CHAPTER II

The Crash

Frank Hardy could scarcely keep the car on the road. He glanced at the
speedometer. They were traveling at seventy miles an hour.

It was certain that the airplane would crash on the highway.

Suddenly Joe leaned forward.

“Look! The side road!” he shouted. “Take the side road!”

A short distance ahead Frank saw a rough dirt road leading off the
highway to the airport. If he could only reach it in time! The roar of
the descending airplane was deafening now. They could even hear the wind
screaming in the struts. Joe saw the pilot, in helmet and goggles,
waving his arm wildly.

Frank slackened speed slightly as he neared the dirt road, bore down on
the wheel, and made the turn. The rear wheels skidded wildly, there was
a screech of brakes, the car teetered perilously, then righted itself,
and shot down the rough lane.

At the same moment the airplane roared past. It was so close that the
wing tip came within a few feet of the rear of the car.

Then it crashed.

Frank was having his own troubles and he did not see the crack-up. On
the bumpy dirt road the car skidded, throwing up a cloud of sand and
dust, then shot across a ditch, thumped and lurched over some rocks, and
finally came to a stop at a rail fence.

Joe came close to going through the windshield and then hit the door
with a thud.

“Wow!” he burst out. “Some wild ride, I’ll tell the universe!”

Frank had been thrown tightly against the wheel, otherwise he, too,
might have gone into the glass. As it was, he hurt his ribs a little.

“Well, I’m glad we didn’t overturn,” he remarked, as soon as he could
catch his breath.

“Or take down the fence.”

“Wonder who that crazy fellow was?”

“Maybe something went wrong with his air bus.”

“Well, I’m glad we managed to get from under. It was a mighty close
call.”

Joe, looking back, saw the airplane as it crashed.

Nose-down, it came, then flattened out just before it reached the
ground. Its understructure crashed into the earth. The plane seemed to
bound high in the air, then came down again with a snapping and
crackling of wood, and buried its nose in the dust of the road. Then its
tail canted up and the plane turned a somersault over on its back.

It was a wreck!

While the Hardy boys are scrambling out of their roadster and hastening
back to the scene of the airplane crash that had so nearly cost them
their own lives, the opportunity will be taken to introduce them more
definitely.

Frank and Joe Hardy were the sons of Fenton Hardy, an internationally
famous detective, late of the New York police force. Mr. Hardy had made
such a name for himself as a detective with the New York force that he
had resigned to go into business for himself as a private detective and
his services were frequently sought in important cases. His sons, Frank
and Joe, were eager to follow in his footsteps.

The Hardys lived in Bayport, a thriving city on Barmet Bay, on the
Atlantic coast. Here Frank and Joe attended the Bayport high school,
where they were in their final year. Although Frank, a tall, dark,
handsome lad, was a year older than his curly-headed brother Joe, both
boys were in the same grade because of an illness that had caused Frank
to lose time. Mr. and Mrs. Hardy were anxious that their sons should go
to college after finishing high school, Mrs. Hardy wishing them to study
law and medicine. But the boys were of different mind. Their father’s
profession appealed to them. They wanted to be detectives.

As a matter of fact, the lads had a natural bent toward detective work
and they had already proved their ability so thoroughly that Fenton
Hardy was disposed to believe that they would be successful if they
followed in his footsteps. The Hardy boys had solved a number of
mysteries that had puzzled the police of Bayport and vicinity, and
already the people of the city knew of them as boys possessing more than
the usual share of initiative, resourcefulness, and deductive ability.

Frank and Joe were introduced in the first volume of this series,
entitled: “The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure,” in which they solved the
mystery of the disappearance of a treasure from Tower Mansion, on the
outskirts of Bayport. In succeeding volumes of the series their
adventures while seeking to unravel other mysterious cases in which they
became involved have been described at length. During the winter
previous to the time this present story opens, Frank and Joe Hardy had
spent a vacation on Cabin Island, in Barmet Bay, where they had cleared
up the mystery of a stolen stamp collection of great value, discovering
the precious stamps after many thrilling events. These adventures have
been related in “The Mystery of Cabin Island,” the volume immediately
previous to this story.

As the Hardy boys ran back down the dirt road toward the wreckage of the
airplane they had little hope that they would find the pilot alive.

“He’ll be smashed to pieces!” gasped Joe.

“The plane isn’t burning, anyway,” said Frank. “There may be a chance
for him yet.”

