CHAPTER V Startling Reports

The lads had no snowshoes to impede their progress this time, and the race to the hangar was a real contest, given zest by the anticipation of the ludicrous spectacle that was to greet them there. Slim-limbed Don won out, but he had hardly poked his head in the partially opened door when the other three were on the scene.

For a moment all four of the young men went into veritable convulsions of laughter. They roared out in gales of merriment which they could not suppress. For the time they forgot either to pity poor Captain Allerson, "town constabule," or to resent the evident malicious interference of Henryson, which evidently had brought both men into their present predicament.

Here was the despised Henryson, apparently clutching for dear life at one of the heavier braces of the plane, although in reality the trap had worked and he was caught there, unable to separate himself from the stiff current which the lads had connected up; while Captain Allerson seemed to be in an even worse plight, his present attachment being to the engine, through which an even heavier current of electricity was flowing.

"What in Heck ye laffin' at, anyway?" the captain finally managed to bawl out, at the same time tossing his head quickly to throw off the streams of perspiration which were coursing down his wrinkled brow.

"Oh, ho! Oh, my golly," gurgled Andy, half doubled up with laughter.

"Grab it! Capshure it! Step on it! Do somethin'. Kill it!" the old whaler yelled in strident panic.

Henryson, however, who knew exactly how he had been caught—knew not only that, but that his previous schemes must have come to light, else the trap would not have been set for him—kept a pained silence, his face aflame with anger and shame.

At length Big Jack managed to put on a stem judicial appearance, although only with the greatest difficulty. He viewed the pair severely for a moment, and then, grave of visage and in the most biting tones he could control, he pretended not to understand the situation at all, and demanded an explanation.

"What does this mean, anyway?" he stormed. "I find you two in our hangar, apparently about to carry off our plane, according to your positions, and all the time yelling 'Leggo!' and 'kill it!' and a lot of other nonsense like that. 'Leggo' what? And who do you want killed?"

"Oh, don't try to be funny," Henryson, snarled. "Guess you know all 'about it inasmuch as you arranged it. Turn off the juice."

"The juice?" echoed Captain Allerson, still squirming in the clutches of a power he could neither see nor understand.

"If I were you I wouldn't criticize anybody, or even make suggestions," Andy Flures blurted out, in real anger, and advancing on Henryson threateningly. "You're in a pretty tough hole, and you ought to know it."

Henryson drew back suddenly as though he had been struck. For the instant he even seemed to forget the direct cause of his present predicament.

"I'll turn off the juice, all right," Big Jack announced. "But after I do we'll have a little conversation. We'd like to know some of the facts relating to this rather—er—unusual situation."

"Turn 'er off first, an' we'll conversation afterward," Captain Allerson blurted out sharply. "I've had enough o' this stuff to last a life time."

Fred severed the connection to the buried battery, and Don swung off the engine switch. The two men nearly dropped over with their sudden release, but the ex-whaling captain hadn't finished rubbing his injured hands together before he turned almost murderously upon the not completely dejected Henryson.

"Now, you," the officer of Canadian law thundered. "Yer under arrest. I dunno jest yet what the charge is, but if it's anything like what I got from this thing here it'll hold ye fer life. I'm warnin' ye not to try to get away."

"Let's get at the facts," Big Jack suggested, pointedly.

"We'll do that, and mighty quick," Captain Allerson answered, forceful if not grammatical.

The four men gathered around, and in such a way that they were between Henryson and the door, so that he could not possibly make his escape.

"It was this here way," the police force began ponderously, all the time glowering at the discovered trickster, who refused to meet the gaze of any of the others. "I didn't know how much you suspected concernin' this mean meddler, but I had 'im marked from the very beginning as the original messenger of misery. Consequent thereto, I nachurally had an eye peeled fer him ever since that little fracas with the snowshoes when he showed up his sweet disposition.

"I ain't 'zactly pinned that fire to him yet, but I guess this is what them lawyer fellers calls circumstantial evidence of a convictin' nature.

"I sees him headin' this way a while ago, an' all the time actin' zif he didn't want to invite the general public to whatever festivities it was he was about to attend. So I thought I'd just nachurally trail along, sufficient in the rear an' out of sight so he wouldn't know what an interestin' cuss he'd become. I didn't want to arouse his suspicions, ner flatter his vanity neither.

"Well, just as I expected, he took a roundabout way, but his general direction was toward this place, and finally he reached it. Once he was inside, I wasn't long gettin' here either. I peeked in, and sure 'nough, there he was a-monkeyin' around, with no good in his twisted mind, I'll bet.

