Air Wonder Stories, August 1929 — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

s THE ARK OF THE COVENANT The Story Thus Far New York is stertled by o rahe everyone in the financial district ts by 3 strange gas let loose; aud some wn help. ‘themnaeloes to millions of ‘dollars of gold xd: millions in negotiable @ mysterious ond daring robbery. Early one * "fp sleep For too hours unseen robbers securities from three banks, The next day, the securities are found tm the Post Office addressed to several cena millions im radium also consigned to hospitals, Tames Boon, son of the president of the National Metallurgical, ona of the invaded banks, decides to investigate the robberies. He finds that. as has stopped all autos in the invaded district and also had tarnis! gold (a feat seemingly impossible), He also finds near the banks a little powdered gloss, ‘pss seemed to be the remains of the ot oad of the sles He finds me who-saticed @ haze in the streets. before fi Py He-takes "the matter up with Daw Lamont, a scientist ds trying to dix cover what gas-hos been used, and how. Semral ie days later comes the news of the —robi of a gasoline station in Newark of c aviation gas, pea ol Me seas a ee are fe "fer pre ta in this case money is y for them. From what Boon and-Lamont can figure ont ond from the et eee eS ae et ee, 8 dence of a half-drunhen em; e atop the Metallurgical Buslding, who claimed to have soon am mip the doy of the bank robbery, they balieve the. bandits come via the div- swith o Soa: principe airship. Boon is by profession” an inventor freee ere constructed 6 peels, plane, the i IN, capable. Sr making 550 Miomaters os Cry hour. request of his father, he goes out over the Atlantic, gre panied “ite eres btiliben, a Derseaty to | se up ARNASSIC, steaming’ towerd: New- York; Lord A Peodre deputy governer-of the Bank 4 Engl or ork, Le asrive over the ship to find the deck covered ith ats Pag acanen — men and the the rolling as-though it had 10 condrol Lnaging i ng on it, that the some bandits had ‘mae a raid hip, by body to sleep, and stolen from the safe soo 000 gos Boe Boon pi picks up Lord Almeric and his pretty secretory ond niece, Kirsten Torrance, ond starts back to the States, On the way back ey fin ‘o A pred trom on oi steamer, stating that all aboard kad be bed rene rs Cos ite all the other case) and the steamer bat of. 3,00 tres of aviation gasoline, CHAPTER VI Searching the Clouds E had left the Parnassic at about six o'clock, New York time, with a flight of nearly twelve hundred kilometres before us. . Keeping the Merlin ata steady four-sixty per hour, we expected to make the Battery soon after half-past eight. From the bearing which the radio indicator had given us of the Westbury's position, Dan and I plotted out her relation to the Parnassic at the time of the raid, and found that she had been just over sixty kilometres from the liner. She was probably one of the freighters we had sighted -in approaching the Parnassic. Now, the hour given by the Westbury’s skipper as the time when she was brought to—eight bells in the middle watch, or four o’clock in the morning—revealed the astonishing fact that the raid on the Parnassic had been pulled off, sixty kilometres covered, and the oil- tanker stopped, all within an hour. Even at record airship speed, the flight between the two vessels would occupy nearly twenty-five minutes, which left thirty- five in which to board the liner, break open the strong- room and specie boxes, and remove three thousand kilos of gold before casting off. It seemed. incredible that one group of pirates could have effected the two operations, We tried to work out the raids with every coticeivable type of craft, taking into consideration the time factors and the six thousand kilos weight of gold and oil that had been carried away, We even tried Dick Schuyler’s idea of a motor-ship, giv- ing her the highest known speed for sea- IT borne craft, but we found the thing impos- sible, despite the fact that we provided her with hydroplane type of power-boats as auxili- aries. We were inevit- going to happen. N_ the present installment, this classic of scientific-aviation stories takes on greater and greater interest and the reader follows breath- lessly the wonders of this latter day aviation. The author. has a marvelous knack of remaining ahead of you at all times and he is continuously outguessing your own efforts to. decide what ts None of -the scientific instrumentalities which a dirigible of the very latest type; and the abstraction of the gasoline’ from the Newark station and from the Westbury was an additional sup- port to the idea, since an airship carrying out these operations would certainly need to replenish her fuel. We imagined the pirates operating from a base within a day’s flight of New York and, judging from the taid on the Parnassic, probably situated over the Canadian border. The weakness of the raider's posi- tion in using a dirigible or dirigibles for their operations lay in the conspicuousness of their craft, and of the sheds necessary for docking them. We did not lose sight of the possibility that the pirates might be mas- querading as a corporation engagedin civilian transport. A few such companies were in existence, despite the popular prejudice against the so-called “lighter-than- air” machines on account of the structural weaknesses which in the latter seemed to be past curing, But every dirigible that took the air, whether-experimental. or otherwise, could only do so. under permit or li- cense from the govern- ment. It would present no great difficulty there- fore for the police to run to earth any unregistered airship on American. ter- VICTOR MacCLURE ably brought back to our the author brin ritory. gs into this story ate either tm- air: ae Gece ine possible or improbable, Quite the contrary, the With the help of Lord sider what kind of ma- chine would have made possible the whole series of opérations—from the gasoline station at New- ark, Wall Street, the Parnassic, to the descent on the Westbury — the weight of the evidence was strongly in favor of “\ perfection. latest scientific researches show that the scientific content of Mr. MacClure’s story will probably seem quite tame twenty-five years hence. This Summer we are to witness a great many exhibitions of various. monster airships of the lightec-than-air variety and while these airships may not be as perfect as the ones described by the author, we may test assured that- not many es will pass before they have seen such ic and Miss Tor- france, and an occasional word from Milliken, Dan and ¥ decided on a pres- ent plan of action. If the raiders had used an airship, they would now - be making for their base . and could not be far away from us in the air. (To escape detection they \ Ne Nea id fy