Brad Langdon’s shoulders stiffened under his leather jacket. He drew forward, a little ahead of his flight. He knew what was coming. The Krauts would center their attack on him, smash him earthward at their first opportunity. He grinned mirthlessly. Let them come! He was ready for them!
And then the Fokkers were upon him. A flaming streak of red tore past his fuselage as tracer-bullets vomited from the guns of the German flight leader. Hot lead smashed against the protected cowling in front of Brad Langdon.
He smashed a fist again his throttle—gave the motor all the soup she’d take. The little Spad lurched into a tight bank as he kicked left rudder and jammed his stick over. Then he straightened out and pulled the prong back against his chest. The Spad zipped almost straight upward—full at the belly of a black Fokker above him. His fingers ripped at his gun-trips. Twin streams of barking death tore into the under-part of the Fokker’s fuselage. The black ship lurched drunkenly, fell off on one wing—and went whirling earthward in a sickening, uncontrolled spin.
Brad Langdon stared downward at the falling Boche. Then, into the roaring inferno of sound that hammered all around him, he yelled “I’ll meet you in hell!”—and shoved his stick full forward.
Downward under the full force of his roaring motor he lanced through the air. He twisted in his cock-pit, looked behind him. Far above, the Fokker formation was drawing away from the American flight, as though satisfied to withdraw from the fray. Langdon grinned harshly. The ground was poising up to meet him with the speed of a meteor. Just before he crashed, he drew back his stick, leveled off. Struts screaming and ailerons straining, the Spad struck the ground, bounced twice and settled with a crashing, rending sound of splintered wood and twisted steel and ripped fabric.
At the first shock, Langdon pitched forward. His head struck against the cowling. A blaze of lights danced before his eyes, and he tasted the salty blood that gushed from his bruised lips. Then the Spad settled, a motionless and twisted wreck. Painfully Brad Langdon crawled from the jammed cockpit. He stared upward. Another Spad was hurtling toward him out of the sky. Abruptly it leveled, nosed up; then, like a leaf, it bumped gently against the earth and came to a stop.
Flight Commander Higgins leaned over the fuselage. “Quick—run for it, Langdon! Hop in!” he screamed.
Brad Langdon staggered toward the rescuing ship. He felt his superior’s strong arms lifting him, helping him. And then he was jammed tightly into the Spad’s cockpit, and Higgins was sitting on him in that constricted space.
The Spad’s motor roared a challenge to the skies, rocked forward over the uneven ground—and leaped into the air like a screaming monster, just as a knot of men in field-grey uniforms belched out of a dugout and came running forward with blazing guns.
Bullets ploughed venomously through the fabric of the Spad’s wings. Higgins gunned his motor and the ship roared upward out of range. Then it headed back toward the home tarmac.
CHAPTER IV
In a Paris hotel, Brad Langdon stared at the message an orderly had just handed him. It was the following night. “Spot near Bricon bombed this afternoon. Proof positive of girl’s guilt. Intelligence division instructed to place her under arrest at once. Higgins.”
Langdon leaped for the door. “Damn her!” he gritted savagely. “Then she did send Rocky to his death! If he hadn’t had her brassiere on his strut, the Boche wouldn’t have ganged him!”
He sped out into the night. A dilapidated Paris taxi honked dolefully by. He hailed it, launched himself into the vehicle. “Rue Champon—vite!” he roared to the ancient and grizzled cabby. Then he added the address of the house where Jeanne d’Albert lived.
The cab lurched forward. Eight minutes later it drew up at the curb before Jeanne d’Albert’s house. Brad Langdon sprang out, tossed a fistful of change at the cabby. He lunged up the steps of the house and pounded his fist against the door.
After a long wait, the portal opened. Langdon stared into the dark, liquid eyes of Jeanne d’Albert—dark eyes that widened in abrupt astonishment.
“You—Monsieur l’Americaine!” she gasped.
Brad forced a tender smile to his grim lips. “Oui,” he answered gently. “You are—surprised to see me?”
Her mouth suddenly opened in a wanton, provocative smile. Her heavy lashes lowered. “Not surprised, chéri. Happy—very happy!” she breathed. “You will come in?”
