Master Tales of Mystery Part 68

But now I have encountered, as I say, another such instinctive aviator to whom flight appears to be as natural as walking. And thou seest by my bandages, my poor friend, what it is that has in consequence arrived to me!

Unhappy meeting! It is with pain and difficulty still that I lift an arm. I can no more, since my accident, ill.u.s.trate my remarks with appropriate gesture. Forgive, therefore, _mon ami_, a story inadequately picturesque, vivid, _mouvant._ And yet--we have brought each other fortune, this young Monsieur Power and I. Fix a little the pillows up, and you shall hear.

A man-eagle, I a.s.sure you! A veritable condor of the Andes hatched in human shape, who has, nevertheless, discovered his gift only to renounce it at once and forever.

Our first meeting was curiously disturbing. He appeared suddenly at a door of my ateliers on the flying ground at Mineola, very tall, very _soigne_, smiling in the way he had that showed all his strong, square teeth as he recognized me in conversation, with my faithful mechanician, Georges. This latter, grown portly and nervous since marrying a Montmartre shopkeeper, I have since promoted to be my chief designer.

"Pardon the intrusion," said the stranger. "I perceive you are about to murder the stout gentleman. I will wait your convenience."

"Quite on the contrary, monsieur," I explained, bowing. "We discuss merely the theory of the explosion turbine. If monsieur will give himself the trouble to enter--"

"That is my card," he replied, advancing. "I want a strong, swift biplane, and a mechanic to attend to it."

I glanced from the card to this extraordinary young man with interest.

For the name itself, John Hamlin Power, told me of a career in Wall Street--brief, but conspicuous in its daring and success; a career in which this immaculate, smiling young cotillion leader had made the very monarchs of finance fear the elan of his attack, the relentless quality of his grip.

"I have taken a fancy," he went on, "to possess the identical machine with which you accomplished your recent Mount McKinley record. It is perhaps for sale?"

"Perfectly, if monsieur wishes," I responded, with another bow. "But it is a machine of unusual speed and power. Monsieur can already fly, no doubt?"

"I do not antic.i.p.ate any difficulty. As a matter of fact, I have not yet attempted it. It is for that purpose that I have come to buy a machine. It would be a favor if you would arrange to deliver it to me in Westchester to-morrow. The mechanic will, of course, arrive at the same time, as I shall wish to commence practice at once."

He turned aside to inspect a motor that lay dismounted on a wooden stand, as if there were nothing further to discuss. Indeed, though his speech was rapid and incisive, and his every movement full of an _allure_ that spoke of splendidly poised muscles, he was in face and manner alike the most singularly immobile man I had ever met. He gave the impression of employing neither words nor actions except in case of clear necessity.

I exchanged glances with Georges, who had turned up his eyes, spread his arms, and allowed them to fall again limply to his sides. I coughed. Monsieur Power drew himself up from his inspection of the motor and smiled again expectantly.

"But the question of tuition?" I stammered. "Monsieur has no doubt arranged for the services of an instructor?"

There was the slightest twinkle in that steadfast gaze of his. He had the bravest, and yet the tenderest, eyes in the world.

"I'm afraid I have not sufficient time for the regular course,"

he said. "I am a rather busy man, as you possibly know. I have consequently taken lessons in advance, by mail. May I expect the machine to-morrow as arranged?"

I murmured something to the effect that he had perhaps underestimated the difficulties of aviation.

"Are they not exaggerated?" he inquired. "You taught my friend, Miss Hamilton Warren, to fly, did you not?"

"Mademoiselle, it is true, flies here almost daily," I admitted.

"Just so! It does not seem to me that there can be anything very difficult in what a girl can do. However, if you will be so good as to deliver the biplane we will see."

Under that clear, steady gaze of his I was powerless to protest.

Behind him I could see the good Georges struggling palpably for breath, and waving his hands to the rafters. I contented myself with a profound bow; whereupon, with the same quick, alert movement with which he had appeared, this strange young man departed. Georges and I fell gasping upon each others' necks, and stared together after his tall, receding figure.

"Without doubt he is mad, this Monsieur Power," I said at last. "You remember that he has just made two millions in a bear raid. Doubtless it has turned his brain. Name of a name! He pretends to have taken flying lessons from an inst.i.tute of correspondence, and I have promised him a biplane of one hundred horse power! Georges, _mon ami_, you must yourself accompany it and give him counsel lest he break his neck!"

Not satisfied with this precaution, I myself flew the biplane over to Westchester on the morrow, and explained the controls to Monsieur Power in an extended pa.s.senger flight. He was, it appeared, an amateur of the balloon, and accustomed to great heights. When I handed the machine over to him, with the engine throttled down so that he might try rolling practice on the ground, he waited until he was out of our reach, whipped the motor into its full power, heaved himself into the air, and flew back the whole length of his grounds--alighting gently as a falling leaf.

"It seems pretty simple," he said, as he swung himself out of the nacelle. "I do not think I need detain you, Monsieur Lacroix, if your a.s.sistant Georges will be good enough to consider himself my guest, and keep the motor running."

It was in vain that I besought him to have patience. He replied only that his time was limited, and that he had given the subject careful study in theory.

