A FALL INTO THE SEA
Out over the shining sea flew the glistening all-metal plane, and the spirits of the boys lifted to the chase. The oldest fever of the blood known to man is that of the chase. It comes down to us from our prehistoric ancestors who lived by the chase, got their daily food by it, wooed and won by it, and fought their battles by it in that dim dawn of time when might was right and the law of tooth and claw was the only rede.
Gone was the irritability that had possessed Frank in the noise and din, the crowding walls and swarming hordes of human beings, back in the city. Below him lay the broad Atlantic, from their height seeming smooth as a ball-room floor, with the surface calm and unruffled. No land was in sight ahead. The water stretched to infinity, over the edge of the world. For a wonder, not a sail broke that broad expanse due south, although to the west were several streamers of smoke where ships stood in for port, 51 hull down on the far horizon, while closer at hand was a little dot which Bob, swinging the glasses, made out to be a four-masted schooner.
It was a long distance off, ten or fifteen miles, judged Bob. The tiny plane was heading in that direction. Was it bearing away for the schooner? The question leaped into Bob’s mind. He put it into spoken words, into the transmitter.
“There’s a schooner southwest,” he said. “The plane is going in that direction. Bear up a trifle, Frank, and slow her down. Let’s see whether the plane is heading for it.”
Frank slowed the engine and altered the course sufficiently to keep the plane in view on the new tack, but not to bring them so close to it as to arouse suspicion. In a few moments, all could see the tiny speck coasting down on a long slant and Bob, watching through the glasses, exclaimed excitedly:
“The little fellow is going to land. There, he’s on the water now. He’s taxying close to the ship.”
“I’m going to climb,” stated Frank, suiting action to word.
“Good idea,” said Jack. “Let me have the glasses a minute, Bob, will you?”
Bob complied.
“I don’t believe they know of our presence,” Jack presently declared. “Do you fellows consider the 52 plane was forced to land? Is that how it happened to come down near the schooner? There doesn’t seem to be any attempt to put out a boat and get the pilot.”
“Forced to land, my eye,” said Bob, repossessing himself of the glasses. “Do you want to know what I think? I believe the pilot is holding a confab with the schooner. By Jiminy, that’s right, too. And it’s ended. He’s taxying again, and starting to rise.”
Frank, at Bob’s words, had swung away again to the south. After describing a long circle, which carried them so far aloft and so wide of the ship as to lose it from sight, he again turned the plane toward home.
“I expect they never saw us, either from the schooner or the plane,” Jack said. “There was never any indication of alarm. Of course, we were too far off to tell exactly, even spying through the glass.”
“Somehow, however,” replied Frank. “I have the feeling that they didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” asked Bob.
“Didn’t see us,” answered Frank.
Frank had accelerated the speed of the engine, and was driving at eighty miles an hour, straight for home. Suddenly, an exclamation from Bob, who again was swinging his glasses over the sea below, smote the ears of the boys. 53
“Something’s the matter with that little plane. Say”—a breathless pause—“it’s falling. Come on, Frank. We’ll have to see if we can help. Swoop down. There, to the left.”
Rapidly Frank began spiralling and in a very short time was near enough to the small plane for it to be seen clearly with the naked eye. It had been flying at a considerable height. As the boys watched, it went into a dive, with the pilot struggling desperately to flatten out. He succeeded, when not far from the surface of the ocean. As a result, instead of diving nose foremost into the water, the plane fell flat with a resounding smack, there was a breathless moment or two when it seemed as if the little thing would be swamped, then it rode lightly and buoyantly on the little swells.
Descending to the water, Frank taxied up close to the other plane. The figure of the pilot hung motionless over the wheel. Probably, considered the boys, the man had been flung about and buffeted until he lost consciousness.
“I’ll close up to him head on,” Frank said. “Then, if necessary, one of you can climb into the other plane and see what we can do to help. Probably the thing to do will be to get him aboard here, and carry him ashore.” 54
“Righto,” said Bob, climbing out to the fuselage, behind the slowly revolving propeller. “Now take it easy. We don’t want to smash. I can drop into the water and swim a stroke or two, and get aboard.”
As the boys swung up close, however, the figure at the wheel of the other plane stirred. Then the man lifted his head and looked at them, in dazed fashion.
“Mr. Higginbotham,” exclaimed Frank, under his breath. “Well, what do you know about that?”
It was, indeed, the man they had interviewed earlier that day in the McKay realty offices, back in New York.
“How in the world did he get here?” asked Jack, who also had recognized the other.
Frank had brought their plane to a halt. It bobbed up and down slowly on the long ground swell, not far from the smaller machine.
Bob was still astride the fuselage.
