by John Blaine
Rick looked down at it. “I’ll bet anything that sign said ‘Smoke’ yesterday,” he said. He pointed to the gray car he had seen just to the left of the barn. “It must have been changed. But why?”
“It’s their sign; they can change it if they like,” Scotty said grinning.
“Yes, but why from ‘Smoke’ to ‘Drink’? It doesn’t make sense. And what is ‘White Cream,’ anyway?”
“Maybe a soft drink, maybe a cigar,” Scotty shrugged. “Maybe both. Don’t ask me; I’m as confused as you are.”
TheWhitesideAirport was under their wings now. Rick banked into the wind and landed. They rolled up to his usual parking place next to the hangar.
Mac trotted up. “Gas?” he asked.
“Right. Where’s Gus?”
“Inside.” The mechanic reached for the gas hose as the boys walked into the hangar.
Gus was bent over the engine of a small plane that had been torn down for repair.
“Well, if it isn’t one of the Wright Brothers!” was Rick’s greeting.
Gus wiped his face and scowled good-naturedly. “Hello, fly-boy. Where to this time?”
“A little errand, soon as your hired hand fills the Cub.”
Gus looked out to where Mac was filling the tank. “He really goes for that baby of yours. He was giving it the once-over yesterday.”
“Sure,” Rick jibed. “After the broken-down kites you people see all day, it must be nice to have a real airplane around.” He walked back to the plane with Scotty. Mac had finished gassing it up and was standing near the tail.
“Like it, Mac?” Rick asked.
Mac jerked his head up. “Yeah, sure do. Wish I had one.” He turned and began stowing the gas hose.
“Let’s go, Scotty.” Rick started to climb into the cabin, but Scotty stopped him.
“Your tail door is open again,” he said.
The tail inspection port was slightly open. Rick went back and closed it, turning the catch with his pocket-knife. “It must be loose somewhere,” he remarked. “I’ll fix it when we get home.”
Scotty hung back as he climbed into the Cub. Rick looked at him questioningly.
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“I just remembered,” Scotty said. “I’m supposed to be a guard. I ought to be guarding instead of joy riding. Why don’t I pick up the groceries? I’ll get the stuff and phone Barby to pick me up in one of the boats. Then I’ll go home and sleep for a while before I go on watch.”
It was a sensible suggestion. “See you at home, then,” Rick said.
Gus walked from the hangar as they spoke. “Say, Mac didn’t get into your hair, did he? I took him up on leaving that inspection port open and he said he never touched it. I saw you close it again just now. I’ll tell him to lay off touching things that aren’t his.”
“Maybe he’s trying to hunt up repair jobs for you.” Rick grinned. “Turn it over, will you, Gus?”
The engine roared into life. Rick waved to Scotty and rolled down the strip for the take-off.
Once in the air, he pushed the little plane to slightly better than normal cruising speed. It wasn’t long before theNewarkAirport came in sight. He landed and took a taxi to Cotter’s, where he made his purchase.
“Well, one good thing, they don’t seem to use the same tricks twice,” Rick mused. “At least I could get the part.”
He hurried back to the airport, happy that he was making good time. After a short wait for instructions from theNewark tower, he was again in the air, flying toward Spindrift. The railroad below passed from the crowdedNewark district into flat farm lands. Rick glanced around at the scene rolling underneath the Cub’s sturdy wings. Off to the east, he caught a glimpse of ocean and swung toward it. His altimeter read three thousand feet.
Then something flashed past the corner of his eye. He turned just as a black biplane shot underneath him.
Rick banked away. “Crazy,” he muttered. “Does he want the whole sky to himself?”
The black plane was pulling up in a wild climb a thousand feet away. It was a strange model, with retractable landing gear, variable pitch propeller, and all the latest gadgets. Rick had often yearned for something like it, but that class of plane was surely in the neighborhood of twenty thousand dollars. He noticed the airplane registration number as it climbed and made a mental note of it.
