Happy landing! The mockery of that good-luck phrase rang in Brad Langdon’s ears like a death-knell. He looked over the side, down toward the spot where Rocky’s ship had crashed. Then he stared puzzled. The kid’s Spad had one down just within the German lines; and a group of grey-clad soldiers were gathered around it in a tight knot. They were removing something from the demolished plane!
Faintly bewildered, a dull ache in his breast, Brad Langdon shook his fist savagely at the ant-like forms in field-grey below him. Then once more he headed for the home tarmac.
Fifteen minutes later he set his ship down in front of his flight headquarters. He climbed dazedly out of his cockpit and walked toward the office of his flight commander, Colonel Higgins. The older man looked up as he entered. “Any luck, Langdon?”
Brad’s voice was wooden, toneless, as he replied. “I wish to report the destruction of one enemy ship, sir—and the loss of two of our own. Lieutenants Greir and—Langdon—were sent down by the enemy.”
The flight commander gasped. “Your brother Rocky was—killed?”
A choked sob rose in Brad Langdon’s throat. “Yes, sir,” he answered. And saluting, he whirled on his heel and stumbled blindly out into the bitter, sunless morning.
It was the next noon when Brad Langdon received a summons to appear in the flight commander’s quarters. Colonel Higgins, grey-haired and tense, was awaiting him as he walked in.
The flight commander spoke crisply. “Langdon, I have something to tell you. But before I say it, I want it understood that this is in strictest confidence. I have your word?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then attend me closely. The French secret ammunition dump at Jessains was bombed and destroyed last night by the enemy. It is the third secret supply-depot that has been wiped out by aerial bombers in the last month.”
“Yes?”
“Somehow, information has been getting across to the enemy lines. In some way, they are learning the locations of the Allied secret ammunition depots. And I think I know how it’s being done!”
“How?” Brad Langdon drew a quick breath.
“In all three instances of the destruction of these secret ammunition dumps, the actual bombing was preceded by the death of an American flyer behind the German lines.”
Langdon’s eyes hardened. “You don’t mean, sir, that American flyers have been carrying information to the enemy?”
“Not knowingly, Langdon. But this much I have learned: each of the men who were killed, carried a talisman on his ship. A talisman in the form of a bit of feminine lingerie!”
A picture leaped into Brad Langdon’s mind—a picture of his kid brother Rocky, gaily pinning a girl’s brassiere to his Spad’s outer wing-strut! He went white. “You mean—” he choked.
“Before I tell you what I mean, I’ll ask you one question, Langdon. Just how did your brother meet his death?”
“A—a gang of Fokkers jumped him, all in a bunch. He didn’t have a chance!”
Brad answered bitterly. “What did you do?”
“I tried to go to his aid. But they downed him before I could get within range, sir. Then I attacked them blindly—foolishly, perhaps.”
“Did they give you a scrap?”
“No, sir. They turned tail and streaked for home.”
“Did you happen to notice where your brother’s ship crashed? Anything peculiar about it?”
“I saw a bunch of Krauts around the ship. They seemed to be removing something from it.”
“Exactly! Here’s my theory, Langdon: there’s an espionage system at work, discovering important ammunition-depot location in the French lines. And they’re using a devilishly clever method of sending their information to the Germans. There’s a French girl in Paris who is—very friendly to American airmen. She gives them bits of her underwear to attach to their planes as good-luck charms. Those talismans contain information written in invisible ink—that’s my guess. Then, when an American ship goes over the Boche lines, the German flyers are watching for that fluttering bit of lingerie. They concentrate on that particular ship—bring it down behind their lines. They retrieve the lingerie—and there you are!”
“God!” Brad Langdon whispered.
“Now, then,” Higgins continued briskly, “the thing for us to do is prove our case. And you’re the man for the job—if you want it!”
Brad’s jaw jutted. “If I want it!” he laughed harshly. “Just tell me what to do, sir, that’s all!” His fists clenched.
“Very good. Do you know the identity of the girl who gave your brother that silken brassiere he had on his Spad?”
Brad nodded slowly. “He told me her name and address. She lives in Paris.”
“Are you willing to risk your life, Langdon? The chances are you’ll be killed before this mission is finished.”
“I’m willing, sir!”
“Good! Here’s an official leave for you. Go to Paris. Contact this girl. If she gives you a bit of her underwear as a good-luck token, bring it back to me at once. That’s all.”
Brad Langdon saluted and strode out.
