Argosy All-Story Weekly, November 12, 1927 — page 37: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

KERRY OF THE mistakable shape of a plane, veered away from the tree, pointed toward the middle of the field, and made his landing. He rushed toward the lone tree at the corner of the field, heard a low groan, and in the light of his electric torch saw the blood-spattered face of a young man whose leg was pinned beneath the wreckage. It was but the work of a few minutes to extricate the lad, lift him up tenderly, and transfer him to his own plane. Then Glenn Kerry took off again into the night, flew back over Avalon and made a landing at the New Brunswick Field. He had radioed instructions ahead. Gar- vin had called an ambulance, and in the glow of the floodlights he got a glimpse of a bearded man whom he believed to be a doctor, and of the tear-stained face of Betty Sheldon. The injured young aviator was trans- ferred to the ambulance, and, without de- laying further, Glenn Kerry climbed back into his plane and was in the air, once more headed westward. The weather conditions were good. The wind was back of him. He might be able to make up most of the time and have the mail in Chicago to meet the first delivery. He put on all speed; for the United States mail cannot wait. IV. At the end of the return trip Kerry looked up Garvin. He had previously been informed that the injured man was Richard Sheldon, the son of the builder of the Sheldon ship. ‘““He seems to be doing pretty well,” Garvin explained. ‘‘ He’ll pull through— that’s certain. Be out of the hospital in a few days, but he’ll be piloting a wheel chair instead of a plane for some weeks to come. And here’s a letter for you, Glenn. Lav- ender and scented and generally feminine. What are you doing these days? Chasing the ladies? That’s something new for you, isn’t it?” “Might be from a sister,” suggested Bannister, with an elephantine wink. “Or some dame that ‘ just loves planes ’ —and pilots,” put in another wag. AIR MAIL. S11 But Glenn’s heart was thumping strange- ly. He sensed who the writer might be, and disappeared from the bantering crowd in order to open the envelope. It was as he had surmised: a note from Betty Sheldon, in which she asked him to call at her home any afternoon that he was off duty. Her brother, she explained, was doing nicely, and would be brought back from hospital the following day. She thanked him for his service, using most extravagant terms, and, although no one was looking, Glenn Kerry felt himself blushing. On his first day off he called at the Sheldon home, an old-fashioned frame house on the outskirts of New Brunswick, furnished comfortably but not as elabor- ately as he would have expected in the home of a man like Sheldon. Somehow the discovery made him glad; it made it seem as if Betty Sheldon was not too far above him socially. As he was ushered in, he recalled what he had heard of Sheldon’s recent bad luck— how he had been maneuvered out of the most of the money on his radio invention, and how the wiseacres thought Sheldon was nearing the rocks financially. Betty Sheldon greeted the visitor warm- ly. “IT am so glad to see you, Captain Kerry,” she said. portunity of thanking you personally for your very brave act in saving my brother. You don’t know how much you have done for us. ‘Helping to save a man’s life should surely be enough—but you really saved two lives, for my father dotes on Dick. If any- thing serious had happened to him, I be- lieve it would have killed father, or broken his heart and forced him out of the air- plane business. “As it is, he has been faltering. But Dick’s nerve is still unshattered. He’s tell- ing father that this happening only in- creases his determination to win. We’re entering a plane in the transcontinental race, you know.”’’ Miss Sheldon served tea, and Glenn sat there in the large, pleasant room with a steaming teacup on his lap and feeling out of place, yet strangely happy. COPMICLOOOKS “This is the first op- . (S@)