Air Wonder Stories, July 1929 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

12 AIR WONDER STORIES during the crisis I felt was imminent; not that I fancied my father could not stand alone, but I think my wish came largely out of the new realization of how much I cared for the old man. I wanted to be of some assistance, but I did not know just how. I spoke to him about it as we were finishing break- fast. “Look here, dad,” I said. “I want to stand by. I can be of no use to you on the banking side, but I could be a fairly good watch-dog. If I can do any- thing to keep troublesome people off you, or if I can run errands or attend to the commissariat— just say the word. I'll do anything I can.” “T know that, son,” the old man smiled, “but Vm well supplied with watch-dogs and messengers, who know my ways. No. Listen. Ill give you better than that to do. My hands will be full of the com- plications that are bound to rise from this raid on the banks, and I won't have time for anything else. In that tarnishing of the gold idea you've hit on something that maybe will give you further ideas, and I’d like you to follow up your theory of the gas and see what it leads to. You’re an engineer, and you'll attack the problem from a different angle from that of the average detective. You can have a free hand in the matter of expense.” The old man’s suggestion almost took my breath away, and I fancy my face got red, I must explain that while my father and myself had been good enough friends up to this, our ways had lain very much apart. He was devoted to his banking busi- ness, and I was immersed in aeronautical research. There had been times when we did not meet for months, and when we came together again it had simply been, “Hullo, Jimmy!” and “Hullo, dad!"— pretty much as if we had parted overnight. I knew all right what I thought of him, What he thought of me had ‘been another story. That he had a good enough opinion of me to hand me a job of this sort, and give me the run of his purse with it, put me in such a way that I could only nod acceptance. “Good boy,” said he. “Now here’s another point. During the day you'll be free to conduct your in- vestigations, but I shall want you to fly me into the country every evening. I’m not going to stop in town and have the telephone buzzing in my ear all night. I’ll keep Hazeldene open and live there. Can you do it?” ; “Do it!” I cried. “Why, dad, there’s nothing I’d like better—ang if at any time I should be called away on this job, you’ll find Milliken a first-class man. “That’s settled then. I take it you have something better in your shed than the old seaplane you used this morning?” “You bet. There’s my own Merlin. Three hundred kilometres and more an hour are nothing to her, I'll have her tuned up for you right away. I can get you from the Battery to Hazeldene well inside the half-hour,” “Bully!” said the old man, and rose with a cigar going strong. “Now I must get back to the bank, son.” Some Powdered Glass w= drove back to the Metallurgical through streets that seethed with excited human- ity. Newsboys were running about, offending the ear with unlawful and raucous yells, flourishing newsbills that smote the eyeballs with their faming searelines. One journal, apparently despairing of adjectives sufficiently lurid to describe the reported enormity of the raid on the banks, had printed a sheet containing nothing but one large exclamation mark. Broadway was Babel. At every other corner policemen were trying to move on the crowds that inevitably clustered round each fortunate with a newspaper, and so dense was the press at the lower end of Broadway that it took two mounted men nearly a quarter of an hour to drive a path for the car through the last hundred paces to the bank door. Once we were inside, I immediately got through to my mechanic, Milliken, on the telephone, and told him to tune up the Merlin. Wise fellow that he is, he had anticipated the order, and could promise to have the plane ready in a couple of hours. Next I spoke to the housekeeper at Hazel- dene and arranged for the place to be kept open for my father and myself. In the ordinary way I lived in a hut close to the hangar and workshops on the beach, only joining my father at Hazeldene when he went there for the week ends. He had been at the cottage on one of these visits when the news of the robbery had pulled him out of bed for our flight this Monday morning. I was on the point of stepping out to make what investigations I could when my father called me into his room. He had come upon an old Eastern piece of gold money which he kept as a curiosity in one of the drawers of his desk. It was not of the or- dinary disc shape, but was like two little beans stuck together crosswise and turned over each other. I had seen it before as a shining piece of particularly pure gold, but now it was sadly dulled to a colour with which I was becoming familiar, “You had better keep that, Jimmy,” my father said. “I expect you'd like to have a sample of the tarnishing,” I was glad to have it, and I wrapped it in a scrap of tissue paper before placing it in an empty match- box to keep it from being rubbed. I intended to have the tarnishing analyzed in the hope that the result would furnish some clue to the anaesthetic used by the crooks, for to my mind the crux of the whole affair lay in the mystery of the two lost hours. This was the thing I determined to follow up in the best way I couid. I had no other notion of where to make a start, When I reached the street, the crowd in front of the. bank was thining before the manoeuvres of the police, and I waited in the doorway until there was room to move. In a little I was able to cross Broadway, and it was when I had reached the op- posite sidewalk that a slight accident happened to me which was the means of furnishing another step in the development of my theories. To avoid bumping into a fellow who was hurry- ing past on the sidewalk, I stepped short on the curb. My foot slipped and I came down on my hands. I felt my palms sting, as though I had landed on some sharp sand, but when I stood up to brush the stuff off, I saw that my skin was full of little splinters of glass. It was no conscious alert- ness that made me look down on the curb, but just the ordinary human foolishness that always makes a fellow turn to look when he has trodden comnlicloooks.com