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TREACHERY IN ARCTIC SKIES
By Roy M. Johnson
Sometimes demonstrating with a flying coffin is a good way to sell the customer a safe plane!
"SO you're Dick Matthews," the wizened lawyer smirked across his flat-top desk. "The flyer who's ferrying a Sampson air-freighter to the radium mines in northern Canada? I expected you'd be an older man."
"Yes," Matthews nodded impatiently. "And I'd have been on my way three hours ago except for your summons. What's so important that I had to hold up my flight?"
Ignoring the question, the lawyer studied the young aviator's clean-cut features over cupped hands, while he held a match to the end of a cigar.
"Sampson's taking no chances, are they?" he said. "Sending their chief pilot to demonstrate their new airfreighter."
"You're evading the issue," Matthews said irritably. "Break down, Cheethem. What's on your mind?"
"Well," the lawyer said, toying with his cigar, "a sale involving six airfreighters is a nice stroke of business in any man's language. The Hercules people have got their eyes on that radium mine contract, too. Six Hercules air-freighters are anchored off Harbor Island airport right now, ready to hop off for the mines."
"Hercules!" Dick Matthews' lips curled with scorn. The name revived a bitter memory of his friend, Phil Harris, crashing with a buckled wing.
"Listen, Cheethem," Matthews said. "Freighting pitchblende1 in the Arctic Circle is a mighty tough flying job. Those radium flyers are entitled to the best equipment there is. Not junk. Not a jallopy with crippled wings! Hercules hasn't got a chance against Sampson, with her thousand horsepower motor, slots and flaps. They'll appreciate those modern features—"
1: Pitchblende is a black or brown uranium oxide, has a luster like pitch. It is the chief source of radium,-Ed.
"Say, young fellow," the lawyer cut in. "What salary are you drawing from Sampson?"
Matthews bridled, his eyes smoky with resentment.
"Never mind." Cheethem waved a deprecating hand. "I've got a contract here—"
He opened the desk drawer, took out a paper and laid it on the desk. In the brief instant that the paper flashed from drawer to desk, Dick Matthews got a glimpse of a gun lying in the drawer, saw the butt of an automatic pistol.
"There," Cheethem said, pushing the paper across the desk. "There's a twoyear contract to fly for Hercules, with the space for stipulated salary left blank. You take charge of our flight of air-freighters to the mines, and you can fill in those blank spaces with a figure double your present salary."
"And doublecross Sampson Aircraft! The people I work for! What kind of a heel do you think I am, Cheethem?" Matthews demanded.
"It's nothing to be squeamish about," the lawyer said. "It's dog eat dog, you know, when big money's at stake."
"It isn't my services you want," Matthews charged. "You figure you'd be buying off Sampson competition. Isn't that your idea, Cheethem?"
THE lawyer seemed to weigh this aspersion while he relit his cigar. Preferring to disregard it, he said,
"You know as well as I do, Matthews, that the deadline for bids on that contract is June 25, day after tomorrow. And it's a two days' flight to the mines. Look that contract over. There's a clause giving you a thousand-dollar bonus if you sell those Hercules jobs to the mine owners."
Dick Matthews shoved the contract aside. "You're barking up the wrong tree, Cheethem!" he snapped, getting to his feet. "Hercules can't sell those ships in the States. The Civil Air Authority won't license them. Their wings are weak—a structural weakness. You want me to do the dirty work for you, dump them on the unsuspecting radium flyers—"
Cheethem flushed. "You're taking the wrong attitude, Matthews. Hercules has to sell those ships before they can build better ones. It's a matter of finances."
"I'm not interested in Hercules' financial status!" Dick Matthews blurted out, an angry flush kindling under his tan. "And another thing!"
Wrath edged his words. "When I get to the mines the boys'll hear about my friend, Phil Harris. They'll hear how a Hercules low-wing folded on him in a dive. How it folded back and over the cabin, sealing the cabin door so that he didn't have a chance to use his 'chute! Phil was my chum since flying school days. And I had to see him die!"
Cheethem chewed viciously on his cigar, while his fingers tapped a dirge on the desk top.
"It's no soap, Cheethem!" The young aviator snatched his hat from the desk. "You're stooging for the undertaker, selling those ships. They're—they're nothing but flying coffins!"
Then it happened. The inter-office door was thrown open, and a man filled the doorway. The man had a gun in his hand. He was holding the gun belly-high, pointing it directly at Dick Matthews' stomach.
Dominick Sharp! Free-lance flyer. Jack-of-all-trades, all of them shady. Matthews recognized him from pictures in the local papers. Small black mustache on swarthy skin, whipcords, and brown puttees. Always his name was linked with sensational crimes. Always he managed to elude conviction. A dangerous adversary, this Sharp. Notorious for his strange habit of associating with "big money" one day, thugs the next.
