The crowd was collecting. Carl's manager chuckled to the president of the fair association, "Well, that was some flight, eh?"
"Oh, he went down the opposite side of the track pretty fast, but why the dickens was he so slow going up my side? My eyes ain't so good now that it does me any good if a fellow speeds up when he's a thousand miles away. And where's all these tricks in the air——"
"That," murmured Carl to his manager, "is the i-den-ti-cal man that stole the blind cripple's crutch to make himself a toothpick."
CHAPTER XXI
he great Belmont Park Aero Meet, which woke New York to aviation, in October, 1910, was coming to an end. That clever new American flier, Hawk Ericson, had won only sixth place in speed, but he had won first prize in duration, by a flight of nearly six hours, driving round and round and round the pylons, hour on hour, safe and steady as a train, never taking the risk of sensational banking, nor spiraling like Johnstone, but amusing himself and breaking the tedium by keeping an eye out on each circuit for a fat woman in a bright lavender top-coat, who stood out in the dark line of people that flowed beneath. When he had descended—acclaimed the winner—thousands of heads turned his way as though on one lever; the pink faces flashing in such October sunshine as had filled the back yard of Oscar Ericson, in Joralemon, when a lonely Carl had performed duration feats for a sparrow. That same shy Carl wanted to escape from the newspaper-men who came running toward him. He hated their incessant questions—always the same: "Were you cold? Could you have stayed up longer?"
Yet he had seen all New York go mad over aviation—rather, over news about aviation. The newspapers had spread over front pages his name and the names of the other fliers. Carl chuckled to himself, with bashful awe, "Gee! can you beat it?—that's me!" when he beheld himself referred to in editorial and interview and picture-caption as a superman, a god. He heard crowds rustle, "Look, there's Hawk Ericson!" as he walked along the barriers. He heard cautious predictions from fellow-fliers, and loud declarations from outsiders, that he was the coming cross-country champion. He was introduced to the mayor of New York, two Cabinet members, an assortment of Senators, authors, bank presidents, generals, and society rail-birds. He regularly escaped from them—and their questions—to help the brick-necked Hank Odell, from the Bagby School, who had entered for the meet, but smashed up on the first day, and ever since had been whistling and working over his machine and encouraging Carl, "Good work, bud; you've got 'em all going."
With vast secrecy and a perception that this was twice as stirring as steadily buzzing about in his Blériot, he went down to the Bowery and, in front of the saloon where he had worked as a porter four years before, he bought a copy of the Evening World because he knew that on the third page of it was a large picture of him and a signed interview by a special-writer. He peered into the saloon windows to see if Petey McGuff was there, but did not find him. He went to the street on which he had boarded in the hope that he might do something for the girl who had been going wrong. The tenement had been torn down, with blocks of others, to make way for a bridge-terminal, and he saw the vision of the city's pitiless progress. This quest of old acquaintances made him think of Joralemon. He informed Gertie Cowles that he was now "in the aviation game, and everything is going very well." He sent his mother a check for five hundred dollars, with awkward words of affection.