Trailing the Air Mail Bandit

Front matter

Theiss v

By Lewis E. Theiss

Any story about Jimmy Donnelly is sure to provide thrilling reading. The previous book in the series, “The Flying Reporter,” left Jimmy with a job on the New York Morning Press. Now you can follow him on his most spectacular exploit—the running down of a gang of robbers after one of them had looted a mail plane which had crashed one stormy night. It was a ca¥efully planned crime and, except for Jimmy’s sharp eyes, robbery might never have been suspected. The plane was entirely destroyed by fire and, presumably, the sacks of mail were consumed with it. But Jimmy found one piece of canvas, obviously slit by a knife, and this was the clue to the whole case. It suggested that the fire had been started to conceal a crime and was not, as originally supposed, the result of an explosion.

Foreword

C32 dark and stormy night in the latter part

of October, 1918, Air Mail Pilot William C. Hopson, while on his way from New York to Cleveland with a valuable cargo of mail, was blown to the north of the lighted airway and lost his bearings. Also, he was much closer to the earth than he thought. An upreaching arm of a giant tree snagged his running gear and brought him to earth with a terrible crash. His plane burst into flames and was utterly consumed. Hopson: himself was evidently killed outright in the smash. His charred body was found next day by searchers who were seeking for the lost mail plane. Also, some loose diamonds—part of the registered mail—were found in the débris. These were carried off by the finders, but eventually most of them were recovered by post-office inspectors.

To one who has spent a decade of his life as a metropolitan newspaper and magazine writer, such a situation comes with compelling sugges-

6 FOREWORD tiveness; and when it comes at a time in which one is trying to scheme out a flying story—as this tragic accident came to me—then there can be but one result. The situation intrigues the mind. One cannot get away from it. The brain seizes on the material thus supplied and begins to build with it. I knew Pilot Hopson. I had seen him fly. I had talked with him at the Hadley Airport. The result was inevitable. The story I was trying to write grew directly from Hopson’s crash. It is the story presented here.

This story has to do with Jimmy Donnelly. Those who have read “ Piloting the U. S. Air Mail” and “The Search fdr the Lost Mail Plane,” will be well acquainted with that young flier. In the first of these books young Donnelly worked his way up through the Air Mail service and won a place as a reserve pilot in that organization. ‘That book attempts to give a comprehensive picture of the organization and operation of our aérial mail service. It is based upon a close study of the organization, and acquaintanceship with many Air Mail mechanics, “ grease monkeys,” managers, and all the pilots who

FOREWORD "

regularly flew the eastern lap of the transcontinental mail routes. 7

In “The Search for the Lost Mail Plane” Jimmy Donnelly is pictured at the time when Uncle Sam ceased to fly the mails, and this youthful pilot was left without a flying berth. He wins a place with a great newspaper by making for it a successful search for one of his former colleagues of the Air Mail who had disappeared in the mountain fastnesses of Pennsylvania while flying the mail from Cleveland to New York. ‘That story was based upon the strange disappearance in the Pennsylvania wilderness of Air Mail Pilot Harry G. Smith, who is now a test pilot for Betlanca, and who told me every detail of his remarkable adventure.

In this present volume Jimmy Donnelly is pictured in his new job, as a full-fledged newspaper flier. Although this present story is wholly imaginative, great care has been taken to be accurate in matters relating to flying and in geographical descriptions, though of course some liberties have been taken in placing the scenes of this tale.

The writer hopes that those who have read and

8 FOREWORD

enjoyed the two preceding stories about Jimmy Donnelly will also find this present story worth while. Certainly the theme is a worthy one, for the flying of the mails is one of the epics of this present century.

Lewis Envwin THEIss.

Lewisburg, Penna.

