THE MYSTERIOUS SENTRY
As the drone of the motor died away in the distance, Johnny became
conscious once more of the sentry-like tread from without.
“Who can that be?” His heart went into a tailspin. He was alone,
unarmed. He thought of the gamblers, of Greasy Thumb and his gang, and
of the money in his pocket, that roll of bills which belonged—well, to
whom did it belong?
Regaining control of his nerves, he crept noiselessly to the front of
the tent, then cautiously opened the flap a narrow crack.
The sight that met his eye caused him to start back. Barely did he
escape making an audible exclamation of surprise and alarm. There,
walking slowly back and forth before the tent, now in the shadows, now
in a narrow spot of light, was as strange a figure as one might hope to
see. Wrapped from head to ankle in a long gray coat—or was it a
robe?—wearing gray shoes, gray gloves and with a gray slouch hat pulled
down over his eyes, and with something that at least resembled a gray
beard hiding the lower part of his face, this tall, slim man, if man it
were, presented an awe-inspiring spectacle.
“The Gray Shadow!” Johnny whispered with a shudder. Twice before, each
time in the heart of the city, he had caught a fleeting glimpse of this
curious figure. Each time he had been in grave danger. With the passing
of the Gray Shadow the danger, too, had passed.
“And now it is here,” he thought to himself. As he stared, the Gray
Shadow disappeared into the depths of deeper, darker shadows and did not
return. At the same moment Johnny thought he discerned figures
retreating in the opposite direction.
“Queer doings!” he muttered to himself.
A moment later a low whistle sounded at the back of the tent. It was
followed almost at once by sounds of stealthy movements. This time
Johnny did not quail. He knew that whistle. Two minutes had not passed
when two old friends, Drew Lane and Tom Howe, came creeping in on hands
and knees. They had lifted the canvas at the back and entered
unannounced.
“Did you see it?” Johnny whispered.
“See what?” Drew Lane demanded.
“See him?”
“Him or it? What are you talking about?”
“The Gray Shadow.”
“Again?” Drew Lane’s tone was filled with doubt. He had never seen the
Gray Shadow. Being a detective, and a good one, he believed only in that
which he had seen with his own eyes.
“Oh, I saw him right enough this time!” Johnny declared. “Walked across
in front of my tent twice before he disappeared; exactly as if that were
his business. Queerest sight you ever could look at. Didn’t seem human.”
“All right,” Drew Lane agreed, rather sharply. “You may have your
shadows. We’ll deal with real crooks. That’s a detective’s business.
Greasy Thumb and his gang are gone.”
“Gone!”
“Cleared out, far’s I can tell. Their booth and the tent back of it are
entirely deserted. They’ll not be back, is my guess. Off on some big
business. Pity is, we’ve missed their trail.”
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime, the lone pilot of the sky who had winged his way over
Johnny’s booth an hour before was meeting with an unusual adventure. Had
Johnny Thompson known who that pilot was he would have become excited
beyond words, for this was none other than Curlie Carson. And Curlie
Carson, as you will know, if you have read _The Rope of Gold_, had been
Johnny’s companion in many wild adventures in that island of the Black
Republic: Haiti. At the conclusion of those adventures they had parted.
Now, with one of the queer tricks she appears to delight in, Fate had
brought them within a very short distance of one another. And this time
each was busy battling his way out from the tangle of mystery that was
being woven about him.
After living in Haiti for a time, Curlie had found himself once more in
the grip of wanderlust. Having returned to New York, he fell in with a
friend who was in the Air Mail Service.
“Come with us,” his friend had invited. “Know the thrill of service in
the clouds. Join a growing enterprise. Already Uncle Sam’s airplanes
each day travel a distance equal to the airline that reaches from
Chicago to Cape Town, Africa.”
Curlie had joined up gladly. A natural mechanic, and an aviator with
several hundred miles to his credit, he was not long in gaining a place
near the first rank of mail pilots.
When one of the regular Air Mail pilots flying from New York had been
laid up by a case of nerves following a crackup, Curlie was given the
stick. So here he was on his third long flight with fifteen hundred
pounds of mail on board, his powerful plane drumming happily through the
night.
Happily, but not for long. Scarcely had he passed over the bright lights
that shone up from the “Greatest of all Carnivals,” than things began to
happen.
The beginning seemed insignificant enough. His keen ears had detected a
sound.
“What was that sound?” He had strained his ears in a vain endeavor to
distinguish this new beat on his eardrums which had come to disturb him.
Not that there had been no sound before. There was plenty. For hours he
had listened to the ceaseless roar of a six hundred horsepower airplane
motor. True, this was muffled by a heavy radio head-set pressed lightly
against his ears. But it was distinct enough for all that.
