But no. As the plane below swept over the bank he was not more than five hundred feet behind. For a moment, against a street beyond, he could see the helmeted head of the girl scanning the top of the bank. But she dropped nothing, made no movement. The plane continued, banked away, nosed down till it had picked up speed again. Suddenly the roar of its motor sounded. It shot up toward the clouds.
Agent “X” waited, then switched his own motor on. In the dull drone of the ship above, the sound of his own engine would be lost. He passed over the bank, looked down. All was black on the flat-topped roof. The big building seemed peaceful. There was no hint of the appalling thing that had happened in it tonight. He wondered if Banton were still in his office—and if he knew that his client was sailing the night skies far above him.
The two-place ship disappeared into the clouds. The Agent’s sport plane was answering its propeller, rocketing up in a magnificent burst of speed.
Back in the clouds again, he kicked right rudder, bore away. When he burst through them he was flying at a different angle from the other plane. He swung around in a wide circle and followed, climbing above it once more. Afraid that he would be seen, he continued to climb till his altimeter registered eight thousand feet, until the air was still and cold and so thin that his ears began to ring, until the plane below was a mere speck on the white surface of the clouds. Then again he shut off power and nosed down over it.
IT was headed away from the city, but not back toward the flying field. The mysterious girl passenger had not finished her night flight yet.
Through holes in the clouds Agent “X” could see the glint of water now, and the lights of ships. They had nosed out over the harbor. The clouds became more ragged. The other ship was harder to see. He nosed lower.
The ship with the girl in it was following the shore line of the harbor now. It began to circle, and, diving low with motor shut off, Agent “X” saw the girl leaning over the side, peering down. The plane went down through the clouds. Agent “X” followed.
He hung just under the clouds while the other ship continued dropping. He could follow its exhaust flare once more. Then he saw lights strung along the shore in a curve—the lights of a harbor. He strained his eyes to see through the darkness. The water below cast wavering reflections. The night seemed filled with mystery. What was the other plane doing?
It continued to circle, going three times around the harbor as though the girl were looking for something, or familiarizing herself with the location of this place.
Agent “X” made out gray shapes on the water now. Boats. But the ship ahead was not a seaplane. It couldn’t land. Again he watched for some signal, saw none. The clouds drifted more thickly. He could see only the feathering exhaust of the plane below.
The plane left the harbor at last, started back along the shore again toward the city. Then Agent “X” caught his breath. He was gliding with motor at idling speed. It seemed to him suddenly that he detected another sound. The air seemed to be filled with a throbbing note. He looked up, started.
For an instant he saw a firefly spark against the black under surface of the clouds.
The spark winked, disappeared, came on again. He closed his own motor entirely, glided down toward the water a thousand feet below. Then the hair on his neck began to rise.
Far above him he heard the thin, high wailing of wind shrieking through speeding wires. A ship was coming down from the clouds in a fast dive.
HE looked ahead toward the two-place company plane. The feather of its exhaust was still visible. Then, as though the curtain of the night had opened up, the long, lavender beam of a searchlight stabbed down from the clouds. It leaped across space like a lightning bolt, focused on the plane with the girl in it.
In that first glance Agent “X” could see the white goggled faces of the girl and the pilot staring up. The beam of the searchlight narrowed. The other plane was sweeping close. What did it mean?
In an instant the answer came.
A series of stuttering, rhythmic reports sounded in the sky above. Agent “X” saw a winking, vicious pin point of light close to the spot where the searchlight came from.
The mysterious plane that had dived out of the clouds was shooting, firing mercilessly at the girl and the pilot ahead.
He saw the pilot bank to the left, sideslip away. An instant the searchlight lost it, then picked it up again. Like a terrible, all-seeing eye the lavender beam held its mark. The pilot ahead had apparently had no wartime training. He knew nothing of defensive air tactics. It made sweat crawl along Agent “X’s” spine. This was butchery, slaughter, murder he was witnessing.
He fed gas to his own ship, raced forward. But there was nearly a thousand feet of intervening space. The horrible rat-tat of the machine gun on the plane above sounded again. The finger of the searchlight was focused on its mark.
Then, as Agent “X” came nearer, he saw, under the searchlight’s glare, like a horrible tableau, that the pilot had been hit. The man was jerking in the cockpit. The plane gave a crazy lunge forward, sheered off on one wing. The merciless death beats of the machine gun continued.
The pilot ahead flung out one arm, turned up an agonized face. Then he gripped the stick, pushed it forward, dived toward the water.