Contents

Jimmy Donnevty Puts His PLANE IN OrpDER

Jimmy Taxes Ranp to SEARCH FOR THE Lost Mart PLANE

UNWELCOME ORDERS Jimmy Outwits Ranp Tue Lost Maint Puane Is Founp

CHAPTER I JIMMY Dower Puts His PLANE IN ORDER

IMMY DONNELLY was checking over the ignition system of his new plane. The airship itself was a wonderful creation, thoroughly up to date, and equipped with the latest and best instruments for flying. In construction it was as nearly perfect as a plane could be, yet for some reason the ignition system did not work perfectly. Naturally this worried Jimmy. The feeling of uncertainty it created affected his flying. With a perfect engine he was ready to attempt anything that might be necessary; but with an engine that sometimes skipped a beat and sometimes paused for a second, Jimmy had to confine himself to the most cautious sort of flying. He had a feeling that at any time his motor might play him a nasty trick, and if it did, he didn’t intend to be caught flying upside down, or doing a side-slip, or standing on his tail. He 11 was even more concerned in preventing such a thing. That was why he was checking over his ignition system so carefully.

It should not have been necessary for Jimmy to examine his ignition at all, for his plane was brand-new. Nevertheless, something was wrong with the engine. Jimmy had examined every part of it, and he was satisfied that the engine itself was flawless. He had been over his ignition, too, and that seemed perfect. Yet he knew from the action of the motor that some little thing, somewhere, was not just as it should be. Experience told him the trouble was in the ignition system. Most fliers would have sent the plane back to the factory to have it put in condition, but Jimmy preferred to do this himself. He knew that when he was done with it the job would be absolutely right, and that was the sort of job he wanted done on any plane that he was to fly.

Nor was this attitude due to any conceit on Jimmy’s part. It was really sound judgment, for though Jimmy was now a pilot, and was flying this new plane for the New York M orning Press, he had been an airplane mechanic for months while he was qualifying to fly. Furthermore, he was a good one; in fact, he was one of . the best mechanics that had ever graduated from the hangars at the government Air Mail station at the Hadley Airport, in New Jersey.

Hundreds of times he had helped to take apart and reassemble airplane engines. Times without number he had done for the pilots of the Air Mail just what he was now doing for himself— he had checked over ignition systems until he had become an expert in putting them into perfect condition. Jimmy knew there were no better mechanics at the airplane factory than he was. ° There might be some as good. On the other hand, there might be some who were not so good. Worse yet, there might be some careless ones. It was Jimmy’s own life that was at stake in the reconditioning of this plane. He didn’t intend to have any careless mechanic tell him the plane was O. K. when perhaps it wasn’t. That was why Jimmy chose to do his own checking up. When the job was done, he knew he could trust it, and his experience had shown him that in flying for a newspaper he simply had to have a plane that he could trust.

That did not mean that Jimmy had been flying for a paper for a long, long time. In fact, he was quite new at the game. But his brief experience in flying for the Morning Press had shown him that newspaper flying was vastly different from flying with the mails. He had had to travel in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, and land in all kinds of landing-places, some of which were seemingly impossible. So he wanted a plane that he could depend upon absolutely.

So far Jimmy had had mighty good luck; indeed, he owed his present job to his good fortune. At least, that was the way Jimmy put it, and in truth he had played in luck, but just the same, as he knew well enough in his heart, fortune alone would never have brought him the splendid success that had come to him. In reality, he had won that success, and he had won it by overcoming every difficulty that presented itself.

First of all, he had created his own opportunity. He had rescued Warren Long from the Susquehanna River, when that crack pilot was forced down with his cargo of air mail, through a shortage of fuel. In gratitude, the pilot had opened the way for Jimmy to get into the Air Mail ground force. That gave the lad his chance to become an airplane mechanic and work up to a position as a reserve pilot in the Air Mail itself. And when the government had ceased to fly the mails, and Jimmy was out of a flying job, he had convinced the managing editor of the New York Morning Press that the editor needed him. ' This editor, Mr. Tom Johnson, was particularly interested in flying and the Air Mail. When Warren Long, who stepped from his government berth as a pilot to a position as pilot for one of the commercial companies that now carry the mails, had disappeared in the mountain fastnesses of western Pennsylvania and all America was anxiously awaiting news of him, Jimmy had persuaded Mr. Johnson that he, Jimmy, could find the missing Air Mail pilot where most other pilots might fail. Jimmy had helped to build the lighted airway along which the pilots fly from coast to coast. He had flown over it himself. He knew the territory intimately. He was familiar with the practices and habits of the various pilots of the Air Mail. All this he pointed out to Mr. Johnson, and the latter engaged Jimmy temporarily to aid in the search for the missing pilot.

