What Happened at Midnight Read online

  The boys nodded and Joe said, “We’ll just make a chase of it.”

  Weber went off but soon returned. “Everything’s set,” he said. “And we’re in luck! The control-tower boys are going to let us take off from the grass shoulder of Runway Six. It means we won’t have to wait in line for clearance. Chances are we’ll be off the ground ahead of your friends.”

  The Hardys followed the pilot to his orange-and-white biplane. He drew three parachutes from the baggage compartment and instructed Frank and Joe to put them on while he fastened his own.

  “Climb aboard!” he said.

  The boys seated themselves side by side in the front cockpit. Weber signaled a mechanic to help start the engine, then jumped into the rear cockpit.

  “Brakes on! Contact!” the mechanic shouted.

  “Brakes on! Contact!” Weber replied.

  With a single whirl of the propeller, the engine roared to life. The boys were so thrilled by the chance to fly in an old biplane that for a moment they had almost dismissed Taffy Marr from their minds.

  Weber began to glide his wood-and-fabric craft down the taxiway. Nearing Runway Six, he veered onto the grass shoulder which paralleled it.

  “All set?” the boys heard him shout over the sound of the engine.

  “All set!” Frank and Joe answered.

  Their pilot pivoted the craft around and pointed its nose into the wind. Shortly a bright disk of green light beamed from the control tower. The engine emitted a loud, steady roar as Weber advanced the throttle. The plane bounced across the grass surface, then cleared it. Frank looked down and spotted Marr’s craft just taxiing into position for take-off.

  After reaching a couple of thousand feet, Weber circled the airport. He and the Hardys watched intently as the other plane sped down the runway and became airborne far below them.

  Weber maneuvered his craft a safe distance behind Marr’s plane, which was now heading on a northeasterly course.

  “So far so good!” Frank exclaimed, noting that their quarry was not outdistancing them. The boys waved at Weber, who responded with a wide grin.

  Nearly half an hour had passed when they noticed a build-up of haze ahead. It seemed to thicken as they drew closer. Soon the antique craft was skirting an ocean of milky-white mist which obscured the countryside below.

  “What a cloud!” Joe shouted.

  “And we’ll head right into it on our present course!” Frank observed.

  Weber signaled that he would try flying above it. By now Marr’s plane was also climbing. To the Hardys’ dismay, their quarry vanished behind a screen of whiteness.

  Weber signaled that he was going to turn back. But as he banked the biplane, it suddenly plunged into a misty void!

  CHAPTER XVI

  Bail Out!

  WEBER struggled to keep the aircraft under control in the fog. He shifted his attention to the turn-and-bank indicator mounted on the instrument panel. What the dial showed would help prevent the pilot from rolling into an uncontrollable spiral.

  Then, suddenly, the plane broke out into a cavity of clear air. The boys spotted the other aircraft and saw that it had altered its course. It was now heading south. Weber immediately banked and took the same direction, hoping to close the gap and come in on the tail of the other plane.

  It was then that the Hardys realized the extent of the fog bank. Already obscuring a great area of the coast, it stretched far out to sea. Ahead they saw their quarry flying directly toward a looming wall of thick mist.

  Weber altered course again and headed northwest in an effort to skirt the edge of the fog bank. But the mist built up rapidly in swirling clouds.

  “I guess if we hope to keep the other plane in sight, we can’t go too far to the west,” Frank observed.

  Weber began to climb, hoping to get above the fog. But as he turned north to meet the advancing cloud, his craft was enveloped in mist before he could gain altitude. Marr’s plane had vanished.

  “The other ship is equipped to fly on instruments !” Weber shouted. “We’re not!”

  Their pilot held to a straight course and increased his speed, hoping to run through the fog and pick up the other plane when visibility improved. The great bank of mist evidently extended over a greater area than he had first supposed.

  Minutes ticked by and still the opaque grayness persisted. Frank and Joe turned to watch the pilot. Weber was peering at the instrument panel.

  “At least we’re flying straight and level,” he announced.

