Master Tales of Mystery Part 69

"It's no use, I can't stand it," he said again. "I a.s.sure you that I could see the thing shaking, as it pa.s.sed overhead, in every stick and wire of it. It can't be safe! And there she is, five hundred feet high, with her life hanging on a thread."

"I a.s.sure you also, monsieur," I protested, "that I have this very morning examined every nut and bolt, every brace and valve and stay in the entire _appareil_. Never have I permitted your daughter to ascend without such an inspection. I would stake my life upon the perfect integrity of the machine."

He smiled, a little querulously.

"You are accustomed to stake your life, Monsieur Lacroix. As for me, I am an old man. The old are obstinate and selfish. I abhor the entire proceeding."

Plaudits came from the gay crowd outside as mademoiselle's machine again roared above the hangars. The old man shook his ma.s.sive head.

"Of course, you don't see it as I do," he went on. "If you had considered risks, you would have accomplished nothing. It is natural that you should think only of the glory and conquest of flight. But I think of the little girl I held on my knee the night her mother died, and I can neither stay away in peace when Ella flies, nor can I bear to watch her."

"But you are powerful, Monsieur Warren," I said, "a commander of the captains of finance. If you said even that a country should not make war, its cannon would rust in the parks, and its soldiers play leapfrog in the casernes. Surely you can bend the will of a young girl who is also your daughter?"

The old man's smile became grim.

"I may be all that you say," he sighed. "But, nevertheless, if you chose to wring my neck at this moment, I could do little to prevent you. Neither dare I stand between an American girl and the desire of her heart."

I looked with sympathy upon this gaunt, mighty, old warrior of Wall Street, bent under the shadow of apprehension and anxiety, and I knew why he had at last visited Mineola. And as I looked, I, too, my friend, saw clearly for the first time the reverse of the bright medal of aerial conquest. I saw the graves of lost comrades, I saw the homes in mourning, I saw mothers who wept for their bravest boys. Truly the price was heavy, and I knew in my heart that it had not been paid in full.

"Monsieur knows," I said, "that I was once a poor mechanician. What I am now, flight has made me, and I have worked for the glory of flight.

But now I perceive that in encouraging mademoiselle your daughter to fly, I have perhaps done wrong. I promise you that in future I will do my best to dissuade her."

He rose, and pressed my hand in grat.i.tude.

"I am wealthy," he said. "I am rich beyond dreams. I can buy anything for my little girl that she desires--except a single moment's safety up in the air, or a single moment's true happiness on the earth. And in pursuit of this flying craze of hers, she may easily miss both."

He frowned suddenly as we emerged into the sunlight and saw the Comte de Chalons hasten to a.s.sist mademoiselle to dismount. Above the hangars the red storm cone had been hoisted, prohibiting further flight by pupils. Already the treetops were swaying ominously.

"After all, there are some things that can happen to a girl," said Monsieur Warren bitterly, "that may well be worse than breaking her neck in an aeroplane."

He departed in search of his automobile without another word. But I thought I knew what he meant.

It was at this moment that I first saw him fly, this marvelous birdman of a Hamlin Power. Away in the direction of New York, so high that he seemed to hang motionless just under the driving clouds, the spectators had caught sight of his huge biplane, and had delayed their departure to watch his approach. It was Georges, dancing on the gra.s.s beside me, who first proclaimed his ident.i.ty.

"It is he, the crazy pupil!" he cried. "I have seen through my gla.s.s the little silk flag he attached to the nacelle. Now you are going to marvel that I still live!"

In a few moments the sound of his motor fell faintly on our ears as a whisper from the clouds. Then--_chut_!--it stopped, and in a single leap he dived a sheer thousand feet.

That in itself was amazing temerity for one who had flown just long enough to justify him in piloting an aero bus in a dead calm. But I was little prepared for what followed. Instead of continuing his flight horizontally at the end of that headlong dive, this tyro pulled up his elevator, sweeping through a sharp curve into an upward leap with all the dizzy impetus gained in his descent.

The crowd gasped. At my side Georges danced with anxiety upon the turf.

"You are right," I said. "He is certainly crazy, this young Monsieur Power."

"He calls it the _montagnes russes_, this trick," said Georges. "I have told him that everybody who ever did it is long dead, with the single exception of yourself, but that to him is entirely equal. See, he has dived again only just in time!"

