“Sure,” the tall man said. He leaned forward and raised his voice a little: “Where’ll I find this Jones, this secretary?”
The driver told him.
“Is the newspaper or the printing shop near there? I want some handbills.”
“I’ll show you,” the driver said. “I’ll help you get fixed up.”
“Fine,” the tall man said. “Come out this afternoon and I’ll give you a ride, if I have time.”
The car stopped at the newspaper office. “You can get your handbills here,” the driver said.
“Good,” the tall man said. “Is Jones’s office on this street?”
“I’ll take you there, too,” the driver said.
“You see about the editor,” the tall man said. “I can find Jones, I guess.” They got out of the car. “I’ll come back here,” the tall man said. He went on down the street, swiftly, in his dirty coverall and helmet. Two other men had joined the group before the newspaper office. They all entered, the limping man leading, followed by the three boys.
“I want some handbills,” the limping man said. “Like this one.” He took from his pocket a folded sheet of pink paper. He opened it; the editor, the boys, the five men, leaned to see it. The lettering was black and bold:
DEMON DUNCAN
DAREDEVIL OF THE AIR
DEATH DEFYING SHOW WILL BE GIVEN
UNDER THE AUSPICES OF . . . . . . . . . . . .
THIS P.M. AT TWO P.M.
COME ONE COME ALL AND SEE DEMON DUNCAN
DEFY DEATH IN DEATH DROP & DRAG OF DEATH
“I want them in one hour,” the limping man said.
“What you want in this blank space?” the editor said.
“What you got in this town?”
“What we got?”
“What auspices? American Legion? Rotary Club? Chamber of Commerce?”
“We got all of them.”
“I’ll tell you which one in a minute, then,” the limping man said. “When my partner gets back.”
“You have to have a guarantee before you put on the show, do you?” the editor said.
“Why, sure. Do you think I should put on a daredevil without auspices? Do you think I should for a nickel maybe jump off the airplane?”
“Who’s going to jump?” one of the later comers said; he was a taxi-driver.
The limping man looked at him. “Don’t you worry about that,” he said. “Your business is just to pay the money. We will do all the jumping you want, if you pay enough.”
“I just asked which one of you all was the jumper.”
“Do I ask you whether you pay me in silver or in green-backs?” the limping man said. “Do I ask you?”
“No,” the taxi-driver said.
“About these bills,” the editor said. “You said you wanted them in an hour.”
“Can’t you begin on them, and leave that part out until my partner comes back?”
“Suppose he don’t come before they are finished?”
“Well, that won’t be my fault, will it?”
“All right,” the editor said. “Just so you pay for them.”
“You mean, I should pay without a auspices on the hand-bill?”
“I ain’t in this business for fun,” the editor said.
“We’ll wait,” the limping man said.
They waited.
“Were you a flyer in the war, Mister?” the boy said.
The limping man turned upon the boy his long, misshapen, tragic face. “The war? Why should I fly in a war?”
“I thought maybe because of your leg. Captain Warren limps, and he flew in the war. I reckon you just do it for fun?”
“For fun? What for fun? Fly? Gruss Gott. I hate it, I wish the man what invented them was here; I would put him into that machine yonder and I would print on his back, Do not do it, one thousand times.”
“Why do you do it, then?” the man who had entered with the taxi-driver said.
“Because of that Republican Coolidge. I was in business, and that Coolidge ruined business; ruined it. That’s why. For fun? Gruss Gott.”
They looked at the limping man. “I suppose you have a license?” the second late-comer said.
The limping man looked at him. “A license?”
“Don’t you have to have a license to fly?”
“Oh; a license. For the airplane to fly; sure, I understand. Sure. We got one. You want to see it?”
“You’re supposed to show it to anybody that wants to see it, aren’t you?”
“Why, sure. You want to see it?”
“Where is it?”
