I
“CALLING FOR HELP!”
There is a saying in the Service that when Liner 40 N runs late the
whole world waits. It may be true enough; I suppose it is. But to me, as
Commander 3 of Liner 40 N on that night in May, 1998, it was a
particularly annoying truth.
For I was running late; at the Azores I was a good twenty-eight minutes
behind where I should have been, and it hardly made things any easier
for me to contemplate an impatient world awaiting me.
All the way from Madrid our port meter 8 had been giving trouble. Then
at 15 W. I had no sooner left the coast than a surge of wind from the
northwest had swung down upon us, and I lost a good eight minutes trying
unsuccessfully to climb over it. A mood of ill-nature possessed me. I
was just twenty-four years old, the youngest of the three commanders who
alternated on successive flights of the 40 N; this was only my seventh
circle since promotion from the small equatorial liner of the East, and
running the famous 40 N late under the eyes of a disapproving world
disgruntled me.
At Meridian 45 W. the connecting Director at New York called me up. The
Northern Express, flying north on Meridian 74 W., was already at New
York waiting for me. The Director wasn’t very pleasant about it. If I
held up the express in its flight over the Pole and down 106 E., every
connection in the Eastern Hemisphere would be disarranged.
The mercurial screen on my desk glowed with its image of the director’s
reproving face.
“You can’t expect McIleny to make up your lost time,” he told me. “Not
on a night like this. The Bureau reports head winds for him all up to
Baffin Land.”
“I’m having a few head winds myself,” I retorted.
But I grinned, and he caught my grin, and smiled back at me.
“Do the best you can,” he said. And disconnected.
I made no ocean stops; but the director at 55 was a fussy fellow. I was
due to pass him at ten thousand feet, to clear the north-south lanes for
the non-stop Polar freighters; and with this wind and the fog which was
now upon me I knew I would receive a sharp rebuke from 55 if I passed
too high.
A hum sounded at one of the dozen mercurial screens beside me. Director
55 already annoyed! But it was not he. The small rectangle of screen
glowed with its formless silver blurs, took form and color. A girl’s
face, ash-blond hair wound around her forehead, her white throat, with
the square neck of a pale-blue jacket showing. And her earnest azure
eyes searching mine, lighting with recognition as on her own screen she
caught my image. Alice!
My annoyance at the threatened director’s call-down died. I seized my
headphone, heard her voice.
“Len?”
“Yes, Alice.”
“I’ve been trying to get you all the way from Greenwich. They wouldn’t
let me through, not until I told them it was important—I had to get
you.” She spoke fast against the moment when the Vocal Traffic Timer
would cut her off. “Len, grandfather wants you to come up and see us. At
once—when you’re through with this circle. Will you?”
She saw the question on my lips.
“Don’t ask me now—no time, now, Len. But it’s important, and
grandfather . . . do you know where I can find Jim? We want him too, you
and Jim.”
“He’s in the Anglo-Detective Division, London Air Service, New York
Branch.”
“Yes, I know. But he’s in the air tonight. How can I get him?” Her smile
was whimsical. “When I asked for a tracer, the Timer over there told me
to get the hell off the air. I guess he thought I wanted to find Jim
just to tell him I loved him.”
Her image blurred.
The Mid-Atlantic Timer’s voice broke in. “Fifteen seconds. Last call.”
“I’ll get Jim,” I said hastily. “Bring him with me. Soon as we can get
there.”
“Yes. We’re waiting for you. And Len, you won’t need to sleep first. You
can sleep after you get here. And tell Jim—”
A click silenced her. The screen went dark.
What could she want of me? It was pleasant to have seen and heard from
her, this granddaughter of old Dr. Weatherby. In the stress of getting
my appointment and continuous examinations and tests between voyages, I
had not seen Alice since leaving the Equatorial Run. Nor Jim Dunkirk
either.
I went after him now. The tracers could not rebuff me as they did Alice.
They found him at last—at 120°E., 85°N. He was coming up over the Pole,
and down Baffin Bay making for New York. His jolly face, with its ever
present grin and the shock of fiery red hair above it, glowed on my
screen.
“Well, Len, say, it’s great to see you!”
“Alice just called me—Alice Weatherby. Doc wants us both—you and
me—something important. Wants to see us. You off at New York?”
“You bet,” he grinned. “Had a chase down through Tibet; every cursed
murderer thinks the grand idea is for him to swoop it for Lhasa and
parts unknown. I have one here, now. When I get him in his airy cage I’m
off duty for a while. Alice wants us?”
“Yes. I don’t know what for. She didn’t have a chance to—”
“Fifteen seconds. Last call.”
“The infernal bedamned it is!” came Jim’s belligerent voice.
“Last call, Liner 40 N—limit ninety seconds by general orders.” The
Timer was imperturbably impersonal.
