The Sky Phantom (9 page)

At the same moment Nancy was claimed by a stranger wearing a sailor’s work clothes and a full face mask.

“You sure look mighty purty tonight,” he said.

Nancy thought his voice sounded familiar, but she could not identify it.

“Do I know you?” Nancy inquired.

“I don’t guess you do, but let’s dance.”

Nancy was puzzled. It always bothered her when she could not recognize a voice at once.

The stranger swept her around the room in long strides, but stopped abruptly at the door that led to the garden.

“It’s too bloomin’ hot in here,” he said. “Come on outside.”

Nancy did not trust the man. She suddenly recalled the time she had been kidnapped from a masquerade party at her friend Ned Nickerson’s fraternity house.

“I’d rather not,” she said.

“Aw, come on!” the man said.

He began yanking her by the hand. When he could not budge Nancy, the stranger put an arm around her shoulders and pushed her toward the doorway.

This was enough for Nancy. With a quick jerk, she removed his mask!

“Ben Rall!” she cried out. “You don’t work here any more. You weren’t invited to this party.”

“Never mind that, you little tartar. You’re going to come with me!”

“I am not!” Nancy shouted at the top of her voice. “Let me alone!”

Other dancers, hearing the argument, rushed to the girl’s side. The men hustled the unwanted, obnoxious Ben outdoors and Nancy heard one of them say, “Get away from here and stay away! You understand? You don’t belong here!”

The men’s partners gathered around Nancy. One of them said, “I’m glad you got rid of that pest!”

At this moment another man came up. Though he wore a half mask, Nancy immediately recognized the man dressed in a soldier’s uniform.

“Bruce!” she cried out. “Am I glad to see you!”

He led her onto the dance floor and said, “I guess I got here just in the nick of time, and I suppose you’re surprised to see me. Pop Hamilton invited several of the instructors at Excello to come to the party.”

Nancy said she was happy to hear this. When the music stopped, Bruce remarked, “It’s warm in here. Would you mind walking outside with me?”

“Of course not,” Nancy replied.

Bruce said, “I’d like to talk to you about tomorrow morning’s flying lesson. Also, I wanted to tell you that the school telephoned Roger Paine’s home again. His parents still have not heard from him, and I think they’re getting the FBI to make a search. So you may have company in your sleuthing.”

Nancy said she thought the Paines were certainly doing the right thing. “As you know, I suspected foul play from the start,” she added.

Bruce asked if she had had any new hunches. “Most of yours turn out to be correct guesses.”

Nancy thanked him for the compliment, then said she would never forget the amazing experience of flying inside the big cloud, with the fantastic magnetic black formation.

“That giant was like a sky phantom,” she said. “He could change shape whenever anything disturbed him.”

Suddenly she realized that Bruce was not listening attentively. She looked sideways at him.

He apologized. “I was just thinking about something I’d like to do tomorrow in our lesson,” he said. “We’ll try a new spot, where the winds and terrain are different from any place where we have been.”

“That sounds interesting,” said Nancy. “I’ll be on time.”

Bruce looked at her intently. “I have a surprise for you, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. Yes, the secret will have to wait until tomorrow.”

DURING the evening, Nancy speculated on the secret that Bruce declined to tell her. She tried several ways to get him to divulge it, but failed. The pilot merely grinned and refused to commit himself.

The next morning he arrived early in his car and the two drove to the Excello Flying School. Bruce’s plane was ready, so he and his pupil climbed aboard.

“Do you want me to take the controls?” Nancy asked him.

“I certainly do,” Bruce said. “Well, I’ll tell you where we’re going. That’s the secret.” He grinned. “I can have my mysteries too. We’re flying to an entirely different location this time—in fact, one that is flat and reasonably smooth. If we come down, taxiing won’t be so difficult. But before we do that, I’m going to teach you something about accidental spins.”

Nancy gasped at the thought of possibly spinning right down to the ground, but she said nothing to Bruce.

In about half an hour, they reached the practice area. “Ready?” Bruce asked.