“Where should it be? It’s nailed to the airplane, where the government put it. Did you thought maybe it was nailed to me? Did you thought maybe I had a engine on me and maybe wings? It’s on the airplane. Call a taxi and go to the airplane and look at it.”
“I run a taxi,” the driver said.
“Well, run it. Take this gentleman out to the field where he can look at the license on the airplane.”
“It’ll be a quarter,” the driver said. But the limping man was not looking at the driver. He was leaning against the counter. They watched him take a stick of gum from his pocket and peel it. They watched him put the gum into his mouth. “I said it’ll be a quarter, Mister,” the driver said.
“Was you talking to me?” the limping man said.
“I thought you wanted a taxi out to the airport.”
“Me? What for? What do I want to go out to the airport for? I just come from there. I ain’t the one that wants to see that license. I have already seen it. I was there when the government nailed it onto the airplane.”
II
Captain Warren, the ex-army flyer, was coming out of the store, where he met the tall man in the dirty coverall. Captain Warren told about it in the barber shop that night, when the airplane was gone.
“I hadn’t seen him in fourteen years, not since I left England for the front in ‘17. ‘So it was you that rolled out of that loop with two passengers and a twenty model Hisso smokepot?’ I said.
“‘Who else saw me?’ he said. So he told me about it, standing there, looking over his shoulder every now and then. He was sick; a man stopped behind him to let a couple of ladies pass, and Jock whirled like he might have shot the man if he’d had a gun, and while we were in the café some one slammed a door at the back and I thought he would come out of his monkey suit. ‘It’s a little nervous trouble I’ve got,’ he told me. ‘I’m all right.’
I had tried to get him to come out home with me for dinner, but he wouldn’t. He said that he had to kind of jump himself and eat before he knew it, sort of. We had started down the street and we were passing the restaurant when he said: ‘I’m going to eat,’ and he turned and ducked in like a rabbit and sat down with his back to the wall and told Vernon to bring him the quickest thing he had.
He drank three glasses of water and then Vernon brought him a milk bottle full and he drank most of that before the dinner came up from the kitchen. When he took off his helmet, I saw that his hair was pretty near white, and he is younger than I am. Or he was, up there when we were in Canada training. Then he told me what the name of his nervous trouble was. It was named Ginsfarb. The little one; the one that jumped off the ladder.”
“What was the trouble?” we asked. “What were they afraid of?”
“They were afraid of inspectors,” Warren said. “They had no licenses at all.”
“There was one on the airplane.”
“Yes. But it did not belong to that airplane. That one had been grounded by an inspector when Ginsfarb bought it. The license was for another airplane that had been wrecked, and some one had helped Ginsfarb compound another felony by selling the license to him. Jock had lost his license about two years ago when he crashed a big plane full of Fourth-of-July holidayers.
Two of the engines quit, and he had to land. The airplane smashed up some and broke a gas line, but even then they would have been all right if a passenger hadn’t got scared (it was about dusk) and struck a match. Jock was not so much to blame, but the passengers all burned to death, and the government is strict.
So he couldn’t get a license, and he couldn’t make Ginsfarb even pay to take out a parachute rigger’s license. So they had no license at all; if they were ever caught, they’d all go to the penitentiary.”
“No wonder his hair was white,” some one said.
“That wasn’t what turned it white,” Warren said. “I’ll tell you about that. So they’d go to little towns like this one, fast, find out if there was anybody that might catch them, and if there wasn’t, they’d put on the show and then clear out and go to another town, staying away from the cities. They’d come in and get handbills printed while Jock and the other one would try to get underwritten by some local organization.
They wouldn’t let Ginsfarb do this part, because he’d stick out for his price too long and they’d be afraid to risk it. So the other two would do this, get what they could, and if they could not get what Ginsfarb told them to, they’d take what they could and then try to keep Ginsfarb fooled until it was too late. Well, this time Ginsfarb kicked up. I guess they had done it too much on him.
“So I met Jock on the street. He looked bad; I offered him a drink, but he said he couldn’t even smoke any more. All he could do
