The Courtney Entry

by Max Hennessy

  ‘Instrument board lights, Ira,’ Woolff said, striking a line through a note he’d made. ‘Suppose we have a circuit failure? Nothing big but enough to stop you seeing your instruments.’

  ‘How about a torch?’

  ‘I’ll get a couple at the five-and-dime.’

  ‘I guess we can still afford something better than that,’ Alix said. ‘I’ll buy ’em.’

  ‘OK.’ Woolff glanced down at his notes again. ‘That miniature radio Loerner came up with.’ He grinned. ‘I looked into it. The guy’s a crank.’

  ‘I thought he might be,’ Ira said.

  Woolff shrugged. ‘So do we carry a radio?’ he asked. ‘Byrd’s got one. He’s even got a waterproof one as well in case they ditch, and a kite to carry the aerial, and an automatic sending device in case they’re all knocked unconscious.’

  ‘He’s also got a distiller in case they run out of water,’ Ira pointed out. ‘And three weeks’ rations in case they’re in the sea that long. Let’s concentrate on the possibilities of flying, not ditching. But since we’re on the subject, how about getting a rope net put over the rubber raft? If we do have to go in, it’ll be like trying to scramble aboard an eel.’

  ‘OK.’ Woolff’s pencil moved across his notebook, then he looked up. ‘How about getting the Dixie from Curtiss Field to Roosevelt Field for the take-off?’

  ‘Fly it,’ Alix said at once.

  Woolff looked dubious. ‘It’d waste a lot of time,’ he said. ‘We’d have to wait for daylight and we couldn’t risk flying her with the tanks full. We’d have to fill her up after she arrived. It’d delay us.’

  ‘What’s the alternative?’ Ira asked. ‘We can’t taxi her across. There’s a bank in the way and, loaded, she’d burn the engine out, anyway.’

  Woolff rubbed his nose. ‘It’s only a little bank,’ he said. ‘We could make it if we were careful. We could maybe arrange a tow and manhandle her up the bank. It’d save waiting for daylight.’

  Ira nodded. ‘Sounds sense,’ he said. ‘Let’s look into that, Hal.’

  ‘OK.’ Woolff made another tick on his pad. ‘When do we check the compasses, by the way? The Pioneer man, Goldsborough, says he’s ready any time.’

  ‘Let’s make it this afternoon. We’ll check the carburettor heater at the same time.’

  As Woolff sat back, Sammy looked up. ‘Mail,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘There was a bloke here yesterday offering a thousand dollars for us to carry a bag of letters to Paris. Stamped “First Atlantic Flight” or something. He says they’ll be worth a fortune in a year or two’s time.’

  ‘Providing we make it,’ Ira pointed out dryly. ‘How much do they weigh?’

  ‘He said around a pound.’

  ‘Seems reasonable. Who gets the money?’

  ‘You do,’ Alix said. ‘I checked with Lave Boyle. Newspapers and book publishers’ll be falling over themselves for the story, too, and there’ll be prizes from oil companies and fees for goodwill tours and personal appearances. You could make two hundred and fifty thousand dollars with luck.’

  Ira chuckled. ‘Let’s make it two hundred and fifty-one and then we can take over some of the money you’ve invested. Tell him we’ll take a limited number, Sammy.’

  Sammy nodded and glanced down at his notebook. ‘Another bloke,’ he said. ‘Yesterday. Rang to see if we’d be photographed in front of a cigarette advert. To advertise the cigarette. They’re willing to pay a lot of money.’

  ‘Do we smoke ’em?’

  ‘No. But he said it didn’t matter.’

  ‘How about Byrd’s offer of his runway?’ Woolff asked. ‘He said that we could have the same facilities as the Bellanca people.’

  ‘I’ll go and see him and thank him. We might be glad of it.’

  ‘Fine,’ Woolff nodded. ‘How about his ramp? He says they’re having one to give ’em a flying start.’

  Ira grinned. ‘Sounds about as safe as detachable undercarriages. Let’s leave it.’ He pushed at his notebook, frowning. ‘I still wish we could have had the fuel tank forward of the pilot’s seat,’ he said slowly.

  ‘You couldn’t,’ Sammy pointed out. ‘How would you see?’

  ‘This Ryan they’re building in San Diego’s supposed to have its tank forward,’ Ira said. ‘Chamberlin heard they were going to fly it with a periscope.’