“Quite,” Nancy replied.

Bruce rolled into a steep turn. “Do you remember how you accidentally spun over the top during a previous lesson?” he asked.

“How could I forget?” Nancy answered.

“I’m going to demonstrate a similar situation to you,” the instructor declared. “However, this time we’ll spin
out of the bottom
of the turn, rather than
over the top.”

Nancy braced herself as Bruce tightened the turn to the left. Then suddenly he pulled the stick back with a snap and shoved the left rudder pedal forward. A split second later the plane whipped into a vicious spin.

Nancy grabbed the sides of her pilot’s seat. “Oh!” she murmured.

After several turns Bruce recovered from the maneuver.

“Whew!” Nancy sighed. “What a ride!”

“Rough, isn’t it?” Bruce said, “but I want to be certain that you fully understand these maneuvers so you won’t get into trouble in the future.”

“May I try one?” the girl flier asked nervously. Then she told herself she must be calm.

Guided by her instructor, Nancy manipulated the controls. Her first attempt merely resulted in a tight spiral, but her second and third tries yielded excellent spins.

“Very good,” Bruce commented.

Nancy, herself, was pleased. After half an hour of practice, however, the girl flier confessed that she was beginning to feel a bit dizzy. “I’ve had enough.”

Bruce grinned. “I imagine you’d like to go down to terra firma for a while.”

Nancy would not admit that her pulse was still racing even though she had done the last maneuver very well.

“Yes, let’s.”

They had no sooner touched down and Nancy cut off the engine than Bruce lay down and put his ear to the ground. Nancy watched, wondering why he was doing this.

“Someone’s riding near here,” he announced a moment later.

While the couple waited, Nancy hoped fervently that the oncoming horseman would not be Ben Rail. She mentioned this to Bruce, who frowned.

“I hope not also, because I’d sure be tempted to punch him!”

It turned out that the rider was not Ben Rall. He was a stranger to Nancy and Bruce, who introduced himself as John Wade. He did not wait for them to tell him their names.

“You folks out for a little jaunt?” he asked pleasantly. He was a sun-tanned, medium-sized, rather stout man, who patted his tummy affectionately. “When I saw you coming down, I thought I’d give Susie gal here a break. She can rest while I talk to you.”

Wade dismounted and looked at the plane. “Pretty neat little job,” he remarked. “I sometimes use a small craft in my work. But today I felt like getting away alone and chose to ride the pony.”

The man explained that he was an oil prospector. “There’s probably no oil here, but then, one never knows.”

Nancy introduced herself and Bruce, then asked John Wade, “Do you live nearby?”

“Oh, no,” he replied. “I live a long way off. But I flew to a ranch some miles from this territory and borrowed this pony. There’s an old superstition that a man’s horse will lead him to gold. Maybe this one will find some black gold for me.”

He looked at Nancy. Then, as if she did not understand what he was saying, he added, “Black gold is a nickname for oil.”

Nancy’s detective instincts were aroused. “You must have some kind of information or clue that there is oil in this area,” she said, and waited eagerly for him to answer.

The prospector laughed. “Yes, I had a tip. I haven’t much hope that it means a thing, but if there’s any sign at all, I want to try out a new invention of mine. I’ve always thought it was a shame that when men drill for oil a gusher sometimes comes in that can’t be stopped. A lot of oil is wasted before the well can be capped. I hope to change that.

“With my invention there won’t be any wasted oil. Right now one of my gadgets is tied onto my pony. The device drills a tiny hole, so a small stream of oil can flow out with very little lost.”

“That sounds great,” Bruce remarked. “I’d like to see it working.”

John Wade proved to be a continuous and rather tiresome talker. Nancy found it easier to listen than to try thinking of something to say to the man. Presently his comments shifted back to the Excello Flying School plane Nancy and Bruce were using.

“She’s really a little beauty,” he said, gazing intently at the craft. Turning to Bruce he added, “Would you object if I climb aboard and look her over?”