“He must feel good,” Rick said admiringly. “He wants to play.”
The pilot had leveled off. Now he was doing snap rolls. As he came out of one, he pulled the biplane up in a tight vertical bank and Rick’s throat constricted in horror.
The black plane was diving right at his Cub!
Rick shoved the nose of his plane down, wincing as the black biplane screamed by so close that the Cub was tossed around in its prop blast. It vanished behind his tail and he flew straight and level, his scalp prickling. The black plane wasn’t through with him yet. He expected it to come roaring down past his nose, and he was waiting tensely, ready to fight the Cub back to level flight. If the bigger plane got too close, its prop blast would throw the Cub into a spin.
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But the black plane edged slowly into sight, throttled down to Rick’s own speed. He watched the blunt radial engine with its disk of propeller creep even with him. He saw the pilot, his face hidden by big goggles, motion with a gloved fist.
Rick couldn’t believe his eyes. The pilot was imperiously motioning him to land! He shook his head and waved the pilot away, warning him not to come nearer.
The black plane’s reply was to rock up on a wing and slide close, so close that it almost overlapped the tiny Cub. Rick slid away, sweat starting out on his face.
The strange pilot gestured again, then passed his hand across his throat. The motion said as plainly as though he had spoken: “Go down, or I’ll knock you down.”
Rick knew he could do it, too. The black plane could “spin him in” with hardly any danger to itself. If the pilot were desperate enough, he could take a bite out of Rick’s tail with his prop.
There was only one thing to do. Rick nodded acceptance of the order, then shrugged, indicating that he didn’t know where he was supposed to land. The pilot pointed ahead to a grassy stretch surrounded by woods, the only possible landing place in sight. Rick nodded again and put the Cub’s nose down.
As his altimeter slowly spun around to fifteen hundred feet, then a thousand, he searched frantically for a way out. The black plane was riding slightly behind him and to the right, in position to flash across his nose at the slightest wrong move.
The strange pilot was flying at near-stalling speed, Rick knew. The biplane was a fast job, with a top speed of over two hundred miles an hour. He estimated quickly. The black plane, being heavier and faster, would take longer to turn, or longer to pull out of a dive.
Rick wiped perspiration from his forehead. He had a plan. He thought it would work, but he wasn’t too sure about it.
He glued his eyes to the terrain ahead. The flat land had given way to rolling wooded country. That much was in his favor. A glance at the altimeter showed him that he had five hundred feet. The black plane was edging closer, the pilot motioning toward the clearing ahead.
Rick suddenly put the Cub’s nose down. Trees flashed up to meet him. He held the dive as long as he dared, then pulled out, praying that the wings would stay on. The small plane wasn’t stressed for diving.
When he leveled off, his wheels were almost brushing the treetops. He turned his head and caught a glimpse of the black plane vanishing behind his tail. Then he looked straight ahead and concentrated grimly on escaping.
Unless the strange pilot were completely insane, he would never try to dive on the Cub when it was flying at treetop height. The bigger plane would not be able to pull out in time.
Rick kept as close to the ground as the trees allowed, taking advantage of every dip in the terrain. At one time he saw the black plane flash overhead and he had to fight to keep the Cub’s wings level as turbulent air rocked the
m. But as the miles flowed underneath, he began to breathe easier. As long as he stayed near the ground, he was reasonably safe. Evidently the strange pilot valued his neck too much to try tricks without sufficient altitude.
Rick had read of war pilots “hedgehopping” to bomb an enemy, or to strafe, but he didn’t know that he Page 40
had effectively copied a device used by light-plane pilots to escape from fast enemy fighters.
SpindriftIslandloomed across the treetops, the most welcome sight Rick had ever seen. The black plane flew past, a good fifty feet higher than he, and the pilot shook his fist, then banked away.
Rick gave a deep, grateful sigh. The stranger had given up the chase; he was safe.
