Читать книгу The Phantom Detective: Tycoon of Crime - Robert Wallace - Страница 3

CHAPTER I

Maiden Flight

THE LONELY SHACK stood in the chill night gloom, its windows faint squares of light. Thin mist, driven by a wind which shook the dark branches of surrounding heavy trees, swirled coldly about the small, solitary building. Within it, under the glare of a single naked ceiling bulb, two men stood with their backs to the bolted oak door. They were watching a third man who crouched across the room before the gleaming dials of a small but full equipped short-wave radio apparatus.

His hands — slender, nervous hands — were turning the dials with swift, jerky motions. The back of his hat-less head was a shiny black knob, plastered-down hair glistening like patent leather in the light. His slender, crouched body swayed as he worked, graceful except for its slight jerkiness. His flashy top-coat trailed on the boarded floor.

Harsh, raucous static coughed abruptly from a loudspeaker, rising and diminishing as the man turned the dials.

“What’s the matter, Slick? Can’tcha get it?” came the coarse, deep voice of one of the two, a huge, barrel-chested hulk of a man who seemed almost to fill the cramped little shack. His fedora hat seemed pygmy-sized over his wide, swart face with its small, glinting eyes, flattened nose, and wide gash of mouth.

He took a step forward as he spoke, moving with a loping, almost simian gait, one arm swinging at his side, the other nestled with snug ease around a blue steel Thompson submachine gun.

“Me,” he snarled, “I’m gettin’ tired of waitin’ around here like this.”

“Shut up!”

The authoritative command came in a harsh, jerky staccato from the man at the radio. He turned from the set. The light fell on his face — olive skinned, its darkly handsome features marred by a livid, zigzag scar which ran across his left cheek from chin to ear.

“I’ll get it any minute now if you keep quiet.”

He turned to the third man who was standing immobile as a statue, a faint wisp of smoke from the cigarette in his lips alone giving him semblance of movement. Tall, lean, he had an angular face with pale, expressionless eyes.

“Luke!” he snapped. “You sure you tipped off the others?”

Without moving the man Luke answered: “They’ll be around on the dot, Slick.”

The patent-leather hair of the man called Slick showed again as once more he bent to the dials. The static continued, grating in the silent shack.

Then, suddenly, Slick’s crouching figure tensed as through the cloud of that static a voice began to materialize.

“Listen, guys!”

Slick turned the dials more. The static diminished, the voice grew in volume and clarity. A crisp, incisive voice speaking rapidly, with clear enunciation.

“— Plane Number One from Chicago, calling Newark Airport — Pat Bentley, pilot, speaking — Plane Number One —”

Out of the night, out of the dark ether, came that call. And as the three men in the shack listened with tense interest, there was a swift answering voice.

“Newark Airport. Go ahead, Bentley.”

“We’re still over the Pennsylvania, nearing Balesville. Visibility getting bad up here at fifteen thousand. Been keeping altitude to cross the Alleghenies and to get best speed, but clouds are too thick. Don’t worry, though. We’re smack on the radio beam. Ought to make Newark in another hour.”

Slick rose to his feet. His dark eyes glinted, and there was a crooked, evil smile on his lips as he looked at his two companions.

“Newark in another hour, eh?” he chortled. “That’s what he thinks!”

“Number One going off,” said the voice in the loudspeaker. “I’m taking the controls again. Stand by.”

Slick glanced at his wrist-watch. His slender body had gone tense again.

“We’ve got to be all set, guys! Luke — you keep your ears on that radio. Ape, you just keep that mug of yours closed.”

THE BURLY MAN with the tommy gun at once broke that command.

“Listen,” came his coarse-toned protest, and there was a baffled look in his small, wide-set eyes. “I don’t savvy this business, honest! What are we gonna do? I thought we was bein’ paid to mess around with that railroad — wreckin’ them trains an’ —”

“If you was bein’ paid to think, you’d sure be out of luck!” Slick cut in with his harsh staccato. “Stop worryin’. The guy who gives us our orders knows his stuff, an’ I don’t mean maybe. You ain’t workin’ for no mobster, punk. You’re workin’ for the Tycoon of Crime!”

Awe threaded his voice as he pronounced that title — and the awe communicated itself at once to the burly Ape, who winced and was silent. Luke remained immobile, but the dangling cigarette in his thin lips bobbed slightly, as if to express his own feeling of respect.

“Yes, an’ the Tycoon knows his stuff,” repeated Slick. “Maybe it’s the swag on that plane.” His eyes narrowed. “But I ain’t trying to figure it. Whatever it is, it’s gonna put dough in our pockets.”

