by Jack London
WINGED BLACKMAIL
PETER WINN lay back comfortably in a library chair, with closed eyes,deep in the cogitation of a scheme of campaign destined in the nearfuture to make a certain coterie of hostile financiers sit up. Thecentral idea had come to him the night before, and he was now revelingin the planning of the remoter, minor details. By obtaining control of acertain up-country bank, two general stores, and several logging camps,he could come into control of a certain dinky jerkwater line which shallhere be nameless, but which, in his hands, would prove the key to avastly larger situation involving more main-line mileage almost thanthere were spikes in the aforesaid dinky jerkwater. It was so simplethat he had almost laughed aloud when it came to him. No wonder thoseastute and ancient enemies of his had passed it by.
The library door opened, and a slender, middle-aged man, weak-eyed andeye glassed, entered. In his hands was an envelope and an open letter.As Peter Winn's secretary it was his task to weed out, sort, andclassify his employer's mail.
"This came in the morning post," he ventured apologetically and withthe hint of a titter. "Of course it doesn't amount to anything, but Ithought you would like to see it."
"Read it," Peter Winn commanded, without opening his eyes.
The secretary cleared his throat.
"It is dated July seventeenth, but is without address. Postmark SanFrancisco. It is also quite illiterate. The spelling is atrocious. Hereit is:
"Mr. Peter Winn, SIR: I send you respectfully by express a pigeon worthgood money. She's a loo-loo--"
"What is a loo-loo?" Peter Winn interrupted.
The secretary tittered.
"I'm sure I don't know, except that it must be a superlative of somesort. The letter continues:
"Please freight it with a couple of thousand-dollar bills and let it go.If you do I wont never annoy you no more. If you dont you will be sorry.
"That is all. It is unsigned. I thought it would amuse you."
"Has the pigeon come?" Peter Winn demanded.
"I'm sure I never thought to enquire."
"Then do so."
In five minutes the secretary was back.
"Yes, sir. It came this morning."
"Then bring it in."
The secretary was inclined to take the affair as a practical joke, butPeter Winn, after an examination of the pigeon, thought otherwise.
"Look at it," he said, stroking and handling it. "See the length of thebody and that elongated neck. A proper carrier. I doubt if I've everseen a finer specimen. Powerfully winged and muscled. As our unknowncorrespondent remarked, she is a loo-loo. It's a temptation to keepher."
The secretary tittered.
"Why not? Surely you will not let it go back to the writer of thatletter."
Peter Winn shook his head.
"I'll answer. No man can threaten me, even anonymously or in foolery."
On a slip of paper he wrote the succinct message, "Go to hell," signedit, and placed it in the carrying apparatus with which the bird had beenthoughtfully supplied.
"Now we'll let her loose. Where's my son? I'd like him to see theflight."
"He's down in the workshop. He slept there last night, and had hisbreakfast sent down this morning."
"He'll break his neck yet," Peter Winn remarked, half-fiercely,half-proudly, as he led the way to the veranda.
Standing at the head of the broad steps, he tossed the pretty creatureoutward and upward. She caught herself with a quick beat of wings,fluttered about undecidedly for a space, then rose in the air.
Again, high up, there seemed indecision; then, apparently getting herbearings, she headed east, over the oak-trees that dotted the park-likegrounds.
"Beautiful, beautiful," Peter Winn murmured. "I almost wish I had herback."
But Peter Winn was a very busy man, with such large plans in his headand with so many reins in his hands that he quickly forgot the incident.Three nights later the left wing of his country house was blown up. Itwas not a heavy explosion, and nobody was hurt, though the wing itselfwas ruined. Most of the windows of the rest of the house were broken,and there was a deal of general damage. By the first ferry boat of themorning half a dozen San Francisco detectives arrived, and several hourslater the secretary, in high excitement, erupted on Peter Winn.
"It's come!" the secretary gasped, the sweat beading his forehead andhis eyes bulging behind their glasses.
"What has come?" Peter demanded. "It--the--the loo-loo bird."
Then the financier understood.
"Have you gone over the mail yet?"
"I was just going over it, sir."
"Then continue, and see if you can find another letter from ourmysterious friend, the pigeon fancier."
The letter came to light. It read:
Mr. Peter Winn, HONORABLE SIR: Now dont be a fool. If youd came through,your shack would not have blew up--I beg to inform you respectfully,am sending same pigeon. Take good care of same, thank you. Put five onethousand dollar bills on her and let her go. Dont feed her. Dont try tofollow bird. She is wise to the way now and makes better time. If youdont come through, watch out.
Peter Winn was genuinely angry. This time he indited no message for thepigeon to carry. Instead, he called in the detectives, and, under theiradvice, weighted the pigeon heavily with shot. Her previous flighthaving been eastward toward the bay, the fastest motor-boat in Tiburonwas commissioned to take up the chase if it led out over the water.
But too much shot had been put on the carrier, and she was exhaustedbefore the shore was reached. Then the mistake was made of putting toolittle shot on her, and she rose high in the air, got her bearings andstarted eastward across San Francisco Bay. She flew straight over AngelIsland, and here the motor-boat lost her, for it had to go around theisland.