And with that a.s.surance I had to depart, little content. First, however, I warned him of one or two pitfalls--as, for instance, that he must never stop his engine in an emergency, as one does instinctively in an auto, because the greater the danger the more need he would have of motive power to get him out of it. Also, I told him not to fly above trees or water, where the currents would suck him downward, but to steer over the darkest patches of land, where the heat of the sun is absorbed, and the air in consequence rises.

In what state of emotion I was maintained by the letters of Georges during the ensuing fortnight, I will make you judge.

"_A moi_!" he writes to me in the first week. "I am in the clutch of a madman! Each morning I am awakened at six, that I may plunge with him in the lake of cold water attached to the mansion, he having first made _la boxe_ noisily with a fist ball on the floor directly above.

To-day in his machine he has described figures of eight in the s.p.a.ce of his grounds even, banking the planes at an inclination _affreuse_!"

Again he writes: "I am now to accompany him on a cross-country raid.

Farewell to my wife and little one. I will die like a Montmartrois for the honor of France!"

Finally an appeal--urgent, pitiful, telegraphic:

"Take me away, _je t'en prie!_ This maniac wishes now to discuss the possibility of a somersault in the air. I can no more--Georges."

Thereupon I replaced him with another mechanic, and he returned, appearing worn and noticeably thinner.

"It seems to me, _tout de meme_," I remarked, "that this young monsieur knows very well what he is about. We have not been asked to repair a single stick of his machine."

"True," replied Georges. "But that is not his ambition, to break wood.

It was his neck that he wished to break, and incidentally my own.

Wait, my friend, until you have seen him fly. I, who speak to you, have faced death daily these weeks past, and my clothes hang loose upon me!"

And I was fated to see this monsieur, also, before very long, on the occasion of his dramatic appearance upon the grounds of my flying school. I must explain that Mineola had become a social inst.i.tution, for already I taught the younger members of the rich sportsman set the new diversion that science had placed within their reach. Crowds a.s.sembled each fine day to witness the first flutterings or the finished flights of their friends.

On this occasion the lawn before the hangars was bright with flowers and gay with the costumes of pretty women, in deference to whom I had even permitted what the society reporters began to call "aviation teas," placing little tables about the gra.s.s, where the chatter was not too much interrupted by the vicious rattle and the driving smoke of motors under test. I did this the more readily as it prevented the uninstructed from wandering into the path of the machines, which buzzed about the grounds like crippled beetles trying to rise into the air.

The grounds, particularly in expectation of a flight by Miss Warren, bore very much in consequence the appearance of a garden party, and I looked with pride upon a scene such as only the historic flying schools of my dear France had hitherto witnessed.

It was with a start that I recognized, while gazing upon this throng of flower-like women and gallant young men, the figure so tall, so commanding of the aged Monsieur Warren himself. I knew that he did not belong to this plutocratic young sporting set, of which he even disapproved. Moreover, the old financier had never before condescended to recognize the prowess of his daughter as an aviator. Indeed, I understood that the least reference to it had been forbidden in his presence. I hastened forward to welcome him, with joy in this new and powerful convert to the science of flight, and together we watched the preparation of Miss Warren's great French biplane, her beautiful _Cygne_, which she had insisted upon bringing with her from Paris.

Ah, _mon vieux_, I cannot describe to you the emotion that seized me as she advanced from the hangars, this beautiful girl, to mount her great white bird! The Comte de Chalons, who had followed her from Europe, and rarely left her side, hurried after her with her leather flying gauntlets--for while it was warm on the ground, there came from aloft reports of a chilling wind. I saw the tall, bent old man, her father, gaze with eyes moist with pride and affection on that superb figure of young womanhood as she swung gracefully out toward the gallant machine that awaited her in the sunlight, chatting gayly with her companion as she walked. She wore a thick-knitted jersey of brown silk, a simple brown skirt, and leather gaiters, and a brown leather automobile cap covered her s.h.i.+ning, dark hair. Like a slim, brown statue she stood at last on the step of her biplane in the breeze, and I saw the Comte de Chalons bend over her hand as he a.s.sisted her into the nacelle.

Well, he had reason, that one! She is a better flier than I can ever make out of him.

A run of fifty yards, and she was aloft with the practiced leap of the expert pilot. The next minute she was breasting the breeze far above our heads, the rear edges of the huge planes quivering transparent against the sky, her motor roaring impetuously. As she pa.s.sed, I had a single glimpse of her face--bathed in full sunlight, radiant, joyous!

I looked then with curiosity upon the aged Monsieur Warren. The great financier leaned upon his cane, and I saw that the hand that held it was blue and trembling. As he gazed skyward, his breath came deeply as in a sob.

"Ah, monsieur," I thought, with a surge of pride, "it is I, Lacroix, who have enabled you to enjoy a parallel triumph. She is your daughter whom they applaud, truly--but she is also my pupil!"

Figure to yourself my surprise, therefore, when he turned to me suddenly in appeal, and, with a hand that trembled on my arm, besought me to take him away.

"I cannot stand it, my dear Lacroix--it isn't safe!" he said, in a low voice.

He repeated these words several times, his lip quivering like that of a child who suffers, as I led him into the drawing office of the ateliers. There he seated himself, bent and gray, upon the edge of an armchair.