Agent “X” knew it was the worst thing he could have done. Wartime pilots were trained never to fly away in a straight line. “X” remembered brilliant wing-overs, rolls and Immelmann’s he had seen—the strategic air maneuvers of skilled aces who could throw an enemy off. Even for him it would have been a simple matter to avoid that groping searchlight’s beam.
But the pilot ahead was helpless, wounded, and ignorant of combat tactics.
At last the plane sideslipped, did a falling leaf maneuver, then nosed into the surface of the water with a burst of billowing spray.
Chapter X
Groping Bullets
FOR one horrified instant Agent “X” watched. The searchlight still played over the crashed ship. The air spaces in the wings were holding it up—holding it till bullet holes filled and the plane sank from sight. The figure of the girl was visible. As the spray subsided he saw her struggling desperately in the rear cockpit.
The searchlight shifted. The murder plane nosed up from its dive, and Agent “X,” eyes bright and bleak as steel, thrust his control stick forward.
There was no hesitancy in his movements now. There was only one thing he could do. In a matter of minutes, seconds perhaps, the heavy engine of the crashed plane would pull it beneath the surface, dragging the girl with it.
Wind howling through struts and wires, Agent “X” roared down. He had no searchlight to guide him. But horror had marked the spot where the other plane rested. Faintly against the gray surface of the water he could see the distorted floating mass. He put on a burst of power, plummeted in a dive that made the wings shudder. At the last he flattened out, pulled the nose of the ship up and pancaked into the cold swells. On the chance of saving a human life he was deliberately wrecking a four-thousand-dollar plane.
The fat air wheels struck first, ploughed through the water. The landing carriage groaned as though in resentment of this harsh treatment. The engine’s hot cylinders took water with a boiling, bubbling hiss. And Agent “X,” cleared of his safety belt, leaped the instant the plane began to settle. He had unlaced his shoes, kicked them off. He struck out toward the spot where the other plane had landed. The water was cold, freezingly chill against his body. And his movement in it was a strange transition from the swift sky progress he had been making.
He took a half-dozen quick strokes and listened. Something slapped against the top of a wave. The wing of the fallen plane. He heard a faint, shrill cry that sent the blood racing through his veins.
He didn’t try to explain to himself the reasons behind the thing he had seen. There would be time for that later. His one thought now was to save a human life. There had been enough of murder already.
Something rose out of the water a
head of him. It was a wing of the plane, canted. That meant that the other one was broken—or else the ship was already beginning to sink. The cry came again. There was a note of horror, fear, in it that wrenched his heart.
He gripped the wing, pulled himself along it hand over hand, racing his body through the water. He passed a strut top, two, neared the fuselage of the plane. Then dimly he saw the girl ahead. She had gotten out of her safety belt. She was clinging to the coaming of the cockpit. He couldn’t see her face, but he called to her.
A smothered intake of breath answered him. There was a moment of silence. Then her voice sounded, scornful, fierce as a trapped animal’s cry. “Murderer! Butcher!” There was in her speech, too, the faint trace of some foreign accent.
Her words were like a blow. Agent “X,” treading water, gathered his thoughts. Who did she think he was? What did the girl mean?
“I heard your plane crash,” she said bitterly. “I hoped you’d been killed. Now I suppose you intend to finish your work!”
The Agent spoke softly. “I’m not the person you think. You’ve made a mistake.”
“Who are you then? You’ve killed my pilot. He’s dead—dead, I tell you—and you are going to kill me!”
“It wasn’t I who shot at you,” he said. “I saw you crash and came to help.”
A harsh, scornful laugh came out of the darkness. “You expect me to believe that—butcher!”
There was another moment of tense silence, then Agent “X” spoke again.
“Listen!” he said.
He could almost feel the girl in the darkness straining. Then she cried out.
“It’s someone coming to rescue me. You can’t kill me now!”
She gave a sudden, piercing scream, a cry for help, waving her arm and beating against the canvas cockpit of the plane. Agent “X” reached forward and caught hold of her. She screamed again and tried to wrench loose.
“Be quiet!” he hissed. “They aren’t coming to help us. They are coming—”
He didn’t finish the sentence. The roar of a plane’s motor was louder now. Once again the bright, questing beam of a searchlight flicked on. It swept across the water, centered on the wrecked plane.
AT almost the same instant the Agent’s ears caught the horrible, rhythmic tattoo of a machine gun again. Bullets slapped into the water in a burst not fifty feet away.
In the glaring glow of the searchlight’s beam he saw the girl’s white, terrified face. He looked beyond her, got one ghastly glimpse of the dead pilot slumped over his controls, his body riddled with bullets.
For one tense instant the girl turned toward him.
“I was wrong,” she said. “I’m sorry—they are going to kill us.”