"So the monkey wouldn't play ball!" Sharp addressed Cheethem over Dick Matthews' shoulder.
"No," the lawyer said. "He's got some screwy ideas about ethics, and loyalty to his company."
"Well, he ain't flying that Sampson north!" Sharp rasped. "Nobody's flying it to the radium mines. I'll see to that!"
"So that's how it is!" Matthews said grimly. "You eliminate your competition, if you can't buy it off!"
"You learn fast," Sharp snarled, prodding with the gun. "Sit down in that chair!"
CHEETHEM had his gun out now, leveled across the desk. His face was a harsh mask.
The young aviator sat down. He was, as it were, between two fires. His gaze went over Cheethem's shoulder to the half-open window, where beads of rain glistened on the fire-escape grating, and through which came the melancholy voice of a foghorn in Seattle's Elliot Bay.
"—and I'll take that flight of Hercules ships north myself," Sharp was saying. "Like we intended to do before this monkey showed up and gummed the works. And it'll be just too bad for anybody that gets in my way! But first I'll get hold of Nick, and have him fix that Sampson."
Sharp went to the wall telephone, dialed a number.
Dick Matthews looked at Cheethem across the desk, then over the lawyer's shoulder. Mentally he gauged his chances, measured the distance to the window. It was five, maybe six long steps. Would they dare to shoot in this office building? With the windows open?
"Hello—Nick?" Sharp said into the phone. "This is Dominick. I've got a job for you. Now listen careful, Nick. There's a red Sampson seaplane moored to the Lake Adams airport dock. I want you to take the speedboat over there and ram the pontoons of that seaplane, see? It's gotta sink! Get me? You'll have to make out that your boat's outa control—broken rudder or something."
Matthews had heard enough. That was his ship they were going to sink! It was now or never. He glanced again at the window. He knew it was the lawyer across the desk he'd have to handle, whose bullets he'd have to dodge.
He slid his feet back on the floor till one foot was on either side of the chair, till he could rest his weight on the balls of his feet. He glanced from Sharp at the phone to Lawyer Cheethem across the desk. The lawyer's gun was sagging, his interest taken up with Sharp's conversation.
Dick Matthews chose that second to spring, to heave his side of the desk up and over, dumping it in Cheethem's lap. His last glimpse of the lawyer showed Cheethem toppling backward in the swivel-chair. As the young aviator rounded the falling desk, the small room filled with a deafening roar.
But he felt no pain. He did not turn to look at the furor behind him, where one man sprawled on the floor as the other stood transfixed at the phone. To get through the window before a bullet got him in the back was all that mattered.
The last five feet Matthews made in one terrific lunge which carried him half through the opening. From there he rolled to the platform of the fire-escape.
Flying feet beat a tattoo on steel steps as the Sampson pilot zigzagged down the fire-escape. At the second landing the window stood open. He clambered through. A stenographer's hand flew to her mouth, stifling a scream. Others gaped in open-mouthed astonishment as he tore through the office and into the corridor. From there it was three floors to the street level. He raced down the stairs.
OUTDOORS, the rain had turned to a light drizzle. Dick Matthews was disheveled, gasping for breath, when he slapped a banknote on the desk before a bewildered hotel clerk.
"I'm checking out," he panted. "Call a cab! Call Lake Adams airport. Hurry! Tell them to warm up the Sampson. My orders—"
Then he flung himself away from the clerk's desk, and bounded up the newel stairway.
The cab was waiting. Traffic was moving sluggishly on the wet pavement of Seattle's business section. Matthews' driver clipped four traffic signals before a red light forced him to brake to a full stop. Once clear of the changing lights and clanging bells, the cabbie demonstrated to his passenger the possibility of banking on two wheels around turns and corners without benefit of ailerons or rudder.
As the cab neared Lake Adams, Matthews identified the sound of an unmuffled motor as that of his own thousand horsepower Sampson. The sound increased in pitch from the low, throaty growl of a cougar, to the roar of a lion—to a crescendo of thundering reverberations that, it seemed, would split the very heavens. Here was power! Speed! Life! Somehow, the thunder of this motor struck a responsive chord in Dick Matthews' innermost being.
As the roar of the big radial subsided, Matthews ears picked up the whine of another unmuffled motor. Then the cab turned the last corner, and there stood the airport hangar. Tension gave way to a surge of pride as the young flyer's anxious eyes swept the sleek lines of his Sampson, found her intact.
Motor cowling and cabin streamlined neatly into her high-lift wing. Her big twin-row radial was idling, snoring like a sleeping giant. From drawing board to where she stood like a living creature poised for flight, Dick Matthews had had a hand in her construction.