He followed her into the house, into that room where he had once spent the night with her. There was a light burning now, and he could see the masked bewilderment in her enigmatic eyes as she turned toward him, touched his arm. “You are safe, chéri?” she asked.
He nodded. “Oui. But I had one close call. I was forced down behind the Boche lines. Another member of my flight landed and picked me up.” He grinned. “The talisman you gave me brought me good luck. It saved my life.” Then he frowned regretfully. “Unfortunately, I lost it. It remained on my smashed ship.”
She drew a deep breath. Then she approached him. Her warm arms went about his neck. “It does not matter, beloved. I shall give you another in its place—” she whispered.
“Now? Right away?”
She flushed. She took his hand, pressed it against her swelling breast. “I—I have none on, as you see, chéri. But wait here. I will don one. Then you shall have the pleasure of removing it from—from my—breasts, with your own tender hands…
She turned and left him. She was gone for a long while. Then, at last, she came back into the room. She was smiling wickedly, guiltily.
He stepped toward her, masking the blazing hate in his eyes. He knew why she had been gone so long. She had prepared a message in invisible ink, written it on the brassiere she now wore. She intended that he take it, place it on his ship as a talisman—a token that would send him crashing to his death.
His hands went to her blouse, ripped it open. The girl gasped as his hard fingers scraped the resilient firmness of her breasts under the silken brassiere. “Chéri—you are rough—you hurt me!” she cried out.
He yanked the brassiere from her body. Then, in one swift motion, he stuffed the lingerie into his tunic—and withdrew his service automatic. He trained it at her naked left breast. “You lousy spy!” he snarled. “You killed my brother! And now—”
She backed away from him, white-faced. Her red mouth opened. A wild cry escaped her lips. “Anton! Anton! Schnell!” she screamed. Her use of the German word was her confession of guilt.
Brad Langdon whirled in his tracks as he heard running footsteps behind him. A burly, hulking figure of a man was at the doorway of the room. He leaped at the American. “Schweinhund!” he snarled gutturally as he sprang.
Brad Langdon squeezed the trigger of his automatic. As he fired, the girl launched herself at him from behind, knocking his arm aside. His shot went wild. Then her accomplice was upon him. The two men locked in vicious embrace.
Langdon felt a knee jam into his groin, and he doubled over as pain shot through every fiber of his being. Hard fists smashed against his face, blinding him. He staggered clear. Then, like an uncoiled spring, he plunged forward. He raised the butt of his automatic, brought it crashing down against his antagonist’s close-cropped, Teutonic head. The man grunted and pitched face-downward to the floor.
Brad Langdon pivoted. The dark-eyed girl was upon him, clawing, scratching, biting. He raised his hand and struck her across the face. She swayed, and the marks of his hard fingers were like blood on her pale cheek. He leaped for her, grabbed her. Her naked breasts were flattened against his chest. She struggled with insane fury in his smothering grasp. Her left hand snaked downward toward her thigh. She snatched up her skirt, grabbed at a venomous little automatic holstered against her leg. She jammed it into Brad Langdon’s ribs. “Now, pig-dog!” she hissed…
The room’s door crashed inward with a splintering of smashed wood. A man’s voice said, “Drop tha
t—unless you’d rather die now instead of before a firing-squad!”
The girl gasped. She pushed free of Brad Langdon. He turned—and stared at two grim-faced officers of the American intelligence service!
One of the men stepped forward, wrenched the tiny automatic from the girl’s suddenly nerveless hand. Then he smiled grimly at Brad Langdon. “Looks like we just got here in time, Lieutenant.”
Langdon nodded. He gestured toward the man on the floor—the man he had felled. “You got here just in time,” he answered. “And there’s another candidate for your firing-squad.”
He turned and walked unsteadily out of the room, out of the house. A deep sigh issued from his battered lips. Then, very gently, he smiled. “I’ve avenged you, Rocky, old kid!” he whispered toward the winking stars overhead.
TATTOOED BLONDE, by Ellery Watson Calder
Originally published in Spicy Adventure Stories, April 1935.
His face unshaven, his husky form clad in tattered overalls, Terry Dixon stood at the edge of the milling, sullen mob. A cold fury leaped within him as he stared toward the blonde girl who stood on an improvised rostrum in the center of the throng.