But not Jimmy Dunkirk. “You cut me off,” he roared. “I’ll have the
General Inspector tell you who you are in thirty seconds. This is Chief
Dunkirk, Patrol Liner A 22, Anglo-Detective Division. I’ve got a
murderer here—understand? A murderer! Important official business.”
With the Timer cowed, Jimmy would have talked all night. But I was on
duty.
“Good,” I said. “I’ll call you at your office after you get in.”
“Old Weatherby wants us?”
“Yes. Off, Jim.”
* * * * *
It was well toward dawn when I hooked up with him; together we flew up
the river, where on the Tappan Zee, at the northern borders of the city,
Dr. Weatherby had his home.
Alice was under the landing stage when we descended in the hand lift.
“Len, Jim, I’m glad to see you.” She gave each of us one of her cool
white hands. “Grandfather is waiting to—Jim, let go of my hand; you’re
squeezing my fingers. That hurts!”
He flung it away. He had always done that with Alice, to devil her.
“Next time,” she said soberly, “you bow to me. That’s all.”
He laughed gleefully. “Right. Sure, that’s safer when you look so
pretty.”
She was indeed pretty. A tall, slender girl—an inch taller than Jim.
Big, serious blue eyes she had, and that braided mass of ash-blond hair.
She was dressed now in a pale blue jacket like a tunic, to her thighs,
and long silver stockings from beneath the China-silk trousers that
flared above her knees.
She smiled at Jim. “I’d never take _you_ seriously. Dolores says—”
Jim sobered. “Dolores.”
“Dolores is waiting to see you both. She’s very excited.”
Dolores, the little sister of Alice. I never saw her without a pang. In
this great age of science she is a pathetic example of what science
cannot do.
Our wonderful, marvelous age of science! We pride ourselves on it. But
this girl had been born blind, and she was one of those rare cases where
all the learned surgeons of our learned world could not bring the light
to her.
Jim called, “’Lo there, Dolores.”
“Jimmy! Is that you? I’m so glad to see you!”
See him! There was, to me, a grim pathos in her conventional words.
“Len is here too, Dolores,” Alice said gently.
“Len? Oh, how do you do, Len?” Her hand reached and touched my hair in
recognition. Then she turned back to Jim. “I’m glad you’re here, Jimmy.
They told me you were coming.”
He swept her up, whirled her through the air like a child, and set her
gasping upon her feet.
“Well, well, how’s my little friend Dolores, huh? Want to do that again?
Come on!” He whirled her again and panted. “Getting too big . . . all
grown up. Say, Len, she’s prettier every day, isn’t she?”
* * * * *
Dr. Weatherby was seventy-five years old at this time when he sent for
Jim and me. He met us on the lower terrace of his home. He was a squat,
powerfully thick-set figure, with long ape-like arms and a thick back
slightly humped.
His head was overlarge, made to seem larger by its great mass of
iron-gray hair. His face, large of feature, was unlined, save by the
marks of character stamped upon it. A kindly face it was, smiling with
friendship, but always stern in repose.
“Well, my boys, you came promptly,” he greeted us. “That’s fine. Come
in.” His huge hands gripped us with a strength that made Jim pretend to
wince and grin mockingly at Alice. “Come in. We’ll sit in the garden
upstairs.”
He led us up the inclines through his rambling house and to its roof,
where in the starlight we sat on leafy couches in a garden blooming with
flowers, shrubs and coned ferns.
It was about an hour before dawn, cloudless, moonless—a brilliant
firmament of gems strewn upon their purple velvet. Venus was rising now
to be the morning star and herald the dawn; red Mars, lying opposite and
low, glowed like the ashless end of a cigarro.
Below us over the parapet of roof was the crowded countryside, wan and
still in the starlight, with the thread of river beyond—a river of
silver with the blue-white lights of its boats skimming the surface. A
few planes were overhead, the small local airline from Albany skimming
past with a whir of its fans.
Dr. Weatherby chatted with us, rebuked me smilingly for running the 40 N
late, and listened gravely, with occasional interested questions, to
Jim’s vivid account of his world chase after the murderer, while Dolores
snuggled up against him, thrilled, and timidly held his hand.
“Well, well, you boys do have an interesting life. Youth coming forward.
Youth can do anything—the world waits on youth.”
“It did tonight,” said Alice, with a sly glance at me.
I wondered what Dr. Weatherby wanted us for. He had not hinted at it. He
had spoken of a morning meal, and then we must have some sleep.
Then, abruptly he said, “I should not have sent for you unless it was
important. It is. The fact that I need you—” He stopped as suddenly as
he had begun.
I don’t know why a great tenseness should have fallen upon us all. But
it did. I felt it. And in the insuing silence little Dolores left Jim
and crept to her grandfather, leaning against him.