Out on the lake a speedboat was skipping over the high spots. Its motor was winding up as though it would tear its heart out. Two men were in the boat. The bow was coming fast toward the airport, splitting the waves into Vs of spray like white gull's wings.
Matthews leaped from the cab, ran toward the Sampson.
"Here!" he bellowed to a greaseball, who stood on the dock watching the boat. "Here, you! Quick! Throw off these lines!"
The speedboat was closer now. Its varnished sides and slanting windshield flashed intermittently. Daylight showed under its keel at times.
The greaseball came running to where Matthews was frantically untying a rope.
"Cast off!" the young flyer yelled, pointing to the remaining rope. Then he climbed into the Sampson's cabin.
He had to taxi toward the charging speedboat to get away from the dock. There was perhaps five hundred feet of open water between them.
"Okay!" the greaseball called, waving his hand.
MATTHEWS pushed the throttle forward. The Sampson started to move. Now there was only three hundred feet of open water.
Dick Matthews realized now that he was helpless to avoid the collision. The Sampson hadn't enough forward speed for her controls to be effective. But he had accomplished one thing. The boat could no longer ram his pontoons. It would have to be a head-on collision.
The speedboat was closer now, so close that Matthews saw it through the blur of his metal propeller. He knew how terrifying, how like a huge buzzsaw those churning blades must look to the pilot of the speedboat. The man had guts, at least.
Nearer the boat churned with every second. A crash seemed inevitable. Matthew's' body stiffened for the impact, his eyes squinted against possible flying debris. Suddenly the speedboat veered, flashed under the Sampson's high wing and disappeared behind, leaving the Sampson rocking in its wake.
Sweat beaded Dick Matthews' brow. In the moment while he relaxed from tension, the speedboat turned, came charging back. Matthews full-gunned the throttle. With a lurch and a bellow, the Sampson forged ahead.
At first the red pontoons sent up showers of spray. Then as she gathered speed, and the high-lift wing took hold, the Sampson pulled up on her step, spanked the surface of Lake Adams—and was off!
Matthews held his ship in a climbing turn, which brought him back over the lake at nine hundred feet. Below, on the airport dock the greaseball waved his arm. The speedboat was stationary now. The young flyer looked down into the white, upturned faces of the men below and laughed a little shrilly.
Off his right wingtip was Harbor Island, where six Hercules planes, Cheethem had said, were ready to take off for the pitchblende mines. Why six, Matthews wondered, when the mine owners' letter to Sampson Aircraft asked merely for a demonstration and a bid on six ships? Could it be that Cheethem was bluffing? Without conscious intent the Sampson pilot widened his turn to bring Harbor Island under his wings.
Cheethem wasn't bluffing! There was frenzied activity around the six Hercules moored near the dock. Their motors were revving up. One of them was streaking across Elliot Bay, leaving twin furrows of foam in its wake. That would be Dominick Sharp, Matthews reasoned. Sharp had said he'd lead the flight north himself.
"And it'll be just too bad for anybody that gets in my way." That's another thing Sharp had said.
As Matthews watched, gaining altitude, the scene gradually dissolved in a sea of murky fog, creeping inland from the Pacific. Then he was alone in an opaque world, a world of invisibility where he could scarcely see his wingtips. Banking the Sampson around, he laid a compass course for Sioux Lake the first stop of his flight to the radium mines in the Canadian Arctic.
He was eating supper with the factor of the trading post at Sioux Lake when Sharp's flight of low-wing Hercules thundered over the settlement at dusk. Matthews watched their dark forms bank against the red-streaked Canadian sunset, glide to the lake and taxi to the refueling wharf, His Sampson had beaten the Hercules by two hours.
Refusing the factor's invitation, Dick Matthews spent the night in the cabin of his Sampson. Sharp's presence on the lake was too great a threat to leave his ship unguarded. This thought, and the eerie wailing of loons, kept him awake most of the night. But travelweary senses finally succumbed to the rhythmic lapping of water, and he dozed the last few hours.
Axes, ringing in the forest, wakened him to find early sun tinting the uppermost branches of spruce trees close to the water's edge. He was eager to be off for the mines. But first he'd get a bite to eat at the post, and some food to take along. There was a long day's flying ahead. Tomorrow was the last day for the bids. Swinging along the forest trail, Matthews pulled long draughts of pungent spruce into his lungs.
On the veranda of the post, he met Dominick Sharp face to face. Just as he stepped onto the rustic porch of the log building, the other pilot came out of the commissary.
Sharp straightened, a look of genuine surprise creeping over hi3 swarthy features. His expression told Matthews that in the dusk of last evening, Sharp hadn't seen the Sampson moored in the sheltered cove where it had been taxied out of the wind.