Just then they heard a cry for help.

It came from beneath the jumbled wreckage of the plane. In a few moments
the Hardy boys reached the scene.

Although the crash had been witnessed from the airport and people were
already proceeding toward the spot, the Hardy boys were the first to
arrive. They could hear groans and shouts from beneath the plane.

“We’ll have to lift up some of that wreckage to get the poor fellow
out,” said Frank quickly. He looked around. It was futile to attempt
raising the wreckage by hand. He saw a heavy rail lying at the base of
the near-by fence. “Here we are. This will do as a lever.”

The boys seized the rail and carried it over to the wreckage. They
inserted one end of the rail beneath the body of the plane, rolling a
big rock forward as a support.

The groans and shouts continued.

“All right there!” called Frank. “We’re going to pry some of this
wreckage away from you. Are you badly hurt?”

“I’m nearly killed,” groaned the pilot. “Hurry up and lift this plane
off me.”

“Try to crawl out when we raise it,” advised Frank.

The boys bore down on their improvised lever. There was a clattering and
crackling of the wreckage; then the mass began to move. The body of the
upturned plane rose slightly. Joe caught a glimpse of the pilot
scrambling out of the cockpit. The man’s face was scratched and
bleeding, but he seemed to be crawling out of his precarious position
quickly, so evidently no bones were broken.

The boys managed to hold up the plane by means of the strong rail until
the pilot crawled out.

“Anyone with you?” demanded Frank.

The pilot, struggling to his feet, shook his head. The boys released
their grasp on the rail and the wreckage subsided again with a crash.

The pilot came forward. The boys noticed that he lurched slightly as he
walked and that he staggered as he came up to them. His uniform was torn
and he had a few scratches across his face, but otherwise he did not
appear to be badly hurt.

“How are you feeling?” Joe asked him.

Swaying from side to side, the pilot confronted them in silence. His
face was flushed.

“Narrow escape,” he muttered. “Mighty narrow escape.” He turned and
looked at the wrecked plane, and hiccuped.

“What happened?” asked Frank. “Engine trouble? Or did you run out of
gas?”

“I dunno,” answered the pilot thickly. “I dunno what happened. It wasn’t
my fault. All the fault of them fellows in the car.”

“Fellows in a car?”

“Yes. Couple of fools in a car ahead of me. I wanted ’em to stop and
they wouldn’t. They rushed right ahead and got in my way. Thought I’d
scare ’em and make ’em stop, but they kept on going. Then I found I
couldn’t get back in the air again—flying too low—it was all the fault
of those fools in the car.”

Frank and Joe glanced at one another significantly. Clearly, the man was
referring to them. And it was just as clear that the pilot had been
drinking.

“We were in a car,” said Frank. “If you think we’re to blame for your
accident you’re badly mistaken. You mighty near cost us our lives. We
had to get off the road or you would have crashed on top of our car.”

The pilot turned and looked at the boys, an ugly expression in his
bloodshot eyes.

“You were in the car, eh?” he shouted. “You’re the fellows that are to
blame for this crack-up!”

“It was your own fault.”

“Wasn’t my fault. You fellows wouldn’t stop. I was afraid I was going to
hit you. That’s why I lost control of the plane.” The pilot was working
himself up into a temper. “You’ll pay for this, let me tell you. My
plane is wrecked and I was mighty near killed just because a couple of
fool boys didn’t know enough to stop.”

Frank and Joe Hardy stared at the man in amazement. The injustice of the
charge passed belief. They were just about to reply angrily when they
heard voices and saw men hurrying down the road toward them. A number of
farmers in the adjacent fields had witnessed the accident and had lost
no time in hastening to the scene.

“What happened? Anybody killed?” demanded one man, as they came up.

“The plane is wrecked. The pilot escaped,” explained Frank.

“No thanks to you young fools,” snarled the pilot. He turned to the
farmers. “I’m lucky to be alive. I was trying to make a landing on the
road and these young idiots in their car kept racing ahead of me so I
couldn’t come down. I lost control of my machine and it’s wrecked.”

The farmers looked gravely at the Hardy boys. Frank laughed.

“I think you’d better wait until you sober up,” he told the pilot,
“before you make any charges like that. You haven’t any business being
in an airplane when you’re drunk.”

“Who says I’m drunk?” demanded the pilot belligerently. He clenched his
fists and stepped forward. “My airplane is wrecked and I’m going to hold
you young fools responsible.”