"I tiptoed in just as he was about to do somethin' to one o' them there wires. I sneaked around the side o' the plane, and was jest about to ast him sudden like what he was doin' in this here hangar, when I put my hand on somethin' thet seemed to run hot and cold both at the same time, an' be full o' needles, too; and I give a surprised little remark which causes him to jump, and touch his tender hand to thet wire, which seemed to be loaded the same way.

"The resultin' general conversation directed toward effectin' our release, I believe you heard."

"Just as I thought," said Big Jack, turning furiously toward Henryson. "Now, you pup, what were you doing here?"

"Why," Henryson stammered confusedly, in a quavering voice, "I just dropped in to see whether any of you fellows were here. I wanted to find out how you had outrigged your machine against extraordinary winds."

"Yeh, wanted to loosen it up a little, so that the first wind would cause the whole plane to collapse, eh?" demanded Andy, advancing again upon the culprit.

"What do you mean?" Henryson could hardly more than whisper.

"You know well enough what's meant," Fred interjected, while Don, his mind's eye picturing the tragedy which might and probably would have overtaken them if the treachery had not been discovered in time, stood silently by, merely clenching and unclenching his hands as an unconscious way of working off some of his pent-up anger and disgust at such inhuman and underhand work.

But before Henryson or anyone else could say anything further, Big Jack had grabbed that misguided young man by the scruff of the neck, and, with no one, not even Captain Allerson, attempting to interfere, thrust him toward that part of the plane where the cut strands of the wire had been discovered.

"I suppose you don't know anything about that little job, eh?" Jack demanded, shaking Henryson as a terrier might shake a rat.

"What do you—Why, I—I—I—"

"Oh, shut up, you cowardly idiot," interrupted Captain Allerson. "If you can't say one honest word, don't say anything at all. You're convicted already, and I guess it means a nice term of solitude fer you, too."

"Now look here," Andy broke in. "This bird's as guilty as Satan, and he knows it, and he knows we know it. However, I'm of no mind to let one crook like him besmirch a science, a sport and a profession which decent men have kept decent and clean and far above that sort of thing.

"Captain, if you'll agree, I'll tell you what we'll do. If this fellow will get out of Halifax and clear out of Canada immediately after he has fought me, we'll let it go at that, and it'll save you spoilin' your hands on him. Will you do it?"

Captain Allerson was not the only one who turned in surprise on Andy. But nobody said anything, and finally Captain Allerson said: "Well, if I can be a witness to the scrap, and afterward see that he leaves on the first train, I'll agree. I'll admit it ain't just the thing to do under the circumstances, but then it would be a shame to let the government spend its money in prosecuting such a skunk. Are you game fer that there proposal, which is a dern sight easier than you deserve, although I suspect yer going to get the deservin' lickin' of yer life?" he demanded, turning on Henryson.

"Oh, I guess the five of you could frame me up, all right," Henryson answered sullenly, seeking some way to agree to this comparatively easy way of escape without seeming to entirely admit his guilt.

"It ain't no frame-up," snapped Constabule Allerson sharply. "You can take yer choice, providin' you do it within the next sixty seconds. You can employ a lawyer and fight the charges, if you prefer to take yer chances there."

"Oh, I'm not afraid to fight," Henryson retorted, seeing the way opening for him to take that alternative. "I'll tell you what I'll do. Without disputing any of the points further I'll accept this challenge, with the idea that if I win I stay and there's nothing more said. If I'm licked I'll leave."

"Well, you brazen pup!" ejaculated Captain Allerson.

"Agreeable to me," Andy retorted, "for it amounts to the same thing after all. You're going to be licked, and licked so you won't forget it for some years to come; and then you're going to sneak out of here as rapidly and as quietly as you can. You can make your own explanations to the other crews if you want to. We won't discuss the matter after you're gone."

"Well, where's this here struggle to take place?" demanded the former whaling captain, much more favorably disposed to this method of solving the difficulty than by merely placing the meddling pilot under arrest.

"Why not here?" asked Don. "We'll roll the machine out, then close the door and start proceedings."

"Guess that's best, providing no one else finds out what's going on," Captain Allerson agreed. "But I'm going to be referee of this match, and there ain't going to be any funny work, either." He shot another vicious look at Henryson.

While Big Jack remained within to see that the captured pilot did not escape the consequences of his misdeeds, the other three young men rolled the machine out, left it standing in front of the hangar, as several other machines were then before other hangars at some distance away, and then returned, locking the door behind them.