She was young and lithe and beautiful, but her face was contorted with anger as she harangued her listeners. “You spineless cowards!” she screamed venomously. “Are you going to let the Dixon interests get away with their high-handed methods? Are you going to let them pay you slave’s wages forever? Are you going to let them treat your women as they’ve treated me?”
With a dramatic gesture the girl’s hands went to the neck of her cheap cotton dress. She ripped at the material—tore it open. Terry Dixon gasped. In the nickering flare of the torches that lighted her, he saw her suddenly-bared breasts, unbrassiered and incredibly lovely. Across her milk-white bosoms, standing out boldly against the satin-smooth skin, appeared the word “Striker!”
The girl turned slowly, so that all could see. “That’s what the Dixons did to me!” she cried out. “They captured me—tattooed me! Are you going to stand for it?”
A huge, hulking man, beetle-browed and powerful, leaped up to the platform. He shoved the yellow-haired girl aside.
“Well?” he roared. “What’s the answer? Have you got guts? Will you join the strike?”
Terry Dixon’s eyes narrowed as he recognized Stanislaus Slavich, the man responsible for all the labor troubles at the Dixon mill during the past few weeks. A paid agitator, a professional trouble-maker, the beetle-browed one stood there commandingly, arrogantly. And once more a cold fury leaped within Terry Dixon’s veins.
He thought of his kindly father, old Terrence Dixon, owner of the mill. If these men struck, the Dixon plant would go under—be wiped out. It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t just! Terrence Dixon paid his employees well; treated them squarely. And the blonde girl had lied when she said the Dixons had caused that disfiguring tattooed word to be graven on her lovely breasts!
Terry edged forward through the mob. With his unshaven jaw, his tattered overalls, he passed unrecognized by the men. As he neared the edge of the improvised platform, he heard the yellow-haired girl speak to Stanislaus Slavich. “Meet me at my shack a little later. We’ll discuss plans for tomorrow!” she said tensely. Then she drew the torn shreds of her dress over her naked breasts and stepped down from the platform.
Cautiously, unobtrusively, Terry Dixon followed her as she wormed her way through the mob and departed into the night. She walked with long, lithe, swinging strides; and her narrow hips swayed in a way that made Terry Dixon’s heart beat a little faster in spite of himself. Keeping to the shadows, he trailed her.
At last she stopped before a ramshackle one-room house at the edge of the company settlement. She fumbled at the lock, opened the door and went inside.
Terry Dixon crept up soundlessly. For a minute he waited, listening. He could hear the blonde girl moving about the interior of the tiny one-room house. He went to a window and peered within. The girl was alone.
Terry grinned grimly. Then he went to the door, took a backward step—and crashed against it with all the unpent force of his brawny body. The portal splintered inward. Terry Dixon leaped into the room.
The yellow-haired girl whirled, her blue eyes wide with startled fear. Terry launched himself at her, caught her in his arms. He bore her backward.
She panted, struggled against him. He could feel the soft firmness of her rounded breasts flattened against him. He whipped a length of cord from his pocket. Swiftly he bound her slender wrists, her chiseled ankles. With a handkerchief he gagged her. Then he picked her up and deposited her on the frowsy bed at one end of the room.
Her blue eyes stared helplessly into his. He grinned down at her sardonically. “So the Dixons tattooed you, did they?” he gritted. And with a savage gesture he tore the cheap cotton dress away from her shrinking shoulders, baring her body to the waist. For an instant his eyes rested upon her exposed, beautiful breasts. Then he turned away, leaped for a cracked wash-stand beside the bed. He grabbed at a stained washcloth, dipped it in water. Then once more he approached the girl on the bed.
She tried to shrink away from him. He caught her bare shoulders, drew her back. Then, callously, he slapped the cold, wet cloth against her naked bosoms. She gasped through the gag. Savagely Terry Dixon scrubbed at her milky skin. Then he grinned. The tattooed word “Striker!” had smudged, faded, disappeared!
“I thought so!” he gritted. “It was plain, washable ink! You—you dirty little liar!”