  Sammy gave a derisive snort. ‘You can’t fly an aeroplane with no forward view!’

  ‘No,’ Ira said thoughtfully. ‘Not unless you’ve thought of a way of doing it first.’

  * * *

  The discussion finished, they set about deciding their final route. They removed all the superfluous paper from the charts and glued them together in a long sheet so that they could simply unroll them as they progressed across the Atlantic from west to east. Their efforts to draw a weather chart proved more difficult, however, because the information they were able to collect about the North Atlantic was erratic and none too reliable.

  Later in the day, Loerner arrived with a flood of mail, and Ira and Sammy began to compete with each other over the offers of marriage.

  ‘One here,’ Sammy said, grinning, ‘that says if I won’t have her, will you?’

  Loerner also brought half a dozen showgirls with him and posed them in front of the Courtney. His stunts always seemed to lean far more heavily on girls than aviation.

  ‘Can they fly?’ Sammy asked, staring at them with interest.

  ‘Hell, no!’ Loerner gave him a pitying look. ‘But you’ve got to have girls! Everybody has girls! Who wants to look at a guy with spats and a fedora just because he’s an official of the Aeronautical Society. You have to be a live-wire in this game. People want legs. We need ballyhoo. Everybody else’s got ballyhoo. It can make a football player into a national figure. It lifted Babe Ruth to the level of the president. We don’t need less girls. We need more – together with a band and maybe some bathing beauties in one-piece suits.’

  None of the girls he produced knew anything about aeroplanes, however, and most of them couldn’t have cared less. Only one of them, by the name of Mae Minter, showed enough interest to want to look inside the engine and watched while Sammy struggled to get a screwdriver round an awkward corner.

  ‘Try a nail file,’ she suggested, digging into her handbag. ‘My Pa was a mechanic. He often used one.’

  When the suggestion worked, Sammy pocketed the file and promptly made a date with her.

  ‘She’s bright, Ira,’ he said. ‘Reads books.’ He grinned. ‘I once read a book myself.’ He looked sideways at Ira. ‘She’s got a friend,’ he said. ‘How about it? There’ll be flying tomorrow.’

  Unfortunately the friend wasn’t in the same class as Mae Minter for intelligence, and when she claimed to know a restaurant where they wouldn’t be recognised she turned out to be over-optimistic, too. As they emerged on to the wet streets a flash-gun popped at once.

  ‘Romance, Captain?’ the photographer yelled. ‘What happened to Alix Courtney?’

  Their pictures were in the tabloids the following morning, cut down and rearranged in a more cosy grouping and, somewhat surprisingly, it brought Alix Courtney down to the field in a hurry. They were bending over the desk in the office when she appeared, going through the demands for autographs and photographs, and the offers of advice, business propositions, religious tracts and bibles.

  She threw the paper on to the desk, her face white, and Ira stared down at his own face with that of Sammy and the two showgirls outside the restaurant.

  ‘If we’ve got to have publicity,’ she said harshly, ‘we might as well have good publicity.’

  Ira looked up at her, saying nothing, and her face reddened and twisted bitterly.

  ‘I’ll go if I embarrass you,’ she snapped.

  He got to his feet quickly and, pushing her into a chair, thrust a cigarette at her. The anger died out of her face abruptly, to be replaced by a desperate appeal that made her look like a schoolgirl suddenly.

&nbs
p; ‘Did you enjoy your night out?’ she asked in a low voice, her eyes not meeting his.

  ‘No,’ Ira said.

  Sammy looked indignant, but before he could protest, Ira went on. ‘It just happened,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t planned. The photographers did the rest.’

  She gave a shrug, changing step quickly. ‘Damn newspapermen,’ she said. ‘Give ’em a chance, they’ll louse everything up.’

  She fiddled clumsily with her cigarette. ‘It didn’t matter,’ she went on, a shade unconvincingly. ‘I didn’t come down here because of that.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. I thought you’d like to hear I’ve got a buyer for your story.’ She paused, then she continued in a brittle, unsteady voice, her arrogance melting to unhappiness: ‘Loerner wanted to sell to one of the respectable dailies Lave Boyle favoured. I went to the tabloids. They’ll pay you six thousand, which is a hell of a lot more than Loerner was offered. I got Lave to fix a contract for you.’

