The Ghost of Mystery Airport

"Scared?"

"Not a bit!"

Garry Duncan, just behind the pilot who had asked the question, answered it in his usual, cool manner.

Behind him in the three-place open cockpit biplane, his thirteen-year-old chum displayed none of his calm.

"I'm scared!" Chick cried as the pilot cut down his throttle. Chick raised his voice to a tremulous shout, "Scott-turn back."

The man at the controls laughed.

"Don't be a baby!" he counseled. "Just because you see a cloud begin to look shimmery-the first sign of the ghost, according to all the pilots who have seen it-don't lose your nerve."

"But-this ghost hunt might be dangerous," Chick began to plead. "C-can't you-Scott, can't you t-turn and go out on the bay?"

"No. I cut the gun too much and the engine died. We have to glide in, dead-stick, to the best landing we can." There was no regret in the pilot's voice. He proposed to carry through his purposes.

"But-" Chick was hopeful as he offered an argument, "in the dark here, the swamp is dangerous-you might miss water and you'd get the wings torn in the grass." He added quickly, "or you may get our pontoons bogged-" As the airport searchlight made a cloud glow he cried, "Yes-bogged down in the ooze." He expected to see the ship bank, indicating that his hint was being acted on.

Instead the ship's nose went down. Scott, with a little laugh of amusement at Chickering Brown's fears, found additional terrors for the youngest of the pair with them.

"Yes," he agreed, "and then the spectre that always appears in the clouds might fly down on us and say 'boo!'"

He turned, as they glided, high above the swamp.

"How about it, Garry? Wouldn't that be awful?" Garfield Duncan, fifteen-year-old student-pilot and assistant to an airport manager's nephew, answered seriously.

"Terrible!" he agreed, "but it would be Chick's own fault. He was so interested in the mystery that he vowed he wouldn't be scared."

"Well!" Chick hoped for one means of allaying his fears-light. "Why don't you throw over a landing flare, Scott! It's pitchy-black down in the marsh."

"Scott will get us down, even without power." Garry voiced his confidence in the test pilot who knew the channels and open water spaces like a book. "Great Scott," as they had nicknamed him, made many test flights for the American branch of a foreign seaplane manufacturer; of late, since an airport had been inaugurated in connection with the seaplane "base," Scott had flown over the marsh at night, conducting tests of new lighting equipment, spotlight, searchlight and beacon.

"If you're afraid," he added, "try whistling, Chick, my boy! I've heard that ghosts won't come around if you whistle."

Usually Garry did not tease his younger chum; but Chick had been so confident of his own bravery, had so insistently begged to be one of the "spook trappers," that Chick's terror in the face of darkness-and of nothing worse, so far-prompted him to be a little sarcastic.

"It's all very well to sneer," said Chick. "I wasn't scared, back in the design room-but here-" he stopped. They had been filing blue-prints in the plant of an Italian aircraft building company when Scott, its test pilot, had come quietly into the blue-print room where Garry made the multitudes of blue-prints from pen drawings for the many detailed parts of the company's product.

The secrecy of his entrance had fascinated Garry's more youthful companion, who filed the blue-prints and sketches. Chick had caught a hint of something secretive about Scott; it had fired his ready imagination and he had been so eager to hover close that Scott, after a moment of hesitation, had included him in the proposal he had made.

"You both realize how serious that Sky Spook scare has come to be," he had whispered. "I wasn't going to say anything to Chick, because he's pretty young-" at once Chick had denied the insinuation, "-all right, Chick," Scott had continued. "Just the same, I wasn't going to include you-but it may help, at that-if you are 'game' and not scarey."

Assured of Chick's absolute bravery and perfect gameness the test pilot had suggested that he wanted to "get to the bottom-or top-of the spook business."

"Ever since the first pilot cracked up," he had said, "and explained that he thought he saw a spooky-looking crate flying straight at him out of a cloud, I've thought he was trying to 'cover up' his own carelessness with that story. The next one to see 'it' must have caught the scare and had an overdose of imaginittis. But it has gotten into the newspapers and they call the new airport 'Mystery Airport.' It's ruining business for Don McLeod's uncle, and I'd like to help him out by proving that there isn't any ghost ship flying in and out of the clouds to make a pass at every pilot whose firm gives the new airport its business."

Garry had agreed with Scott's theory that some hidden enemy was trying to ruin the airport's business, and hamper its growth. Readily he had consented to help Scott with his simple plan, which required that with Scott the two youths would fly, that night, inviting the appearance of the ghostly, or human apparition, at which time Scott felt confident that he could run down the culprit and end the scare before it further harmed the morale of the flying force or resulted in the loss of contracts for air line hangar space and landing and take-off fees.

The eagerness with which Chick had seconded the plan, his pleading to be included in the airplane's passengers as an observer and signalman, his stout declarations of his complete fearlessness, had suddenly become empty boasts when the three-place ship had reached the vicinity of the swamps adjacent to the airport but not yet drained and prepared for filling in. Eventually the greater part of the swamps would be changed into good ground. Engineers were already preparing to drain away the salt tides flowing in from Long Island Sound and Little Neck Bay. Unless the unexplained mystery of the spectral sky denizen could be settled, it seemed unlikely that the swamp land need ever be reclaimed for airport expansion.

Scott, for years the hangar supervisor and chief test pilot for the airplane construction plant and seaplane base which had existed before the airport project in combination with them had been started, was very anxious, it seemed, to end the ghost scare.

With his two youthful aides, confident Garry and shivering Chick, he made a good descent to the surface of a wide sheet of enclosed, shallow water, let the amphibian craft, which could make either earth or water landings, run out of momentum, and then sat back, loosening his helmet chin straps.

"Here's the full plan," he turned around in the cockpit in the dark, salty-smelling marsh, silent except for the plash of a leaping fish or the cry of a gull seeking a belated dinner, "I didn't want to be seen talking too long at the plant. You never know who 'might be'-you know!"

"I understand," admitted Garry. "Let's hear it all."

"I went to Don as soon as I left you-and he's managed to get Mr. McLeod to let him go aloft in the Dart." He referred to a light, fast two-seater, the personal property of the airport manager, which his seventeen-year-old nephew had secured for the evening. "Now, Don is as good an amateur pilot as you'll find; but he lacks stunting experience. He will come here, set down, and then I'll take the Dart and keep it warmed up and ready, while Don, with you two for observers, will go up and cruise around-and invite Mr. Ghost to come at you!"

Chick shivered and muttered under his breath. "If Mr. Spectre shows up, you signal to me--"

"I know." Garry recalled arrangements used in other night communications, during night tests. "If the spook appears in the clouds, we set off a red flare. If 'it' takes off from the ground, we give you a green Verey signal and you'll be able to catch anything slower than greased lightning in that Dart-and drive down the ghost and prove it's only some human person, after all."

"Well, that's what I hope to do."

"Sup-supposing it isn't a h-human being?"

"That would tickle me to pieces, Chick, old top," laughed the pilot. "I'd sort of like to have it turn out that way. Why? Because I never shook hands with a ghost, and it ought to be a right nice experience."

"He-it would scare you out of your togs!" scoffed Chick.

"Oh, no!" Scott assured him. "Spectres, if they really do exist, can't hurt you. It's only your fear that can do you any harm. Now, I like spooks!--"

"Yes?" Garry pointed up toward the July night sky. "Well, there's one! Go up and get acquainted. We'll wait here!"

He had meant to joke, to terrify Chick; but he became silent and a trifle awed.

There was-something!-black against a luminous Summer cloud!