The Ark of the Covenant by Victor MacClure "We landed with a grinding shudder, then keeled over sideways as if we'd never right. I had quite made up my mind we were going to crash over on our back to the sea below." Here is, perhaps, the greatest air story that has yet been written. The editor, who has personally read, as near as is humanly possible, every important air story of a scientific nature, has still to find a single one that excels '"The Ark of the Covenant." Here is a real story of the air that bristles with adventure, good science, tremendous suspense, and excellent construction. The author is always a step ahead of you and you are never permitted to guess in advance just what is in store for you. There is nothing contained in the story that could not come true at the present or the near future. It is one of these stories that grows upon you as time goes on, a story that you will wish to recommend to your friends for a long time to come. As extraordinary as the story is, the author himself--who by the way is Scotch--comes pretty near matching it. He was wounded in 1915 during the World War in Gallipoli by a bullet which lodged near his heart, and, strange to say, it remains there to this day, without in the least interfering with the author's literary career. Sketch of the author, Victor MacClure CHAPTER ONE The Coming of the Mystery A HAND was laid on my shoulder. I woke up. My father stood by my bedside, with that in his look which drove sleepiness out of me and brought me quickly to my feet beside him. "What's the matter, dad ?" "The bank, son," he said, quietly--"the bank has been robbed. How soon do you think you could land me at the Battery?" It was all I could do to refrain from spluttering out a string of questions. Had it not been for the grimness of the old man's expression, I should have thought then that he was walking in his sleep. But there was no mistaking that he was clean awake and in deadly earnest. What I did was to put a hand under the pillow for my watch. I said nothing. I was not going to be beaten in coolness by my own father, but I did some quick thinking. My roadster was in the garage, so the five miles between the house and my hangar on the beach was a small detail. I had to decide at once if I should risk taking the old man across Long Island on the only machine I had ready for the air that chilly morning. This was an ancient seaplane, built in 1928, and now held together by pieces of string and tin tacks. In a series of experiments on stability I had pared her wing area down to the absolute minimum, and she asked for a deal of handling. As I reached for my watch, I kept my eyes on my father's face. It was as placidly grim as could be, but I saw that he was betting on me to get him over to his old bank in quick time. So, almost before I had seen on my watch that the time was half past six, I had decided to risk his neck and mine on the ancient bus. "Get the hangar on the phone, dad," I told him. "Ask Milliken to warm up the Sieve right away, and have her run out in less than ten minutes. Then put on some thick clothing, while I get into overalls and pull out the roadster. You'll find me outside. I'll have you at the Battery inside forty minutes." The old man took his orders like a soldier. "The Sieve," he repeated. "Right!" Off he went, while I got into my flying kit. I went down to the garage, and had the car out on the drive with her engine turning over prettily before he joined me again. "Good man, that mechanic of yours, son," he grunted in approval; "doesn't waste time in talk--" Once out on the turnpike, I let the car out full and we were alongside the hangar well inside of ten minutes. Milliken already had the old seaplane in the water, and when I saw anew how stubby her wings were, I had to stifle my misgivings all over again. She looked terribly inadequate to carry the only father I have. But before I had time to express my qualms, even if I had wanted to, the old man was out of the car and down on the jetty. With a nod to Milliken, he climbed into the cockpit, and there was nothing to do but follow him. Milliken swung the propeller to contact, and I knew at once that, however patchy the structure of the Sieve might be, her heart was as sound as ever. The note of her engine was good to hear. When I felt the strain was right, I dropped the signal to the mechanic. Milliken released the patent mooring, and we shot out to sea with a muttered "fluff-flufter-fluff!" from the floats, as of big pebbles skimmed over the water. Then I pulled the stick, and the old bus took to the air like a bird. I let her climb east just far enough for the turn, then swung her into a dead course for the New York Battery, a hundred and thirty kilometres away. It was the first time my father had flown with me, though I must say he had always shown an interest in my aeronautical research work and, before the sale of a few patents of mine had made me independent of him, had always been ready to dip his hands deep in his pockets to help me. In the years since the European War, where I suppose as a cub flyer I got the flying germ into my blood, my father had never tried me out as a pilot, and I had often wondered what opinion he had of me. But as I thought, that gray March morning, of the certainty with which he had depended on my help and of the way he had gone about the business, I couldn't help growing chesty as I realized how clearly he took my skill for granted. As soon as we were properly set on our course, I took a look back at the old fellow. He was sitting humped up in the passenger's seat, with only his eyes and the tip of his nose showing through his voluminous wraps. A grim calm was eloquent even in those features. He caught my eye when I looked back at him, and he nodded serenely. I don't know how it was, but it dawned on me just then that I had a large-sized affection for my sometimes irascible sire, and I turned my attention to getting all I could out of the old bus for him. We flattened out to a nifty two hundred and fifty kilometres the hour. I hadn't wasted any of the old man's time by asking him questions, but I'll confess that the robbery of the bank had roused in me a lively curiosity. The roar of the unsilenced engine put all conversation clean out of possibility, and I did not want to have him unwrap in that cold rush of air to put on the headpiece of the phone. So I had to keep mumchance and speculate about the affair. There was enough material for speculation. The premises of the National Metallurgical, of which my father was president, were generally believed to be absolutely burglar-proof. The building on Broadway was comparatively new. Its safes and strongrooms were supposed to be the last word in appliances for the thwarting of cracksmen, and the president was immensely proud of them. Altogether, I came to the conclusion that this sudden flight towards the Battery and Wall Street was the result of some swindle by a forger or by a dishonest official, rather than of burglary. I knew it must have been something big to put the old man in such a hurry, but I was far from realizing then, with the old Sieve flattened out and roaring above the misty trees of Long Island, just how big a thing I was headed for. My father has since admitted that at the time his conception, too, of what the future held, came little nearer the truth than my own. I must explain at this point in my story that what I write in the following pages can only be a personal version of a bewildering run of events that have since become history. I had the luck to be close to many of these happenings from the start--as the world saw it--and also to be in at the death. This must be my excuse, if any is needed, for trying to put together a connected story of what befell in a quick-moving and epoch-making period of six months. Nobody will deny that for this space the world was badly scared, and, now that the terror is past, and everybody breathes freely again, I can do no harm by telling what I know. I may even do a little good. The flight with my father that chilly Monday morning in March was the beginning of my participation in a conflict that for clash of intellect, mystery, romance. and far-reaching consequences has made the World War of 1914-18 look by comparison like a rough-and-tumble in a back street. As we droned along above the island, I had little but my thoughts to occupy me. The seaplane was behaving splendidly, and I had none of the trouble I had expected with her if I leave out a little manoeuvering that came when we hit a pocket in the air. In about twenty-five minutes the Woolworth Building loomed up on the horizon, dead ahead, and I swung a point or two south, so that its shape fell on the starboard bow. Next minute I had circled and was dropping northerly into the upper New York Bay, with Battery Park in front. Under forty minutes after my father had wakened me I was landing with him at the seaplane jetty west of the park. There was quite a fleet of planes round the landing-stage, mostly the bronze-painted machines of the water division of the Air Police; speedy, sinister things they were, but trim enough to make my old boat look more like her nickname than ever. I had never seen so many police machines together at the Battery landing stage before, but I imagined they were there merely upon their lawful occasions. The pierman, an old friend of mine called O'Grady, gave me my mooring ticket and would have held me inconveniently in gossip, bu...
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