Then the two ships began to tighten the circle again, their guns spewing fire and lead and death. Bill waited until they almost had him between a crossfire. He waited until one of the biplanes became overconfident. Then, for that brief moment that is enough, he got the dun ship under his sights. His finger clamped down on his 37mm. gun. He fired a burst of five shots as he pushed the throttle of the Lancer wide open and nosed down in a power dive.
The dun biplane became a great mass of black smoke and orange flame, the explosive shells taking it apart with a finality that was appalling. The other dun ship zoomed upward to escape the shooting debris as it exploded.
Bill looked back and up as he pulled the Lancer out of its dive. The remaining biplane was diving on their tail, and Sandy tried to get him under the sights of his gun. As Bill began a tight turn to the right, the other ship went underneath him and nosed up eight hundred yards away. Then they were roaring toward each other headon, each striving to find the other under his sights.
When only fifty yards separated them, the pilot of the single-seater suddenly swerved it in fast to the left for a death-dealing burst of fire just before they passed. Bill shouted, involuntarily, then threw the Lancer out of its mad path to avoid the crash that for an instant seemed inevitable.
Bill yanked back on his stick and zoomed the Lancer up and over on its back, while the biplane continued on its course. At the top he half-rolled level and gazed over the side. His face was white and his eyes were wide with disbelief as he watched the dun ship flip over and come back. He couldn't believe what he had just seen and yet he knew it was true.
He knew that he had come in contact with only one man during all his aerial combats who used that particular swerve in to the left before he tripped his guns. And that man was his most deadly enemy. Yanking back on the control column. Bill took the Lancer high into the heavens as the tear-drop biplane tried to come up beneath him. He wanted to get some place where he could think. He took the Lancer steadily upward until his altimeter read 25,000 feet.
“Hey, Bill!” Sandy shouted. “Where the—where are you going? That other ship can't get up. here. He's wallowing!”
“I know it, kid,” Bill said calmly. “Close your hatch and turn on the oxygen. I don't want him to get up here. I don't want to shoot him down. I want to follow him and take him alive.”
“Who is he?” Sandy asked. His voice was a combination of anger and disgust because they were peeling off in the middle of a fight.
“He's our old friend,” Bill said. “And by a coincidence that is stranger than fiction he had another chance to try to murder me.”
Through Bill's mind were racing a thousand and one thoughts. Only his own loyal men knew that he was flying the Atlantic that morning. It had been his men who had urged him to do it, even insisted. Had one or more of them betrayed him—got him out where he would be at the mercy of the man who hated him above all else?
“Who is he?” Sandy persisted.
“The man who calls himself the Saver of Souls,” Bill said. “I didn't recognize his tactics until he came at me with that swerve, head-on.”
And Bill was aware that his voice was unsteady and trembling. He watched the dun biplane slip down in a power glide, then dropped the nose of the Lancer to follow it.
“And. this,” he said grimly to himself, “is the beginning of my holiday!”
V—“HE MUST BE SILENCED!”
MORDECAI MURPHY, the man who had led that little element of three dun-colored biplanes on their murderous flight over the Atlantic that morning, sank into an overstuffed leather chair in the lounging saloon of his hundred-and-eighty-foot, oil-burning yacht Haman, as it moved silently out into the Irish Sea from the Isle of Man.
Riding low in the water, the Haman was as spick and span and trim as the man who owned her. She was passing the tip of Langness, that narrow strip of land, jutting into the sea, which divides Castletown Bay from Derby Haven, the airport, before Mordecai Murphy came out of his reverie and spoke to the florid-faced Wetherby Duncan, who was his companion.
“I will tell you what happened now,” Mordecai Murphy said in his pleasant, cool way. “I'm sorry I was so abrupt when I came aboard. But I was in no mood to talk. I hadn't got over the amazing thing that happened to me today—the most amazing coincidence that has ever occurred to me. No fiction writer would dare to use it in a story.”