He rinsed the ink-stained cloth, wrung it, grabbed at the girl once more. Deliberately he washed away the last traces of the inked word on her bosom. Her breasts were firm and resilient under his questing hands. Though he tried to fight it down, a thrill coursed through him as he touched her…
And then a savage, growling voice from the doorway said, “Reach high, you meddling rat!”
Terry Dixon whirled—and confronted the ugly muzzle of an automatic in the steady hand of Stanislaus Slavich!
The agitator’s teeth were bared in an animal snarl. “So, Mr. Dixon, Junior! You thought you’d pull a fast one, did you? You figured to kidnap the girl and display her to the mob—show ’em she’d lied about the tattoo-mark? Well, you’ve got another guess coming!” He grinned wickedly. “You’ve played right in my hands, you lousy smart-alec!”
‘What do you mean?” Terry gritted.
“I mean you’re going with me, see? I’m holding you as hostage until your old man sees fit to give in to our demands!” He prodded Terry Dixon with the blunt snout of his automatic. “Stand aside, rat!”
Hot, futile rage blazed in Terry Dixon’s impotent eyes as he watched Slavich untie the yellow-haired girl. She swayed to her unsteady feet, tried unsuccessfully to cover her exposed breasts with the ripped tatters of her cotton dress. Slavich drew her toward him, slipped an arm about her waist. His thick, heavy hand stole toward her bosoms, caressed them possessively, intimately. “Okay!” he grinned. “Let’s get going!”
A vast sense of defeat, of hopelessness, assailed Terry Dixon as he found himself being shoved out of the shack and into a battered, powerful sedan. Swiftly, efficiently, Slavich looped rope around Terry’s wrists and ankles. Bound and helpless, Terry lay back in the sedan’s dark tonneau while Slavich and the yellow-haired girl climbed into the front seat. The car leaped forward, into the dark night.
Terry strained ineffectually at his gyves. Cold sweat stood out on his forehead. He had had victory within his grasp—and it had been snatched away from him! Now the mill-hands would strike; the Dixon mill would close down; and its last contract—the contract that would have put it back on its feet financially—would go to the rival Acme Mills.
For a long time the sedan roared on toward the distant foothills. And then, after what seemed ages to Terry Dixon, it drew into a side-road and pulled up before a dark and ominous cabin. Slavich shut off his motor, climbed o
ut of the car. He went to the door of the cabin, threw it open. A flickering light flared into life from a kerosene lantern.
The agitator returned to the car, opened its rear door. Roughly he hauled Terry Dixon out of the tonneau, shoved him inside the cabin. Terry felt himself slammed into a hard chair.
The blonde girl entered the sparsely-furnished, dimly-lighted room. Her blue eyes glittered with a hard light. She faced Stanislaus Slavich, and a smile played around the corners of her red lips—a wanton, provocative smile.
“Well, Stan, it looks as though we’ll put it over now!” she said triumphantly. Her eyes went to the bound and helpless figure of Terry Dixon on the chair. She sneered. “With this guy captured, his old man will have to agree to the demands of the workers. If he does, the increased wages will bankrupt him. If he doesn’t, the men will strike—and the mill will close anyhow!”
Slavich grinned harshly. “We got old man Dixon where we want him!” he snarled, “And now I’m going back to talk terms with him. You stay here and see that this rat don’t get away!”
“I’ll watch him!” the girl answered grimly.
Slavich grabbed her. His loose, heavy mouth descended toward hers. He pawed at her breasts.
She pushed him off. “Not—not yet, Stan!” she laughed. “Remember, I promised…that…when you had succeeded in shutting down the Dixon mill!”
Slavich eyed her hungrily, esuriently. “Okay, baby. But you won’t have long to wait!” Then he turned and went out of the cabin.
The girl stood there, silent. Terry could hear the sudden roar of the battered sedan’s powerful motor. Gears clashed and whined. The motor’s roar grew dimmer as it faded into the distance.
And then Terry Dixon’s body tensed. The yellow-haired girl went to the door of the cabin. She opened it, peered out into the blackness of the night. After a silent moment she closed the door once more and bolted it from inside. There was a look of determination on her piquant features as she stepped back into the room. Swiftly she walked toward the rear of the cabin, toward a decrepit steamer-trunk that stood in one corner.
The Spicy-Adventure Page 15
