The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  For the second time that day, Jerry was tempted to crown somebody. But that would have spoiled everything. He had been acting; he could continue.

  “Now, now; ain’t I one of the outfit? You pulled me away from a good job—for why? I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do.”

  Casey melted somewhat. Maybe the kid was right. Maybe he ought to rate a few secrets.

  “Well,” he said, “I can’t tell you nothing but this: if there hadn’t been something big doing, the old man wouldn’t have wanted you. He’s a pretty good student of human nature—and he figured you’d been in a jam somewhere and wasn’t too particular what you did as long as it was in an airplane. There’s something about an airman that’s written all over his face. He’s like a schoolboy in love. He doesn’t know it’s there, and even if he did he couldn’t do anything about it. You sit tight.”

  Jerry made up his mind to sit.

  The air circus came off as scheduled. Good advertisement. It packed the field and roads for miles around. The spectacle of fifteen pilots in the air doing all manner of stunts was appealing anywhere—especially in Waco. They hadn’t seen anything like it since the training days of the war.

  Crouch’s business acumen was sound. The trade rolled in. There were innumerable hops. Everybody wanted to fly. The young men visioned themselves not as Foncks and Guynemers and Bishops and Lukes, for they belonged to another age. It was Lindbergh now. The old people grinned as they came in contact with the onrushing age. Jerry caught a passenger to Austin one morning. He had gone on a rush call. He had an hour to wait.

  He visited the capitol and found the Adjutant-General in another rage. This was getting to be the best thing the Adjutant-General did.

  “What’s the big idea?” he bellowed. “We’re wasting time. I’ve had to fight with myself to keep my hands off. From your reports, we’ve got enough on those fellows to get a conviction now.”

  “From my reports—yes,” Frost replied. “But my reports wouldn’t convict them because I haven’t got one single fact. It’s pure hunch. But I’m going to nail them to the cross, and it won’t be long. This is the toughest, nerviest outfit I’ve ever run across in my life. They’d stick up the National City Bank in New York with a little encouragement. But something’s in the wind. I need help.”

  “Take anybody you want.”

  “It isn’t that kind of help. Listen.”

  For five minutes he talked, all the while the Adjutant-General nodded and drummed on his desk top. Hardly had Frost left the office when the state official reached for the telephone and placed a call for the commandant at Kelly Field, the army base.

  And thus, that night, one of the new A-3 battle planes, carrying six thousand rounds of ammunition and mounting six machine-guns, dropped out of the darkness at Withers Field and was quickly rushed into the hangar of the Mid-West Air Transport Company and covered with a tarpaulin.

  Given that impetus, Jerry felt more confident. Nothing was likely to happen at Waco. If anything broke, it would be at Jamestown. And something was going to break—soon.

  Riding his hunch, Jerry was sure Crouch and his gang had wrecked the air-mail plane a year before. They had held up the Rio Grande express. God knows what else they had done. Jerry felt it had been plenty.

  He had fitted himself up a bunk in one corner of the hangar on a collapsible cot that was hidden away each morning. He didn’t want to jeopardize the confidence Crouch might have in him.

  A few nights later, as he lay there and stared into the darkness, and made up his mind to force the play within the next twenty-four hours, he heard the low drone of a motor. He rolled over and strained his ears. It was faint, then louder, then faint again. Then he heard another sound—a drone. There was enough noise to make him think it was a bombing raid.

  Jerry looked at his watch. Four o’clock. Of course, it would be an hour like that. Something was up. Something was going to happen. He slipped into his pants and boots, knocked down his cot and shoved it under a fuselage and strapped on his guns. He went to the far corner of the corrugated hangar. There was an opening there wide enough for him to see. If there was anything to see. Right now it was black night.

  Louder and louder the drones came. They were directly overhead now. Jerry wondered how Crouch expected to get away with anything like this. It amounted to pure suicide. And then it dawned that perhaps this was the very reason they had held that air circus. Adjacent residents might not be so curious if they heard motors at night. Or could Crouch have been that much of a psychologist?

