Owen was a good motorcycle rider, but a very poor mechanic. His machine had been adjusted, cleaned and kept in repair by the Marvin chauffeur, and the secretary had seldom, cause to investigate it on the road. He had always used the carefully filtered gasoline from the garage, so that he neither understood the present alarming symptoms nor knew their simple cure. His motor was protesting at a drop of water which had entered the needle valve of his carburetor and, being heavier than gasoline, had lodged there and stopped its flow. It would have been an easy, matter to drain the carburetor, but instead Owen with nervous fingers adjusted everything he could get his hands on, and after two hours' work trundled it into a farmhouse and hired the farmer to drive him the short remaining distance to the aviation field.
Several machines were in the air, but not the Frenchman's, when the farmer drove up. The roads and the edges of the field were alive with cars and spectators as the secretary hastened to the "hangars." The French aviator welcomed Owen and inquired for the mademoiselle. This confirmed Owen's fears that something had happened to her on the way. It had troubled him a little that the runabout had not passed him on the road, but Harry might have made a detour to avoid some section of bad road.
Owen lost another hour in watching and worrying before he made up his mind to go to the rescue. There were plenty of idle cars, but it was not easy to hire one, as they were mostly guarded by chauffeurs with no right to rent or lend them. At last a man was found who was willing to pick up $10 and take a chance that his master would not know about it.
The rescue car found them just where they had stopped, half way up the hill. Pauline had run the scale of feminine annoyance, from silence to sarcasm, to tears. The tears produced almost the same effect on Harry's determination to keep Pauline from flying that the drops of water had in Owen's carburetor. The spectacle of the girl he loved weeping had almost broken up his resolve when Owen dashed by, shouted, turned around and drew up alongside.
Harry asked for help, and the chauffeur who had never had the pleasure of tinkering with a "Marvin Six," was inclined to dismount and aid at least in diagnosing the car's ailment. While he was thinking about it and surveying the parts which Harry had taken out and strewn about the running board in his pretended trouble hunt Pauline had dashed away her tears and transferred her pretty self to the new car. Pauline and Owen both knew there was barely time to reach the field before the Frenchman's ascent. So with scanty farewells Harry was left to reassemble his car. When he had set up the last nut he replaced the little plug in the tank, produced a can of gasoline from the locker behind the seats, emptied it into his tank and drove at reckless speed for the aviation grounds.
He was just in time to see a tiny speck on the edge of the horizon. This, he learned, was the Frenchman's machine. He was told that it carried a passenger. The speck grew rapidly in size, developed the insect shape of a biplane and soon seemed to be over the other end of the aviation field. The young man's joy at seeing the aeroplane returning in safety was dampened by a little feeling of shame that by such devious means he had almost spoiled Pauline's pleasure.
"I act like an old woman worrying Polly this way," he decided. "No wonder she is cross to me lately. She must think I would be a tyrant of a—"
Harry's last words were choked by a spasm of the throat.
There were shouts and gestures from the spectators.
A light gust of wind had struck the aeroplane on the right wing. It wavered an instant, like a dragon fly about to alight, and then instead of responding to the aviator's levers turned on its left side and plunged to the ground. A cloud of dust arose, half hiding the wreck, and then the crash of impact came to his ears.