CHAPTER II
Paris was dark and somber and silent. Not a light showed in all the vast reaches of the city; for there had been a Zeppelin raid earlier that evening, and the metropolis still shuddered under the echoes of exploding bombs rained from the night-black skies.
Brad Langdon walked swiftly through the deserted streets. At last he came to a dark somber house on the Rue Champon. He ascended the front steps raised his fist and knocked.
For a long while he waited. Then the door opened cautiously. In the gloom. Langdon could see the features of the girl before him in the doorway. She was ineffably lovely; her dark eyes glowed liquidly in the dim lights of the stars, and her mouth was darkly-red with the promise of passionate kisses. She was tall and slender; her breasts, even in the darkness, were full and firm and prominent.
“Can you tell me if this is the residence of Mademoiselle Jeanne d’Albert?” Brad Langdon asked softly.
The girl scanned his face swiftly. Then she nodded, hesitant. “Oui—I am Jeanne d’Albert,” she answered after a moment. “And you, Monsieur l’Americaine—?”
“My name is Langdon—Captain Brad Langdon. I—I have a message for you from my brother, Rocky—”
She drew a sharp breath. Her hand went to her jutting breast. “You are Rocky’s brother? And he—?”
“He is dead.”
The girl went suddenly limp. As she swayed forward, Brad caught her in his strong arms. To his sensitive nostrils came the erotic, faint odor of her perfume; his hand accidently touched her breasts. They were resilient, firm under his fingers. The contact with her slim body sent a queer, thrilling sensation through him. He lifted her up, stepped inside the house with her in his arms. He kicked the door shut behind him.
The girl drew a long, fluttering breath.
Her mouth was close to his ear in the solid darkness.
“Straight ahead, chéri,” she whispered faintly. “The—the room at the right of the corridor. Let us go in there.
Then you can tell me about—Rocky. Le pauvre brave!” she sighed wistfully.
“You—cared for him?”
“I loved him!”
Brad Langdon felt his way forward. He came to a doorway, entered an unlighted room. He stumbled across a bed.
“We will sit here, chéri,” the girl whispered.
As they sank down on the edge of the bed, Brad could feel the girl’s warm young body close to him; and once again that odd, tingling thrill shot down his spine. He reached out and found her tiny hand. It trembled in his.
“How long had you known my brother?” he asked through the darkness.
She nestled against him. “Only twenty-four hours, chéri. Mais—c ’est la guerre! In wartime one meets, one loves, one lives—i
n a very few hours.”
He was silent, thinking. Could it be true that this girl, half-child, half-woman, was a spy? It seemed impossible. Her nearness, her perfume, the softness of her feminine body against him, combined to argue that the flight-commander’s theory was impossible. Surely so sweetly-innocent a creature could not be a German agent! And besides, she had cared for his brother Rocky. She had been good to him, in her fashion.
Brad Langdon slipped an arm about her waist, drew her closer to him. Her flower-like face turned toward him in the gloom. “You are very like your brother,” she told him softly. “So much like him that I—I think I could love you in his stead!”
A sudden, aching surge of longing and of loneliness assailed Brad Langdon, Abruptly he turned toward her. His mouth lowered toward her waiting, expectant lips. For a long, lingering minute their mouths clung together—
Brad’s fingers crept to her blouse, seeking the fastenings. She caught at his fumbling hand, guided it. He found the concealed snaps, pulled them open slowly, one by one. Then, very gently, he pulled at the blouse; felt for her jutting breasts…
The firm, warm mounds swelled against his palm, with only the thin texture of a silken brassiere between. “Wait!” she whispered. He felt her body move as she shrugged out of the blouse, unfastened the brassiere and permitted it to flutter down over her shoulders. “Now!” she said so faintly that he thought he imagined it.
His heart rose in his throat as his hands encountered bare pulsing woman-flesh in the darkness. His fingers pressed deeply, gently, against resilient skin. From the valley between her bosom rose that faint, pulse-stirring fragrance.
He pressed her to him savagely. Again and again he kissed her, rougher, possessively. His mouth wandered to the hollow of her throat and lingered there a long while. His hands traveled over the satiny flesh of her bare body. She panted suddenly, painfully. Her breasts rose and fell sharply; her warm arms stole about his neck, drawing his head down toward her.
His breath was hot and dry in his throat. A flood of desire surged through him like a riptide, leaving him shaking and weak. And then—silence—
* * * *
The first grey streaks of dawn were breaking in the east when Brad Langdon opened his eyes. Jeanne d’Albert was standing over him. She was fully dressed, and she was smiling faintly.