  Staring through the aperture, Jerry was momentarily blinded by a flash of light as the field was illuminated by two great searchlights. The motors throbbed, clawed furiously as they lost traction, and then whistled as the ships landed.

  One was a cabin monoplane. The other was a tiny battle plane.

  Then the lights went out. The entire operation consumed not more than two minutes.

  Presently there were footsteps. Shuffling footsteps … and low voices. Out of the low conversation his ears picked strange words. Chinese!

  Then: “Keep those Chinks quiet!”

  Under cover of night, Crouch was running in Chinese.

  Frost lay there for ten minutes, thinking. Crouch seemed to have his hand in everything. He heard echoes of automobiles on the highway, the grind of gears coming loud and clear through the stillness; then two men walked back. The office door opened, and a faint glow appeared through the cracks.

  He got up and moved closer. He recognized the voices of Crouch and Casey.

  “God, I’m glad that’s over.” This was Casey. “Two more trips and then we’re Europe bound.”

  “Thompson’s waiting in Mexico City.”

  “You wasn’t sap enough to give him the dough, was you?”

  Crouch laughed shortly. “Certainly not! Nobody knows where that money is—nobody but I.”

  “What do you mean?” Casey asked.

  “Well, I moved it.”

  “You mean you moved our dough from that train job?” He was incredulous.

  “Yes. Remember seeing some guys working on those old asphalt tennis courts behind our hangar at Withers Field?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, you thought they were repairing them, didn’t you? So did everybody else. But they were just putting the asphalt over a little hiding place I’d previously fixed up.”

  “My God!” Casey ejaculated. “Suppose we wanna get away quick?”

  “That’s all right. We can smash that stuff in five minutes. And it was the safest place—believe me.”

  “Maybe it was wise. By the way, this wild man we got off the Mid-West ain’t so certain everything’s on the level. He cornered me and asked a lotta questions. I told him if there was anything to say, you’d say it. Might not be wise to stall him. He looks pretty sharp.”

  “I don’t intend to. I’m going to talk to him today and he’ll run in the next batch of Chinese. I figure he’s got the nerve to help us pull a sweet one down South pretty soon.”

  “Course, you know what you’re doing. But I don’t see the point in hiring him. Never did.”

  “Perhaps there wasn’t. But I collect good pilots just like other men collect stamps and books. I like to have them around. But you don’t need to worry about this guy. He’s been in a lot of jams before. You can look at him and tell that.”

  “I dunno—”

  “Help me get that Moth in.” They moved out on the field.

  Captain Jerry Frost came alive. He had them nailed. His suspicions were confirmed. They had done the train job. And unless he missed his guess, those bonds from the air-mail plane were in that cache Crouch spoke of. He moved up in the dark until the two men got into the hangar with their plane. Then he started off on a dog-trot down the road.

  At dawn the law forces of the sovereign State of Texas swung into action. They had long been waiting for this moment. The great, ponderous, clumsy law, with its thousands of tentacles, got going. The tide itself
was not more relentless. It struck here sometimes, there sometimes, in a circle sometimes—but eventually it straightened out and began to roll. It was inevitable.

  The Adjutant-General sat at his desk and manipulated the controls. He was the puppeteer.

  Shortly after sunrise, two state planes were in the air. There were six men in each besides the pilot. Six tight-lipped, grim men, who would shoot their way into hell and back again to get their men.

  The Rangers were moving up.

  In the hangar at Waco, the telephone jangled. Casey answered it.

  “Yeah, Casey … all right, Tommy … What’s that? I can’t hear you … wait a minute.” He handed the receiver to Crouch. “The goof is excited. Get an earful.”

  Crouch took the instrument. “Hello, Tommy … Yes …” A long wait. Casey moved closer. Something had happened. One look at Crouch’s face told him that. Finally: “Who told you? … Hell!” He slammed the receiver on the hook.

  “We’re fools!” He spat the words out. “One of the Mid-West fellows told Tommy this morning that this guy Femrite is a Texas Ranger. Come on!”

  “Where?”

  “That’s the trouble with you damned Americans,” Crouch cried. “You lose your head in a tight place. We’re going to get that money. Maybe we can make it. He’s waited this long without tipping his hand, maybe he’ll wait a little longer.”

