“Stangland, you and Blair James carry Lucky’s body,” he ordered, and then spoke to the disheveled police lieutenant: “Davidson, you post your men outside the hangar’s doors once we’re inside.”
The stunned Blair James and the airport superintendent picked up the dead flier’s body and started with it toward the hangar. The others followed without need of urging, glancing nervously toward the raging mob outside the ropes. McCord followed last, gun in hand, watching to see that none of them slipped away.
When they reached the hangar, McCord waited outside a moment. Lieutenant Davidson and his torn, bruised officers were running toward the building, the vast crowd surging after them.
Davidson panted as he ran up.
“McCord, if you find the killer don’t let this mob know it. They’ll tear the place down to get him.”
“You’ve got to hold them back!” rasped McCord. “Use your guns to scare them, and meanwhile I’ll phone for reserves. Someone of that group is the killer, all right,” he continued swiftly, “and they’re going to stay here until I find out who.”
Davidson yelled to his officers, and they spread out around the hangar, posting themselves at the doors with drawn pistols.
The mob rolled up to the building and halted with a menacing growl at sight of the glinting weapons. McCord saw that the guns would hold them back, and he strode swiftly into the hangar.
The interior of the hangar was a vast, dark space more than two hundred feet square, its floor of smooth concrete and with a spidery network of steel beams and girders under its low roof. A few suspended lights fought the darkness and showed the dim shapes of several large airplanes parked along the side.
The group of men gathered beside the body of Lucky James were listening with pale faces to the menacing voices outside. McCord singled out Stangland and said to the airport superintendent:
“There’s a telephone in your office, isn’t there? Then phone Headquarters to rush reserves here at once.”
Stangland hastened across the shadowy hangar to the door leading to his offices. In a few moments he was back.
“The reserves will be out here as soon as they can make it,” he reported.
“They’ll take care of the crowd when they come,” McCord said. “Meanwhile, we’re going to learn who killed Lucky.”
He turned toward the silent body on the floor. Someone had thrown a tarpaulin motor cover over it, and now Blair James stood gazing dazedly down at the unmoving, shrouded form of his cousin.
Blair’s face was working, and he choked through trembling lips:
“To think that Lucky flew all those hours, across half the world, and all the time he wasn’t flying to fame and fortune as he thought, but to death—flying to death!”
McCord nodded somberly. He asked:
“You and your cousin were pretty close, weren’t you?”
Blair James nodded, his face still quivering. “He was more like an older brother than a cousin, I guess, because I was his closest relative. He taught me flying, got me my job, and was always lecturing me about wasting my money and gambling. We lived together, you know.”
“Then maybe,” McCord asked him keenly, “you can tell me if you ever heard anyone threaten his life, or heard him mention any such threats?”
Blair shook his head.
“Lucky was everybody’s friend and nobody would—”
He stopped suddenly, his face changing as though expressive of an abrupt inward revelation.
McCord, watching him intently, saw the change and instantly fastened on it.
“You did hear of threats of some kind against him, then?”
“I just remembered something,” Blair James said slowly. “You know, Lucky’s flight was backed financially by Gotham Airlines, the company both he and I were pilots for. They thought it would be good advertising for them if one of their pilots won the prize, and to the pilot it would mean fifty thousand dollars.
“Several other of the pilots tried to get the company to choose them to back for the flight. Tuss McLiney and Wallace Jandron and Leigh Bushell were the others who applied, and they were pretty sore when the company turned them down and chose Lucky. It was rumored around the airports that some of the three had declared that Lucky James would never live to spend that fifty thousand dollars, even if he succeeded in making the flight.”
“I heard talk like that around the field too!” exclaimed a mechanic beside Blair James. McCord asked tautly of Blair, “Were any of those three pilots in this group that was around the plane when Lucky landed?”
“Yes! They’re all three of them here!” Blair exclaimed.
Out of the group there stepped quickly a stout, strong young fellow with chubby face and slightly protruding blue eyes.
“I’m Wally Jandron, one of the three you’re talking about,” he told McCord. “But I want to deny right here that I ever made any threats against Lucky James’ life.”
A sharp-faced, nervous young man behind him spoke up rather hastily.
“Neither did I ever threaten him—I’m Leigh Bushell,” he said. “I was rather angry, but I wouldn’t threaten a man’s life.” He added: “But I want to suggest that we slip out of here by a back window or something and continue this investigation elsewhere. That mob might do anything if it breaks in here!”
“That’s right!” seconded a reporter. “If the crowd fastened on one of us as the murderer, it’d kill him right here.”
“No one is going to leave here!” rasped McCord. “The murderer of Lucky James is going to be found before any of you get out. What about the third pilot, McLiney?” he demanded.
A tall, browned, hard-bitten man with a short mustache, thin hair, and a hard mouth and eyes, stepped forward.
“I’m Tuss McLiney,” he said truculently, “and I hate lying and liars. I did make threats against Lucky James and so did Jandron and Bushell, though they deny it now. We were all three burned up because the company turned us all down to back Lucky, and I admit I talked wild and made angry threats. But it was just talk. No matter how resentful I was, I wouldn’t kill Lucky or any other man.”