And, in truth, another moment of upward flight would infallibly have caused him to lose headway, and fall backward, to flatten himself upon the ground. But he had with superb coolness entered upon a second dive of the most impressive, continuing his species of switchback descent until within a few hundred feet of the hangars. I saw his head protruding from the nacelle, incased in a flying helmet of perfectly black leather. At that height the _remous_ and gusts. .h.i.t him at unexpected angles, and his machine rose and fell and rocked, as if upon the waves of an invisible ocean. It was buffeted about until I knew that he could not be on his seat half the time. First one wing tip and then the other was blown upward, threatening irrevocable side slip, but always at the last moment his instinct--for it could have been nothing else--saved him in masterly fashion.

At one moment, indeed, as he banked high to turn down wind, it seemed that he was lost, and a woman in front of me turned away with a little cry of horror, her hands before her eyes.

But no! Blown like a leaf straight toward us, he wheeled again into the teeth of the wind at the same astonishing angle, finally landing neatly in front of the hangars. It was with an exclamation of relief that I saw him leap from his machine safe and sound.

With a number of mechanicians, I ran to greet him, and he held out a gloved hand, smiling in boyish delight and complete unconcern, and showing all his square, white teeth. I burst at once into protests.

"Bunk!" he exclaimed, with an irreverent laugh. "You fellows make a voodoo mystery of flight because it pays you. There's nothing very difficult about it, after all. One has only to keep cool."

I was going to reply with I know not what appeal to his reason, when the clear, contralto voice of Miss Warren came suddenly from behind me. She hastened to meet him, holding out both her hands.

"Jack, this is good of you!" she cried. "It's just your generous way--you couldn't possibly have forgiven me more gracefully. To think that you, of all people, should be the mysterious airman of Westchester who has set every one talking and wondering! Why, it was the pleasantest surprise in life to see you get down from that machine after such a wonderful flight. And my father has been here to-day, also. Two such converts in one afternoon is a coincidence that seems too good to be true."

The young Monsieur Power was regarding her, I noticed, with a sort of curious reserve.

"Maybe there's something in that," he said. "You mustn't get the idea that I've altered my ground in the least, Ella."

"But you are flying yourself, now!"

"Certainly, but that doesn't mean that I approve of it as an amus.e.m.e.nt for you."

"When did you begin?"

"Last month, when I bought the machine. Since then I've been practicing around home."

The girl started from him in amazement.

"Last month! Why, don't you know you might have killed yourself, cutting capers on a day like this?"

"Precisely what I have allowed myself to point out to monsieur," I interposed. "He attempted feats full of danger even for the expert."

"Well, I guess that's all right," he responded shortly. "A man's life wasn't given to him to nurse. Besides, flying is a great relief after a week in the city."

I turned aside, then, to superintend the disposal of the aeroplanes in their sheds, as it had become evident that a gale was in prospect. It was some minutes later that I received a sudden intimation from Miss Warren that she desired my presence outside her hangar.

"Mademoiselle wishes you to denounce the young American monsieur,"

added on his own account the mechanic who brought the message.

I found her confronting Monsieur Power, who was leaning in an att.i.tude characteristically immobile against the landing carriage of his machine. The Comte de Chalons stood on one side, pulling at his mustache and staring from one to the other. Monsieur Power chewed a gra.s.s stem and smiled in a fashion a little _narquois_.

"Why not give in, Ella, and admit you have been in the wrong? You know you'll have to come to it, sooner or later."

He spoke quite pleasantly, but the girl's magnificent dark eyes were blazing with suppressed anger.

Give in! A thing unheard! She had never suffered compulsion in a young lifetime of following her own sweet way, this dollar princess. As they gazed upon each other, I could see a t.i.tanic battle of wills in progress beneath the outward calm of the discussion.

"You would not be so foolhardy, Jack," she said, controlling her voice with an effort. "You know, or at least if you don't know, Monsieur Lacroix and everybody else does, that you couldn't live two minutes in this wind."

"Monsieur Power, you are annoying mademoiselle in a grave degree,"

broke in the count, suddenly glaring. "My friends will lose no time in waiting on you."

The American swung round with one of those rapid, definite movements so habitual with him.