  “But what about the others?”

  “This is no time to think of them. We can be in Mexico in five hours. Come on!”

  They moved quickly to the hangar door, swung it open. They wheeled their tiny, speedy planes out into the starting line. They swung each other’s props, the motors barked into life, and dust and pebbles swept into the backwash and puttered against the side of the hangars.

  Crouch was first off. Casey followed. Tails whipped up and wheels bounced lightly on the uneven ground. They zoomed into the air in broad climbing turns. Casey saw Crouch was loading his guns.

  They didn’t know it then, but they were to be disappointed. Jerry already was at Withers Field, had been there when Ranger reinforcements arrived. And, of course, a perverse fate decreed they would start at the wrong end of the tennis court.

  To see a half dozen apparently intelligent men digging into an asphalt tennis court in the early morning is not a sight calculated to be passed without stopping for a moment. Mechanics stopped, workmen stopped. There was a great textile mill near the field, and a crowd begets a larger crowd.

  Jerry was trying to direct the traffic and the Rangers at the same time. Three young men in handcuffs, late of the No. 6 hangar, looked on in undisguised amusement.

  Then a shout. Somebody had the pouch. Jerry grabbed it and, with a single movement, slit the side. A handful of currency was extracted. Torn currency.

  “That’s it!” he said. “That’s it! Take those men and this pouch into the office. Those other fellows are coming here sooner or later. We’ll make a reception out of it.”

  The news swept about the airport like wildfire. The textile mill was all agog. For the first time in many of their lives, they were sitting in the middle of a big event. “The train robbers have been found!” The doorman at the textile mill told the switchboard operator, and the switchboard operator told the secretary. The secretary thought the police ought to know so he telephoned them.

  Eagle-eyed news hawks caught the message the moment the desk sergeant finished his yawn and copied it. They flashed their papers. Editors stirred their stumps, called circulation managers, engravers, operators and pressmen. Reporters on the city staff got going, the rewrite man lighted a fresh cigarette off the butt of an old one and rammed copy paper in his mill. He pulled the telephone close. And muttered: “I hope to Gawd this is as big as it looks!”

  The word got about Jamestown. Sirens shrieked through the traffic carrying enough police to take Mont Sec. In thirty minutes, the highways leading to Withers Field were choked. Some of them knew what was going to happen, but most of them didn’t. This was the Great American Public.

  Speeding north for their plunder before seeking safety, neither Crouch nor Casey was aware of the plans being made for their welcome. Crouch, being of higher mentality, probably thought he had pushed his luck too far, but that was all.

  He couldn’t see Withers Field, he couldn’t see Captain Jerry Frost beside the A-3 single-seater, positively the finest thing in battle planes. If Crouch’s ships were lovely, there was no superlative for this. Jerry stood there, his eyes glued on the southern heavens, his propeller swinging idly.

  He seemed just a little ridiculous to himself. He couldn’t, for example, grasp that this was 1929. Imagine such a thing with so large a gallery? It was like an opéra bouffe. Still, he tingled. He almost, once, half admitted he liked it.

  From out of the distance came a drone. Two planes were seen; they roared onward, still unaware of what awaited them. One dipped downward, the other, which was higher, began a long glide.

  The cordon of police started forward.

  “Wait a while,” Jerry shouted. “Those ships have got guns on ’em! Take your time!”

  But the police disregarded the command. They, too, had waited long. And neither were they self-conscious before the crowd.

  Casey was in the first ship, and no sooner had his wheels touched the ground than he realized all was lost. He shot the throttle to his ship and the smoke belched from the exhaust. A policeman fired. The bullet whistled through the fuselage.

  Then Casey either tried to zoom, or he lost his head. He later claimed he didn’t know his finger was on the trigger. His guns barked through the propeller and two policemen pitched forward, twitched and lay still. A second later a shot got Casey and his plane dived into the ground.

  Crouch had seen and heeded. He had gone into a climb—and he was going south.

  Jerry throbbed and pinched. It was the old feeling. Something in him seemed to say, had always said: “Enjoy this, for it may be your last one.” Not fear—and yet it might have been.