Bruce winked at Nancy, then said to Mr. Wade, “Not at all. I’ll join you.”

As John Wade turned, Nancy smiled at the pilot. She had guessed what he was thinking. He did not want this stranger to disappear suddenly with his plane!

As the prospector went inside the cabin, Nancy began to wonder if there was any possibility that the man could be connected with Roger Paine’s apparent abduction, or with the sky phantom. Maybe he was out reconnoitering and was not really an oil prospector at all!

“But I must be fair,” she decided, and tried to erase this suspicious idea from her mind.

The man seemed to be very nice, and she did feel that he had an honest face. Nancy put any thought of trouble from her mind. She would take his word that he was a prospector and inventor.

While waiting for the two men to reappear, the girl detective sat down on the stubby grass. She pulled a copy of the cryptogrammatic message on the medal from her shirt pocket. With a pencil she tried to make whole letters from the small lowest part of the words yet to be deciphered. She became so absorbed in her project that she did not notice how much time had passed.

When she had nearly completed one word, Nancy hoped nobody would disturb her. The only sound she could hear was the rumble of the men’s voices in the plane.

“This is it!” Nancy thought suddenly. The young sleuth was ecstatic! The last word in the puzzling code was “cloud.” Now the whole cryptogram read:

With no idea what the message meant, Nancy was eager to get back to the ranch and share her find with Pop Hamilton, Bess, and George. She was sure this message called for immediate action.

Nancy glanced up at the doorway of the plane. The men were still conversing animatedly. She stood up, stretched, and gazed around. Suddenly her eyes focused on one spot. Mr. Wade’s pony was no longer standing where he had left him!

The young detective turned in a complete circle, viewing the landscape in all directions as far as she could see. Finally she detected the animal running off in the distance. She was a mere speck with legs.

Nancy cried out loudly, “Bruce! Mr. Wade! The pony’s gone!”

The girl’s cry had rung out so loudly that both men appeared in the doorway at once. She repeated the bad news.

“Where is she?” Mr. Wade asked in concern.

Nancy pointed. “I think that’s probably your pony way over there.”

The prospector panicked. “We must get her back!” he yelled. “She’s carrying all my special equipment, which must not fall into the hands of anyone else!” Turning to Bruce, he said, “Will you take me in your plane to capture her?”

The pilot looked skeptical. “Of course, I can taxi all the way down this valley, but it would be a rough ride. I can’t go very fast, and your animal may disappear before I can reach that spot.”

Mr. Wade would not take no for an answer. “I’ve got to save my equipment!” he almost screamed. “No one must see my invention!”

Finally Bruce said, “Nancy would you mind staying here for a little while? I’ll come back as quickly as I can. The plane will hold only two of us.”

“I don’t mind,” she replied. “I may even look around a little.”

After the plane had started its run, she gazed off to her right. Not far away she saw a hillside that was partly rocky and partly covered with vegetation.

“That seems like an unusual formation,” she thought. “I think I’ll go over and investigate that place.”

Nancy crossed the flat area, then began walking along the foot of the hillside. By this time both the pony and the plane were out of sight.

Nancy’s attention was suddenly directed toward a nearby opening in the hillside. Was there a cave beyond?

The opening was small, but large enough for her to squeeze through. Unhooking her flashlight from the belt of her jeans, she beamed it into the enclosed area ahead. To her surprise, the cave was apparently a large one.

“How exciting!” she thought. “I must see what’s inside!”

NANCY squeezed through the narrow opening to the cave, beaming her flashlight ahead of her. The interior was large but the ceiling was low. She could barely stand up straight.

As she progressed, the rough stones above her brushed against her hair, and she ducked often. There was nothing on the walls, ceiling, or floor of the cave to indicate that anyone lived in the place.

“Maybe the sky phantom uses this for a hide-out,” she thought.

A short distance ahead Nancy came to several stone steps, which led to a lower level. She stopped to examine them. Were they natural or had they been hewn out by some ancient Indians? They were very smooth and could have been worn by a lot of travel up and down.