"So, it's you!" Sharp's face clouded with rabid fury. He took a step closer to the young pilot, raised clenched fists and clamped them on his hips.
"Yes, it's me!" Matthews snapped. He saw Henri Laval, French-Canadian factor of the post, come to the doorway at this altercation. He saw Sharp's black mustache twist in a sneer.
"Things didn't work out like you figured, Sharp!" Dick Matthews bristled. "Your lousy gangster tricks didn't—"
A deadly gleam came into Sharp's eyes. His right fist left his hip. Matthews saw the motion start. In a flashing arc, those hard knuckles whipped into an overhand drive, straight for the younger man's chin. The blow had all the weight of Sharp's stocky body behind it.
Matthews jerked sidewards, but a little late. Sharp's knuckles seared a furrow along his jawbone from chin to ear. Matthews staggered, recovered.
Sharp's fist came again in a sizzling uppercut, starting from his knees. The young pilot weaved out of range, lashed a stinging left to the other's jaw. The blow glazed Sharp's eyes. And the next punch, a straight-from-the-shoulder right, smashed squarely into Sharp's mouth and nose.
The stocky man reeled backward, groggy. But his reflexes did not fail him. Instinctively, it seemed, his right hand snaked under his coat to the left armpit.
MATTHEWS hurled himself in a flying tackle. The impact knocked Sharp flat to the veranda floor. His arms flailed as he fell, but he had reached the gun and it was now clutched in his hand. Matthews fell on top of him, straddled his gun arm. He was wrenching the gun from Sharp's fingers when it exploded.
Henri Laval grabbed at his side, staggered against the building and caved in. From the doorway Fay Laval, the factor's twenty-year-old daughter, let out a scream. She dropped to her knees beside her father, half frantic.
Natives came running then from every direction. The veranda quickly filled with men and women: Indians, whites, half-breeds. Some of Sharp's pilots were there in flying togs, also.
"Shot in the hip!" Dick Matthews announced, straightening from a hasty examination. "The bullet's still there. It didn't go through, thank God. Someone go for a doctor!"
"C'est triste, m'sieu!" a woman with a flat nose, colored shawl and moosehide moccasins said. "'Tis sad, but no doctor ees een Sioux Lak'."
Matthews looked to Fay Laval for confirmation.
"The nearest doctor is at Strubbard—a hundred and fifty miles from here!" she said abjectly, moisture rimming her eyes.
Somewhere, the young pilot had heard that a bullet wound should bleed freely. This one wasn't doing that. He knew that the bullet would have to be removed. Hence Laval must be flown to the nearest doctor.
Matthews swung to Sharp, surrounded now by his pilots.
"You're responsible for this, Sharp. This man's got to be flown to Strubbard, to the doctor there. Bring one of your ships to the beach, and we'll put him aboard."
"Who'n hell are you to be giving me orders?" Sharp demanded, glowering. "I ain't playing nursemaid to no damn Canuck! You fly him yourself, Matthews. I got a date with the radium mine operators tomorrow, and Strubbard's off my course to North Fork."
Turning to his brood of flyers, Sharp said, "Let's go, men. We ain't got a minute to waste!"
As Sharp and his pilots stalked away, Dick Matthews laid a hand on Fay Laval's shoulder till she looked up.
"Have someone help get your father ready," he said quietly. "I'll get my Sampson, and we'll fly him to the doctor."
"But—what about your getting to the mines? The contract?"
"The bullet's got to be removed," Matthews replied. But he didn't want to alarm this girl. "Oh, I guess a few hours won't make much difference."
"Thank you!" the girl breathed, her eyes filled with emotion. Matthews straightened up and walked slowly away.
The Sampson was just as he'd left it. But he saw that three Hercules were already in the air. The others were sledding, full-gunned, over the choppy water. Then they, too, were in the air, climbing to join the circus. One of the Hercules leveled off, waggled its wings and headed north.
That would be Sharp, Dick Matthews reasoned. And he'd be gloating over the predicament he was leaving behind. As the young flyer watched, the other ships lined up behind their leader in a ragged V formation.
Fay Laval and a group of solemnfaced natives were waiting on the wharf when Matthews taxied the Sampson alongside. A tall half-breed with the bulging muscles of an axeman and a plaid hunting shirt helped to carry Laval aboard. His daughter arranged a comfortable bed on the cabin floor.
TO warm the motor thoroughly, Dick Matthews taxied the full length of the lake. At the far end, he blasted the tail around and gunned into the choppy waves. Above, the sky was deep blue, except for a bank of sheep's wool drifting lazily along the eastern horizon. Below, the lake fell away, leaving the natives standing bare-headed on the wharf, shading their eyes against the slanting sun.