But when Jimmy learned, ahead of any other searcher, that aérial bandits had made an attempt to hold up and rob Warren Long’s plane; when Jimmy himself discovered the missing pilot, helpless with a broken leg, and saved him from a forest fire that was sweeping down on him; and when finally Jimmy, with the aid of some native trappers, ran down the bandits and placed them under arrest, his temporary job as a flier for the Morning Press became a permanent one. He was the first flier to be thus engaged by that great newspaper, and the paper, very wisely, had secured as good a plane as money could buy.

This new airship was a craft as beautiful as it was well made. Every once in a while Jimmy paused in his work simply to look at it. He loved airplanes as another lad might love horses or dogs, or a sailor might love a ship. The grace and beauty of this ship of the air filled Jimmy with delight. |

It was a slender monoplane, built for speed, yet sturdy enough to do battle with almost any kind of wind. Its wings had a generous spread, and its appearance was suggestive of a hawk that could cleave the skies at tremendous speed. The sloping struts that braced and supported the wings were widely stream-lined, adding to the liftmg power of the craft. The radial, aircooled motor at the nose of the ship had proved to be a marvel of efficiency. For a craft of such graceful, light construction, the landing gear was unusually sturdy. It had been made so at Jimmy’s own suggestion. His brief experience in flying for the press had shown him at once that rough landings might often be necessary, and that a sturdy landing gear might easily make all the difference between success and failure if he had to do any more rough pieces of flying such as he had done when he found Warren Long. The fuselage of the plane was slender, almost straight above, with a gracefullycurving under side. His elevator and rudder were both a little sturdier than common, and his tail-skid was of the strongest construction. Within the fuselage was a comfortable cabin, with seats for two, while the pilot occupied a perch high up in the forward part of the ship, where his view was unobstructed.

On the sides of the ship, in big black letters, were the words New York Morning Press. Jimmy did not like the name. The name he would have liked to paint there was The Spirit of the Press. Jimmy felt that he understood the spirit of the press. To be sure, he was not really a reporter himself. He was a pilot, whose task it was to carry reporters and photographers, to transport pictures, to bring despatches from inaccessible places, and to do any other flying tasks that might be necessary in the gathering of the news. But Jimmy had had a taste of reporting. He had tried his hand at it when he went in search of Warren Long. His success had stimulated his ambition. He wanted to become a reporter. He did not, of course, wish to give up flying; but he did want to reach a position where his managing editor would freely send him out alone on just such errands as had taken him off on his first flight for the Morning Press.

In any case, Jimmy felt that_he thoroughly understood the spirit of the press. When he was winging his way through sunshine and storm, in daylight and dark, in unflagging quest of news

—even though he carried a reporter that was to gather that news—he felt that he was himself an embodiment of the spirit of the press. For always that news was to enlighten the world, or expose an evil, or remedy a wrong, or bring help to the unfortunate. There was something thrilling about this search for the news, something that gripped and held Jimmy and called forth his loyalty and devotion, as even flying with the mail had hardly done. Jimmy knew that that was the real spirit of the press. When he was. flying to get the news, he felt like a crusader of old, like a knight errant, riding the world over to right some wrong. ‘There was something about this newspaper job that gripped him and held him and called forth his deepest loyalty. Outsiders could never understand it. Jimmy had never understood it himself until he got this job. - But he knew now what it was. It was the spirit of the press. He thrilled when he looked at his beautiful new ship, and wished again that he could have had the naming of it.