“Hello,” he called. “We saw you fall and came over to see if we could help. Engine gone wrong, or what was it?”
Higginbotham was rapidly recovering his senses. He stared at his interlocutor keenly, then at the others. Recognition dawned, then dismay, in his eyes. But he cloaked the latter quickly.
“Why, aren’t you the lads who were in my office to-day?” he asked, ignoring Bob’s proffer of help. 55
“You’re Mr. Higginbotham, aren’t you?” answered Bob. “Yes, we are the fellows you spoke to.”
“What in the world are you doing out here?” Higginbotham demanded, sharply.
“Why, we told you we lived near here. We had flown to Mineola and then motored to the city. And we were just flying home when we saw you fall, and came over to do what we could.”
“Oh.”
Higginbotham stared from one to the other. Had he seen them pursue him and spy on him as he visited the schooner? That was the question each boy asked himself. Apparently, he had not done so, for his next question was:
“Do you fly around here often in your plane?”
Frank took a hand in the conversation. If big Bob were left to carry on alone, he might blunderingly give this man an inkling of what the boys knew or suspected about their mysterious neighbors. Frank felt that his chill of suspicion, experienced when he encountered Higginbotham in New York, was being justified. Decidedly, this man must be in with the mysterious inhabitant of the old Brownell place. Equally certain was it that he had lied in stating he did not know the name of the man who had bought the property.
“Oh,” said Frank, “we haven’t had the plane out 56 for weeks until a day or two ago, when we made a trial spin, and again to-day. We’ve been busy for a month overhauling it.”
That, thought Frank, ought to stave off Higginbotham’s suspicions. Evidently, the other was feeling around to learn whether they had flown sufficiently of late to have spied out the secret radio plant or seen the radio-controlled plane in operation.
“And I’ll bet,” Frank said himself, “that it is a complete surprise to him to find there is a plane in his neighborhood. Probably, he thought he could operate without fear of discovery in this out-of-the-way neighborhood, and it’s a shock to him to find we are here.”
Some such thoughts were passing through Higginbotham’s mind. How could he get rid of these boys without disclosing to them that his was a radio-controlled plane?
“I’m very much obliged to you, gentlemen,” he said, smoothly, “for coming to my aid. As it is, however, I do not need help. This is a plane of my own design, I may as well state, for I can see its surprising lines have aroused your curiosity. I would prefer that you do not come any closer but that, on the other hand, you would leave me now. I want to make some minor repairs, and then I shall be able to fly again.” 57
“Very well, sir,” answered Bob composedly, climbing back from the fusilage to his seat in the pit. “We don’t want to annoy you. Good day.”
With that, Frank swung clear, the propeller to which Bob had given a twist began anew to revolve, the plane taxied in a circle, then rose and started for the shore.
“We certainly surprised him,” chuckled Jack. “He didn’t know what to say to us. In his excitement and his fear of discovery of some secret or other, he acted in a way to arouse suspicion, not dispel it. Well, Frank, you win the gold medal. Your hunch about Higginbotham being untrustworthy certainly seems to have some foundation.”
“I’ll say so, too,” agreed Bob. “But what do you imagine happened to him?”
Bob sat with the glasses trained backwards to where the little plane still rode the sea.
“That’s easy,” answered Jack. “Something went wrong at the secret radio plant and the continuity of the dash which provides the juice for the plane’s motor was broken. That’s the only way I can figure it. I say. Let’s tune up to 1,375 meters, and see whether that continuous dash is sounding.”
“It’s not there,” Bob announced presently. “Not a sound in the receivers. Neither does the plane show any signs of motion. Look here. Suppose 58 that whatever has happened at that fellow’s radio plant cannot be fixed up for a long period, what will Higginbotham do? Ought we to go away and leave him?”
“Well,” said Jack, doubtfully, “it does look heartless. He’s four or five miles from shore. Of course, we might shoot him a continuous dash from our own radio plant.”
“Zowie,” shrieked Bob, snatching the receiver from his head, and twisting the controls at the same time, in order to reduce from the 1,375-meter wave length. “There’s his power. No need for us to worry now. Oh, boy, but wasn’t that a blast in the ear?”
Ruefully, he rubbed his tingling ears. Jack was doing the same. Poor Frank, whose eardrums had been subjected to the same shock, also had taken a hand from the levers at the same time and snatched off his headpiece.
“She’s rising now,” cried Bob.
Without his headpiece, Frank could not hear the words and kept his eyes to the fore, as he swung now above the line of the shore. Jack, however, also was straining his eyes to the rear, and he snatched the glasses from Bob and trained them on the plane.
True enough, Higginbotham was rising.