In a few moments the Cub was secure on the grass strip at the edge of the island. Rick sat perfectly still for a full minute, trying to gain control of his unsteady nerves. Finally he reached with shaking hand for the package he had obtained at Cotter’s and climbed out. As he did so, he looked up. The sky was empty.
“Now what did he want with me?” he asked himself. “He was trying to force me down for something.”
He looked at the package in his hand. “Not for this. They could get one at any electronics store.” He shook his head hopelessly and turned toward the house.
As he reached the gravel path, he saw Scotty.
“What’s up?” Rick called.
“Everything’s quiet,” Scotty answered, reaching his side. “How did you do?”
“Not so quiet,” Rick said grimly. “Our playmates came up in the sky after me this time I”
Scotty’s mouth fell open. As they headed toward the laboratory Rick gave him a swift summary of what had happened.
“Listen, this is getting serious,” Scotty said. “We’d better do something, get some help!”
They stopped in front of the laboratory and Rick’s voice fell to a whisper. “Help? From whom? We don’t know whom we can trust here, and my father won’t be back for a couple of days.”
“How about the police?”
Rick looked at him sidewise. “Do you think they’d take us seriously after that shields thing? Nope.
We’re on our own, Scotty.”
He walked into the laboratory, saw Zircon and String-fellow at work, and handed the package to the thin scientist.
“What I can’t figure out is why they wanted to force me down,” he said when he rejoined Scotty.
“It beats me,” Scotty agreed. “Unless you had something in the plane that they wanted.”
“But what? Not that coil. They could get one anywhere.”
They walked in silence for a few steps. Then Rick suggested, “Let’s go down to the plane.”
“I should think you’d have had your fill of that thing for today,” Scotty said.
“I want to look at that tail-assembly inspection port,” Rick remarked.
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As they reached the Cub’s side, Rick walked directly to the little door in the tail and opened it. He slammed it hard to see if it would bounce open, but it stayed fast.
“Nothing loose about that thing,” Scotty commented.
Rick scratched his head. “Funny,” he said. “There’d be no reason for anyone to open that purposely.”
Scotty examined the door. “What’s it for?”
Rick started back toward the house. “It’s there so you can inspect the cables in the tail assembly.”
“I thought that’s where you carried your lunch,” Scotty joked.
“By golly, it would be big enough to carry a lunch in at that,” Rick exclaimed. “Or something else!”
Scotty’s head snapped back toward the little door. “Something else!” he blurted. “What a pair of dopes we are. That’s it!” He dived toward the tail but Rick was there before him.
“Maybe,” Rick said, crossing his fingers. “Let’s see.” He pried the little door open and reached inside.
“I’ve got something!” he shouted.
In the next second he drew out a folded slip of paper.
“What is it?” Scotty exclaimed, leaping to his side.
Rick unfolded the paper with shaking fingers. “ ‘Two ... six ... eleven . . . nine,’” he read slowly. “The rest of the sheet looks just like it. A bunch of numbers.”
The boys stared at each other and then Rick let out a whoop. “It’s a message! The traitor has been using my plane to send code messages to his confederates on the mainland.”
CHAPTER X
A Message in Code
“Boy, what nerve this gang has,” Scotty marveled. “Using you to help wreck your dad’s experiment.”
“But how did they do it? Who picked up the messages on the mainland?”
The two boys stared at each other for a moment and the same thought leaped into their minds.
“Mac! That new attendant!”
“Yes,” Scotty said. “Didn’t Gus say he thought Mac was responsible for that door being open?”
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“He must be the one.”
“What’ll we do—decode this note, or call Gus and tell him to grab that Mac character?”
Rick looked at the coded note in his hand. “It’s Greek to me and it’ll take some time to make sense out of it. Let’s call Gus.”
They turned from the plane and ran full speed back to the house. In less than thirty seconds Rick heard the operator ringing theWhitesideAirport number.
“Gus here, who’s there?” he finally heard the mechanic say.
“Gus? This is Rick. Listen, where’s your new mechanic?”