Matthews looked at Fay Laval, sitting on stacked dunnage beside her father- She had plenty of "oomph," he thought. Then he realized how incongruous this term was, when applied to her. Her appeal was unaffected loveliness, not sophisticated glamour.
"Like flying?" the young pilot asked when she looked up.
"I love it!"
"Ever been up before?"
"Oh yes. Twice. Last year I flew to North Fork to visit my brother Andre and his family."
"Oh," Matthews said, feeling vaguely disappointed. He knew that a first airplane ride is never forgotten, no matter how many come after. Somehow, he had wanted to be identified with the girl's first ride in the air.
"It's my first airplane ride," Henri Laval volunteered a little weakly from his improvised bed. "I can't tell whether I like it or not from here."
"You'll be able to enjoy the scenery on the return trip," Fay promised him. "How do you feel now, Papa?"
"Don't worry about me. I feel all right—lying still like this."
Throttle wide open, the big radial thundered defiance at the god of space. This was one time, Dick Matthews decided, that he wouldn't spare the horses. This motor had had plenty of hours at cruising speed. It wouldn't hurt to let her out for a while.
The Sampson seemed to revel in her new-found power, seemed to reach out for the landmarks and hurl them, reverberating, at the receding horizon.
An hour later they landed at Strubbard. The hospital there was white, quiet. Matthews marveled at Fay's valiant poise during the ten-minute eternity while her father was in the operating room. Neither of them heard the door open or saw the doctor till he stood before them.
"Your dad'll be as good as ever in a few weeks," the surgeon smiled, shaking something in his fist. "But he'll have to stay here, where I can watch him for awhile." Then he reached for Fay's hand and put the bullet in it. "Here's the cause of all the trouble, my dear."
A stern-faced nurse in white cap and starched uniform permitted them a brief stay with Fay's father, then ordered them out of the sick room.
"He's got to have absolute quiet for a while," she said. And that was what it would have to be.
"But you can't fly all day on an empty stomach," Fay protested as they came down the hospital steps. "Let's find a place to eat." She placed her hand lightly in the crook of Matthews' arm as they went down the street.
OVER the coffee, Fay said, "What would you think if I asked you to take me with you as far as North Fork?"
"Think? Why—why, it'd be the best break I've had for—"
"That's not what I mean," Fay said, coloring. "I mean, about leaving Papa here while I get Andre to come back with us to take care of the post. Papa will be laid up for weeks, you know, and it takes a man to—"
"Let's see what your dad thinks about it," Matthews said. "I'd sure like to have you come along."
Fifteen minutes later they were aloft in the Sampson over a vast range of jagged peaks.
"That was a swell tip your dad gave us about taking this short-cut over the mountains," Dick Matthews said. "It'll save at least two hours. And with the Sampson's extra speed, we'll catch Sharp yet. I wonder why the established air route goes the long way around."
"To reach the settlements," Fay explained in her throaty voice. "All large settlements are on the waterways. This country was first developed by canoe, you know."
Gathering up the miles in bundles of ten, the motor droned on and on without a skip to distract the young pilot's ears from Canadian history, legend and tradition. Under the wingtips, white crags and glaciers gave way to rolling foothills, and these in turn to a vast expanse of country where prehistoric glaciers had gouged the earth, leaving a land of myriad rivers, muskegs and lakes.
"Look!" Fay exclaimed, pointing directly ahead.
Dick Matthews saw that a body of water, larger than the rest, bad separated itself from the horizon, leaving between it and the skyline an everwidening strip of land.
"That's Big Hand Lake!" Fay pointed out. "North Fork is on the far shore."
North Fork proved to be a large settlement from which two piers jutted into the lake, alongside of which airplanes were warped. Just off-shore, more airplanes and several boats heaved easily at anchor ropes. Beyond North Fork, the hills were shrouded in stratus clouds.
"It's a bigger air base than I expected," Matthews said, easing the Sampson into a landing glide. "More activity, better facilities."
Fay nodded. "It's a terminus for the big crosS-country airline, as well as for the radium flyers. A lot of flying prospectors use it for their base, too. Aren't those Hercules ships along the left pier?" she asked excitedly.
But Dick Matthews couldn't look just then. He had too much flying speed, too close to the water. He had to fishtail. Then the Sampson squatted, plowing furrows in the heaving water.
"Yes," Matthews nodded belatedly, taxiing toward the pier. "Those are Hercules. They're being refueled at the moment."
Dominick Sharp and one of his pilots were standing by the first ship in the line, watching the Sampson's approach.
A MAN in greasy overalls came to the end of the pier, holding up his hand, palm outward. It was the signal for Dick Matthews to stand off with the Sampson. He cut the switch. While he watched, the first Hercules taxied aWay from the pier. And a man with a gasoline hose in his hand motioned for the next ship in line to move up. Matthews guessed he'd be ordered to fall in behind this lineup and await his turn for gas.
