He had been a harmless old coot, although a nuisance. Well, when the bombing was broached, he set to work, and figured out a scheme to carry bombs, each bomb to be hung under an individual balloon which was to be filled with poison gas. Then there was some magnetic idea which would make the bomb and the balloon go straight for the battleship attracted by the steel in it. When the bomb hit, the balloon would burst and spread poison gas all over. The only thing he hadn’t figured out was what would become of the pilot, except that he might jump into the middle of the ocean in a parachute.
This old bird was very patriotic, offering all his nutty ideas to the Government free and clear. Now comes the hitch. A soldier of fortune, named Gimbel, and reputedly—I never met him—a very keen, unscrupulous and strong-minded person, had attached himself to this old gentleman and worked him for a fairly comfortable living, suggesting newer and nuttier ideas and pretending to help him work on them at a comfortable salary.
The old boy trusted him a good deal, and was pretty strongly under the sway of said Gimbel. Gimbel had decided, evidently, that he wanted a big piece of change all in a lump, instead of putting up with the vagaries of the old boy for merely a stipend, so to speak. So he’d worked on the old boy’s mind, helping him become convinced that there was a deep laid plot to keep the Government from taking advantage of this priceless method of bombing.
The inventor was absolutely certain, finally, that the Government was in the hands of traitors who were working deliberately to make the bombing tests a failure, or at least, not as successful as they could be. The Martin factory, Gimbel convinced him, had bribed high Government officials to make them turn down his invention so that they could sell a lot of very expensive ships.
Then Gimbel convinced him that, in view of the fine patriotic motives behind the scheme, it would be a good thing to get rid of the factory entirely, thus at one and the same time getting rid of a big business which was working against the country for their own ends, and forcing the country to use the balloons and bombs of the inventor, which, of course, would be tremendously successful.
Gimbel patriotically offered to burn the Martin factory, or in some way stop the use of Martins in the tests, for a consideration of three hundred thousand dollars to be paid him because of the risk. The old boy fell for it and, when the thing was broken up, was actually working about fifty men getting the magnetic apparatus ready, and had sent a letter to a prominent rubber company in Akron, warning them to be ready to furnish the Government at least thirty free balloons at a month’s notice.
Gimbel, hot after the three hundred grand, had decided to carry on after the failure of his attempt to ignite the factory in Cleveland. He had assured the old boy that the wrecks in Boundville had been due to the rotten construction of the Martins, and did not plan to let him realize what he was actually doing.
You can see, by the methods used, how easy it would be to ruin enough ships en route, without being caught, they figured, to cause the bombing to be a bust that year. And that meant Gimbel’s three hundred thousand. He had got the aged millionaire so completely non compos mentis that the poor old man considered it a holy crusade for the good of the country.
The way Gimbel was operating was this:
Two men had drifted to the field at Boundville, without anybody seeing them, chatted with Marston, and then suggested some coffee. They had doped it, so Marston slept like the dead and they came back and filed the wires. In the gang Gimbel had collected—three men, it appeared—there was one flyer. In some way they were informed when I left Cleveland—that would be simple enough—and their plan of shooting me down was a very good one.