He broke off as once more the loudspeaker came to life.

“Pat Bentley calling — Visibility worse — I think I’ll go down a ways —”

“He thinks he’ll go down,” Luke echoed, his words significant despite his expressionless tone.

“Yeah.” Slick’s malignant smile flickered again. “He don’t know the half of it!” He moved hurriedly across the floor. “Got to be ready now! Any minute the time’ll come.

Any minute!”

THROUGH THE HIGH-SWIRLING cloud banks piled seemingly against the very stars, the huge-winged Douglas transport sliced downward, twin motors thundering, propellers churning the mists.

At times those mists swallowed the big plane completely. Then it would reappear, a great, silvery, birdlike shape, with lights showing from its cabin, and green and red running lights on its wing tips.

Below, through gaps in the mist, mountains showed dark, jutting peaks; gaping valley. Presently, as the heavier clouds were left drifting above, the big monoplane leveled in its flight, straightened to roar ahead.

In the cozy, lighted cabin, ultramodern in its appointments, the dozen passengers gratefully unstrapped the belts they had been cautioned to fasten during the descent. They settled back comfortably, secure in the knowledge that this plane was in capable hands, and that even through mist the invisible but complicated network of radios and beacons which had made sky-travel as fully developed as any railroad on signal-marked tracks, helped guide the ship safely through the night.

“Coffee?”

A trim-uniformed stewardess, her cap set jauntily over her copper-tinted hair, emerged from her compartment to pass down the corridor with her tray. She was pretty in an efficient, capable-looking way. As if she regarded all the passengers as helpless patients as long as they were in the air, she treated them with firm solicitude.

“Now, Madame —” She was speaking to the rather stout but mink-coated wife of a big Chicago business man, who had fought for tickets on this first, new run of the airline. “— do take coffee. It will steady your nerves.”

She passed the cup over, continuing her journey. Most of the passengers were men — men of wealth and position.

Two had brought wives; another a daughter. The cabin had the air of an exclusive, privileged society.

BUT NOT ALL of its occupants were so comfortably blasé. In Seat Number 1, directly behind the closed-off pilot’s compartment, a thin man in a black Homburg hat leaned out across the aisle. He had a scrawny, pallid face, its leanness accentuated by the tension that etched it. The cords of his neck stood out like whipcord. His eyes, in which all the personality of the man seemed concentrated, were dark, burning. He clutched a black briefcase in his arm as he spoke.

“I tell you, Garth, I feel nervous,” came his low whisper, lost in the vibration of the motors. “Why did you insist on our taking this plane?”

Max Garth, a chunky man, muffled in a great-coat, from which his hatless head, large, square, and with a shock of greying, reddish hair spoke without leaning from the opposite seat. He wore thick-lensed glasses which gave his eyes a hard, concentrated stare.

“Cool down, Truesdale!” His low voice had a hard, brittle terseness, as if emotions were something he neither understood nor tolerated. Those who knew Max Garth — and he was famous in his profession of geology — knew him to be one of those cold men of science whose brains work only in cold, logic, without sentiment. “You know it was a break — getting on this plane! Now nothing can go wrong. The whole affair will turn out as we expected. Why the trip’s almost over.” He was reasoning as if with a child. “What is there to worry about?”

And like a child, David Truesdale relaxed a trifle. He, too, was a scientist; one of the country’s foremost mining engineers, who had done noteworthy work in ventilating mines. But his work had become a shell into which he retired from worldly life, and he displayed that naïveté which is so bewildering in men otherwise brilliant.

“Guess you’re right, Garth. It’s just nerves.” He passed a blue-veined hand nervously over his pallid face.

“And don’t hug that briefcase so,” Garth said sourly. “Maybe you’d better give it to me!” His voice had an edge in it as it dropped still lower. “You don’t want to attract attention.”

TRUESDALE’S CLUTCH TIGHTENED on the briefcase as these words seemed instantly to bring back his fear. His eyes were burning, bright. “What’s the use?” he began fearfully. “If someone knows — and he must know —”

“Are you going to bring up those threats again?” Garth’s glasses seemed to glare. “Are you going to take the phone call of some crank seriously?”

“But if you had heard that voice over the phone!” Truesdale said shakily.

“I did,” Garth returned coolly.

“What?” The eyes of David Truesdale went wide. “You mean, he — he threatened you too, this person who calls himself —” His voice was a frightened whisper. “— the Tycoon of Crime?”

Garth stiffened a little at that title; but his voice was contemptuous.

