THE HAUNTED HANGAR

By VAN POWELL

THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY Akron, Ohio New York

Copyright MCMXXXII THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY The Haunted Hangar Made in the United States of America

CHAPTER I “SUSPICIOUS SANDY”

“Steady, all! Engine’s quit and left us with a dead stick! No danger.”

Neither sixteen-year-old Larry Turner nor Dick Summers, a year his junior, had any more fear than had Sandy Maclaren, hardly thirteen and seated just back of the pilot who, in flying the four-place, low-wing airplane, had called back reassuringly.

“Jeff’s a war ace and knows his stuff,” Larry mused, “and the engine couldn’t have died in a better spot. We are high enough and within gliding distance of that old, abandoned private field.”

Dick, who saw something to make light of in any situation, turned with his plump face cracked by a broad grin.

“I always said whether you fly a crate full of passengers or handle one full of eggs, you get a good break sometimes!”

Larry nodded in his calm, half-serious way.

Only the youngest member of the trio, as the craft nosed into a gentle glide and banked in a turn to get in position to shoot the private landing spot on the old estate, took the occasion as anything but a lark.

Dick joked, Larry admired the skill of the pilot.

And Jeff, chewing his gum casually, justified their confidence.

Sandy Maclaren, with narrowed eyes and an intent frown, bent his gaze on the pilot’s back and muttered under his breath.

“That engine didn’t die. I saw what Jeff did. He was as quick as a cat—but he didn’t fool me.”

His expression altered to a puzzled scowl.

“But why did he shut off the ignition and pretend the engine had stopped—so handy to this old, abandoned estate?”

No answer rewarded his agile thoughts as Jeff skilfully shot the small field, compelled to come in to one side because of tall trees directly in their line of flight, over which his dead engine made it impossible to maneuver. Nor did he get a solution to his puzzle as Jeff cleverly side-slipped to lose momentum, and to get over the neglected, turf-grown runway down which, a little bumpily but right side up, he taxied to a standstill.

“Well,” Jeff said, with a grin, swinging around in his seat and drawing off his helmet, “here we are!”

“If I ever get the money to take flying lessons,” Larry said, “I know the pilot I’m going to ask to give me instruction! When I can make a forced landing like that one, Jeff, I’ll think I’m getting to be a pilot.”

“If ever I get taken into my uncle’s airplane passenger line,” Dick spoke up, “I know who’ll be Chief Pilot—until Larry gets the experience to crowd Jeff out.”

Sandy, his face moody, said nothing.

The tall, slim pilot, grinned at the compliments and then went on working his jaws on the gum he habitually chewed.

“Guess I’ll have to trace my gas line and ignition to see if a break made this trouble.” Jeff began removing his leather coat. “Say! By golly! Do you know where I think we’ve set down?”

“Yes,” Sandy spoke meaningly. “This is the old Everdail estate—the one that’s been in the newspapers lately because the people around here claim the hangar is haunted.”

“I believe it is!” agreed Jeff. “Why don’t you three take a look. Yonder’s a hangar and the roll-door is lifted a little. Maybe you’d spot that there Mister Spook and clear up the mystery while I work.”

“I’d rather go down by the water and see if it’s cooler there,” Sandy said, trying to catch Larry’s eye. “Since we got down out of the cool air it’s the hottest day this June.”

“I’m for the hangar!” voted Dick. “If there’s any specters roaming through that hangar you’ll get more chills there than you will by the Sound.”

“I could stand a shiver or two,” commented Larry, leading the way toward the large, metal-sheathed building at the end of the runway.

Facing them was a wide opening, sufficiently spacious to permit airplanes to be rolled through: in grooved slots at either side the door, made of joined metal slats working like the old-fashioned roll-top desk, could be raised or lowered by a motor and cable led over a drum.

Sandy gave in, and as they walked toward the hangar they discussed the stories that had come out in the news about queer, ghostly noises heard by passers-by on the state road late at night, accounts of the fright the estate caretaker had received when he investigated and saw a queer, bluish glow in the place and was attacked by something seemingly uncanny and not human.

The door, when they arrived, was seen to be partially open, lifted about three feet.

“There’s an airplane in there—it looks to be an amphibian—I see pontoons!” Larry stated.

“Let’s go have a look at it,” suggested Dick.

“Don’t!” Sandy spoke sharply. “Don’t go in there!”

Larry and Dick straightened and stared in surprise. It was very plain to be seen that Sandy was not joking.

“Why?” asked Larry, in his practical way.