  He swung his arm out for the chocks to be pulled. His motor whined and then caught with a roar. Something throbbed in his hands and feet and played along his nerves like tiny electrical impulses. He was talking to himself, and there was something terrible in it—prayer and hatred intermingled.

  He opened his throttle and his propeller disappeared in a thin circle of light. Like a living thing his ship bounded forward. For a while he bounced along and then he went straight up like an elevator. He climbed 500 feet before it began to stall, then drifted his stick forward and presently flattened out at 140. His bus never even felt it. Tight. Solid. Maneuverable.

  He warmed his guns with a burst of twenty. He rather hoped he wouldn’t have to fight. Still, never could tell. Everything was different in the air. Once before, he had been in the same air with Crouch. He had remembered. Maybe there would be a fight after all.

  He climbed to 7,500 and buckled on his straps. He had done that before, too. But this was something new. No straining the eyes to the right and to the left and above looking for black specks. No wondering if that was an L.V.G. two-seater—a decoy—with a half dozen Albatrosses lurking above. His man was just in front. Only one.

  He crawled up on Crouch’s tail and motioned for him to land. Crouch climbed to the left and got into fighting position. Jerry motioned again. His answer was a burst that raked through the A-3 ailerons.

  “O.K.,” Jerry bellowed. “Here we go!”

  He half rolled to get on top, so did the other. Jerry touched the trigger and pulled up, dived again. Crouch Immelmanned and straightened out on Jerry’s tail and another burst ripped through the fins. Jerry kicked it off into a slip and leveled out. Crouch was diving away. He was going to run for it. No doubt of that.

  Jerry pushed his stick forward until the rush of air gagged him. The rattle of his guns came through the chatter of the motor. Crouch went into another Immelmann and Jerry dived by him. The German was a flyer. But he was not matching skill with the kid he had kno
cked down that day at Toul. This was another fellow.

  Jerry pulled up and went into a climb. He banked sharply and started higher and higher. That was Crouch’s mistake. His ship couldn’t climb with the A-3. Jerry was so close now he could see the wheels on the other’s undercarriage spinning.

  Well, there he was. He had him. The trim white belly of Crouch’s ship glinted along the tip of his guns. There he was. There was von Byfield, the great ace. The von Byfield. The one who had followed him down. He could still hear those Spandaus clacking as they raked his body in a steel flail.

  Jerry touched his trigger. He could see holes tearing in the linen. He kept his guns open. There was a fan of flame. He noticed his altimeter: 14,000. Too high. And yet … He stalled and whipped out in a spin.

  Crouch’s ship hung momentarily like a leaf undecided whether to fall this way or that. Then it dipped its nose and wabbled. The glide became a dive; the dive went into a lazy, aimless spin, wings flopping, to the floor. The plane flattened, whipped out upside down, stalled, snapped out again in a final effort, and then again went downward in that grotesque way. Over and over. Over and over. Jerry watched it, fascinated. It was only a dot now, flashing in the sun as it keeled over. It was coming closer to the floor—closer, closer.

  Then suddenly a tiny sheet of flame lashed out, a puff of dust. That was all.

  Jerry sideslipped down, landed and taxied slowly in. He climbed out stiff-legged. He looked down and saw his pants were slightly torn. There was a gash in his leather coat. He looked into his cockpit. The floorboards were splintered. He looked up. The center section was riddled. The linen on his fins was ribboned.

  Far down the field a group of police and civilians was rushing to the wrecked plane.

  “Cigarette?”

  Somebody gave him one.

  “Match?”

  Somebody else struck it. Frost thought those fingers were familiar. Long … white … He looked into the face. The Adjutant-General. He had his arms extended.

  “Hurt, Jerry?”

  “Nope. Tired.” Quite matter-of-fact. The curious crowded around. The Adjutant-General very plainly was ill-at-ease. It had stirred him tremendously. He wanted to say something nice, but he couldn’t. Men are like that. Especially men who are suddenly overcome with pride. They try to say flowery things, but the words clog up in their throats. They think them right down to the tip of their tongue, and then strange words come out.