now we’re all set, as soon as Dave arrives,” he said.

“Don’t you wear any uniform or helmet?” Kitty asked, looking at the aviator’s neat gray business suit and battered fedora hat.

“Not in this de luxe job,” he replied, waving toward the cabin. “It’s like flying in your own living room at home.”

“You know,” Doris said, “I don’t yet understand our good luck. How does it happen you are flying to our destination in this beautiful thing?”

“Why, it’s like this,” Pete replied. “Lolita Bedelle, the opera star, has a big ranch near Raven Rock. Lots of moneyed people have ranches all through that section—not dude ranches, either. They make ’em pay dividends. This Miss Bedelle has taken up flying so she can look over her 500,000 acres and visit her neighbors. She had this plane fitted up for her, and I got the assignment of delivering it.”

“Lolita Bedelle!” Doris exclaimed. “I’ve always admired her. I heard her as Marguerite in ‘Faust’ once and dozens of times on the radio. Maybe I’ll have a chance to meet her!”

At this juncture Dave ran up.

“All aboard!” he shouted. “No reserved seats. Pile in, everybody, and let’s go!”

In the flurry that followed his words he whispered in Doris’s ear, “I couldn’t get your uncle but I gave the police the news. They’re getting busy.”

“That’s good!” replied Doris. “Thanks, Dave!”

When all were seated, with the exception of the excited Wags who insisted upon trying everyone’s lap, Dave shut the door and bolted it. As he climbed into the pilots’ compartment, he waved to the crowd outside. From it arose shouts of “Happy landings!” the aerial farewell.

“This is better than a Pull—” Doris began, but her voice was drowned out as the huge motors roared into life. The body of the plane trembled, and Doris saw Mrs. Mallow, who had the seat in front of her, grip the arms of her chair as the color ebbed from her cheeks.

Jerkily the huge aircraft began to move over the ground. Faster and faster flitted the scenery past the windows and then suddenly the plane seemed to stand still. The motors’ staccato roar evened to a resonant hum.

The passengers looked outside. Already far below them, and oddly tilted, lay the airport.

“How do you feel?” Doris shouted to Mrs. Mallow.

“Not as bad as I did a minute ago,” that lady called back. “But not as happy as I was last week!”

Except for an occasional tremor or the least perceptible dip to one side or another the airplane was as steady and even-keeled as a ferryboat at anchor.

Doris looked forward to where Dave’s broad back could be glimpsed through the glass partition. She saw him point forward and a little to his left.

She peered in the direction Dave was indicating to his partner.

Those who have flown will remember the peculiarity that the horizon is always on a level with the eyes, no matter how high one rises above the earth.

Doris saw that a portion of the horizon was blotted out by a towering mass of boiling clouds that seemed to rush upward from behind the earth’s curve. Of course it was the speed of the plane that gave that impression, as it rushed toward the storm.

A thunderstorm! And a bad one!

“If Mrs. Mallow sees it, she will jump out,” Doris thought. “She is scared enough of storms in her own house, and here we are diving into one a mile above the earth!”

Her worry grew as she watched the two pilots signaling to each other and looking behind them with knitted brows.

Was disaster to overcome the trip at its start, as Kitty had foretold?