“Yes,” he conceded. “He called. And gave me the same time limit. Nine o’clock tonight.”

“But you never said a word about it.”

“Because there’s nothing to say, except to the police, when we get to,New York.”

Abruptly Garth broke off. He had turned in his seat, and his glare-glassed eyes caught sudden sight of pretty Nancy Clay, the stewardess, standing directly behind the two seats with her coffee tray. She was staring at them both, her lips half parted.

Garth darted a warning look at Truesdale who seemed oblivious of her presence. He spoke to Truesdale in a tone momentarily harsh:

“Well, forget about it! It’s all a joke of no importance.”

But the stark, haunted fear in Truesdale’s eyes did not lessen. He started to speak again, then gulped and shut his lips tightly. Only then did he seem to become aware of the stewardess, as she came forward.

“Coffee, gentlemen?”

Garth shook his head. Truesdale growled a shaky: “No thank you, Miss.”

“Come, come,” she insisted. “It will warm you up. Make you feel fit for the landing.”

“When do we land, stewardess?” Garth demanded.

She flicked around the wrist of the hand gripping the tray to look at her watch.

“Little more than three-quarters of an hour now,” she said. “We’re scheduled to land at nine-forty-five. It’s now exactly two minutes to nine.” She smiled, glancing at the closed partition in front of the two seats. “And if I know our pilot, we’ll make that schedule!”

On the other side of the partition, his strong young hands gripping the Dep-wheel, Pat Bentley turned to his co-pilot.

“You can take over soon, Bill. I want to tell Newark now that everything’s okay.”

His eyes glanced through the oblique windows in the nose of the ship, at the dim mountains growing less precipitous ahead and below. Visibility was fairly good now. Not far ahead, Bentley saw the Balesville beacon funneling upwards, blinking like a white tentacle in the sky.

Yet, in the light from the myriad-instrumented dashboard, the young ace pilot’s rugged, wind-swept face was etched tense. His broad shoulders were braced as if against some invisible foe. Veteran of thousands of flying hours, the big Douglas was a placid baby in his skilled hands — and yet, somehow, he did not feel right tonight.

A grim responsibility weighed him down. This was a maiden flight — for a big airline. Important people were in this plane; and there was important cargo too. Bentley had seen the armored truck come up on the Chicago field, seen the strong boxes being loaded into the great plane. Exactly what they contained he didn’t know. But he did know he was carrying a fortune of some kind.

His keen eyes narrowed, thinking about the passengers. Two of them had acted queerly when they went aboard. The pilot had overheard a few words, tense words. Now that he thought of it, he realized that was what had created the uneasiness in him.

Garth and Truesdale. Two big scientists. Working, just now, Bentley knew for the Empire and Southwest Railway line. He grinned crookedly. That railway was in a slump: the growth of airline travel hadn’t helped it any — Why had Truesdale looked so frightened when he climbed into the plane?

And why had Garth looked so icily cold?

Bentley cursed himself inwardly. He well knew just what part of his nature made him so curious about things like this. Once a newspaper man —

Yes, he had worked for a paper, a big New York paper. For several years he had been a flying reporter, and a radio news commentator. His voice had become as famous for its rapid-fire reports as Floyd Gibbons. He had covered many “exclusives,” but now his real love, flying, had claimed him again and he had welcomed the job of piloting this new transport.

“It’s just nine, Pat. Better call in Newark.” The voice of the young co-pilot held the proper amount of respect for his “skipper.”

“Right!” Quickly Pat Bentley snapped out of his reverie. “Take her, Bill.” And added, listening to the neutral sound of the radio compass. “She’s right smack on the beam now.”

HE RELEASED the Dep-wheel and rudder bars in precise synchronization with the moment that his co-pilot took them in control. Adjusting earphones under his trim visor-cap, he picked up the radio microphone.

“— Number One calling Newark — Number One calling Newark.”

“This is Newark,” came the prompt answer. “Go ahead, Number One.”

“We’re passing Balesville now. Visibility okay at eight thousand. How’s the weather ahead?”

“Ceiling nine thousand. Visibility good.”

“We may still beat the schedule,” Bentley stated, hopefully, then broke off.

A buzzer had sounded in the little glass-windowed compartment in the nose of the big ship. It rang once, then again — imperatively. The copilot jerked up his head.

“Someone ringing, Pat.”

“Just a minute,” Bentley clipped into the microphone.

He reached back with annoyance, to unlock the partition door. And then his annoyance changed to sudden surprise.

His eyes went wide, stark, with horrified amazement!