CHAPTER IX
JUST IN TIME
“Who is that man, Hiram?”
It was two days after the stirring adventure among the burning haystacks. They were now under a new and changed environment. Outside of a roomy hangar on the training grounds near Chicago, they seemed to have passed from a zone of peril and trickery into an atmosphere of order and security.
The chums had been oiling the Scout, which had been shipped to them from the Midlothian grounds the day previous. Dave had noticed a thin wiry man standing outside of their hangar and studiously regarding the Ariel. Then the stranger had moved nearer to them, and transferred a steady, almost insolent gaze to the young aviator. Hiram had been so absorbed in his task that he had not noted what the keen observation of Dave, always on the alert, had taken in. Now he straightened up and shot a glance at the stranger, just turning away.
“Hello!” he exclaimed, “he’s familiar. Why it’s Valdec!”
“You don’t mean the crack cloud-climber, as they call him, the Syndicate champion?” questioned his companion.
“That’s him,” went on Hiram. “Yes, that’s ‘the great and only.’ I saw him down at the clubhouse last evening. Humph! I don’t like him any better than I do his backer, and that’s Worthington.”
Dave viewed the rival airman from head to foot. He was not only curious, but interested. The chums had met a variety of amateurs and professionals since their arrival at the present centre of attraction in the aviation world. A portion of them were a motley group. They ranged from expert balloon trapezists to acrobatic notables. They were essentially “stunt” men. The real professionals were a widely different crowd. There were men who had earned fame in their particular line of activity. Some were inventors, and there was a sprinkling of scientists. The name, Valdec, however, Dave had heard a great many more times than that of any professional on the grounds.
Valdec was an importation. He claimed some wonderful records made in France and England. His specialty was the handling of a machine in speed, gyration and novelty effects. He had been a public demonstrator and exhibitor at big fairs in Europe. His daring was notorious. He was a grim, unsocial specimen of humanity, and talked but little. His backers talked for him, however. These comprised the Syndicate, a group of old-time racehorse and baseball promoters and the like. They had taken to the aviation field as the newest and likeliest sport where their peculiar abilities would count.
A great many standard airmen besides Dave did not like this feature of the great International meet. It was not to be helped, however. The manager, Worthington, paid for his special entrants, who were able to qualify. It was his business to finance them, and he claimed that such a connection was legitimate. The Syndicate group formed quite a camp of their own at one end of the grounds. There were over half a dozen airmen in the combination, covering various phases of flying, all out for prizes, and selected by the promoter as likely to win.
“Yes, that’s Valdec,” resumed Hiram. “I don’t like him, nor his crowd, nor their hangers-on, but I will say the fellow can do things. When you were away yesterday he had half an hour’s practice on spiral work. It was not only pretty, but it took away your breath. I heard one of the bystanders say that before Valdec makes one of his sensational dives, he works himself up to such a point that he is perfectly reckless. That’s his crowd—running things just as they would for a track race.”
“Well, the steady nerve and the clear head counts in the wind up,” observed Dave philosophically. “This job is done. Now for some real work.”
It was not Dave’s habit to “show off” nor to advise his rivals of his prospective programme. The location of the practice grounds was ideal. The country about was level, and there was a lake area over which long distance flights would be unhampered. The day before, however, and on the present occasion, as soon as both aviators were in their places in the machine, its pilot started a course for a barren uninhabited reach among the sand dunes twenty miles south of the grounds. Here they were unnoticed and had free scope.
“No danger of collisions here,” observed the cheerful Hiram, as they landed and Dave sailed off alone. Then he sat down on a heap of brush and chucklingly announced himself as “an audience of one,” prepared to enjoy the spectacle of the occasion.
“Bravo!” voted the loyal and enthusiastic lad, as Dave made a superb sweep that vied with a sailing pigeon, fleeing in terror from this unfamiliar monarch of the air.
Then Hiram clapped his hands loudly, and kicked with his feet, as though in some auditorium, and bound to applaud, as Dave made a volplane that seemed destined to land the machine nose deep in the flickering sands. Suddenly, twenty feet from the ground, he balanced, even tipped, and went up, up, up—until machine and pilot were a mere speck.
“Hurrah!” rang out briskly, when the daring operator of the Ariel began a spiral drop. And then as Dave landed, his assistant, half wild with delight, was dancing from foot to foot. “Oh, I say,” he shouted, “it’s up to Valdec! Honest, Dave, it beats him. Yes, sir, it actually does!” and the faithful chum laughed, as though already he saw the capital prize of the meet safe in the hands of his friend.