He looked out on the lake toward the point where the pilot of the ship that had left the pier was jazzing the throttle. The ship was skipping about erratically. Then, in full-throated roar, the Hercules headed straight for the Sampson!
Matthews froze in his seat, as though he were in a loop so tight that he couldn't lift his arm from his lap. His mind was a television screen, flashing pictures of past events at dizzy speed. The last of these was a snapshot of the Hercules charging down upon him. It seemed to release him from his trance, to demand instant action.
Throttle wide open, the Hercules came on like a projectile, unerringly guided by a fiendish hand. It was so close that a crash was inevitable. Helpless, Matthews knew those metal propeller blades would hack their way into the Sampson's cabin. He hadn't time to start his motor, to pull away. He had only time to jerk the latch of his safety belt, to hurl himself as a protective shield in front Of Fay Laval.
Then came the crash!
DICK MATTHEWS didn't know what happened after that. He knew only that he was sitting on the pier, and that someone behind him was bandaging his head. He knew, too, that his head hurt like hell, and that his shirtfront was a bloody mess. Then the fog cleared a little, and he looked behind and saw that it was Fay.
"Gee!" he said. "I'm glad you're not hurt. What happened?"
"There was an accident," Fay said. "And you were thrown against the cabin so hard that it split your head open. They came with a boat and brought us here."
At Matthews right, the Hercules pilot was explaining how he had lost control of his rudder, how the throttle had jammed at the same time. But the young flyer knew better than that. He knew that the man had orders to ram the Sampson head-on. Else why hadn't he cut the switch when the throttle froze?
But it seemed the others believed the liar. They were congratulating him for his quick wit in avoiding a fatal collision. All but Dominick Sharp. He wasn't congratulating his man. He was scowling disapproval. It was plain that Sharp had wanted a complete washout, but at the last second the pilot had lost his nerve.
Out in the bay, Matthews saw the Sampson, its right wingtip mangled, listing to port. It looked sadly like a huge red bird holding out a crippled wing. Closer to shore was the Hercules, standing on its nose in shallow water. It must have careened, Matthews thought, or cartwheeled after the crash. Its right wing was mangled even worse than the Sampson's.
Well, the Hercules came out second best at that, Dick Matthews exulted. And that was fine—just ducky! Its motor was submerged. It wouldn't fly again until, until—Then that all-gone feeling came to the pit of his stomach. That Hercules out there with its crippled wing and submerged motor was symbolic of himself. He had come out second best, too. And Dominick Sharp was the winner!
As a last resort, Sharp had crashed one ship to sabotage another. He'd have everything his own way at the radium mines now. And tomorrow was the last day for the bids to be in. Yes, Sharp was the winner; he was the gogetter!
Dick Matthews winced, remembering the superintendent's words when he left the Sampson factory:
"We're all behind you, boy. And we're depending on you for that order."
Then, jokingly and with a slap on the shoulder, the factory man had added, "So you'd better make that sale, or keep moving." Those words, uttered in good fellowship, were now a bitter irony.
Dick Matthews forced a weak smile to his lips as he turned to look up at Fay Laval. But Fay was gone! Anxiously, his eyes searched the pier. And then he saw her. She was the center of attraction over at the big hangar doors. Six or seven young fellows were grouped around her. Some of them were Sharp's pilots. One fellow with black curly hair and corduroy breeches had a possessive arm linked through hers.
The sight of Fay smiling at this fellow invoked a strange passion within Dick Matthews. He wanted to bash the fellow's head in. He'd like to get Sharp's whole damn clique together, too. He'd beat their brains out, damned if he wouldn't! Savage hatred gleamed in his eyes, in the rigid set of his jaws.
WHETHER it was the Hercules, standing beside the pier with its prop ticking over, that prompted him to action; whether new courage, born of desperation and despair, it was immaterial. In that moment of surging rage Dick Matthews leaped to his feet. Sharp had used gangster tactics to gain his advantage. You can't fight fire with water pistols. Sharp had done all the dirty work thus far. Now let him have the dirty end of the stick!
In a few leaps Matthews was inside the Hercules cabin, had the throttle shoved clear out.
There'd been no reflective delay in his action, no counting to ten. Matthews was acting solely on impulse. What his plan was, outside of flying off with this Hercules, he couldn't say. Vaguely, it had to do with beating Sharp to the radium mines, Sampson or no Sampson. Maybe, if he had a chance to explain the situation to the mine owners, they'd postpone the closing of the bids till the Sampson could bp repaired. But Dick Matthews hadn't counted on Sharp's acumen. Before he could lift the Hercules off Big Hand Lake, another plane had pulled away from the pier, to come streaking after him. This other flyer had the advantage over Matthews. He was familiar with his ship.