“You destroyed the Memphis?” Duncan asked in a low voice.
“We destroyed the Memphis.”
“Where are Chamberlain and Lorenzo?” Duncan asked.
“Dead,” Murphy said, and his eyes were as hard and brittle as two pieces of ice. “Stop asking me so many bloody questions and I'll tell you about things.
I'm trying to figure how, or why Barnes happened to be out there.”
“Bill Barnes?” Duncan asked.
“I told you something about my previous encounters with Bill Barnes, the American,” Murphy stated.
Duncan nodded.
“It is uncanny,” Murphy continued, half to himself. “I told you how I set a trap for Barnes over the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina?”
“Yes,” Duncan said.
“Did I tell you that the man who lured Barnes down there where I could get an unhampered shot at him was a stock broker in New York who told Barnes he knew a man down there who owned a block of Transatlantic Transport stock?” Murphy asked.
“No,” Duncan said, “you didn't tell me that.”
“That,” said Murphy, “is the why Transatlantic came to my attention. Barnes didn't get the stock because my agent shot himself the same day Barnes and I had our encounter.”
“And Barnes came out on top?” Duncan said, and immediately regretted having said it because of the deep color that suffused Murphy's face, and because of the way his eyes froze.
“But later on,” Murphy said, “Barnes got hold of a large block of it. Almost enough for control. I happen to know that he is having quite a task carrying it. That is one reason why I was willing to listen when you came to me with your proposition to make Transatlantic Transport look bad so that you could build up confidence in our own line, International Airways. I knew I would be killing two birds with one stone in destroying the Memphis.”
“You said Barnes was out there today?” Duncan said.
“I did.” There were two little creases between Murphy's worried eyes, and his mouth was a straight line across his strong jaw.
“We dove on the Memphis, riddling her with incendiary bullets,” he went on after a moment. “She was falling in flames when Barnes suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I don't think he could have received a call for help from the Memphis herself because I studied her layout so carefully that I am sure I got the radio apparatus and the operator on my first, dive. But there he was. He came down in a long power dive and circled above the Memphis as she struck the water. He was, probably, hoping to find some survivors.”
“Were there any?” Duncan asked.
“Not a one,” Murphy said, and there was no trace of regret in his expression. Rather, it was one of elation.
“And then?” Duncan said in his maddeningly cool way.
“He was too much for us,” Murphy said. “That man is without a doubt the greatest aerial fighter who ever lived. He is astonishing and he has the luck of——”
“His record doesn't sound as though there was any luck about it,” Duncan said. “How did it happen he didn't get you?”
“I don't know,” Murphy said frankly. “I learned my lesson in two encounters with him. No one can stand against him in the air. That is why I decided to leave him alone, at least in the air. There must be an element of luck about it.”
“He shot down Chamberlain and Lorenzo?”
“He tore them and their ships to bits with his 37mm. cannon,” Murphy said. He wet his dry lips with his tongue. “I was next.”
“You're here,” Duncan said, a smile flitting across his face.
“Only by the grace o
f God,” Murphy-said. “I admit that Barnes is my superior in the air now. But he won't always be. My day will come. ... He came at ire head-on, and I used a trick I learned from diving falcons. I have a room in my New York apartment where I train and watch them attack their prey. While I was getting ready for that combat with Barnes I learned that just before they strike their prey, after their dive with their wings wide and their talons spread, they swerve in to add force to their strike.
“I practiced the trick, keeping my ship out of line of fire of my opponent until just before we pass, when I swerve in to the left with my guns firing. At the last moment I zoom above him and then straighten out.”
“You used that trick on Barnes over North Carolina?” Duncan asked.
“Yes, and I used it again today.”
“Then what happened?”
“Barnes hung his ship on its props and took it upstairs,” Murphy said. “So far upstairs I couldn't follow him. I began to wallow at 35,000 feet and I didn't have any oxygen so I started for the Irish coast.”