The chums put in two hours about the flying field afforded by the sand dunes. They started back for the International grounds feeling duly satisfied. Dave was more satisfied with the Ariel than ever. The perfect piece of mechanism had never “balked” yet. Hiram professed to see new skill and expertness in his gifted chum with every succeeding flight.
“Let’s take a view of the city before we go home,” he suggested, and Dave was nothing loth.
“Doll houses and pigmies; eh?” submitted Hiram, as they flew over the south end of the city. “A little flat patch of the world, down there. Those vessels on the lake look like play-ships. That big skyscraper doesn’t appear much larger than a chicken house. There’s some excitement!” and Hiram leaned over to get a better view of what had attracted his attention. “Dave,” he cried suddenly, “it’s a fire!”
Dave made out smoke and flames about a very high structure located near the river that traversed the heart of the city. He was as much interested as his companion, for a mimic play seemed going on below. Everything appeared in miniature—the hurrying fire engines, the puffing fire-boats on the river, the great crowds, the giant building wreathed with smoke. As they neared this Dave made out more clearly the situation.
“It seems to be a storage warehouse, built solid from the sixth story up,” he said. “The lower stories are all on fire. It will be a bad blaze when it gets up into the closely sealed upper part.”
“Dave,” cried Hiram sharply—“look, look, on the roof!”
“Yes—a girl,” responded Dave. “Why, Hiram, she is alone, and imprisoned up there by the fire!”
It was not difficult to understand the situation. The sixth floor of the building was probably the office of the warehouse. Such concerns hire but little help outside of the men who handle consignments for storage. The girl, probably a stenographer, must have been alone on the floor noted when the fire broke out.
She could not descend, for the five lower floors were all ablaze. Escape was cut off, except upwards. She had probably fled up the spiral staircases without coming to a break in the solid masonry, in the dark, and groping her way, and driven to frenzy by the pursuing smoke.
Now she was plainly visible to the two chums. She stood near the edge of the roof, waving her hands frantically. Below, the hook and ladder service attempted to reach her point of refuge, but they could not get above the eighth floor.
“Dave,” spoke Hiram in a muffled tone that trembled, “can’t we do something?”
Already the pilot of the Ariel had received the same mental suggestion. His eye took in all the chances. All that was chivalrous and humane in him came to the surface.
“There’s just one way, Hiram,” he said. “That is to make a volplane and a landing on the roof.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Hiram eagerly. “It’s a long narrow building, with plenty of room for a stop and a start.”
“You’re willing to risk it?”
“Yes—surely!” cried Hiram. “Don’t delay, Dave. We’re safe to try it, before the flames reach her, or the building collapses.”
A great cry went up from the excited crowds in the streets below, at the sight of what resembled some mighty winged bird coming on a mission of rescue and mercy, where other help seemed vain.
The girl on the roof saw the machine, and comprehended what it meant for her. She ran towards it with a glad cry as Dave dexterously directed it. The Ariel struck the smooth flat roof, and came to a stop, Hiram leaped out.
“This way!” he called, and, taking her outstretched hand he guided her to the seat he had just vacated, and belted her in. “Don’t get scared, nor faint. You’ll be safe on solid land in a jiffy. Go ahead, Dave,” added Hiram. “The machine won’t stand my weight on the narrow margin start we can give it.”
Onward went the Ariel. To the spellbound crowd below it seemed to slide off the roof. Dave made a spiral drop. A block away from the fire there was a lumber yard, only half stocked, affording a good landing place.
The girl was out of the machine and safe in charge of two ladies who supported her. She turned to Dave, her lips moving as if in gratitude, and then swooned. Dave got started before the onrushing mob got in his way. It seemed to him as if the voices of thousands joined in a thunderous cheer. There on the roof, as if in response to this mighty tribute to daring heroism, stood Hiram, smiling and unconcerned as though it were all an every day occurrence.
“Good for you, and quite in time,” he commented briskly, as Dave landed on the roof in safety. “The fire is eating up through the staircases. See, yonder!” and the speaker pointed to wreaths of smoke and cinders shooting out through a roof trap as if forced by an air compressor.
“Something wrong with the control,” said Dave, as they skidded into space again. “The jar of that roof, I guess. It needs fixing,” and the young aviator was compelled to land again in the spot where he had delivered the imperiled girl into friendly hands.