Adventure, December 1914 — page 39: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Stolen War Secret I haven’t gone over. I can’t seem to find anything wrong—and yet—it doesn’t work right.”’ Sinclair finished the examination of the machine which he had been engaged in when we arrived, then led the way to the little kiosk from which he controlled it. “Now—just a moment—I’ll show you what I mean,” he said as he tested out his apparatus for wireless control. The engine of the aeroplane had already been started. He depressed the right key. She rose and sailed away gracefully. So far, I could see nothing wrong. “Tt’s all right at the start,” he remarked, peering out anxiously at the machine. ‘“‘It’s only after it has flown a while that things begin to go wrong.” Sinclair was depressing lever after lever and the machine was obeying his will as accurately as if he himself had been sitting © in it at the wheel. Suddenly, I could see that something was wrong. The look on his face changed. “There it is,”’ he cried, rising excitedly. “What?” asked Burke, gazing at the ma- chine. “Everything looks all right to me.”’ “Everything looks all right,’ Sinclair re- peated. “Yes indeed—it looks fine to me —when I depress the key to make a turn to the right and the machine deliberately rises and not content with that volplanes down almost to the water. Yes—it may look all right, but it is not all right.” “T didn’t know,” apologized Burke. thought you did it.” “Not a bit of it. I might just as well have no control over it at all now. It’s a wonder to me how I ever got the thing back here the last time. Only a lucky chance, I guess.”’ I don’t think I ever felt more sorry for any one in my life than I did for Sinclair just then. Here was the work of years, the child of his brain, as it were, going wrong. I glanced at his tense face; it was tragic. He ran over the keys. “Even the signals she repeats back are wrong,” he added in despair. “The thing is absolutely out of my control.” The air-ship was mounting higher and higher. She swerved, her nose pointed toward a spit of sand down at the harbor’s mouth. Before any of us could speak there came a sudden swoop of the machine. Down, down, down she dropped rapidly. hg § 37 Sinclair was vainly endeavoring to manip- ulate the keys that ought to have con- trolled her. But it was no use. Down she planed, gathering momentum. “‘Confound it!’ he muttered, turning to Kennedy in despair. ‘‘What can be the matter? You saw her work the other day.” Kennedy was looking from the machine to a wireless detector in the kiosk. We had all sprung to our feet. The gyroscope-aeroplane had swooped down to the sand-spit and in a cloud of sand had buried her nose deeply into the beach. There she lay, a mile or two distant, a mass of tangled wreckage. “You can thank heaven for telautomatics, at least,’ muttered Sinclair blankly. “At any rate, no one was in the machine.” We gazed at each other aghast. There was one great unanswered question in all our minds. Whence had come the impulse that had sent the air-ship to her fate? “Could it have been the gyroscope?” I asked. Sinclair did not reply. As for Kennedy, he was still looking at the wireless detector. I knew enough to understand that tremen- dous impulses of wireless energy had in some way been let loose in the air. Still, Kenne- dy said nothing. The sand-spit was on the same side of the bay as oursleves, in fact was the point of land that rounded off the miniature cape on which Sinclair lived between the bay and the Sound. Already Sinclair, followed by Kennedy and oursleves, had started down toward the wrecked aeroplane. Scarcely a word was spoken as we went. IT WAS a pathetic sight to see the graceful mechanical bird lying there in the sand, her wings broken, a mass of scrap. What it was that had caused the catastro- phe none of us knew. Had it been some part of the machine itself that had been tampered with? Craig was turning over the wreckage carefully. To me it seemed a hopeless quest even to try to read the cause of the disaster in such an apparently hopeless mess. Yet, as Kennedy looked it over, I began to fancy that to him it merely pre- sented new problems for his highly deduc- tive and scientific mind. “The gyroscope is out of business for NOOK C©