  ‘Win or lose?’ Ira asked with a smile.

  She gave him a quick, scared look. ‘Win or lose,’ she agreed.

  ‘So long as I survive.’

  She stared at him, her face expressionless, then she closed her eyes exhaustedly. ‘So long as you survive,’ she said, rising and pushing the chair back abruptly. ‘And that’s really all that matters.’

  Sammy gazed after her as the door closed, then he looked at Ira. ‘You know, old lad,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘she’d eat out of your hand if you wanted her to.’

  Ira shrugged, already only too well aware of the dangerous currents of emotion that ran so violently through Alix Courtney, and Sammy went on hotly.

  ‘You think being the owner makes her different?’ he demanded.

  ‘Not different. Just more complicated.’

  Ira glanced through the window to where Alix was stalking in her long stride across the hangar floor. As she pushed through a group of mechanics standing in the doorway, a man in an overcoat and hat spoke to her, but she brushed past him as though she hadn’t even seen him.

  ‘She’s got it bad,’ Sammy pointed out. ‘She’s in love. It’s pretty simple.’

  Ira shook his head. ‘She’s as simple as Lucrezia Borgia,’ he said. ‘Come off it, Sammy. You make her sound as frail as a pressed rose. She knows flying and she’s as tough as Old Nick’s nag nails.’

  Sammy snorted. ‘Women are never that tough,’ he said shortly.

  He turned back to his work and there was an awkward silence in the office for a while, then the door opened and the man they’d seen in the hangar stood in the entrance, smiling at them. It was a moment or two before Ira’s frown vanished.

  ‘Cluff!’ he said.

  Sammy looked up, his eyes smouldering. His glance was clearly intended to turn the newcomer into Lot’s wife there and then. He’d always insisted Ira had taken the wrong partner in Africa and he’d never forgiven Cluff for the indifference that had ruined their first venture into business and the insistence on his share of what was left that had almost beggared them.

  Cluff stepped into the office, his expression embarrassed, and Ira noticed that his too-good-looking features had thickened a little, as though he’d been drinking a lot. He had a double chin now and his blond hair had suddenly begun to thin, and somehow there was a look about him of a man who had not found life easy. He’d never been a very determined or resourceful man and the old machines and tenuous finances with which they’d tried to run their airline in Africa had persuaded him that hanging on by the skin of the teeth wasn’t much of a life.

  ‘Hello, Ira,’ he said. ‘They told me I’d find you here.’

  Sammy had risen to his feet now, his face unrelenting, and Cluff pushed the conversation along awkwardly.

  ‘I never thought when I walked out on you,’ he said, ‘that I was walking out on two chaps who were going to be famous.’

  ‘We’ve a long way to go before that,’ Ira pointed out. ‘Three thousand six hundred miles to be exact.’

  Sammy’s eyes, still hostile, were on Cluff. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he said.

  Cluff turned to Sammy, whose expression indicated that he expected the meeting to affect his pocket, and his mouth twisted in an embarrassed grin. ‘There was nothing much in England so when I married Dulcie we went to Canada. There wasn’t much in Canada either, though, so I went back to flying. Up in the north. But it was too bloody cold. If you didn’t drain the oil within five minutes of landing, nothing on God’s green earth would get you off before spring. Ira, I want to ask you a favour.’

  Knowing Cluff’s nature, Ira half-expected it to be a request for a loan.

  ‘When I saw your name in the paper,’ Cluff went on, ‘I thought it couldn’t possibly be you because the last I saw of you, you were wondering how to pay the bills.’ He paused, glancing at him. ‘Look, let’s go and find a hot dog stand. Somewhere we can talk.’

  They drove unwillingly to the airfield diner and Ira noticed that Cluff allowed them to pay for the coffee without argument.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘What’s the mystery?’

  Cluff grinned. ‘Ira, I’m going to have a shot at the Atlantic, too.’

  Sammy’s sudden movement slopped coffee to the table, and he began to dab it up with a rag from his pocket.

  ‘You are?’ Ira said.

  ‘You think I could?’

  It didn’t require a second’s thought for Ira to doubt it. Cluff had never had the patience to plan anything well. Nevertheless, married, he might have changed, and Ira answered cautiously.

  ‘Maybe you could,’ he said. ‘If you worked at it hard enough.’

