Chapter VI: Tricked Into a Crash

The answer came when I got up to four thousand feet, and it came so suddenly that I almost let the D.H. slip into a tail-spin. We’d been climbing in a wide circle--the five ships--following the Old Lady. And I guess we’d all been getting a kick out of those two dummy guns and the slapped-on war paint.

All of a sudden the Old Lady stood right up on her tail in a sweet zoom--and laid over on her back! Then she came down in a pretty fair loop!

I had the D.H. out of her way, banking off vertically. As I came around, in a position to get a good look at things, I saw plenty.

There were about a dozen ships in the air. At least four of them were stunting--looping, doing wing-overs, Immelmanns, and spins! From two of them came sulphurous trails of yellow, streaming off at an angle. They had guns--and were shooting them!

The Old Lady was going down in a spin, and two planes were following her down, both streaming out yellow trails from their exhausts and spitting red from guns shooting between the synchronized propeller blades! Diving near by was a fourth ship, with a bird standing in the rear cockpit--and turning a crank in a boxlike affair!

Then I got it. Conant and Russ Healy had framed us! They were shooting from the air and from the ground--shooting stuff for the picture! And they were using our five ships!

A screaming, wire-whistling shape dove past the D.H. on the right, and instinctively I banked away. But even as I did so, I got a glimpse of a helmeted figure using a camera. He wasn’t cranking it--but I guessed that he had one of the new, electrically driven ones that didn’t need it.

I had the D.H. in a spin. Bob Brooks, riding with Russ, being let in for all this frame-up! And the Old Lady doing all of her stuff! No wonder Russ had exchanged glances with Conant!

At three thousand feet I got the D.H. out of the spin, leveled off, and gave her the gun.

There were white bursts in the air, and on the ground below there were more of them. I banked over, looking for the Old Lady. I saw one of the circus ships going down in a steep glide, with a strange plane on her tail. A ship was looping a few thousand feet above me, white bursts on her right. Smoke was drifting all across the sky.

Then I spotted the Old Lady. She was going down toward the field, at the shell-ripped end, with one of the Nieuports I’d seen right behind her. I caught sight of two camera men, shooting up at her as she came down.

I dove the D.H. I was too surprised and too excited to get sore. Anyway, it wouldn’t have done any good. The whole thing was plain now. I’d always given Russ credit for having brains, but I’d never given him credit for having this much.

They’d had ships waiting on some other field of course, and Russ had guessed that we’d come after him. When Bob Brooks had said he’d fly back with Russ he’d played right into that pilot’s hands. Two birds with one stone! Not only would Brooks sit in on the sky shoot, but he’d be right there for the crash--the big scene that Conant wanted!

I groaned. The D.H. was down pretty low now. I could see a ship diving off to the side of the Old Lady, and in the center of the shell-holed area were two more camera men, waiting to shoot the crash from the ground.

The Old Lady was slipping off on a wing now, and I knew that Russ was trying to hit the spot near the camera men. There was the fellow grinding away from the plane at one side, too--still shooting the fake battle.

I thought of Bob Brooks in the rear cockpit. He was helpless--it wasn’t a dual-control ship. Russ had put the Old Lady through every air stunt--and Bob had had to sit there and take it. Now he was in for the crash!

It was a beauty! The Old Lady nosed right into what looked like a fairly deep shell hole. Her propeller splintered, her tail came up. I could hear her wings crackling, with the engine throttled down. Then she tumbled over, upside down--and I groaned and dove the D.H. for a landing.

“The old fool!” I said, and wasn’t at all sure that I really meant it.