CHAPTER XXI
“FIFTY POINTS”
“You’ve got something on your mind, Bruce! What is it?” challenged Hiram Dobbs.
“Oh, just thinking,” answered Bruce in a way meant to be off-handed, but palpably evasive and embarrassed.
“You can’t fool me!” insisted Hiram in his persistent fashion. “Ever since you took those diamonds back to the police you’ve been mooning. You don’t mean to tell me you’ve caught the detective-fever?”
“Me!” laughed Bruce. “No more chance of that than of running an airship. I’d better correct one false impression you’ve got, though, Hiram.”
“And what is that?”
“I didn’t take those diamonds to the police at all.”
“Didn’t? Well, that’s news!” declared Hiram wonderingly.
“You see, you were all so busy here I didn’t want to bother you about a little thing like that. I took the diamonds back to the people who lost them. I’ve had an idea about those diamonds for some time.”
“You have some good ideas, Bruce—what’s this one?”
“Why, I have felt satisfied all along that the thief had those diamonds when he was escaping in the Scout.”
“We all believe that. What of it?” inquired the young pilot of the craft in question.
“So, I’ve dreamed—only dreamed, mind you—of maybe some time going and looking for them.”
“Ho! ho!” laughed Hiram. “I guess you have no idea of what hunting around the place where the thief landed might mean. If he really had them and lost them, or hid them, or threw them away, there’s half a mile of thicket, gully and creek to go over, with about one chance in a thousand of hitting the right spot. You never ran across such a mixed up place.”
“It’s because I was once right in it all for a week or more that I got interested,” explained Bruce.
“Well, there may be something in your idea, Bruce,” admitted Hiram. “Just now, though, we’ve got more important business on hand. We must add twenty points to our thirty before sundown, you know.”
“Oh, I hope you make it!” said Bruce ardently. “I’ve been worried ever since the Syndicate crowd beat in the altitude work.”
“Beat! who’s—beat! what?” almost shouted Hiram, becoming vociferous, and looking wrathful. “Mr. Brackett and Dave are saying little and thinking a good deal. They may talk out when the governing committee passes on the prizes. I’m doing some guessing myself, and I’d give all I’m worth to see one man for just one minute, and that’s Mr. Borden.”
“Aha!” cried Bruce—“got a secret yourself, have you?”
“Never mind if I have. It isn’t the time to talk about it just yet,” retorted Hiram mysteriously. “I’ve got some common sense, though, and lots of confidence in the word of Dave Dashaway. You heard what he told us about that altitude climate. It nearly finished him, even with that new oxygen device aboard. He was soaked, frozen, exhausted when he landed, wasn’t he? And Valdec wasn’t even damp! Again, Dave says he never caught sight of the Whirlwind over the 7,000 foot level. There’s another county to hear from!” concluded Hiram, “and I’ve got something under my hat.”
“What, Hiram?” asked Bruce, but his comrade only laughed, and walked off to greet Mr. Brackett and Dave, who, at that moment, approached the hangar.
The mail bag delivery contest was one of several set for that day. There were only five entries, the Scout being among the number. Neither Dave nor Valdec were listed as principals, but one of the Syndicate machines had been entered.
It was in the Scout that its pilot had done his practicing and the Ariel was not called into service. A crew of two was apportioned to each machine competing and Dave of course was to take charge of the wheel.
“Looks like a game of basket ball,” remarked Hiram as they drove the Scout over to center field.
The grounds had a two mile circular track, being used on other occasions for motor contests. Around this, and at each corner of the grounds, poles twenty feet high had been set up. At the top of the poles were woven baskets about two feet deep and double that width at their flanging tops.
Poles and baskets were painted white and were conspicuous to the eye for a long distance. There were some twenty-five of these improvised postal stations. That number of bags was put in the cockpit of each machine. Each set was marked with a numeral, those on the Scout bearing the Brackett entrant number, which was five.
The bags had been furnished by the city post office people, were about two by four feet and filled each with twenty pounds of newspapers and old envelopes. The time limit on the stunt was one hour.
“It’s going to be interesting,” Mr. Brackett remarked to Bruce Beresford, who with him occupied an advantageous stall near the central stand.
“The crowd seems to think so,” replied Bruce. “It’s something new, and nearly everybody has a score card.”
Bruce himself was prepared to keep “tab” on the mail deliveries. One, three, five, nine and eleven were in commission, and the machines were sufficiently varied in construction and appearance to enable even a novice to identify them separately when in operation. There was valor and confidence in Hiram’s last hand wave.
“I hope the lad makes his points,” spoke Mr. Brackett.
“It will break his heart if he doesn’t,” declared Bruce. “Why shouldn’t he, though? He’s ahead of the rest of them on practicing, and he’s got an expert pilot in his machine.”
“There’s a hit!” cried a voice near them, and necks were craned and eyes strained to watch a leather bag go tumbling over the edge of aeroplane number three. It landed directly on the basket aimed at—and the crowds yelled at this first sample of a new feature in aviatics.
“What’s wrong?” inquired a curious voice.
The guard stationed under the basket where the mail bag had fallen had stepped slightly away from his post. He had unfurled and was waving a blue flag.
“It doesn’t count,” guessed Bruce readily. “The machine must have been under the low level.”
A great laugh next swept the mob of onlookers. The Syndicate biplane had sent down a bag aimed at another basket. It went so far wide of its mark that it landed on the shoulders of a “White Wings” man thirty feet away, knocking off his hat and sending him scampering as though a bomb had struck him.
“Hiram—good—one!” suddenly yelled Bruce.
“You mean two,” remarked Mr. Brackett quietly a minute later, but with a slight chuckle of satisfaction.
The Scout had made two deliveries into different baskets true as a die. Unlike any of the others, the little machine sailed high, and as it approached a delivery point described a swift swoop. So true were the calculations of Dave Dashaway, that, directly at the turn of the volplane Hiram let loose the mail bag, counting on a forward sway of several feet in the descent.
“Ah—missed! but it hit the edge of the basket,” reported Bruce. Then the fourth one landed directly within its intended receptacle.
There were generally cheers for the Scout, even when Hiram missed on three deliveries. These, however, never dropped more than five feet away from the base of the pole, while some of the other contestants saw their mail bags go half a hundred feet from the goal.
“Seventy mail bags delivered, only thirteen not gone foul, and the Scout scores seven of them,” cried Bruce, half an hour later. “There’s a dive for you—oh, grand!”
Three of the contestants with a decidedly poor showing retired from the field, among them the Syndicate entrant. Nine kept aloft, with three deliveries to its score.
It seemed as though Dave and Hiram were husbanding their strength for a final brilliant exploit. The Scout took a backward swing of nearly a mile. Then at full speed its pilot headed it down the last side of the long track.
“Eight, nine and ten—oh, they’ve made it!” shouted the delighted Bruce Beresford. “Thirty and twenty are fifty. Mr. Brackett, we’re even now with the Whirlwind people!”