This Hercules was to the young flyer like an automobile to a new driver. Matthews didn't know what the Hercules could do; what it couldn't do. He did know that its motor was two hundred and fifty horsepower less than the Sampson's.
He was reminded of this now, as he felt for the ship's best angle of climb. He had to get through those overhanging clouds.
The other ship was up there first. Matthews saw it circling in the sunshine like a huge bird of prey as he broke through the Upper layer of clouds. It came at him in a screaming dive.
Sharp! Dick Matthews recognized his sinister features behind the black automatic pistol that was sticking through the sliding panel of his windshield. The automatic was jumping in Sharp's hand. Matthews rolled away in a twisting wingover, but not before two bullets had ripped through the windshield beside his head.
When he recovered from this maneuver, Sharp was on his tail, pumping slugs into the cabin. Dick Matthews could almost hear the staccato clatter of the automatic! He did hear the bullets hit the cabin. It was like Someone driving rivets next to his head. Matthews zoomed to avoid this hail of death.
After that it was a milling dogfight. It was dive and zoom, loop and roll. Whichever way he turned, Sharp Was there. Sometimes they were close to the clouds, again far above them. Twice, through rifts, Dick Matthews saw blue water below. Once he glimpsed the piers of North Fork.
He was on his back at the top of a whipstall, when Sharp got him in the left arm. It came at the exact moment when inertia was giving way to gravity, when his ship was hanging helpless, belly-up—like a stunned fish floating in water. Sharp managed to be there at that precise moment, a little above him. He pumped a full clip of bullets into the belly of the helpless ship. Warm blood began to trickle down the young flyer's arm
Dick Matthews gritted his teeth. Another one like that, and he'd be cold meat. Sharp had the only gun. All his victim could do was to escape. Hot blood pounded in Matthews' temples with the rage that possessed him. His eyes narrowed then with cold decision.
IT was Sharp who had that vicioi urge to ram the other fellow. We he'd get some of his own medicine now! If this was to be the end, he'd take Sharp with him. He'd ram Sharp so hard, they'd both go down, locked together!
Sharp was still above him when he leveled off. Unaware of the younger man's decision, Sharp dropped the nose of his Hercules and came tearing in for the coup de grace. Matthews flippered around in a tight, vertical turn. He was facing his adversary now, charging him.
With only five hundred feet separating them, they rocketed at each other like two locomotives on a single track. Sharp's face was a mask of satanic fury. Split seconds narrowed the distance. Sharp's eyes widened; his mouth opened. And then he broke under the strain. Downward he dived, screeching in terror. It was Sharp who couldn't face death! The last flash Matthews had of his face, Sharp's piglike eyes were bulging in stark horror.
Dick Matthews zoomed up in a flashing Immelmann then, came charging back. He had the feel of his ship now. He was dominated by a single, frenzied urSe—to smash Sharp! The other swerved frantically to avoid Matthews' dive. Another tight flipper turn, and the younger man was after him. Sharp had his tail down now. He was clawing for the ceiling like a pearl-diver coming up for air.
High above the clouds Matthews caught him. Sharp nosed his ship into a vertical dive to avoid a slashing wing. Matthews followed grimly. They were close together now, so close together as to seem that the young pilot was riding the other's back.
Down they plummeted. Backward crept the altimeter, like a speedometer when brakes are applied. Seven thousand, six thousand, five thousand feet! Sharp didn't dare pull out of the dive. And Dick Matthews didn't intend to let Sharp get away.
Glued together, they plunged into the clouds. The sudden change of visibility sobered Matthews like a plunge into cold water. In a flash he remembered Phil Harris and the Hercules' weakness. He was diving at terminal velocity now. He didn't dare pull out too fast. Overcontrol now would mean a buckled wing. Spinning death!
With a vision of the Grim Reaper before him, Dick Matthews nursed the Hercules out of the hurtling dive as gently as he'd lay a sleeping baby in its cradle. Even so, tremendous forces twisted the ship's structure, squeezed Matthews into his seat with the unrelenting force of a hydraulic press. He wondered how far Sharp would dive before realizing that he was all alone now.
Then Dick Matthews shot through the lower layer of clouds. Dominick Sharp was less than a quarter of a mile away, spinning like the winged pod of a maple leaf.. His left wing was wrapped back over the cabin. Dick remembered Sharp's bulging eyes. Bail out, Sharp! Jump! No—impossible! The jammed door!
