Chapter I: Front Matter

THE LAST CRASH

By Kenneth Latour

Author of “The Sky Call,” “The Vindication of Smith,” Etc.

Most aviation stories are just good stories with aviation in
them. We have no objection to yarns of that sort. Those that
we have published have been decidedly good reading. This
aviation story is different--just how different you will
realize as you read it. “The Last Crash” is something new in
fiction--a real air story. Its author is a man who knows not
only the technique of the airman’s trade but also its
spirit. --The Editor

John Norris, whom you will remember as the man who flew the first straightaway from Langstrom Field to Cristobal, had a touch of the mystic in him, for all he was the sort of a man that good men favor. And in this, it may interest you to know, Norris wasn’t different from most men of his calling. He was different, however, in this respect, that he was outspoken with his ideas about unearthly matters whereas most airmen keep their mysticism to themselves.

If Norris knew you and liked you he would tell you stories--stories to prove his conviction that “things do not _happen_; they are _arranged_.” He was a fatalist, you see.

Being a fatalist is one of the characteristic peculiarities of the flyer which he shares, perforce, in common with other men whose professions keep their spiritual elbows raw with constant rubbing against the harsh specter of sudden and violent death.

“There must be an explanation for the things that happen in the air,” Norris once affirmed. “The papers call them ‘accidents’ but don’t you believe it. They aren’t accidents. They are consummations.

“I think this: A man is given a course to run; he runs it; and then he is wiped out. The manner, the time and the place of each man’s last crash is already marked up on somebody’s office tickler at Cosmic headquarters.

“Otherwise--why? Why should men like Hawker and Alcock, with all their biggest risks behind them, wash out on puny little expeditions that they undertook with no more thought than they would have given to drinking a cup of tea? Why should a ship running free and smooth catch fire in the air, for no good reason that is earthly?

“There is a reason, of course, but it has nothing to do with physical or mechanical flaws, if you ask me. The flaw is not the cause. You’ve got to look for the cause in something behind the flaw. Did you ever hear of ‘Last Crash’ Cobb?”

The story of Billy Cobb, and how he came to his last crash, was one of Norris’ classics. There is no denying that it points a moral if you want to look at it that way.

* * * * *

This is what Halliday, the old crew chief, told the accident-investigating officer.

He was standing just outside hangar number three about six-thirty of that simmering August evening when Captain Cobb came in with _No. 59_. The pilot had executed his customary landing, a tight spiral directly over the field, followed by a spin and two accurately timed fishtails which brought the ship to ten feet where it leveled off up the wind and hovered swiftly to the ground.

Up to this point nothing unusual. Then the fantastic. A tire burst as the wheels touched. The crew chief heard the sharp report. A wheel crumpled. The right wing lurched sharply up and _No. 59_ dove into a sudden cart wheel.

The crew chief was heading across the field, calling “Ambulance!” as he went, before the tangle of ripped canvas, splintered spars and tortured wires came to rest on its back, quivering.

There followed a significant stirring amid the mass of débris. The crew chief uttered a prayerful ejaculation of relief and stopped running. He saw a man emerge from the wreck of _No. 59_. It was Cobb--unrecognizable! His face was black with blood; his goggles---- But the rough preliminary transcription--slightly reconstituted--from the sergeant major’s stenographic notes of the investigation tells the amazing incident in the words of the only close-up witness.

“Well, sir,” the crew chief deposed, “like I said, I stopped when I seen the captain was starting to crawl out. I thought he was all right. I seen officers crawl out o’ lots worse’n that, in my time, an’ start cussin’ as healthy as you please.

“But the minute I got a good look at Captain Cobb I knew different. You couldn’t see his face for blood, an’ by the way he put out his hands, kind o’ feelin’ ahead of him, I knew he was blind. His goggles, like you seen, was all crushed into his eyes.

“Well, sir, he staggered a step, or maybe two. Me, I was sort o’ paralyzed. I just stood an’ watched. The captain was a good friend o’ mine an’ it was my ship done it. I seen him stiffen up all of a sudden. Then he laid himself down careful, just like he was easin’ into bed, you might say. He didn’t fall, sir; he just laid down like he meant to be comfortable.

“Well, then he raised up a little on one elbow, an’--an’---- Now, sir, you says I got to tell you what I seen an’ I’m tellin’ you. You don’t have to believe it, sir. But I wasn’t more’n twenty feet away, sir, an’ I _seen_ this, an’ heard it, too. Maybe it didn’t happen that way, but I _seen_ it that way!

“The captain he raises up, like I said. An’ he appears to be starin’ at somethin’ just over his head. He hadn’t his eyes any more but he was starin’ just the same, _without ’em_. He kind o’ rubs his free arm across his eyes--what was his eyes, that is--an’ his sleeve wipes away the blood on his face. Then I seen that he was smilin’, sir. Yes, smilin’! I ain’t never seen no smile like that, an’ I hope I never will!

“Well, sir, it might ’a’ been a second an’ it might ’a’ been ten minutes the captain stays that way, propped up, starin’ at nothin’ my eyes could see, an’ smilin’. Then he speaks. I could hear him plain. His voice was as strong as mine right now and I could tell by it he was awful glad about somethin’.

“This is what I hear him say: ‘Hello, Jennie, sweetheart. It’s the last crash and you kept your promise. Let’s go!’

“He said that. You won’t believe it. Nobody believes it. But he did. An’ when it’s said he lays down again, flat on his back an’--an’--reaches up with both hands. He seems to find somethin’ to take hold of there in the air. For a minute I can’t make out what he’s doin’. Then I get it. He is holdin’ somebody’s head close to his face--at least he thinks he is--an’ he is--he is--well, he is kissing somebody!

“After that, sir, his hands drop an’ he lays there an’ never moves again. When I get to him he is dead as far as I can see. He’d got the machine-gun butts in the head, the way they all do.

“I don’t know nothin’ more, sir, except that a little ways back from where the ship crashed I found a bit of wood with a big nail in it. Which might explain how that tire come to bust.”

How much of the old crew chief’s deposition actually found credence with the members of the crash board and the personnel generally of Langstrom Field, all of whom, of course, came into possession of more or less elaborated versions of the story, cannot be definitely determined. Publicly the old mechanic was scoffed out of court. The C. O., who was worried for the state of his pilots’ nerves, took occasion to call the talkative witness into private session and threaten certain unspeakable consequences if he let his tongue grow any longer.

So that the affair was a three-week sensation, with everybody talking about it and everybody proclaiming intrepidly that it was all damfoolishness and very bad medicine for a flying field. There are certain things that flying men always affect to disdain--and always take more seriously than anybody else.

There was one particular discussion of the case, on the night of the crash, in the lounge at the officers’ club. But to appreciate what passed between the three, Norris, Weyman, and Crawley, who held that quiet conference you must know many things that went before.