  Cluff gestured. ‘Dulcie’s in it with me. And I’ve got a Canadian engineer called Pelletan. We’ve all put every cent we’ve got into it.’

  Sammy had hardly spoken until now, and as he stuffed his rag away, he studied Cluff for a long time, his eyes contemplative.

  ‘You know what you’re doing, I suppose?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Cluff grinned. ‘It’s make or break, this time, Sammy.’

  ‘What you got?’

  Cluff gave an embarrassed smile. ‘Well, she was a Bréguet but I’d call her more of a Pelletan-Cluff now. She had no engine so we made modifications and rebuilt her to save money. We got a second-hand Hispano-Suiza motor.’

  ‘You’d be better with a new one,’ Sammy grunted.

  ‘It’s not done many hours,’ Cluff shrugged. ‘And we couldn’t afford a new one. It took nine thousand dollars to build her – everything we could scrape up.’

  ‘When are you planning to take off?’ Ira asked.

  Cluff made a self-deprecatory gesture. ‘That’s what I want to see you about, Ira. We’ve got nothing arranged for weather reports.’

  ‘Why don’t you see the Bureau here? They’re helpful.’

  ‘We’re too far away.’

  ‘How in God’s name have you managed to keep it from the press?’

  Cluff grinned. ‘Most of the preparations were done in Canada. Up in the wilds. The press aren’t quite the same there as they are here. When they did enquire, we put ’em off with a story that we were developing a mail plane.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Pelletan’s got an uncle here, farming. He’s got a bit of money.’

  ‘Well, that’s something. You need money.’

  Cluff grinned. ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘he’s no millionaire and we’ve gone as far as we can go.’

  Ira studied him warily. ‘Are you in need of money?’

  Cluff grinned. ‘Always,’ he said. ‘But you needn’t look like a frightened stag. I don’t want it from you. We’ve got enough, even if we’ve none to spare. We’ve done all we have to do. We’re proposing to start at Newburgh, fly down here and pass over New York, and then on out to the Atlantic. That way it keeps it quieter. We flew her down from Toronto in one hop.’

  ‘How far?’ Sammy asked.

  Cluff moved uncomfortably inside his clothes. ‘Nothing
really,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that trip you did from San Antonio. It’s only three hundred and eighty miles or thereabouts.’

  ‘Didn’t you check?’

  ‘We haven’t got around to worrying about that yet. We’re not ready. We need another week or two.’

  Something in the way Cluff was talking worried Ira. ‘Cluffy,’ he said. ‘Do you realise what you’re taking on?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I wonder if you do. You’re proposing to fly three thousand six hundred miles in a machine that’s only done three hundred and eighty so far.’

  ‘No!’ Cluff gestured. ‘We flew her from Quebec to Winnipeg, and Winnipeg to Toronto. Two legs – six hundred and fifty and five hundred and fifty. She gave us no trouble.’

  ‘It’s still not much,’ Sammy said.

  ‘It’s make or break,’ Cluff said again, and they sensed there was a touch of desperation behind his words.

  ‘What can she lift?’ Sammy asked. ‘What fuel load?’

  ‘Ton and a half. We worked it out.’

  ‘I hope you did. It’s a fine point of balance.’

  Cluff smiled, a sad lonely smile. ‘I think we did,’ he said. He gestured with his coffee cup. ‘I never thought I’d see you over here. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read your names. But I knew there couldn’t be two people with a name as potty as Ira Abel Penaluna.’

  Ira stared at him. ‘Look, you haven’t come out with it yet,’ he said. ‘What’s it all about? Why did you come and see me?’

  Cluff gestured. ‘Well, there’s no need to spread it across the face of the newspapers,’ he said. ‘But I know you and Sammy are pretty hot stuff as a team. I wondered if you’d come out and give my bus a try for me.’

  Ira put his cup down. ‘It’s out of the question, Cluffy,’ he said firmly. ‘You must know that. I’m under contract to the Courtneys. I can’t go around testing the opposition’s machines for ’em.’

  Cluff smiled. He seemed to smile a lot these days, as though he’d got used to smiling to get the things he needed.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I see that. I didn’t really expect you could. But there’s nothing to stop you coming out and looking at it, is there? I mean, I know you’ve had a look at Byrd’s plane and Byrd’s had a look at yours. There’s no harm in giving it the once-over, is there?’