All the while Jimmy worked patiently away _at his task. With skilled fingers he polished the contact points in the timers, tested and adjusted the platinum points, examined and adjusted the brushes in the generator, and tested one by one all the wires in the ignition system. With rags soaked in gasoline he wiped away every bit of oil and grease, until his engine was spotless. Tor a long, long time he toiled at his task. He found nothing wrong, but he wasn’t satisfied. Another mechanic might have called the plane O. K. and sent a flier aloft in it, possibly to his death. Jimmy knew that something had been - wrong and that he had not yet found out what it was. He went all over his job again, for experience told him that the difficulty was in the ignition. He increased his care. This time he_ found that one of the springs attached to a generator brush was broken. ‘The break had occurred in such a manner that it was not noticeable; indeed, Jimmy himself had overlooked it on his first examination. He heaved a sigh of relief when he found the defective spring. “Gee!” he said to himself. “I’m glad I didn’t take this plane back to the factory, as the boss wanted me to do. They’d never have found that break, but they’d have checked the ship over and told me she was all right, and she wouldn’t have been improved a bit. I guess it’s true that if you want a thing well done you have to do it yourself. Anyway, Dll bet my hat that that -engine’ll run one hundred per cent now. I’m going to take the ship up and see if she won’t.”

But before he could make another move, the telephone on the hangar wall began to ring, and Jimmy skipped over to it and put the receiver to his ear. Mr. Johnson was at the other end of the wire.

“Is your plane in shape for a trip, Jimmy?” asked the managing editor.

“ Absolutely, Mr. Johnson. I promised you when you bought the ship that I’d keep her in top form. I’ve just finished checking over my ignition and the ship is tuned to the minute. She'll do anything.”

“ That’s good news, because I want you to ride far and fast. Another of your friends of the Air Mail is missing.”

“What!” cried Jimmy. “Missing? Who is it and where'd he disappear? ” |

“T can’t answer your last question. If I could, I wouldn’t need to send you out. The pilot who is missing is Lawrence Welliver. He had a passenger with him. He left the Hadley Airport last night and was due in Cleveland early this morning.”

“Larry Welliver!” cried Jimmy. “Gee! I hope nothing has happened to him. Where was he last seen?”

“He passed over Bellefonte a little before midnight, and was reported at Clarion on schedule, at 1:05.a. mM. Not a thing has been heard of him since. That’s all I can tell you, Jimmy.”

“Very well, Mr. Johnson. Ill be off as soon as I can throw a few things together and get into my flying clothes. Tl be under way ‘in ten minutes.” )

“Hold your horses, Jimmy. Nobody told you to take off yet. I’m sending Harold Rand out on this story, and I want you to take him. You can perhaps help him, but Rand will cover the story. He will tell you what he wants you to do.”

“ Harold Rand!” cried Jimmy. ‘“‘ What does he know about this kind of a story? Let me search for Larry Welliver myself, Mr. Johnson. Tl find him for you, sure. I found Warren Long.”

“Mr. Rand is handling this story,” said the managing editor sharply. “Please do as you are asked to do. Rand will give you your orders.”

“But Mr. Johnson,” protested Jimmy, “I can’t work with Rand. Nobody can. If you'll let me go on my own hook, I’ll find Welliver for you. I promise you I will. Pll work my head off to get the story for you. I can do it, too. I know the Air Mail and the pilots ‘is

Mr. Johnson angrily cut him short. “If you want to fly that plane in the search for Welliver, you do as you are told. Otherwise, we'll put a new pilot in her. Rand will be over to the field in a few minutes. You are to do as he directs. And mind that you help him all you can.”.