And now there had come a second sound. At first faint, indistinct. Then
louder. Like bells, motors have their one definite sound and pitch. The
experienced airman knows the sound of his own motor and many others.
“It’s a plane,” he told himself. “But at such a time, and such a place!”
Allowing one hand to rest gently on his control stick, he half rose in
the cockpit to peer blindly into the void of darkness, of moonless
night, that lay all about him.
For a full moment he remained standing thus, motionless, while his eyes
swept in a circle, up, down and sideways, many times.
“No lights,” he murmured. “I take my oath to that. Dangerous business
I’d say. Suppose they’d miss the sound of my motor, the gleam of my
lights!” He shuddered at thought of a head-on collision, of broken
wings, flaming planes and sudden death.
“Breaking the law, that’s what they are! Wish I had their number. I’d
report them.”
Had he but known it, the occupants of this plane were infractors of the
law in more ways than one. Not knowing, he settled back in his seat,
gripped his stick firmly and gave his mind over to the important
business of bringing the Air Mail from New York.
The drumming of the mysterious plane did not leave his ears undisturbed,
nor did troubling thoughts pass from his mind.
“Up to something,” he told himself. He thought of one precious bit of
cargo that lay so near him he might touch it with his feet.
“Forty thousand dollars,” he whispered. “Don’t seem that it could be
worth that. But that’s what he said. And he’s always told the truth.”
“Snap on the radio,” he murmured after a moment. “May get some clue from
that.” His plane was equipped with a receiving set by which weather
reports and special orders reached him.
He was destined to receive a clue regarding the mystery plane, and that
very soon. And such a clue! It would set his blood racing and his hands
trembling.
But for the moment all was as it had been. Nothing came in over the air.
His plane behaved beautifully. True, at times she bumped a bit as he
speeded her up, but that was to be expected.
Half forgetting the other plane, he settled back in his seat to think of
the hours that had just passed.
It had been George Wiseman, the mail clerk at the New York office, who
had shown Curlie three unusual packages which went with hundreds of
others to make up his fifteen hundred pounds of cargo.
Had Curlie been the usual type of air pilot he would have known nothing
of those packages. He was far from the usual type. Instead of loafing
about the hangar swapping stories with other pilots, he was uptown in
New York, learning things.
His work and his mail interested him most. He was eager to know all
about it from beginning to end.
George Wiseman had grown old in the mail service. He was tall, gray and
stooped. His gray eyes were keen. He knew much and was willing to help
the eager young pilot.
“You boys of the Air Mail know little enough about the service you
perform,” he had said to Curlie as he busied himself with the tasks of
making up the mail. “You see the mail in sacks. It’s packed away in the
fusilage, and you go thundering away. At the other end it is dragged
out, piled into a truck, and is away again.
“We at this end—” He reached for one of the registered mail pouches. “We
know a little more, sometimes a great deal more. People confide in us.
They tell us of their desires, their hopes, their fears.
“Take these three packages.” He jerked a thumb at a small, a medium
sized and a rather large package. “To me they represent three things: a
great necessity, an emergency and a mystery. To you—”
“Tell me about them!” Curlie had exclaimed quickly. “It will make the
trip more interesting.”
“It will that!” exclaimed the aged mail clerk. “Even thrilling, you
might say.
“That little one,” he went on, after ten seconds of silence, “is
medicine, some sort of antitoxin, I think the man said. It’s for a very
sick child, a beautiful little girl, five years old, a college
professor’s daughter. She might die if you failed to go through.
“But there now!” he exclaimed. “Perhaps I’ve told you too much. It may
bother you, make you unsteady.”
“It won’t,” said Curlie with assurance. “My mind doesn’t work that way.
Been tried before. Added responsibility steadies me.”
“That’s the way to be. It’s the sign of a healthy mind in a healthy
body. These boys that smoke a cigaret every four minutes, now. They’re
not like that.”
“But tell me about that one.” Curlie pointed to the largest of the three
packages.
“Worth forty thousand dollars.” The gray old clerk slid the package into
the sack.
“Forty thous—”
“What the man said. Don’t doubt it. See who it’s for? Fritz Lieber. You
know who that is.”
“The greatest living violinist.”
“Many say so. And this is his violin, one of them, perhaps his best.”
“But why here?” Curlie stared in astonishment.
“He has another. He likes the other as well; has it on tour. To-morrow
in your city he is to play for fifteen hundred crippled children. That’s
for the afternoon. At night he plays for the rich, the beautiful, the
mighty, in the opera house. Thirty-five hundred of them. And his violin,
his precious instrument, is out of commission. Don’t know why nor how.
Somebody careless, probably.
“And this,” he added, placing a hand lightly on the package, “is his
chance, the only other he can use.”
“His and the crippled children’s chance.” Curlie’s tone was almost
reverent. “They shall have the chance. We’ll go through, my plane and
I.”