"Inasmuch as this is to be a fight, and not a boxing exhibition," said Andy, "I'd suggest that there be no rounds, and that the only rules to be the rules of fair play—not to hit below the belt."

"That's settled as soon as sed," declared Captain Allerson with finality.

Both combatants stripped off their collars, neckties and shirts, and in two minutes stood before each other, ready for the fray. Big Jack surveyed them appraisingly. So did all the others. No doubt about it, both were magnificent specimens of masculine physique. Andy was the shorter by perhaps an inch and a half, and to the same extent had the disadvantage in reach; but as offsetting that he had a greater depth of chest and breadth of shoulder, was undoubtedly the stronger and therefore the harder hitter, and in addition was as quick as a tiger on his feet.

Above all, Jack concluded as he compared them, Andy had the great additional psychological advantage of being in the right, while Henryson, no matter how callous his conscience might be, could not evade the knowledge that he was so entirely in the wrong as to be mighty close to being within the criminal class.

"Odds on Andy," Big Jack murmured to himself as the men squared off before each other, Captain Allerson just outside of the large ring which he had marked off with the toe of his heavy boot.

"Are you ready?" Captain Allerson demanded, suppressing his own excitement with some difficulty.

The men nodded, but neither uttered a sound, so intent was each in measuring and watching the other.

"Then go to it," Captain Allerson announced, and involuntarily stepped back a couple of paces as the two men began sparring around for an opening. In another instant it became apparent that this was to be no child's play. It was the cruelest sort of a fight that can be had—with bare knuckles.

Biff! Henryson landed the first blow, but only a glancing one, across Andy's shoulder. It seemed to have needed that and only that to touch off the spark of fury in the usually good-natured Andy Flures.

Like a whirlwind he came at his antagonist, his arms working like irresistible pistons, and so rapidly that even the onlookers could hardly count the blows. They landed on Henryson's face, head, body and stomach. But he was no weakling, nor was Andy endowed with the stamina to keep up such a ferocious attack indefinitely. If nothing else, neither he nor any other man had the lung power to keep up the breath necessary for such an onslaught.

Like a Whirlwind he came at his Antagonist.

Realizing that he might be wearing himself down too early in the struggle, Andy slowed up. Henryson, mistaking this for a weakening, and being somewhat fresher, though badly battered, by having been entirely on the defensive, tried to rush. Andy deftly stepped aside, and Henryson staggered to the opposite side of the ring before he regained his balance.

As he did so Andy came at him again. The brief respite seemed to have given him renewed strength and determination. He landed a blow on Henryson's chest with his left, and almost at the same instant broke down the latter's defense and landed on his nose with his right.

The jolt of the two terrific impacts, and the spurt of blood which followed the second, sent Henryson into a blind and impotent rage. He attempted Andy's rushing tactics and came to an abrupt halt on a right hand jab that sent him reeling out of the ring.

"Get back there and fight, you yellow pup," growled Captain Allerson, at the same time giving the badly battered Henryson a vicious shove.

Andy, however, did what his adversary never in the world would have done. Instead of putting him out of his misery then and there, he waited, with hands down, until Henryson had again put up his fists in defense. They came together with another rush and whirled about the hangar like two savages in a wild dervish.

"Break that clinch," ordered the erstwhile sailor of the northern seas, bringing to bear the little knowledge he had gained from newspaper sporting pages, and at the same time rushing in to perform the duties of referee.

Whether purposely or by accident, Henryson at just that instant reached forward with a quick short jolt. It caught Captain Allerson a clout under the chin.

"Holy mackerel!" exclaimed the amateur referee, jumping back in pained surprise.

But the men separated, and the fight was on again with such earnestness and bitterness that no one, not even Captain Allerson himself, paid further attention to this accident.

Henryson landed a stiff jolt to Andy's short ribs which elicited a deep grunt. His adversary again made a fatal mistake. He interpreted it as the first signs of a weakening. He didn't know Andy.

That young man simply came back like lightning. Both men were breathing heavily by now, and Henryson was almost covered with blood, while he had been unable to inflict a single cut or serious bruise on his wary opponent, who seemed to be in half a dozen parts of the ring almost simultaneously.

"Get at 'im," Don muttered, hardly aware that he had given expression to his thoughts or feelings. But Andy heard, and it seemed as if it had required only this urge, this expression of confidence from his friend, to put him into what was to be the grand finale of the fight.

