Free Maiden Flight by Harry Haskell Page B

no nobler cause than to feed Stef’s insatiable ambition.
    It goes without saying that I wanted nothing more to do with the man after that. But Stef was still Kate’s friend, and I couldn’t very well not invite him to Dayton for the twentieth anniversary of the first flight. He and Mr. Akeley came from New York for the ceremony at the National Cash Register Hall. Stef was one of the featured speakers, following Governor Cox. The poor governor was so anxious to do well that he did his very worst. He didn’t get any of his facts straight but soared and soared into the stratosphere until at last he ran out of steam and sat down. After that sorry performance, it was a relief to listen to a scientist who actually knew what he was talking about. The gist of Stef’s remarks was that Will and I had made the world round a second time because the aeroplane can go east or west right over the poles. He said people had grown accustomed to thinking of the world as a cylinder and not as a sphere.
    Stef is a splendid talker, but actions speak louder than words. When he returned to Dayton after Christmas, I read him the riot act. He actually had the good cheek to tell Katharine he was glad in a way that the Teddy Bear had not gotten through the ice in 1922,because the Canadian government had not yet taken responsibility for occupying Wrangel Island. Kate reminded him that in his letter asking me for money, he had emphasized that lives might be at stake. That embarrassed him for once! Yet even then Stef continued to defend everything he had done. From his point of view, his schemes were so important for the advancement of science that he was justified in carrying them out at all costs. I was more than ever convinced that Kate was unwise to trust Stef a bit. Either he lacked conscience or he simply had different ideas of right and wrong from ours.
    I was still reeling from Stef’s behavior when I discovered that Griff—of all people—had gone back on me in an unbelievable way in connection with the sale of British Wright. As he well knew, I was anxious to wind up the company’s affairs and prevent anybody from peddling our patents in Belgium and Italy. British Wright had already lost thirty-five thousand dollars over the past five years. Griff actually expected to use up all the remaining funds—between twenty-five and thirty thousand, half of which was rightfully mine—on his own salary and expenses. He was planning to travel to Alaska to make sure that the one surviving white man and the ten or twelve Eskimos still stranded on Wrangel Island in the wake of the various relief expeditions could return to the mainland, if they wanted to. As Kate observed, between enjoying grandstand plays and liking to travel, Griff’s “duty” would have been very clear to him and very expensive to us.
    By a stroke of sheer luck, the deal for British Wright fell through at the eleventh hour, so Griff was beaten at his own little trick. Swes and I even wound up getting more than seventeen thousand dollars out of the company. We had been prepared for yearsto have that all used up by Griff, and it would have gone that way without protest on my part if he hadn’t gone a little too far in contributing my money to Stef’s plans without my knowledge. The whole business left me sick to the stomach. I arranged to have the sale of my stock in the company taken care of through the bank. I knew it would hurt Griff’s feelings, but I was in no mood to let him handle any more of my affairs.
    Still, I never can stay mad at Griff for long, not after everything he has done for us—not least making the arrangements for sending the flyer to London. I had about reached the end of my rope with the Smithsonian when he came up with his proposal, and I jumped at it. In fact, I was all ready to start reassembling the machine for shipment when, as luck would have it, my back gave out again. Something seemed to snap while I was bending over the washbowl in the