That night, armed guards patrolled the grounds. But there was noexplosion. Yet, in the early morning Peter Winn learned by telephonethat his sister's home in Alameda had been burned to the ground.
Two days later the pigeon was back again, coming this time by freight inwhat had seemed a barrel of potatoes. Also came another letter:
Mr. Peter Winn, RESPECTABLE SIR: It was me that fixed yr sisters house.You have raised hell, aint you. Send ten thousand now. Going up all thetime. Dont put any more handicap weights on that bird. You sure cantfollow her, and its cruelty to animals.
Peter Winn was ready to acknowledge himself beaten. The detectiveswere powerless, and Peter did not know where next the man wouldstrike--perhaps at the lives of those near and dear to him. He eventelephoned to San Francisco for ten thousand dollars in bills of largedenomination. But Peter had a son, Peter Winn, Junior, with thesame firm-set jaw as his fathers, and the same knitted, broodingdetermination in his eyes. He was only twenty-six, but he was all man, asecret terror and delight to the financier, who alternated between pridein his son's aeroplane feats and fear for an untimely and terrible end.
"Hold on, father, don't send that money," said Peter Winn, Junior."Number Eight is ready, and I know I've at last got that reefing downfine. It will work, and it will revolutionize flying. Speed--that'swhat's needed, and so are the large sustaining surfaces for gettingstarted and for altitude. I've got them both. Once I'm up I reef down.There it is. The smaller the sustaining surface, the higher the speed.That was the law discovered by Langley. And I've applied it. I can risewhen the air is calm and full of holes, and I can rise when its boiling,and by my control of my plane areas I can come pretty close to makingany speed I want. Especially with that new Sangster-Endholm engine."
"You'll come pretty close to breaking your neck one of these days," washis father's encouraging remark.
"Dad, I'll tell you what I'll come pretty close to-ninety miles anhour--Yes, and a hundred. Now listen! I was going to make a trialtomorrow. But it won't take two hours to start today. I'll tackle itthis afternoon. Keep that money. Give me the pigeon and I'll follow herto her loft where ever it is. Hold on, let me talk to the mechanics."
He called up the workshop, and in
crisp, terse sentences gave his ordersin a way that went to the older man's heart. Truly, his one son was achip off the old block, and Peter Winn had no meek notions concerningthe intrinsic value of said old block.
Timed to the minute, the young man, two hours later, was ready for thestart. In a holster at his hip, for instant use, cocked and with thesafety on, was a large-caliber automatic pistol. With a final inspectionand overhauling he took his seat in the aeroplane. He started theengine, and with a wild burr of gas explosions the beautiful fabricdarted down the launching ways and lifted into the air. Circling, as herose, to the west, he wheeled about and jockeyed and maneuvered for thereal start of the race.
This start depended on the pigeon. Peter Winn held it. Nor was itweighted with shot this time. Instead, half a yard of bright ribbon wasfirmly attached to its leg--this the more easily to enable its flightbeing followed. Peter Winn released it, and it arose easily enoughdespite the slight drag of the ribbon. There was no uncertainty aboutits movements. This was the third time it had made particular homingpassage, and it knew the course.
At an altitude of several hundred feet it straightened out and went dueeast. The aeroplane swerved into a straight course from its last curveand followed. The race was on. Peter Winn, looking up, saw that thepigeon was outdistancing the machine. Then he saw something else. Theaeroplane suddenly and instantly became smaller. It had reefed. Itshigh-speed plane-design was now revealed. Instead of the generousspread of surface with which it had taken the air, it was now a lean andhawklike monoplane balanced on long and exceedingly narrow wings.
*****
When young Winn reefed down so suddenly, he received a surprise. Itwas his first trial of the new device, and while he was prepared forincreased speed he was not prepared for such an astonishing increase. Itwas better than he dreamed, and, before he knew it, he was hard uponthe pigeon. That little creature, frightened by this, the most monstroushawk it had ever seen, immediately darted upward, after the manner ofpigeons that strive always to rise above a hawk.
In great curves the monoplane followed upward, higher and higher intothe blue. It was difficult, from underneath to see the pigeon, and youngWinn dared not lose it from his sight. He even shook out his reefs inorder to rise more quickly. Up, up they went, until the pigeon, trueto its instinct, dropped and struck at what it thought to be the back ofits pursuing enemy. Once was enough, for, evidently finding no life inthe smooth cloth surface of the machine, it ceased soaring andstraightened out on its eastward course.
A carrier pigeon on a passage can achieve a high rate of speed, andWinn reefed again. And again, to his satisfaction, he found that he wasbeating the pigeon. But this time he quickly shook out a portion of hisreefed sustaining surface and slowed down in time. From then on he knewhe had the chase safely in hand, and from then on a chant rose to hislips which he continued to sing at intervals, and unconsciously, for therest of the passage. It was: "Going some; going some; what did I tellyou!--going some."