He swung viciously with his left and caught the unprepared Henryson with terrific force just above the heart. Before Henryson could even recover his balance, Andy let go with his right. It landed with the power of a motor truck behind it. It caught Henryson on that fatal spot, the point of the jaw, and lifted him clear of the ground. He staggered for an instant and then dropped in an unconscious, and for the moment a seemingly lifeless, heap. Andy looked at him for only a second, and then dropped his clenched hands. He, as well as the others, knew that the blow had been struck which had ended the fight. Henryson was out.

Captain Allerson glanced at the defeated pilot, and then walked over to Andy.

"Young man," he said. "I'm not supposed to watch fights without interferin'. I want to congratulate you upon makin' a most excellent job of this one."

Henryson stirred and muttered something incoherent. He was still only half conscious. Don stepped outside the hangar for a moment and returned with a basin of water.

"For him to wash up with, so he won't be delayed in getting out of town," he said laconically, to no one in particular.

"Oh, I'll escort him, all right. And I'll examine his ticket and have a word with the conductor, too, before he starts," Captain Allerson promised.

Henryson moved again, and this time opened his eyes.

"Get up, wash your face and put your clothes on," the minion of the law ordered brusquely. "You couldn't win your chance to stay here, even when you were given an opportunity to fight for it. Come on; hustle. We don't want you contaminatin' the atmosphere around here any longer."

Slowly Henryson seemed to regather his wits and to realize what had happened to him. He glanced at his person and involuntarily shuddered as he saw that he was literally covered with blood. One eye was nearly closed, and his nose was swollen to nearly twice its normal size.

He arose stiffly, but without a word.

"There's only one thing I want to say to you before you go," said Big Jack, standing squarely in front of him. "You got your licking here today; you got it fair and square; you're getting off mighty easy at that. If I ever hear of your being in aviation again, or if I ever catch you around a hangar or an aviation field, I'll instantly have you arrested and reveal all the facts of what has happened here in the last few days. Do I make that clear?"

Henryson nodded sullenly, but his features had been so distorted that none of the men could tell whether he was sneering or not.

At last clothed, and his general appearance made as presentable as possible, Henryson briefly signified that there was nothing to keep him there longer.

"We've just time to catch a train that don't make a stop until it gets a long way from here," Captain Allerson announced. "Come on, stir yourself. And if you try to get away I'll shoot you. As a matter o' fact, I wouldn't be disappointed at havin' the chance."

The odd pair strode out of the hangar and toward the railroad station. The four youths, watching them, saw several members of other crews at different points along the route hesitate, regard the two curiously, seem on the verge of saying something, and then hold their silence as the two passed hurriedly on.

"Well, that being over with, I think I'll go get some arnica for my wrists and knuckles," Andy announced. "I haven't had such violent exercise since I came up with a fresh Fritz in the Argonne."

"Want me to go for you?" asked Fred. "I'd be glad to. Somebody might ask you a lot of questions, you know."

"All right," Andy agreed. "Thanks."

"And we'll replace this brace wire and test out the others while you're gone," Jack supplemented. Then, turning to Andy, "You'd better sit around and rest for awhile It was pretty strenuous."

Fred departed, and the other two set themselves to the task of going over the entire plane. The drug store was a considerable distance away, and they had about completed their work when Fred hove into sight on a dogtrot. They saw him half shout something to a couple of other men as he passed, and they noted too that in so doing he seemed to refer to a folded newspaper which he gripped tightly in one hand.

He was almost breathless when he arrived. But he managed to blurt out enough to make Big Jack hastily grab the paper.

"Great Scott!" he exclaimed as the big headlines caught his eye. He read them aloud.

No need to recite them in detail here. They were pointedly to the effect that the Peace Conference had struck a serious snag; that Japan was suspicious; her envoys obdurate; that a virtual ultimatum had been pronounced, and in such a way as to threaten a new war worse even than that which had just ended.

"Well, what do you think of that?" Don ejaculated, more to himself than anyone else.

"Looks as though it might stop the flight, even if it doesn't develop into anything worse," said Andy, who immediately had forgotten his painful knuckles.

Big Jack was still reading the balance of the story, which was under a London date line. There was no question but that a very serious situation existed. Within an hour all Halifax was so agog with it that no one seemed to miss Henryson, or to mention it if he did.

Even Captain Allerson gave way to new sensations as he measured the possibilities of a new war, and he merely reported briefly that Henryson had been "deported," and with instructions to the conductor not to let him off the train within the next two hundred miles.

That night half a dozen other would-be Transatlantic contestants dropped into the hut which had come to be known as "Big Jack's." There were lengthy discussions and all sorts of predictions, but all they could do was to await the morning papers, which might contain further and more definite news.