“With Barnes following you?”
“Yes, but I lost him in a wall of fog just before I struck the coast. It was fortunate it was there or everything might have been different.”
“Yes,” Duncan said. “You would, probably, not be here. Barnes must have recognized that falcon trick and identified you. Either that or he didn't want to kill you because he wanted to know who you were. It might be either one. Does he know who you are?”
“He knows me only as the Saver of Souls,” Murphy said. “He has tried to find out who I am before. That is why I decided to leave him alone for a while. I was afraid he would learn.”
“What did you do with the fighter you were flying after you landed?” Duncan asked. His eyes were worried now. As the head of International Airways, a competitor of Transatlantic Transport in the flying of passengers and cargo from Europe to the Americas, he could not afford to be mixed up in any way with the villainous plot he had brought to Mordecai Murphy to execute.
Like a host of other men all over the world, he was indebted to Mordecai Murphy, the man who called himself the Saver of Souls. And like those other men whom Murphy had snatched out of jails and dungeons and the jaws of death, Wetherby Duncan had learned that Murphy did not do his saving for humanitarian reasons. Instead, he had learned. Murphy had saved him, as well as all the rest, to serve in his astounding mill of evil.
“I did what I had planned doing with all three ships,” Murphy said. “I bailed out after I had locked the controls so that it would dive into the Irish Sea off Maughold Head. Sneed was waiting there in a car to bring me down to Castletown.”
“You're sure you lost Barnes?” Duncan asked anxiously.
“Certain,” Murphy said. “But how did he happen to be there? If he had been engaged to convoy the Memphis across the Atlantic we never would have got a crack at it. He would have been on us before we could fire a gun. There is a chance that he just happened to be flying above the North Atlantic and picked, up an S.O.S. from the Memphis. But if he did that why didn't the shore stations get it? The only word that has come out about the Memphis up to now is that the land stations suddenly lost contact with her. After so many hours destroyers and planes were sent out to look for her, but the theory is that for some reasons her radios went bad.”
“They'll know better after Barnes talks,” Duncan said.
Murphy leaned over and snapped a button on a small radio that was built into a bookcase. He twirled the dials for a moment as he looked at the watch on his wrist.
“——interrupt our program,” a voice said through the loudspeaker, “to bring you further news about the Airliner Memphis of the Transatlantic Transport Airways that left Ireland this morning on its maiden voyage with passengers and cargo. The planes that were out searching for her had to return to their bases when night overtook them. But a half-dozen destroyers and other ships that were in the vicinity of the position she was last heard from are speeding toward the spot. It is still hoped that only her wireless has gone out of order and that she is continuing on her journey to New York, although captains of ships along her route say she has not passed above them. Of course, she may be flying high to avoid the areas of fog that are forecast along her regular course. We will bring you further news about the Memphis as soon as it is received. This is——”
Murphy clicked off the radio and a little smile curled the corners of his mouth. “They'll have to do a lot of searching,” he said. “A few things that wouldn't sink may have escaped the fire, but not many. They'll find, patches of oil and come to the conclusion that something caused an explosion and that she was lost with all hands aboard.”
“Until Barnes talks,” Duncan said dryly.
“But he hasn't talked yet,” Mordecai Murphy said. “And I don't think he ever will. He doesn't like publicity and he works as a lone wolf a great deal of the time. He only has four flyers working with him since Hawkins and Henderson were lulled. You see, he has a pretty big interest in Transatlantic Transport himself. If the stock begins to toboggan because of the loss of the Memphis it is going to hurt him. He will have enough sense not to talk until he has proof of his story. He knows his story will be discredited because he is a large stockholder in Transatlantic. He knows the newspapers would laugh at him if he said that he just happened to be flying the Atlantic and saw the ship shot down in flames. A thing like that could happen only to a man like Barnes. But people wouldn't believe it unless he has conclusive proof. That's why he isn't talking yet.”