Curlie recalled these words now as he ploughed on through the darkness
and the night. Still there came to his ears the mysterious drumming of
that other plane.
And then, suddenly, so loud that the speaker seemed at his very elbow,
words broke in upon the thunder of the motor.
“The radio!” he whispered tensely.
“Official orders!” came in a gruff voice. “Land at once.”
“Land at once! in this darkness!” the boy thought in dismay. He was over
a level farm country. The thing was possible. But why?
Emergencies, the child’s medicine, the violin, all called for full speed
ahead.
“Land!” he cried aloud to the waiting night. “Land!”
There was no reply vouchsafed him. His machine carried no sending set.
“Land!” he muttered suddenly. “It’s a plot!”
He touched a lever. His motor thundered louder than ever and his
thoughts raced with the plane.
“That,” he told himself a moment later, “was a mistake. It told them at
once that I accept their challenge.”
But what did they want? Again his thoughts flew to the sack of
registered mail in the fusilage just before him.
“Three precious packages,” he thought. “Can’t be the medicine. Who would
rob a dying child?
“The violin! Forty thousand dollars! that’s it. They would rob the mail
to get that.”
And yet, as he gave the matter a second thought, the thing seemed
uncertain. There was no doubting the true value of the violin. But where
would a robber sell it? Such instruments are few; they are known the
world over. To offer a stolen one for sale would be to court arrest.
“There’s the third package,” he told himself. “Mr. Wiseman said this one
contained a mystery. ‘A strange, wild-eyed man in shabby attire brought
it to the office. He placed a twenty dollar gold piece on the counter,
paid the highest possible insurance fee upon the package, which is
heavily sealed with wax, and then without a word he walked away.’ Those
were Mr. Wiseman’s very words.”
But now the time for reflection was past. The time for action had come.
The voice was once more in his ear. Gruffer than before, it set aside
all pretense.
“You’ll come down, or we’ll bring you down like a crippled wild goose!”
Curlie shuddered. What was this, a plain robbery, or did that mysterious
package contain some terrible secret?
He was alone in the dark. The hour neared midnight. He was high in the
air. What could he do?
“The mail bag is within my reach. I could swing out with it and jump.
Parachute would save the treasure and me,” he thought.
But would it? The parachute was large and white. Even in the night it
might be seen.
“Then they’d land and catch me. I’d crash my plane for nothing, and all
that mail would probably be burned.”
Crash the plane! No. He couldn’t do that. That old plane meant much to
him. In it he had outridden many a wild storm.
Then, too, there was the Air Mail pilots’ slogan: “The mail must go
through.”
“And it shall!” he shouted into the night.
“You’ll come down!” the voice from the air insisted.
In his desperation the boy lifted his eyes to the skies in silent
prayer.
Did the answer come at once? Be that as it may, a thought flashed into
his mind.
In the fusilage directly behind him was a twelve foot parachute.
Fastened to the parachute was, of all things, a large doll and a new
doll buggy.
On the route, a few miles beyond a small city, was a farm. Curlie had
made a forced landing there the trip before this one. There he had made
the acquaintance of a child, a happy, most cheerful little girl, and yet
a terrible cripple.
Curlie read his Bible. He believed what he read. Some day, if he fed the
poor, visited the sick and was kind to crippled children, he would hear
the great Master say, “Come!”
He had written a letter to the crippled child, had received an answer
and had learned that she wanted a doll and a doll carriage. This day he
had meant to send the gifts down by a red parachute. The clouds had hid
the little farm. The parachute was still behind him.
“If I remove the doll and attach the registered sack to the parachute I
can toss it over and they won’t see it. Red shows black at night. They’d
never find it. Then I can land and take what comes.”
“You have two minutes to land!” The voice was more threatening than
ever.
Two minutes! The hum of the other motor grew louder. The radio was not
on that plane, but on some building not so far away.
Two minutes! He worked feverishly. The cord stuck. He cut it, then tied
it again. He dragged out the bag. He lifted the parachute free.
“The violin!” His heart sank. Yet the parachute would lower the sack
gently to the ground.
“It’s the only chance.” With one wide, clear swing, he tossed the sack
over.
The next instant his plane tilted downward. Not a moment too soon, for a
motor thundering by passed again into the darkness.
“Meant to shoot me down,” he muttered breathlessly.
He reached for a switch, pulled it, and at once saw a finger of light
from his powerful landing lamp pointing earthward.
For a space of ten seconds he studied the surface of the ground.
“Level pasture. Take a chance. Land in the dark. Might escape.”
Again there was darkness. And now, too, came silence. He had shut off
his motor.
“They’re landing, too,” he thought with a thrill and a shudder. “I
wonder where?”