“Why did you come here tonight to be on hand when he landed?” McCord demanded.
“Simply because I wanted to see if he made it,” McLiney answered defiantly. “Naturally I was interested in the flight. I admit, mean as it sounds, that I hoped he’d never make it.”
“And you admit you had threatened his life?” rapped McCord.
“I’ve told you that those threats were just angry talk,” retorted McLiney.
McCord spoke to Blair James.
“Blair, you were nearer the plane than I was when the shot was fired. Were any of these three pilots near Lucky?”
“Yes,” Blair said slowly. “Bushell and McLiney were at my right and Wally Jandron was just in front of me.”
McLiney, his hard face unmoved, said to the detective-captain.
“But that doesn’t prove that one of us killed Lucky. Anybody in the whole group around the plane could have done it.”
“Yes, but who else in the group had a motive to do it?” McCord demanded. “Who else had made threats against Lucky’s life? You three hated Lucky bitterly for edging you out and getting the chance to make the flight. And in this group, only you and Jandron and Bushell—”
McCord suddenly stopped, his craggy face tightening.
“Where is Bushell?” he demanded suddenly.
They stared around their own group, then around the dim, dark hangar; but the nervous young pilot with the sharp face was nowhere in sight.
“Bushell wanted me to let him and the others slip out a back window!” the detective-captain cried. “If he’s done that—”
McCord sprang toward the door of the hangar, and tore it open and leaped out into the glare of the floodlights.
He collided squarely with Davidson, the police lieutenant, who had been about to enter the hangar.
The lieutenant’s face was pale and his words poured forth in an
excited flood.
“McCord, the crowd’s got hold of somebody who tried to slip out the back of the hangar! They’re yelling that it’s the killer of Lucky James trying to escape, and they’re going to lynch him!”
CHAPTER II
Mad Vengeance
The scene that met McCord’s eyes on the floodlighted field outside the hangar was an appalling one. The immense crowd was pouring away from the building, giving voice like a great, baying beast.
In the lights flashed a sea of contorted, vengeance-lusting faces. Some one was being carried along on the shoulders of the crazed mob, struggling vainly to free himself, his face terror-stricken.
“String him up! He murdered Lucky James and then tried to get away!” roared the crowd.
“Hang him on this pole over here!” voices were yelling.
The mob was bearing the struggling victim toward the tall steel tower of a beacon light, yanking down ropes from the barriers around the field to use for the hanging.
“That’s Leigh Bushell they’ve got!” McCord yelled to Davidson. “They must have got him as he tried to escape from the hangar. We’ve got to take him away from them—it may be a wholly innocent man they’re lynching!”
He raised his voice and the police outside the hangar came running to him. McCord swiftly ordered two of them to remain and see that no one inside the hangar left.
Then with the other officers massed compactly behind him, McCord plunged into and through the mob that was bearing the terrified Leigh Bushell to his doom.
The officers’ clubs bounced off heads right and left as they smashed through. The little phalanx of police drove through the formless mob like a spearhead, and in a few moments reached the beacon pole where a rope was being tied around the neck of the struggling Bushell.
McCord and Davidson knocked back the would-be lynchers with quick blows, and jerked the stunned pilot in among the officers.
“Back out with him now, Davidson!” yelled the detective-captain “Quick!”
“They—they think I killed Lucky!” the livid pilot was gasping.
McCord did not heed him, he and his fellow-officers fighting now to get Bushell out through the mob.
The crowd was yelling in redoubled fury as it comprehended that its victim was being snatched from its grasp. It surged around the little group of officers, struggling to recapture Bushell.
The advance of the police phalanx was slowed, then halted. McCord jerked his pistol from his pocket and fired a stream of shots over the heads of the crowd. The members of the mob nearest him retreated in sudden alarm, and the police group crashed ahead toward the hangar.
As they neared the building there was a screaming of sirens, and police cars and motorcycles came speeding onto the field. The crowd, that had started in pursuit of McCord and his group, fell back before this unexpected onset.
“Thank God the reserves got here!” panted Davidson. “They’re not any too soon.”
The captain in charge of the newly-arrived forces approached. “What’s been going on here, McCord?” he wanted to know. “We heard that Lucky James was murdered when he landed.”
McCord nodded grimly.
“He was, and the crowd thought this man was the murderer. Can you clear them off the field?”
“We’ll disperse them,” the other promised briefly. “And the Homicide Squad will be out before long.”
The fleet of police cars and motorcycles soon was scattering the thousands of people still on the field, dashing among them in repeated charges.
The crowd, its mob anger cooling rapidly now, dispersed in all directions.
McCord turned and found that Leigh Bushell had slumped to the ground, half conscious, his white face bruised by blows. He and Davidson picked up the limp pilot and carried him back across the floodlighted field to the door of the hangar.
They set the pilot down inside and Davidson went back out to post his scattered guard around the building. Blair James and Stangland and the others came running across the dim interior of the hangar toward McCord.
“God, I thought you were all done for out there!” cried Blair James. “Did they kill Bushell?”
