“Nothing very definite,” Scott informed him. “But I’ve gone over a lot of the dry ‘case-histories’ and I firmly believe that if somebody has done something wrong, he has to haunt and stay around the place.”
“Like a criminal ‘haunting’ the scene of his crime,” chuckled Don. “I’m surprised at you, Scott. I believe, in every case, if you could get to the bottom of it you’d find that the ghost is either produced by fraud, or else some perfectly natural things are misjudged——”
“Chick thought you were the sky spook,” broke in Garry.
“I believe that’s so in most of the cases,” Scott agreed. “But this time I think the ghost is restless, because he was careless in coming along through the clouds where he couldn’t see ahead far enough to be able to avoid other ships—and he may have caused the other ship to go down into the Sink. That makes his spirit hang around, and of course whenever it appears, it lives over all the terrible scenes of the smash!”
“But I just proved—” began Don.
“Yes, you proved that people can be mistaken,” Scott was serious. “You didn’t prove that any ship was near at the other times that pilots have claimed they saw the ghost.”
“One caught the fever from another,” argued Garry. “The first one saw something—or he tried to get out of culpability for carelessness in making his crack-up, by saying a spook put him out of control. The rest were all superstitious and the story got headway. The next pilot to see a flicker of Summer lightning and a bird flying or anything at all, was quick to twist it into a spectre, and come down to tell his story and give everybody chills and shivers.”
“I think we’ll soon find out,” Scott spoke quietly.
Surprised, the others clamored for his reason.
“This is just the sort of night that the three other pilots had, when they claimed to see the ghost of an airplane coming out of luminous clouds,” Scott stated. “It’s close, humid—storm-breeding July weather.