第27章 WINGED BLACKMAIL(2)

Mr.Peter Winn, RESPECTABLE SIR: It was me that fixed yr sisters house.You have raised hell, aint you.Send ten thousand now.Going up all the time.Dont put any more handicap weights on that bird.You sure cant follow her, and its cruelty to animals.

Peter Winn was ready to acknowledge himself beaten.The detectives were powerless, and Peter did not know where next the man would strike--perhaps at the lives of those near and dear to him.He even telephoned to San Francisco for ten thousand dollars in bills of large denomination.But Peter had a son, Peter Winn, Junior, with the same firm-set jaw as his fathers,, and the same knitted, brooding determination in his eyes.He was only twenty-six, but he was all man, a secret terror and delight to the financier, who alternated between pride in his son's aeroplane feats and fear for an untimely and terrible end.

"Hold on, father, don't send that money," said Peter Winn, Junior."Number Eight is ready, and I know I've at last got that reefing down fine.It will work, and it will revolutionize flying.Speed--that's what's needed, and so are the large sustaining surfaces for getting started and for altitude.I've got them both.Once I'm up I reef down.There it is.The smaller the sustaining surface, the higher the speed.That was the law discovered by Langley.And I've applied it.I can rise when the air is calm and full of holes, and I can rise when its boiling, and by my control of my plane areas I can come pretty close to making any speed I want.Especially with that new Sangster-Endholm engine.""You'll come pretty close to breaking your neck one of these days," was his father's encouraging remark.

"Dad, I'll tell you what I'll come pretty close to-ninety miles an hour--Yes, and a hundred.Now listen! I was going to make a trial tomorrow.But it won't take two hours to start today.

I'll tackle it this afternoon.Keep that money.Give me the pigeon and I'll follow her to her loft where ever it is.Hold on, let me talk to the mechanics."He called up the workshop, and in crisp, terse sentences gave his orders in a way that went to the older man's heart.Truly, his one son was a chip off the old block, and Peter Winn had no meek notions concerning the intrinsic value of said old block.

Timed to the minute, the young man, two hours later, was ready for the start.In a holster at his hip, for instant use, cocked and with the safety on, was a large-caliber automatic pistol.

With a final inspection and overhauling he took his seat in the aeroplane.He started the engine, and with a wild burr of gas explosions the beautiful fabric darted down the launching ways and lifted into the air.Circling, as he rose, to the west, he wheeled about and jockeyed and maneuvered for the real start of the race.

This start depended on the pigeon.Peter Winn held it.Nor was it weighted with shot this time.Instead, half a yard of bright ribbon was firmly attached to its leg--this the more easily to enable its flight being followed.Peter Winn released it, and it arose easily enough despite the slight drag of the ribbon.

There was no uncertainty about its movements.This was the third time it had made particular homing passage, and it knew the course.

At an altitude of several hundred feet it straightened out and went due cast.The aeroplane swerved into a straight course from its last curve and followed.The race was on.Peter Winn, looking up, saw that the pigeon was outdistancing the machine.

Then he saw something else.The aeroplane suddenly and instantly became smaller.It had reefed.Its high-speed plane-design was now revealed.Instead of the generous spread of surface with which it had taken the air, it was now a lean and hawklike monoplane balanced on long and exceedingly narrow wings.

......

When young Winn reefed down so suddenly, he received a surprise.It was his first trial of the new device, and while he was prepared for increased speed he was not prepared for such an astonishing increase.It was better than he dreamed, and, before he knew it, he was hard upon the pigeon.That little creature, frightened by this, the most monstrous hawk it had ever seen, immediately darted upward, after the manner of pigeons that strive always to rise above a hawk.

In great curves the monoplane followed upward, higher and higher into the blue.It was difficult, from underneath to see the pigeon.and young Winn dared not lose it from his sight.He even shook out his reefs in order to rise more quickly.Up, up they went, until the pigeon, true to its instinct, dropped and struck at what it to be the back of its pursuing enemy.Once was enough, for, evidently finding no life in the smooth cloth surface of the machine, it ceased soaring and straightened out on its eastward course.