“But he will talk,” Duncan said. “If he recognized you by that flying trick you spoke of they'll comb the earth for you and they'll find you. This isn't any little personal fight between you and Barnes. It's an international incident. It's like those mysterious submarines that were sinking shipping in the Mediterranean that aroused the whole world and brought half the sea power of the world there. You don't seem to realize that it is a big incident. It——”
“Sh——” Murphy Said, extending the palm of one hand outward. “You talk too damned much, Duncan. I told you I did not believe Barnes would ever talk. I'll tell you why: I have a dozen agents waiting to inform me where Barnes has landed, in both Ireland and England. Sneed, my secretary, made contact with them as soon as I landed this afternoon and gave instructions.
“I am expecting to have word from one of them at any minute. When I know where Barnes is I will take steps immediately to seal Barnes' lips forever. I would rather do it myself, in the air. But that is not feasible now. I'm not asleep, Duncan. I have never been caught napping. If I had been I would be dead or in jail. And,” he added as an afterthought, “so would you.”
Duncan's face became even more florid than it had been and it took no little effort for him to hold back the words that sprang to his lips.
“I see,” he said finally. “We'll both hang if you don't succeed. He has got to be silenced.”
“He will be silenced. And International Airways will have the bulk of the Atlantic trade. Transatlantic will never be able to recover from the blow.”
“That was our idea,” Duncan said quietly. He got to his feet, crossed the lounge and picked a book up from a table. He turned the pages until he came to the place where he had stopped reading and sat down again under a light. But he did not read. His eyes kept straying from the words before him to the face of Mordecai Murphy, and he could not help thinking that Murphy was a most amazing man.
The world knew that Mordecai Murphy was a paradox. The people who knew him knew that one moment he could be a person of rollicking good humor who bellowed peals of hearty laughter, and the next he could freeze them and make them feel as though they had ice water creeping up their spines.
No one knew anything about his antecedents. His enormous wealth was supposed to have come from South American oil and emeralds. He was said to have a finger in affairs in every part of the world. But no one knew which finger or which part of the world. He had been decorated by three nations during the
War for his air feats. It was known that he made his home aboard the Haman when he was not visiting one of his half-dozen homes scattered around, the globe. Many items appeared about him in the press. But never anything definite. He was truly a man of mystery.
He traded in men, making them his tools. His files were filled with dossiers on a, long string of men whose destiny he once held in the palm of his hand. Men he had saved from paying the penalty of their crimes. Men who had promised him great promises in return for his seeming acts of charity and kindness. To them he had been the great emancipator. The Saver of Souls.
But most of them knew now that he had saved them that he might force them to help him with his nefarious enterprises.
VI—BOUND FOR CROYDON
AS BILL took a position eight thousand feet above and behind the dun-colored amphibian he tried to piece together some of the startling facts that were racing through his mind.
When he thought back to the two encounters he had had with the man who called himself the Saver of Souls, he remembered that his tactics and strategy in combat were identical with the tactics of the pilot below him. There could be no doubt he was the Saver of Souls, the culprit who had plotted on two occasions to murder him.
But why had he led those other two planes in the destruction of the Memphis? Had he, in some mysterious manner, been instrumental in arranging things so that he could get another chance at Bill far out over the lonely Atlantic? Had he thought that with the aid of the two other planes he would be successful? Did the fact that Bill owned a large block of Transatlantic stock have anything to do with the set-up? Had he in some way been able to influence Bill's men on Barnes Field so that they sent him out to be murdered without knowing what they had done?
All these possibilities flitted through Bill's mind, but he could not fit them together. The thing didn't make sense. He had anticipated making contact with the Transatlantic Airliner Memphis a little later in the day, but no one except himself knew that. He remembered that he had mentioned something of the sort to Scotty MacCloskey. But Scotty hadn't paid any attention and the subject was dropped.
Bill Barnes Takes a Holiday Page 3
