“See if I can’t run my wheels through his prop. Hang on.”
“Won’t that wreck your landing gear?”
“We’ll have to take a chance on that. If it does we’ll get down someway. Are you game?”
“Go ahead,” said the inspector grimly. “I’ll try it once. There may not be a second time.”
“I’ll get you down all in one piece,” grinned Tim. Then he turned to the job at hand.
McDowell was just a little above them and about a thousand feet ahead. Gunning the motor hard, Tim climbed above their quarry and with the motor on full, dove headlong for the biplane. McDowell must have sensed what was in Tim’s mind for he stood up in his cockpit and took deliberate aim with the automatic. Bullets plunked into the wing of the monoplane, but Tim kept on. Prentiss’s rifle was silent for the moment for at that angle he was unable to fire.
Down they dropped like an eagle after its prey. McDowell dove back into the cockpit just as the monoplane crashed down on him, the wheels of the ship above almost raking his head. Tim steeled himself for the expected crash as the propeller of the biplane bit into the landing gear but it did not come. By some trick of magic which Tim would never know McDowell dropped the biplane down almost ten feet at the last moment. Or perhaps fate had taken a hand and the ship had struck an air pocket. At any rate the monoplane sped on overhead and McDowell was safe again.
“What happened?” asked Prentiss.
Tim shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe the biplane hit rough air and dropped. I thought surely we had him that time.”
The motor coughed, rapped out a few more revolutions, and then died.