Jimmy looked like a whipped dog when he hung up the receiver. He believed that his experience in flying and his knowledge of the Air Mail qualified him to take up this search better than any reporter on the Morning Press. He had so hoped the managing editor would let him make the search alone. He would have been glad enough to work with some of the Press men—Flaherty, for instance, or Williams, or

Dudley. But Rand! Jimmy’s blood fairly | boiled at the thought. Rand was a man he despised, almost hated. In the short time Jimmy had been flying for the Press, he had had to carry Rand on a number of assignments. Every time Rand stepped into the plane Jimmy detested him more. ‘The man was conceited, cocksure, arrogant, rude. He had treated Jimmy like a dog; at least, so it seemed to Jimmy. Merely to have him in the plane was trial enough to Jimmy, but to have to take orders from him, and on an occasion like the present, when perhaps the life of one of Jimmy’s good friends was at stake, was almost unbearable. Jimmy knew well enough what would happen.

“We'll come to a situation where there’s only one thing that should be done, and he’ll order me to do just the opposite.. What am I going to do? He knows nothing about flying. He knows nothing about what a pilot should do or could do. But he'll give me orders as though he knew as much as the Lord Almighty. What am I going to do if he tells me to do just what I oughtn’t to do—with Larry’s life at stake? I know what I'll do some day, anyway. I’ll give that know-it-all reporter the worst trimming he ever got. But I mustn’t touch him now. I mustn’t. We've got to find Larry. I ought to be getting my traps ready this minute, instead of stewing about Rand.”

And Jimmy skipped away to get together his pistol, a flashlight, his field-glasses, some matches, blankets, maps, and other things that experience had shown him might be very necessary on such a trip as the one before him.

CHAPTER II Jimmy TAkrs RAND TO SEARCH FOR THE Lost Mart PLANE

VERY few minutes sufficed to collect these

articles. Jimmy stowed them away in his plane, in a little private locker. From the restaurant across the street he secured a basket that contained sandwiches, cheese, some fruit, bread, butter, potted meat, and other condensed rations. He had his two thermos bottles filled with boiling hot coffee. When it was all packed away in his plane, he felt that he had enough food to carry him for a week, if necessary. E:xperience had shown him that on such a trip as the one before him he might not be able to buy provisions of any sort for days.

As soon as this first essential of food was attended to, Jimmy .turned to other matters that might have a bearing on the job-in hand. He telephoned to the Air Mail station and called for the United States weather forecaster, Mr. Beverly Graham. He and Mr. Graham were old friends. The forecaster had flown with Jimmy on more than one occasion, and Jimmy, during his days as a mechanic at the mail field, had often helped Mr. Graham with his work. So now the weather man was glad enough to hear Jimmy’s voice.

“‘What’s up?” he asked. “I haven’t heard from you in a long time.’ You aren’t by any chance going out to search for Larry Welliver, are you?”

“'That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” replied Jimmy.

“Tm mighty glad of it,” said the forecaster heartily. ““ We are tremendously alarmed about Larry. We want every capable searcher we can get. You seem to be about the best qualified flier that can be spared for this work. And you had such good luck in the search for Warren Long that we were all hoping the Press would put you on this job, too.”

There was a very different note in Jimmy’s voice when he answered. “ You mustn’t hope for too much, Mr. Graham,” he said. “ Tm going to have a part in this search, but I’m going only as a pilot. My boss has assigned Harold

Rand to cover the story. I’m merely to transport him.”

“You don’t mean that fellow we have had so much trouble with over here, do you? That awfully fresh reporter? ”

“He’s the very fellow,” said Jimmy sadly, “and I’m under instructions to do exactly as he orders.”

“T don’t imagine you'll like that, Jimmy. But between you, you two surely ought to find Welliver. Rand’s got brains, even if he is so fresh. Il say that for him. And he ought to make out better on this story than on most any other. You know we dislike him so in the Air Mail that we just won’t give him a bit of news any more. But this case is different. We'll be glad to help anybody that is searching for Larry Welliver. What can we do for you, Jimmy? Do you want the weather? ” .

“You guessed it exactly. And I want yesterday’s weather report from the district where Larry disappeared.”

“T looked that all up as soon as we learned about this case. Dve got it right at hand. Ready?”