“Think back,” said Sandy. “When school vacations started and we began to stay around the new Floyd Bennett airport that had opened on Barren Island, Jeff had his ‘crate’ there to take people around the sky for short sight-seeing hops, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” admitted Larry, “and we got to be friendly because we are crazy to be around airplanes and pilots, and Jeff let us be ‘grease monkeys’ and help him get passengers, too.”

“Surely he did! But when we brought them to go up with him, did he take their money and fly them around, the way others did? Or——”

“No,” Dick admitted. “He generally had something wrong with the crate, or the wind was too high, or he had stubbed his left foot and met a cross-eyed girl, or saw a funeral passing, and thought something unlucky might happen from those signs.”

“Do you really believe anybody can be as superstitious as Jeff tries to make us believe he is?”

“Yes. Lots of pilots are—they think an accident will happen if anybody wears flowers in their ‘planes——”

“All right, Larry, let that go. But why did Jeff bring us here?”

“He said, this morning, we had helped him a lot and he didn’t have money to pay us,” Larry answered. “He offered us a joy-ride.”

“But why did he come so far out on Long Island, and then get a dead stick so handy to this old estate that hasn’t been lived in for years and that has everybody scared so they won’t come near at night?”

“‘Then get a dead stick!’” Larry shook his head. “Why, Sandy! I know you read detective stories until you think everything is suspicious——”

“So do you read them—and Dick, too!”

“But we read to try to guess the answers to the mystery,” Dick declared. “You’ve got the idea that real life is like those wild stories. Everything looks as if it had some hidden mystery behind it—I know what will be your new nickname——”

He chuckled to show there was no malice as he stated the new name.

“Suspicious Sandy!”

“That’s good,” Larry smiled. “Suspicious Sandy thinks a pilot gets a dead stick to make us land near a haunted hangar——”

“I saw him cut the ignition switch!” declared Sandy defiantly.

“You thought you did!”

“I know I did—and, what’s more, here we are at a spot where nobody comes because of the ghost story—and he tells us to go into the hangar and—the door is left up a little way——”

“Oh, Sandy, you’re letting wild imagination run away with you!”

“Am I? All right. You two go on in—and be held for ransom!”

“Ho-ho-ho-ho! That’s good. Suspicious Sandy—is that somebody inside the hangar?” Dick changed his tone suddenly, dropping his voice to a whisper as he stooped and saw something move behind the old amphibian at the back of the building.

“I thought I saw—but it’s gone!” Larry retorted, lowering his voice also.

By a common impulse of curiosity they stooped and went in. Sandy, his own impulse following theirs, was inside almost as quickly.

“There isn’t anybody!” Larry’s eyes became used to the duller light that filtered through the thick dust on the roof skylight.

To their startled ears came a muffled clang, a queer, hollow sound—and as they turned to run back under the rolled-up door, it slid rapidly down in its grooves, dropping into place with a hollow rumble.

“Good gracious golly!” gasped Dick.

“That’s queer!” Larry was a little puzzled.

Sandy, half frightened, half triumphant, spoke four words:

“I told you so,” he whispered.

CHAPTER II GHOSTS, GUM—AND GEMS

For a long minute Dick, Larry and Sandy stood in a compact group, feeling rather stunned by the sudden springing of the trap, as they considered the closed hangar.

Larry, calm and cool in an emergency, was first to recover.

“Even if Jeff did want to catch us and demand ransom to let us go,” he remarked quietly, “he wasn’t outside that rolling door—and I don’t think he could pull it down anyhow.”

“No,” Dick agreed, seeing no fun in the situation for once. “See! There is a motor connected to a big drum up in the top of the hangar, and the door is counterbalanced so that turning the drum winds up the cable that pulls it up. I suppose the motor reverses to run it down and——”

“What was that?”

Sandy’s voice was tense and strained.

They heard the strange, hollow sound again, seeming to come from the metal wall, but impossible to locate at once because of the echo.

Rap—tap—tap!

“Somebody’s knocking,” Dick gasped.

“Not somebody—something!” corrected Sandy. “The same ‘something’ that worked the door and shut it!”

“Gracious-to-gravy!” exclaimed Larry, “you don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Sandy? Not really!”

“No human hand touched the switch that ran that door down!”

“I think it did!” challenged Larry. “We thought we saw somebody at the back of the hangar—that’s why we came in! I’m going to see where he is, what he’s doing and why he’s trying to fright—frighten us!”