MATTHEWS tensed as though he 1 A were fighting that spin instead of his enemy. But with a wing gone, it was useless. Sharp was trapped, just as Phil Harris had been. It was the end. Vicariously, the young pilot's body stiffened for the impact. Another half turn, aud-
it was a tremendous splash. Water mushroomed skyward, hiding the scene, then fell away, to reveal Sharp's Hercules as a mass of mangled wreckage, splattered miserably on the surface of Big Hand Lake.
Matthews saw an airplane on the surface taxiing toward the wreck. Farther away a motorboat was speeding to the rescue. Instinctively, Matthews knew that was impossible. No human being could live through such a crash.
Spiraling lower, he saw "Radium Express" painted on the sides of the rescue plane. Then he leveled off and let the Hercules settle on the water.
The radium ship was at the wreckage first. When Matthews got there, two men had already climbed out on the pontoons. One was dressed in pilot's togs. The other, an older man, wore a business suit with the air of an executive. Dick Matthews taxied closer before cutting his switch.
"He's done for!" the older man said in a stentorian voice as the young flyer opened the sliding panel of his windshield. "We saw him crash! He came diving through the clouds with his motor wide open. When he tried to pull out, that wing—" the man shuddered, nodding at the wreckage—"wrapped itself around the cabin. He couldn't bail out. He—"
p Then the motorboat came between the speaker and the radium plane, blanketing the man's words.
Dick Matthews started his motor again, taxied to North Fork. Somehow, he felt no elation over Sharp's demise, only engulfing weariness. Besides, his arm was throbbing. It had stopped bleeding now.
Matthews beached the Hercules between the piers. On shore he was immediately surrounded by excited people who clamored for information about the accident. It was Fay Laval who first noticed his bloody hand.
"You're hurt!" she cried, reaching for his injured arm.
Matthews pulled his hand away. "I'm all right," he lied. "Anyway, it isn't much."
"How did it happen! Where—But never mind that now!" Fay amended quickly. "You come with me, young man!"
Fay took his good arm, leading him inside the hangar. There she dispatched a man in overalls for warm water, another for the first-aid kit. While she was bathing his wound, she said,
"Why'd you run off like that with a Hercules? Where'd you go? And who shot you?"
Before he could answer, a famliar voice at the hangar door bellowed,
"Is Mr. Matthews in here?"
"Yes," Fay called. "He's here."
Matthews saw two men come across the hangar floor. One was the fellow he'd seen at the wreckage. The other was the curly-headed chap with corduroy breeches.
"Here comes my brother Andre," Fay said, straightening up. "And he's got Mr. Morey, the mine superintendent, with him."
A WHIMSICAL grin lit up Dick Matthews' face as he acknowledged introductions. So this curly-headed fellow was Fay's brother. No wonder she had permitted that possessive arml It was a good thing he hadn't said anything about it.
"Why, you're the flyer I saw at the wreck," Mr. Morey greeted him, shaking Matthews' good hand. "Being in a Hercules, I thought you were one of Sharp's men."
"No, I'm with Sampson Aircraft. That's my Sampson out there." The young pilot nodded toward the hangar door. "What's left of it, that is!"
"So I understand, Matthews. It's a nice-looking job you've got there. Too bad about that wing."
"But the bids!" Dick Matthews protested. "They close tomorrow, don't they? It'll take days to repair that wing!"
"Andre Laval, here—" Morey indicated Fay's brother with a nod—"can have that wing fixed for you. I'm going back to the mines tomorrow. I'll hold the bids open till you get there."
As Morey and young Laval left the hangar, Fay finished dressing Matthews' arm. The Canadian sun was painting its last scene on the underside of clouds when they went to the hangar door to watch Andre Laval direct the operation of a big crane. A crew of men, who had lifted the Sampson from the water, were easing the plane onto the dock. When this was done, Andre joined Dick Matthews and Fay at the hangar door.
"First thing in the morning," he grinned, "we'll get after that wing. But let's go home now, see what we've got for supper."
As they turned away from the hangar, Fay linked one arm through Dick Matthews', the other through her brother's.
Trudging up a path leading to a low bungalow, Andre said:
"Mr. Morey thinks you've got a sale coming up, Matthews, if your Sampson performs as well as it looks."
"Does it?" Fay said impishly, hugging the young flyer's arm a little closer to her side.
"If that's what he said," Dick Matthews chuckled, "the sale's in the bag! Why, that thousand horsepower motor talks for itself. And the way she gathers up the miles, these radium flyers'll think they're riding a comet!"
Andre Laval nodded his head. "Your only real competition was the Hercules," tie said. "Mr. Morey told me that they offered six ships at a pretty low figure. But he wouldn't ask any of his men to fly them, he said, after the way that fellow's wing buckled on him today—and no chance to use his 'chute, either. 'Flying Coffins', that's what Mr. Morey called them."
"I wouldn't say he was wrong," Dick Matthews observed a little tightly.
THE END