Even so, it was not all plain sailing. The air is an unstable medium atbest, and quite without warning, at an acute angle, he entered an aerialtide which he recognized as the gulf stream of wind that poured throughthe drafty-mouthed Golden Gate. His right wing caught it first--asudden, sharp puff that lifted and tilted the monoplane and threatenedto capsize it. But he rode with a sensitive "loose curb," and quickly,but not too quickly, he shifted the angles of his wing-tips, depressedthe front horizontal rudder, and swung over the rear vertical rudder tomeet the tilting thrust of the wind. As the machine came back to an evenkeel, and he knew that he was now wholly in the invisible stream, hereadjusted the wing-tips, rapidly away from him during the severalmoments of his discomfiture.
The pigeon drove straight on for the Alameda County shore, and itwas near this shore that Winn had another experience. He fell into anair-hole. He had fallen into air-holes before, in previous flights, butthis was a far larger one than he had ever encountered. With his eyesstrained on the ribbon attached to the pigeon, by that fluttering bit ofcolor he marked his fall. Down he went, at the pit of his stomach thatold sink sensation which he had known as a boy he first negotiatedquick-starting elevators. But Winn, among other secrets of aviation, hadlearned that to go up it was sometimes necessary first to go down.The air had refused to hold him. Instead of struggling futilely andperilously against this lack of sustension, he yielded to it. Withsteady head and hand, he depressed the forward horizontal rudder--justrecklessly enough and not a fraction more--and the monoplane dived headforemost and sharply down the void. It was falling with the keenness ofa knife-blade. Every instant the speed accelerated frightfully. Thushe accumulated the momentum that would save him. But few instants wererequired, when, abruptly shifting the double horizontal rudders forwardand astern, he shot upward on the tense and straining plane and out ofthe pit.
At an altitude of five hundred feet, the pigeon drove on over the townof Berkeley and lifted its flight to the Contra Costa hills. Young Winnnoted the campus and buildings of the University of California--hisuniversity--as he rose after the pigeon.
Once more, on these Contra Costa hills, he early came to grief. Thepigeon was now flying low, and where a grove of eucalyptus presented asolid front to the wind, the bird was suddenly sent fluttering wildlyupward for a distance of a hundred feet. Winn knew what it meant. It hadbeen caught in an air-surf that beat upward hundreds of feet wherethe fresh west wind smote the upstanding wall of the grove. He reefedhastily to the uttermost, and at the same time depressed the angle ofhis flight to meet that upward surge. Nevertheless, the monoplane wastossed fully three hundred feet before the danger was left astern.
Two or more ranges of hills the pigeon crossed, and then Winn saw itdropping down to a landing where a small cabin stood in a hillsideclearing. He blessed that clearing. Not only was it good for alighting,but, on account of the steepness of the slope, it was just the thing forrising again into the air.
A man, reading a newspaper, had just started up at the sight of thereturning pigeon, when he heard the burr of Winn's engine and saw thehuge monoplane, with all surfaces set, drop down upon him, stop suddenlyon an air-cushion manufactured on the spur of the moment by a shift ofthe horizontal rudders, glide a few yards, strike ground, and come torest not a score of feet away from him. But when he saw a young man,calmly sitting in the machine and leveling a pistol at him, the manturned to run. Before he could make the corner of the cabin, a bulletthrough the leg brought him down in a sprawling fall.
"What do you want!" he demanded sullenly, as the other stood over him.
"I want to take you for a ride in my new machine," Winn answered."Believe me, she is a loo-loo."
The man did not argue long, for this strange visitor had most convincingways. Under Winn's instructions, covered all the time by the pistol,the man improvised a tourniquet and applied it to his wounded leg. Winnhelped him to a seat in the machine, then went to the pigeon-loft andtook possession of the bird with the ribbon still fast to its leg.
A very tractable prisoner, the man proved. Once up in the air, he satclose, in an ecstasy of fear. An adept at winged blackmail, he had noaptitude for wings himself, and when he gazed down at the flying landand water far beneath him, he did not feel moved to attack his captor,now defenseless, both hands occupied with flight.
Instead, the only way the man felt moved was to sit closer.
*****
Peter Winn, Senior, scanning the heavens with powerful glasses, sawthe monoplane leap into view and grow large over the rugged backboneof Angel Island. Several minutes later he cried out to the waitingdetectives that the machine carried a passenger. Dropping swiftly andpiling up an abrupt air-cushion, the monoplane landed.
"That reefing device is a winner!" young Winn cried, as he climbed out."Did you see me at the start? I almost ran over the pigeon. Going some,dad! Going some! What did I tell you? Going some!"
"But who is that with you?" his father demanded.
The young man looked back at his prisoner and rem
embered.
"Why, that's the pigeon-fancier," he said. "I guess the officers cantake care of him."
Peter Winn gripped his son's hand in grim silence, and fondled thepigeon which his son had passed to him. Again he fondled the prettycreature. Then he spoke.
"Exhibit A, for the People," he said.