He broke his sentence in the middle of a word because the queer knocking repeated itself, but with quick presence of mind he completed his phrase to steady Sandy, whose face was growing drawn with dismay.

Larry took a swift, sharp look around the enclosure.

“There’s a big, closed can for waste and oily rags,” he commented, “but anyone would suffocate who hid in that!”

“Well, there’s a clothes cupboard—in the back corner,” Dick said. “Let’s look in that, you and I. Sandy, you stay back and keep watch.” Dick, quick to see Larry’s attitude toward Sandy, wanted to have a dependable chum at his side as he investigated while he hoped to give Sandy more confidence by leaving him in the lighted part of the building, under the smudged, dusty skylight.

“Come on!” agreed Larry.

With Dick he walked boldly enough to the built-in wooden cupboard, protected from dust by a heavy burlap hanging.

Throwing the curtain aside sharply, both youths peered in.

“Nothing but old overalls and some tools on the floor,” Dick commented.

“It’s peculiar,” Larry said doubtfully. “Nobody here—but—” a new idea struck him. Quietly he gestured toward the amphibian, old, uncared for, looking almost ready to fall apart, its doped wings stained with mould, its pontoons looking as if the fabric was rotting on them.

Dick, instantly catching Larry’s notion, went to the forward seat, while Larry took the second compartment behind the big fuel tank.

“Nobody here,” he reported, and investigated, by climbing in the vacant part of the fuselage toward the tail.

“This place is empty, too,” Dick agreed. “Where could?——”

“Oh!”—Sandy almost screamed the word as the dull, hollow knocks came again.

Larry leaped from the wing-step, sent his sharp gaze rapidly around the enclosure and, of a sudden, gripped Dick’s arm so tightly that the plump youth winced and grew chilly with apprehension.

At once he saw Larry’s amazed, relieved expression and followed the older comrade’s eyes.

With an instant return of his old amused self he threw back his head and let out a deep howl of delight.

“Oh—ho-ho-ho-ha-ha! Oh, my!—ho-ho——”

“What’s the matter with you?” demanded Sandy. “Have you gone silly?”

“Oh—ho-ho! Suspicious Sandy!—ho-ho!”

Larry explained.

“You got us all worked up and worried,” he told Sandy, “with your suspicions. And all the time——”

“Ho-ho-ha-ha! All the t-time, we were like mice racing around a treadmill.” Dick had to speak between chuckles. “All the time we ran around in circles so fast we didn’t see the end of the cage. Sus—suspicious Sandy! Thinking we would be trapped and held for ransom! Ho, golly-me! Look around you, Sandy!”

Sandy looked.

His face slowly changed, gradually became red.

“Oh!” His voice was sheepish. “You mean the switch for the motor over by that small metal door they use when they don’t want to run up the big one?”

“That runs the motor,” Larry agreed. “The cable must have slipped on the drum and let the door go down——”

“But,” Sandy clung obstinately to his theories, “why did Jeff pick this haunted place and cut the ignition—and why was the door up in the first place?”

“What do we—ho-ho—care?” Dick chuckled. “Another thing—even if the electric current is off and the motor doesn’t work—look at that small, hinged door—do you see that the knob of the spring lock—is on—our—side!” He broke out in a fresh cackle of laughter.

“But—those raps——”

For reply Larry strode over to the metal door set in the wall for use when anyone chose to enter or leave the hangar.

Throwing it open, he faced Jeff.

“Took you long enough to answer!” grumbled Jeff. “What made you fool with that door and shut yourselves in?”

“What made you cut the ignition!” snapped Sandy, working on the idea he had read in so many detective stories that a surprise attack often caused a person to be so startled as to reveal facts.

Larry and Dick turned their eyes to Jeff.

The older pilot, staring at his accuser for an instant, as though hesitating about some sharp response, suddenly began to chuckle.

“That-there is one on me!” he admitted. “You must have mighty quick eyes.”

“I don’t miss much!” Sandy said meaningly.

“None of us do!” Dick caught the spirit of Sandy’s accusing manner. “I know you’ve been here before, too. There are lots of chunks of old chewing gum stuck around in that front compartment of the amphibian—and someone has been working on it, too. I saw the signs.”

“Chewing gum?” Jeff was startled. Swiftly he strode across the dimly sunlit floor, got onto the forward step, peered into the cockpit.

“That-there certainly is queer,” he commented. “You’re right. Gum is stuck every place, wads of it.”

“And you chew gum!” snapped Sandy, unwilling to be left out of the suddenly developing “third degree” he had begun. Jeff made a further inspection, touched a bit of the dried gum curiously, stepped down and stood with a thoughtful face for a moment.

