Dorothy Dixon and the Mystery Plane

With a wave of his hand the car moved off and Dorothy turned to Bill.

“Why did you tell him you were going to take the air about four?” she asked.

“Because if the smuggling gang know what I’m going to do it will save time if we pull off our little scrap this afternoon.”

Before this admission Dorothy had looked puzzled. Now her eyebrows went up in startled astonishment.

“Good Heavens, Bill! You surely don’t think that Mr. Tracey has anything to do with that! He’s as prim and prissy as a pussy-cat!”

“Just my opinion. Of course he knows nothing about the diamonds. But your prissy boy friend has the reputation of being the worst gossip in New Canaan. When he takes those gray bags of his to be cleaned, it will be all over the village that Bill Bolton is back and intends to test out his planes late this afternoon. – And that is just what I want.”

“Oh, I see,” Dorothy nodded thoughtfully. “But I’ll tell you one thing. If we are going up today, it’s high time we quit talking and got busy on the planes.”

With four airplanes to groom, the next few hours proved busy ones for both Dorothy and Bill. But by four o’clock everything was ready for their flight.

“Got your instructions down pat?” he inquired as Dorothy got aboard the Will-o’-the-Wisp. The airplane was resting on the concrete apron of the Dixons’ hangar, preparatory to the take off.

“Know them backwards,” she flashed with a smile.

“Good luck, then.”

“Good luck to you, Bill.”

He stepped swiftly to one side as she switched on the ignition. For a moment or two he stood there watching her amphibian taxi away from the hangar, gathering speed as it went. Then when the wheels left the ground and the big bird of wood and metal soared upward, he turned away and made off in the direction of his father’s property.

As Will-o’-the-Wisp climbed in great widening circles, Dorothy at the controls knew she had plenty of time to gain the position agreed upon before Bill could get under way. The air was smooth and still, without the slightest breath of disturbing wind. Perfect flying weather and wonderful visibility with a clear blue horizon unmarred by the smallest shred of cloud.

The Boltons had turned the ten-acre pasture behind their house into a level flying field. The old hay barn had been enlarged, partitions removed and a concrete floor laid. It now made a large roomy hangar, for their three planes.

Looking down as she kept on circling higher and higher, Dorothy saw Bill cross the ridge road and appear a moment or two later on his own flying field. She watched him hurry down to the hangar and could see Frank busy about the Ryan before its open doors. Then she saw Bill get aboard. When she looked again, his small monoplane was already in the air.

By this time the indicator on Will-o’-the-Wisp’s altimeter marked a height of between eight and nine thousand feet. According to instructions, Dorothy leveled off and bringing right rudder and right aileron simultaneously into play, she sent the plane into a wide circular turn. Far below, the Ryan was pursuing the same tactics, so that both planes were cruising over the township of New Canaan.

Dorothy and Bill continued to maintain the same relative positions for the next fifteen or twenty minutes. Then as Will-o’-the-Wisp swung round toward the west, Dorothy spied a third plane, streaking toward New Canaan at an altitude of some three thousand feet.

The fact that Bill had also spotted the intruder was evident, for he began to climb.

“Bill’s advertising plan worked,” muttered Dorothy with satisfaction. “If that amphibian over there isn’t the Mystery Plane, I’ll eat my ailerons!”

Chapter XV

RUN TO COVER

Dorothy reached beneath her seat, brought forth a pair of field-glasses and clapped them to her goggles. Focussed through the powerful lenses, there was no mistaking the Mystery Plane. And although at this distance it was impossible to see the pilot’s face, she could plainly distinguish the barrel of a machine gun that poked its wicked muzzle over the cockpit’s cowling.

“So the bearded aviator means mischief!” She returned the glasses to their case. “That guy must be a cold-blooded dog to try anything like that over a populated township. He’s likely to bite off more than he can chew if Bill and I have any luck. If he cracks up, I shan’t weep.”

At first sight of the smuggler’s plane, she brought Will-o’-the-Wisp back on an even keel, but now in order to get an unimpeded view directly below, she sent the plane into a steep bank.

Bill, in the Ryan, with an altitude of some twenty-five hundred feet and its nose slightly raised was streaking toward the smuggler.

Most air battles are fought in the higher ether, because combat flying often necessitates acrobatics and the ordinary pilot wants plenty of air below for such work. The smuggler being the aggressor in this case, naturally started to climb when he spotted the Ryan. He hoped, no doubt, not only to increase his altitude but to gain greater ascendency over Bill before diving at the monoplane with his machine gun going full blast.

It was time for Dorothy to act. As the smuggler’s plane began to ascend, she sent her amphibian diving toward him at a tremendous spurt of speed. The Mystery Plane nosed over and dove in turn at the Ryan, some five hundred feet below.