She leaned over him, brushed his lips with hers. Her blouse fell open at the neck, revealing the lure of snowy mounds that had throbbed against him so recently. “Come, chéri!” she whispered gently. “You must arise and leave now. It would not do for people to know that you had remained here the night…”
He stared up at her in the growing dawn, drinking in the lush loveliness which he had hitherto only guessed at in the darkness. His eyes lingered on her piquant features, her slender body, for a long moment. Then he got to his feet. “You are right,” he answered regretfully. “I must leave. I am due back with my squadron this afternoon. Patrol duty at dawn tomorrow.”
Her big, liquid brown eyes widened. “You fly tomorrow?”
Brad Langdon nodded.
A shy blush suffused her cheeks. “Would—you care for a remembrance—a good-luck token—in memory of—last night?” she whispered timidly.
Brad Langdon tensed. Abruptly he remembered his mission; remembered his dead brother, shot down by eight Boche flyers without a chance. He stared at the girl, studied her. In the growing daylight he could discern that she was not as young as he had first thought. There were fine lines about her mouth, and her eyes held enigmatic depths he could not fathom… He forced a grin. “Yes,” he answered. “I would like a token of—last night.”
Before his eyes she lifted her fingers to the buttons of her blouse. Swiftly she unfastened the garment. It fluttered to her feet. She stood there before him, bared to the waist save for a thin silken brassiere. She came toward him, turned her back. “Unfasten it!” she commanded.
He did as she told him. She whirled—and the brassiere came away in his hands. His eyes leaped to her breasts—pulsing, vivid. He drew a deep breath. She was beautiful! And then he looked down at the wisp of lace and silk in his hands, and a cold, seething wave of icy anger flooded his heart. The taste of passion was as dead ashes in his mouth. He knew only that she had done as the flight commander had prophesied; she had given her brassiere as a talisman…
“Fasten it to the wing-strut of your ship, chéri!” she said softly, urgently. “It will bring you good fortune—get you through your battles without harm!”
He wanted to smash his fist into her face, to throttle her, to snap her white neck between his fingers. But he gripped himself hard; forced himself to smile into her eyes. “Merci!” he answered. She held up her mouth for his good-bye kiss.
He left her there in the first rays of the newly-risen sun. And as he went out of the house, his fists were clenched until the nails drew blood from his palms…
CHAPTER III
Brad Langdon strode into the headquarters of his flight commander. It was the next morning. “You sent for me, sir?”
Colonel Higgins looked up from his desk. “Yes, Langdon. We’re stumped.”
‘What do you mean?”
“We’ve tried several chemical reagents on that brassiere you got from the d’Albert girl, but thus far we’ve found no evidence of secret writing.”
“Which means she’s innocent?”
The flight commander shook his head. “No. It probably means we just haven’t found the correct chemical combination. But we have a plan that will prove whether she’s innocent or guilty.”
“A plan, sir?”
“Yes. A dangerous plan for the man who carries it through.” Higgins reached into a drawer of his desk and extracted a brassiere almost identical in appearance to the one Brad Langdon had brought back from Paris. “On this,” he said softly, “we have written a message in a simpler kind of secret ink. The message gives information about an imaginary ammunition depot near Bricon. We want this brassiere to fall into German hands. Then, if they bomb the spot we have indicated, we’ll know that Jeanne d’Albert is a spy!”
A grim look crept into Langdon’s eyes. He picked up the silken bit of lingerie and stuffed it into the pocket of his tunic. “You want me to be forced down behind the Boche lines, sir?”
Higgins nodded. “It’s almost a sentence of death, my boy. You needn’t accept the assignment if you don’t want to.” He cleared his throat. “Of course, you’ll be covered by the other planes of the flight. We’ll make an effort to pick you up—if you’re still alive when you land behind their lines.”
“I want the job!” Brad Langdon snapped shortly.
* * * *
Thirty minutes later, the twelve Spads of “A” Flight leaped into the air from the brown earth of the tarmac. Brad Langdon flew at the apex of the triangular formation; and on his right wing-strut, whipped by the rushing slipstream from his prop, the silken brassiere fluttered like a talisman—a talisman of doom.
Forward toward the Boche lines the formation droned, gaining altitude. Then, at last, they were over enemy territory. And suddenly, without warning, down from the high ceiling dropped a buzzing formation of black Fokkers like furious hornets of destruction.
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.
The Mystery & Suspense Novella Page 10