Presently he walked to an old soap box holding metal odds and ends, washers, bolts and so on. This he up-ended. He sat down, his lean jaws working as he chewed his own gum slowly. Around him, like three detectives watching the effect of a surprise accusation, stood the chums.

Presently Jeff looked up at them.

“Looks bad, this-here, don’t it?” He grinned.

Dick, Larry and Sandy were silent.

“I guess I better explain,” Jeff decided. “I didn’t think you was so suspicious and quick or I’d of done different.”

“You can’t trap us!” challenged Sandy.

“Trap you?——”

“Well, didn’t you make friends with us and let us work on your crate and help get passengers that you never took up? Didn’t you say you’d give us a joy-ride, then come straight here, cut out your ignition and make believe you had a dead stick, land and then try to get us into this haunted hangar?” Sandy ran out of breath and stopped.

“I do think you ought to explain!” Larry said quietly.

“Yes, I did all that—and I guess I will explain. I meant to, anyhow—or I wouldn’t have brought you here.”

They waited, neither convinced nor satisfied.

Fixing accusing eyes on Sandy, Jeff spoke:

“I never dreamed you’d be suspicious of me! I made friends with you all and tried you out to be sure you were dependable and honest and all that—and I did bring you to this place because it is so far from telephones and railroads. But I didn’t think you’d get the wrong idea. I only wanted you in a place it would take time to get away from if you refused to help me.”

“Help you—help you with what?”

Speaking seriously, Jeff replied to Larry’s challenge.

“Help me save the most valuable set of emeralds in the world from being—destroyed!”

CHAPTER III THE SKY PATROL ORGANIZES

Amazed, Dick challenged Jeff’s statement.

“Priceless emeralds—destroyed? You mean—robbers, don’t you?”

Jeff shook his head.

“I don’t think so—but I don’t know for sure who it is. But I do mean to ask you if you’d like to help me, and I don’t think it would be against robbers but against somebody that wants to destroy the Everdail Emeralds.”

“The Everdail Emeralds!” Larry repeated the phrase sharply. “Why, Jeff! I’ve read a newspaper story about them, in a Sunday supplement. That’s the matched set of thirty emeralds——”

“Curiously cut stones,” interrupted Sandy. “I read about them too!”

“That’s the ones.”

“Matched stones—and priceless,” added Larry. “The paper said they were a present to one of Mr. Everdail’s ancestors by one of the most fabulously rich Hindu Nabobs who ever lived.”

“But who would want to destroy them?” Dick wondered.

“That-there is just what I can’t tell you,” Jeff replied.

“How did you get into this?” Sandy’s suspicions came uppermost.

Jeff drew a bulky, registered envelope from his coat, displayed the registration stamps and marks, and his name and address typed on the envelope. Drawing out a half dozen hand written sheets in a large masculine “fist,” he showed the signature of Atley Everdail at the end.

“This-here is what got me going,” he stated. “Want to read it or will I give it to you snappy and quick?”

Sandy extended his hand and Jeff readily surrendered the letter.

“I’m letting you see I am straight with you,” he remarked.

“You said we couldn’t get away to tell anybody anyway,” Sandy said, but he was compelled to admit to himself that although anyone might write such a letter—even Jeff!—the postmark was Los Angeles and the enclosure had every appearance of sincerity.

“Never mind old Suspicious Sandy,” urged Dick. “Let him read that, but you tell us.”

“It will check up, that way, too,” smiled Larry.

“Suits me!” Jeff crossed his legs, leaning against the metal wall, as he related an amazing and mystifying series of events.

“I’m pretty close to one of the richest men in America,” he began. “You see, we both enlisted in aviation units when the big war tore loose and got Uncle Sam mixed up in it. We were buddies, Atley and me. Well, after we came back I stayed in aviation, knocking around from control jobs to designing new gadgets like superchargers and all. But when he went to California and began to organize some passenger flying lines, I stayed East in a commercial pilot’s job.”

“This letter starts off as if you were old friends,” Sandy had to admit.

“Buddies—closer’n brothers,” nodded Jeff.

“Atley Everdail sold out stocks and stuff here and went West to work out some pet ideas about passenger transport,” he told Dick and Larry. “Of course he bought a big place out there and closed up this estate—put it up for sale. Hard times kept it from selling, the same reason made him hang onto that-there swell yacht he owned.”

“I’ve seen pictures of the Tramp,” Dick nodded. “One fine boat.”