“He’ll come around all right, I think,” McCord said.
Stangland was clawing at the detective-captain’s sleeve.
“McCord, while you were out there I remembered something that I think is a straight clue. It’s a letter that—”
“Wait just a minute,” McCord told the airport superintendent. “Bushell is coming around now.”
Leigh Bushell had opened his eyes. As the detective-captain helped him to his feet, an expression of terror crossed his face.
“They nearly hanged me!” he cried. “Because they caught me escaping from here, they thought I was the murderer of Lucky.”
“Well, aren’t you the murderer?” McCord demanded grimly. “If you aren’t, why did you try to get away?”
Bushell’s face quivered with fear.
“I’m not the one who killed Lucky!” he cried. “I only tried to escape because I was afraid that the mob would break in here and maybe lynch us all. I told you I was afraid of that.”
“It looks bad for you, Bushell,” McCord said. “It may be that that mob had the right man.” He swung toward Stangland. “Maybe you can clinch it, Stangland. You said you had a clue.”
The airport superintendent nodded, his keen face alive with excitement. “Yes, and it makes me sure Bushell isn’t the killer,” he said. “It’s a letter Lucky wrote me several weeks ago, in which he told me confidentially that he’d had trouble—”
Click!
The dim lights of the interior of the hangar suddenly went out, interrupting his words. They were plunged instantly into a Stygian obscurity relieved only by the faint glimmer from the small, high windows at the back of the hangar.
McCord’s voice rasped through the thick darkness.
“Don’t any one of you move! I’ll shoot anybody I hear trying to escape! Stangland, you know where the switch of these lights is?”
“Yes, right by the door,” came the voice of the airport superintendent through the dark, followed by his steps. “I’ll—”
His words were abruptly punctuated by a dull, thudding sound. Then came the muffled impact of a body striking the concrete floor.
“Stangland!” yelled McCord in the dark. “What’s happened?”
There was no answer from the superintendent.
“Everybody stay put! I’ll fire if I hear other footsteps!” McCord cried, and darted forward in the darkness in the direction of the door.
In a few strides he stumbled over something lying on the floor. He knelt and struck a match.
And there Robert Stangland lay, on his side upon the floor, his face lax and unmoving. His skull had been fractured by a terrific blow from the side. Beside him, lay a short wrench whose end was smeared with blood.
The match went out, and in the dark someone screamed.
CHAPTER III
The Trap of Flame
It was the voice of one of the reporters and he shrilled: “The murderer has killed Stangland, too, to silence him!”
“Stay where you are, everybody!” thundered McCord.
He struck another match. In its glow he found the light switch beside the door, but discovered that instead of being turned off, one of the exposed wires of the switch had been torn out by a quick pull. The lights could not be turned on again.
McCord stooped with the lighted match and examined the blood-smeared wrench. There were no fingerprints on its handle. The killer had evidently wrapped it with a handkerchief before using it.
McCord looked up. Before him stood the chubby Wally Jandron, and beyond him Tuss McLiney and Blair James and the others.
“You two were both near the switch!” he said to Jandron and McLiney. “And since Stangland, just before he was killed, said he was sure Bushell wasn’t the killer, he must have been about to name one of you two as the murderer. Which one of you took that wrench ou
t of your pocket and killed him to keep him from telling what he knew?”
“It wasn’t me!” bleated Wally Jandron hastily. “But I thought I heard someone moving in the dark beside me.”
“Well, you didn’t hear me, because I didn’t move from my tracks,” declared McLiney.
The match went out at that moment, leaving them all again in darkness.
McCord jerked the door open and yelled out through it.
“Davidson!”
Davidson’s voice came from close at hand.
“What’s the matter? I saw the lights in there go out.”
“Some one turned them off,” McCord told him swiftly, “and then killed Stangland. You get some kind of lantern quick, and I’ll prevent any of ’em escaping.”
As Davidson raced off on the errand, McCord turned back into the dark interior of the hangar.
Holding his gun leveled in the rayless obscurity, the detective-captain was fumbling in his pocket for another match when a sound, hitherto unheard, arrested his attention.
It was a liquid, gurgling sound that appeared to come from the side of the dark hangar where the line of airplanes was parked.
“What’s that sound?” McCord cried.
Blair James exclaimed in the dark:
“It sounds like one of the planes leaking gasoline—”
His words were abruptly interrupted. Someone in the dark struck a match and then quickly tossed it, as soon as it flamed, through the darkness toward the parked airplanes.
The flaming match described a little arc of fire in the darkness and then flipped down into a gleaming pool of liquid that lay on the concrete floor beneath one of the airplanes.
Instantly that pool burst upward a great puff of flame that enveloped the ship above it in a fraction of a second.
Blair James yelled:
“Some one slipped over in the dark and opened the dump valve of that plane’s tank, then flipped a match into the pool!”
“Let us out of here!” cried a photographer in alarm. “This whole hangar will go now!”
With a soft, loud roar, the flames spread to the next airplane, a small biplane.
Burning gasoline spattered the walls—patches of living fire that were swiftly spreading over the sides of the roof of the hangar.
The Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 27