  Frank and Joe tried to remain calm but inwardly they were worried. Their craft might ram another plane at any moment!

  Weber continued on into the limitless white wall. Not a glimpse of blue sky. Not a patch of earth to be seen.

  “I guess we’ve lost Marr for sure,” Joe remarked.

  “Yes,” Frank agreed. His voice showed his disappointment.

  Suddenly the roar of the engine stopped. The only sound was the hum of the rigging. The nose of the plane dropped sharply and the craft went into a dive.

  “The engine quit!” Joe yelled.

  The pilot waved to them in an encouraging gesture. He had thrust the stick far forward and the plane was plunging through the fog at terrific speed.

  On and on it went. The boys were alarmed. They knew engine trouble had developed and a forced landing in the fog would be perilous. But there must still be some hope; otherwise their pilot would have signaled to abandon ship.

  The rush of air took their breath away. Then, as abruptly as it had ceased, the roar of the engine broke out again.

  “Boy, what a welcome sound!” Joe exclaimed.

  Weber eased the stick back slowly and the plane gradually recovered from the dive. It flattened out and began to climb again. Frank took a deep breath. Joe grinned.

  But their relief was short-lived. Again the engine began to act up. It sputtered, balked, misfired, and picked up again. No longer was it throbbing with its previous regularity.

  The boys looked back at the pilot’s anxious face. They all knew a blind landing could be disastrous! For a moment the Hardys stiffened as the engine died, then coughed once more.

  “Carburetor ice, I’ll bet,” Frank said to himself.

  The plane they had been pursuing was forgotten. Their whole concern now was safety—to escape the gray blanket. If only they could sight ground to attempt a forced landing!

  Frank felt for the harness of his parachute. “We may have to jump,” he thought, not relishing the prospect. To leap from a crippled plane, with fog blanketing the earth below, was an experience he could do without.

  Joe was alarmed too. “If only the fog would lift!”

  The pilot was desperately trying to revive the engine’s old steady clamor. But it was useless.

  The engine quit again. The nose of the machine dropped and the plane repeated a long, swift dive. It straightened out, banked, then dived again at screaming speed.

  Coming out of the second dive, the nose rose abruptly. They all waited for the reassuring catch of the engine but it remained mute.

  The speed gained in the dive steadily decreased as the craft soared upward in a steep climb. Then it fell off on one wing and went into a descending spiral.

  “I have a feeling we’re going in circles!” Joe shouted to his brother. “I think Weber is becoming disoriented.”

  “We’re sunk!” Weber yelled at the boys. “You’ll have to take to the chutes!”

  “Jump?” Joe shouted.

  The man nodded. “The engine is done for. Choked up. I don’t dare try a landing in this fog. We’ll crack up sure. Hurry! I’ll keep her under control as long as I can. Crawl out on the wing, watch for my signal, then jump clear! Count ten, then yank the rip cord!”

  The boys scrambled out on the swaying wing in dead silence as the plane coasted through the gray mist.

  “Jump clear!” Frank reminded his brother.

  “It’s not the jumping that worries me,” said Joe. “It’s the landing.”
/>   The boys knew that they had no control over their direction and had no idea of what lay beneath. They might be plunging directly toward a lake or into a city street!

  Out on the wing Frank and Joe clung for a moment, their eyes on the pilot. Weber raised his hand, then brought it down sharply.

  “Jump!”

  Since the parachutes could easily become entangled if the boys jumped together, Frank went first. He leaped away from the swaying plane and plummeted through the fog. Then Joe shot downward.

  Twisting and turning through the air, the boys plunged toward the earth. Desperately Frank groped for the rip cord. It eluded his grasp. Sudden panic gripped him.

  He was falling toward the earth at terrific speed and could not find the parachute’s Dee ring!

  Every second was precious. He knew that even if he found the ring, it would be a few moments before the parachute opened. By then he might already have reached an altitude too low to permit the chute to billow out in time!

  Then his groping hand found the ring and he tugged. Nothing happened. He was still tumbling through the clouds of mist!

