Buck, standing by the editor’s side, began nervously to look over the galley slips. Some were yet damp. The more experienced eyes of the older man detected Winton’s story of the Airship Boys. Extracting it from the bundle he passed the other slips back to the reporter and gave his own attention to Winton’s “insert.”
“The Airship Boys,” the story began, “now known everywhere in America, are not unknown in Europe. Ned Napier and Alan Hope, who first attracted attention under this pseudonym, are Chicago products. Robert Russell, who, from constant association with Napier and Hope, is now generally reckoned as the third of the trio who have gained fame under that title, is the oldest of the three and hails from Kansas City, where for some time he was a reporter on the Comet.
“The greatest achievement of Napier, Hope and Russell was the creation, elaboration and institution of a system of aerial navigation which resulted in the present Chicago-New York air line.”
“I see that one of these young men, Russell, is a newspaper man,” commented the editor, lifting his tortoise-shell nose glasses inquiringly.
“Yes, sir,” answered Buck, “and a good one, I guess. Winton knows him. Met him in New York last summer when Russell and Napier and Hope were here floating the New York-Chicago airship line—the Universal Transportation Company. You remember the ‘Flying Cow’ mystery, sir?”
“And these are the youngsters?” exclaimed the editor with new illumination, replacing his glasses and resuming his reading.
“Napier,” Winton’s account continued, “is the son of a Chicago lawyer—now dead—who was an amateur aeronaut. The father became interested in dirigible balloons about four years ago and contracted to make one for an amusement park. The father dying before the completion of the contract, his son Ned assumed it, finished the craft and then undertook to operate the balloon. Through a series of adventures he attracted the public eye and his career began.
“Early in the following year Napier and a chum, Alan Hope—a lad of mathematical turn—were employed by an ex-army officer, Major Baldwin Honeywell, to construct a large balloon—one capable of a five-day flight—for the purpose of locating a hidden Aztec temple in Navajo land in Arizona. In this adventure Robert Russell, then representing the Kansas City Comet, joined the boys and when the details of this highly interesting, novel and profitable project reached the public the title of the ‘Airship Boys’ was coined by the newspapers.
“It was in this flight over the mountains and desert that liquefied hydrogen was used for inflation purposes, probably for the first time. Although the big balloon used at this time was left in the mountains it was rescued later by a second expedition organized in the same year. At this time young Napier and Hope encountered one of their most marvelous adventures. While they were attempting to ascend from one of the mesas of Navajo land, their balloon was caught in an aerial maelstrom, swept westward to the Pacific Ocean and finally wrecked on a water-logged derelict lumber vessel. On this, within ten days, the young aeronauts turned aviators by constructing an aeroplane out of the remnants of the car of their dirigible balloon.”
Buck had what proofs he could find of his story and stood waiting but the managing editor leaned a little further toward his desk light and continued to read.