“ Shoot,” said Jimmy.

“Well, the atmospheric conditions were good; that is, they were very fair. The sky wasn’t clear entirely, but was fairly so. There seem to have been cloud masses at intervals, rather low down. Larry would have had to fly very high to go over them, or else hedge-hop along to get under them. The wind at 10,000 feet was blowing 60 miles an hour, while at the ground level it was only 18 miles. It was coming from the southwest. There were foggy spots here and there, too. The fog seems to have been mostly on the ground level.”

“What did Clarion have to say about the matter? Was Larry on the course when he got there?”

“Yes, he was right on the course. The caretaker saw him plainly. He passed over Clarion at five after one. At that point it was perfectly clear.”

“Then the foggy spots were to the west of Clarion?”

“ Exactly. The worst weather conditions between here and Cleveland were right in the region where he disappeared. They weren’t bad, though. On the whole, it was a very fair night for flying.”

“What do you think about the matter, Mr. Graham? What do the boys think? Have the pilots expressed any opinion about it?”

“Naturally they think that one of two things happened. Either Larry had engine trouble and had to come down, or he ran into something in the fog.”

“What about the weather out there now?”

“It’s O. K. in every respect—sky clear, visibility good, little wind except high up, and no signs of storm. Looks as though we might have three or four days of fine flying weather.”

“That’s certainly a stroke of luck. Thanks ever so much, Mr. Graham. If you learn anything new, won’t you please send me a wireless to Bellefonte? I’m going to stop there for gas.”

“Sure I will, Jimmy, and the best of luck to you. Were all ee our hopes on you. Good-by.”

“ Good-by. PIL do my best.” And Jimmy hung up the receiver.

Rand had not arrived yet, so Jimmy kept on with his preparations for the search. His first move was to get his topographic maps out of the plane. From these he selected the sections or quadrangles that showed the region along the Air Mail route west of Clarion. Fitting them together on a big work-bench, Jimmy laid a yardstick directly along the line of the mail route and marked the route with a black lead pencil. Laying aside the yardstick, he began to study the topography of the country. A frown came on his face, which deepened as he carefully studied the map. — |

“Gee! That sure is a nasty piece of country to come down in,” he muttered. ‘‘ Nothing out there but hills, rocks, and forests. If you put a lot of oranges flat on a platter they would look about like that country. There must be a million of those rounded hills out there, and the stream courses are dug deep, with pretty steep sides. Gee! the Clarion River must run in a regular canyon in places.”

Intently he studied the map.

“The general level is about 1400 to 1500 feet above sea-level,” he muttered, “with an occasional hill sticking up above that height.”

When Jimmy’s eye reached the Allegheny

River, he whistled. “This has the Clarion - skinned a mile,” he thought. ‘“ Here are river levels marked 900 feet, and shores that stand | straight up marked 1400 feet. Apparently that stream runs through a trough 500 feet deep in places. And in places the banks are so steep they make a regular gorge. That’s bad. Larry had to cross both those rivers, and he had to fly for a stretch almost parallel with that deep gorge of the Allegheny, where it loops around among the hills. Suppose he misjudged his height in the fog, and got down into the gorge the way the Yankee Doodle did on its last flight. Larry’d be bound to crash against the cliffs at the turn of the gorge, just as the Yankee Doodle crashed. That would be the end of Larry, even as it was the end of Captain Collyer and Harry Tucker. Collyer was just as good a flier as Larry, too. He was one of the best. But the fog fixed him, and I’m mighty afraid the fog has done for Larry, also.”

Jimmy left his maps to take a-look at the Morning Press. He had started the ship’s engine to running as soon as Mr. Johnson finished telephoning to him. Now he found that his engine was nicely warmed up, and everything seemed to be in first-class condition. But Jimmy wanted to make sure. So he climbed into the ship itself and inspected each of the instruments on the instrument panel, and examined every bit of equipment and apparatus that a trustworthy pilot does examine before a flight. Everything seemed to be functioning perfectly.