  About to give up hope, Frank heard a crackling sound above him. There was a sudden jerk as though a gigantic hand had grabbed him. Frank found himself floating gently through space.

  Through the wreaths of mist he glimpsed another object. It was a parachute similar to his own, dropping slowly through the fog. Joe, at least, was safe.

  But what of the pilot and the crippled plane? Where were they?

  CHAPTER XVII

  The Trapped Pilot

  FEAR gripping them, the Hardys drifted down silently through the fog. The only sound was an occasional flapping of the canopies looming above their heads.

  “The ground can’t be too far below!” Frank thought. “What kind of terrain? Sharp rocks? Trees? Open water?”

  He and Joe heard a muffled explosion some distance away.

  “Weber’s biplane must have crashed!” Joe concluded. “Hope he bailed out in time.”

  Suddenly the milky void vanished. The Hardys blinked in relief. They were less than a hundred feet above a farmland area.

  They settled down in a plowed field a short distance from each other. Frank tumbled across the soft ground a couple of times, then hauled in a section of shroud lines to spill the air from the canopy of his chute.

  “You all right?” he shouted to Joe, throwing off his harness and running toward him.

  “I’m okay! That was wild! But I wouldn’t want to do it again under the same conditions!”

  Frank pointed to a plume of smoke rising behind a hill about half a mile away.

  “That must be the explosion!” he yelled. “Let’s see if it’s Weber’s plane.”

  They raced toward the spot. In a few minutes they came to a charred, twisted mass of wreckage. A pool of oil still burned.

  “At least Weber wasn’t in the crackup,” said Joe. “But where is he?”

  At that instant the pilot called out to them. “Hey, fellows!” he shouted. “Give me a hand!”

  The voice seemed to come from a small clump of trees located about five hundred feet away. When the boys reached it, they saw Weber dangling in his harness high among some branches.

  “Are you hurt?” Joe asked with concern.

  “No—only my pride,” the pilot answered. “I’m supposed to be an expert at handling a parachute. And where do I land and get trapped? In the only grove of trees within a mile!”

  “You’re too far above the ground to try dropping free,” Frank warned. “We’d better get help.”

  People from the surrounding farms who had seen the smoke began to arrive at the scene. When the boys asked for some rope, one of the farmers rushed off. He returned in a few minutes with a coil of one-inch hemp.

  Joe took it and began shinning up the tree in which Weber’s chute had been snagged. Everyone watched the rescue as he edged out along a branch directly above the pilot and tied one end of the rope to it. Seconds later they both were sliding to the ground.

  The farmer on whose property they had landed stepped up. “My name is Hank Olsen,” he said. “Was anybody injured?”

  “No,” Frank replied. “Sorry about the plane coming down on your land.”

  “That’s all right. I haven’t done any planting in that section yet,” the farmer explained.

  Weber spoke up. “I’d like to telephone a report of the crash.”

  “You can use the phone at my house,” Olsen offered. “I’ll drive you there. My pickup truck is just on the other side of the hill.”

  When they arrived at the farmhouse, the pilot called the control tower at Bayport field to report the accident. Frank phoned Mrs. Hardy to let her know where he and Joe were, and then got in touch with Chet Morton for a ride home.

  “What!” Chet exclaimed in disbelief when he heard about the Hardys’ adventure. “Say that again.”

  “I said we had to bail out of Weber’s biplane,” Frank declared.

  Everyone watched the rescue

  “Aw, come on,” his chum muttered, unbelieving.

  “It’s true,” Frank replied. “We need a ride home. Do you think your jalopy would hang together long enough for you to pick us up?”

  “Hang together?” Chet retorted. “That’s no way to talk about one of the finest pieces of machinery going. Where are you?”

  Frank asked the farmer for their exact location. Olsen unfolded a road map and pointed to a spot about ninety miles northeast of Bayport. Frank traced the route with his finger and relayed instructions to his friend.

  “Okay! I’m on my way!” Chet answered.