“Hell be in jail, if I can get my hands on him!” Gus bellowed. “You know what he did? ACalifornia plane came in right after you left-a black biplane. I told Gus to service it while the pilot went into town for some chow-“
“And Mac stole the plane,” Rick said grimly. “Is that it?”
“How did you know?”
“He chased me and tried to force me down.”
Gus made harsh noises into the phone. “That’s one more thing, then. So help me, if I get that guy I’ll hang him with my own hands!”
“Did he bring the plane back?”
“Yeah. He landed and left it at the end of the runway and beat it into the woods. Did he hurt you, Rick?”
“He tried hard enough,” Rick said. “Listen, Gus, report him to the Civil Air people. My dad will file charges when he comes back.”
“Right,” Gus promised. “But I don’t get it. What did he want to force you down for?”
“Well ask him when we find him,” Rick said, and rang off.
He turned to Scotty. “Well, that solves that mystery.”
Scotty nodded. “He didn’t get the message out of the Cub, so he got panicky and stole that visiting plane.”
“His boss must be a tough customer for him to want to take a chance like that.”
“Boy, that was a clever trick,” Scotty said. “Planting a guy at the airport to pick up those notes every time you flew in. That’s how the traitor notified the gang to buy up all those tubes. And when you had to drive toNewark , they got their chance to do it.”
“Sure,” Rick answered. “And I’ll bet Mac was responsible for that blowout that delayed me, too. It would only have taken him a second to make a cut in the tire. I’ll have to ask Gus to look at it, to make Page 43
sure.”
“Well, no use crying over it,” Scotty remarked. “If we can decode this note, we may get him and the rest of the gang with him.”
Rick looked closely at the number-covered sheet. “I don’t know beans about codes,” he said. “How can we decipher this thing?”
“Your father has a large library. Would he have a book on cryptography?”
“On what?” Rick asked.
“Just one of my thousand-dollar words,” Scotty said, grinning. “Means the study of codes.”
“Say,” Rick nodded. “I do seem to remember a book like that. Come on.” He started for the library with Scotty close behind. They fo
und a heavy book titled Cryptography for the Student. For a half hour the two boys studied it, trying to find a code like the one on the paper Rick had found in his plane.
“No soap,” he said finally. “There isn’t a code anything like this in here.”
“Wait a minute!” Scotty exclaimed. “It seems to me when I was in the service I heard of a code-“ He stopped.
“Come on, come on!” Rick said. “Like this one, you mean?”
Scotty nodded thoughtfully. “Let me see. It was based on a book.”
“I don’t get it,” Rick said.
“Well,” Scotty began uncertainly. “With this code you choose a book-like the dictionary or something.
Then all your messages are written in numbers. The first number corresponds to the page, the second one to the position of the word on the page. Unless you know the book, you can’t break the code.”
Rick was not discouraged. “Whoever sent this message from the island here must have a copy of the book this code is based on. Why not look around?”
Scotty nodded and closed the book. The boys headed for the scientists’ quarters. No one seemed to be around. They decided to look in Zircon’s office first.
Rick had a strong feeling of guilt as he started searching. Scotty stood guard at the door, in case anyone happened along.
Books, hundreds of them, stared back from the shelves and the desks. It seemed useless even to begin a search, but he looked quickly through random volumes, hoping to discover something. As the last book was leafed through, he looked at Scotty, completely discouraged.
“There’s nothing here. Or maybe there is. I can’t tell.” He indicated the stacks of books. “It could be any one of them. All we can do is hope there’s something odd about the right one. Let’s take a look in Weiss’s office.”
In the little scientist’s room the prospects were even less encouraging.
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“Why do scientists read so much?” Rick complained. “There must be a hundred books in this one case.”
“And all in sets, too,” Scotty remarked, reaching for a book.
Rick began examining the titles. “Here’s a set of ten volumes on chemical reactions, and here’s another on thermodynamics. All sets.”