“Ha-ha!” Dorothy shut off her motor and brought Will-o’-the-Wisp’s nose gradually back to the horizontal. “Our scheme worked! That bird either doesn’t know his business or he’s lost his nerve!”

A fighting plane attacking has as its objective a position directly behind the hostile plane at close range. A position either above or below the tail is equally good. From these positions the enemy is directly in the line of fire, and in sighting no deflection is necessary.

The smuggler’s maneuver showed Dorothy that he was a novice; for instead of going into a climbing spiral which would have eluded her dive and made it possible for him to attain a superior position over both planes, he dove at the Ryan. This might have been a proper fighting maneuver if Bill’s plane had not been nosing upward toward him; and had the Ryan not been the faster of the two.

By this blunder he put himself in the direct line of fire from Bill’s machine gun. And had that young man been minded to use it the battle would have been over – almost before it started.

Seeing his mistake almost immediately, the bearded aviator broke his dive by zooming upward. Again Dorothy’s plane dove for his tail and right there he made his second error.

Instead of gaining altitude and position by making an Immelman turn, which consists of a half-roll on the top of a loop, he pulled back his stick sharply, simultaneously giving the Mystery Plane full right rudder. The result was an abrupt stall and a fall off, and his amphibian emerged from the resultant dive headed in the direction from which he had first appeared.

Dorothy sent her bus spiralling downward, while Bill simply nosed his Ryan into a steeper climb. By the time the Mystery Plane levelled off from its split-S turn it had lost over a thousand feet. Granted he was headed for home, if that had been his intention; now he was placed in the worst possible situation with regard to his opponents. For instead of one, both planes had attained positions above him.

For the next few minutes the man in the smuggler’s plane did his best to out-maneuver the elusive pair whose motors roared above his head like giant bees attacking an enemy. Never was he given a chance to better his position or to gain altitude. Every time he maneuvered to place one of the planes within line of fire from his machine gun, the other would effectually block the move; the menacing plane would sheer off at a tangent and its partner, crowding down upon his tail, would hurl forth a smoke bomb. By the time he floundered through the cloud, his antagonists would be back in their relative positions, again, the one directly above his tail plane, the other slightly behind him to the right.

The bearded aviator knew that he was being outclassed at every move, that gradually they were forcing him down to a point where he must land or crash.

Both Dorothy and Bill knew exactly when the man in the plane below guessed their purpose. For with a sudden burst of speed he shot ahead, streaking in the direction of North Stamford like a ghost in torment.

“We’ve got every advantage but one,” mused Dorothy, widening her throttle in pursuit. “He knows where he’s going – and we don’t. He’s up to some trick, I’ll bet.”

That her thoughts were prophetic was made apparent almost immediately. By shutting off his engine and by kicking his rudder alternately right and left with comparatively slow and heavy movements, the smuggler pilot sent his plane’s nose swinging from side to side. This evolution, known as fish-tailing, he executed without banking or dropping the nose to a steeper angle. Its purpose is to cut down speed and to do so as rapidly as possible.

The Mystery Plane slowed down as though a brake had been applied, sideslipped to the left over a line of trees and leveled off above a field enclosed by a dilapidated stone fence.

“Confound!” exclaimed Dorothy, with a glance behind. “He’s going to land and both Bill and I have overshot the field!”

Nose depressed below level, a lively flipper turn to left brought Will-o’-the-Wisp sharply round facing the field again with its wings almost vertical. Immediate application of up aileron and opposite rudder quickly brought the amphibian to an even keel once more. Then Dorothy nosed over, went into a forward slip, recovered and leveled off for a landing.

As the wheels of her plane touched the ground, she saw the Ryan come to a stop on the grass some yards to the right. Just ahead and between them was the Mystery Plane. It lay drunkenly over on one side, resting on its twisted landing gear and a crumpled lower wing section.

Dorothy stood up in her cockpit when Will-o’-the-Wisp stopped rolling and saw the smuggler-pilot vault the wall at the far corner of the field and disappear into a small wood. Bill was walking toward the disabled amphibian. She got out of her plane and hurried toward him.

“Pancaked!” she cried, pointing toward the wreck as she came within speaking distance.

“You said it – ” concurred Bill. “That guy was in such a hurry he leveled off too soon. Usually I don’t wish anybody hard luck but that bird is the great exception. Too bad he didn’t break a leg along with his plane. Now he’s beat it and – ”

“We are just about where we were before,” she broke in.

“Not quite, Dorothy. The Mystery Plane is out of commission. – I wonder where we are?”

“Somewhere in the North Stamford hills.”