  Nearly three hours passed before the Hardys spotted their chum’s yellow jalopy bouncing along the narrow road leading to Olsen’s house. Weber and the boys thanked the farmer and his wife for their hospitality, then started for Bayport.

  As they rode along, the Hardys and Weber discussed their pursuit of Marr’s plane. “I wonder if he ran into any trouble,” Joe mused.

  “When I called control tower, I asked if they knew about the stretch of fog north of them,” Weber explained. “They did, and said it was only two or three miles across, with clear air on the other side.”

  “And since Marr’s plane was equipped with radio,” Frank interrupted, “the pilot would have received the latest weather reports. He knew he could fly through the fog bank and be in the clear again within a few minutes.”

  “Do you think Marr knew he was being followed?” Joe asked.

  “My guess is he didn‘t,” Weber said. “At least his pilot wasn’t attempting any evasive action.”

  “Sorry about your plane,” Joe said sympathetically.

  “It was a great ship,” Weber declared sadly. “But I have enough parts to rebuild another one. That’s some consolation.”

  Chet dropped off Weber and the Hardys at Bayport field, where the pilot made arrangements to fly home. After expressing their thanks to him for his help and saying good-by, the boys walked toward their car.

  “We’d better call Agent Keith before we go home,” Joe suggested, and they went inside to telephone.

  “Too bad Marr got away,” the agent said when Frank told him about their recent adventure. “But I’m glad you and your brother are safe.”

  Frank drew a notebook from his pocket and opened it. “I have the registration number of the getaway plane.”

  “Good!” Keith said. “Let’s have it. I’ll check it out with the Federal Aviation Agency.”

  Frank gave it and hung up. The boys went to the parking lot. In a moment Frank frowned. “I thought I left our car here.”

  “You did,” Joe said with a sinking feeling. “It—it’s been stolen!”

  The Hardys were momentarily paralyzed. Not only their fine convertible, but Mr. Wright’s highly secret invention was gone!

  Frank spoke first. “Come on, Joe! We must call the police.”

  The boys ran to the administration building and telephoned. They were told by the sergea
nt on duty that state troopers had picked up a car fitting the convertible’s description. “Will you Hardys go out to the end of Pleasantdale Road and look at it?” the officer requested.

  Frank hailed a taxi which took them to the spot, then back to Bayport. The convertible was a sorry sight. Every bit of the upholstery had been slashed and the contents dumped out. Articles had been removed from the front compartment and the trunk. The spare tire had been ripped open.

  “Too bad, fellows,” a trooper said.

  “Yes,” Frank answered, testing the rack.

  It was still bolted in place, but he winked at Joe, a signal he wanted to be alone for a further search. On a pretext Joe got the trooper around to the front of the car. Quickly Frank looked under the tire well. The box and invention were still there

  Frank slammed the lid shut. He called out, “Joe, if this baby still runs, let’s go home.”

  The engine started promptly and the steering mechanism was undamaged. Frank signed a paper for the police, saying he was the owner of the car, then the boys rode off. As soon as they reached home, Joe carried the invention to the boys’ room and hid it.

  “I’m afraid that next time the gang’s going to find this,” he told his brother.

  “I agree,” Frank answered. “What say we ask Mother to put it in her safe-deposit box? I’m sure Dad would agree.”

  Mrs. Hardy and Aunt Gertrude approved this idea and as soon as the bank was open the next morning took the invention downtown. A little later the phone rang. Mrs. Hardy was calling to assure her sons of its safety.

  A few moments later Agent Keith telephoned. “We’ve lost Marr again,” he said. “The FAA looked up the registration number of his plane. It belongs to a fixed base operator at a small airport in Connecticut. Marr’s pilot rented the plane for the day.”

  “Did the owner see the pilot’s flying license?” Frank inquired.

  “Yes,” Keith replied. “The name listed was Harold Clark. It’s a forgery! Such a license was never issued!”

  “What about the plane?”

  “It was returned sometime last night. The owner found it tied down on his ramp when he went to the airport early this morning.”