“Not if we can help it,” he grated. “Quick! The plane’s sinking!”
She gave a moan of stark terror then. “I can’t swim,” she said.
It was as though all the hideous fiends of hell were chuckling, conspiring to create a nightmare there in the darkness. They were almost a mile from shore! The girl couldn’t swim! And now armed killers above their heads, relentless, purposeful were trying to slay them as the pilot had been slain. Agent “X” spoke quickly, harshly.
“Put your arms over my shoulders—so. Hang on—but don’t throttle me.”
Trembling, the girl obeyed. For a moment he felt the softness of her body against him, then they were free of the plane. But before he had taken two strokes, the searchlight had swept close.
It seemed like some terrible, monstrous eye, leering at them. The thunder of the plane’s motor was a deafening cascade of sound in their ears. It even drowned out the measured beat of the machine gun.
But bullets snapped and crackled into the wreckage just behind them. Bullets beat around them in the water. The girl screamed again, shrilly, close to his ear, and he thought for a moment she had been struck.
Another salvo of shots fanned the water just ahead. He felt his lips moving, felt himself cursing at the murderous fiends overhead. The plane swept on, so close that he could feel the wind of its propeller. He turned his head, saw to his horror as the plane was outlined for a moment against the glow of its own searchlight in front, that it had pontoons. It was a small, swift seaplane.
The searchlight clicked off, the plane was banking now, getting ready to land and make sure that its terrible work was done.
With all the strength in his body Secret Agent “X” forged ahead through the water, carrying the girl on his back. The steady clutch of her fingers showed that she was unharmed. But he knew that their danger wasn’t over. There was the threat of death by drowning ahead, the threat still that the murderer in the seaplane would find them and riddle them with bullets.
For that reason he almost burst his lungs to put as much distance between them and the wreckage as he could.
He heard the other plane come to rest on the water, heard the pontoons squash, and the motor cut to idling speed. The plane was taxiing over the surface now. The searchlight stabbed on again, swung around toward the wreckage, focused on it. Then the plane came forward.
Hardly daring to breath, Agent “X” swam on. He didn’t go straight toward shore. Instead, he moved off at an angle. In a second he was glad he had done so. The searchlight on the plane began to swing around. It swept across the water, straight toward the shore. For a moment he pulled the girl beside him and held her there with only her face out.
A reflected glow from the searchlight was playing over them. He feared the terrible lash of bullets, feared death not for his own sake, but because he had a life to save and work to do. He could feel the wild pounding of the girl’s heart close to him.
THE searchlight shifted, turning back on the wreckage again. For seconds the unseen killer in the plane examined his handiwork. He still seemed unsatisfied. A red flare came from the plane’s exhaust stack. It streaked across the water, taxiing again.
It circled in a wide arc, came back. This time its searchlight bobbed over the water so closely that Agent “X” gave up hope and waited. But the slow-rising swells served as a precarious, protecting barrier.
The plane taxied by, with the two of them just outside its searchlight’s path.
Agent “X” swam on. The plane circled again. It had become a wild, desperate game of hide and seek out on the blackness of the water. The pilot, hideous criminal that he was, wanted apparently to make sure that no one survived. Some tremendous issue appeared to be at stake.
Seconds passed and “X” saw another light far off on the horizon. Another plane seemed to be coming, perhaps from some coast guard station or army field, or perhaps the owner of the ship he had borrowed.
That ship would have to be replaced now. Betty Dale with her newspaper connections would find out the owner’s name for him, and he would see that an amount large enough to cover the loss of the ship was sent to the man anonymously. To save a human life, to come closer perhaps to the solution of this ghastly murder mystery, beside this the loss of a plane was nothing.
He saw the murder ship leave at last, frightened perhaps by the approaching light. But the light on the horizon passed far overhead. “X” concluded it was a coastwise mail plane on one of the big transport lines.
The long swim to shore began. Agent “X” didn’t try to hurry. He was too experienced a swimmer for that. Minute after minute he made his long, clean strokes tell. The girl seemed to be beyond speech. She was clinging to him as if frozen. When at last he heard the sound of waves breaking on the beach, he thought perhaps she was chilled to the point of death.
His feet touched sand. He reeled through low surf to the shore, staggered up a beach. Then for a moment he laid the girl down. She sagged limply. He felt her face, rubbed her hands.
“Your name?” he said. “What’s your name? Where do you live?”
She groaned, stirred. He repeated his query, again and again, shouting it in her ear. As though it had reached her from a long way off she answered at last, mechanically, feebly.
&
nbsp; “Rosa Carpita,” she said. “Rawleigh Apartments.”
She muttered something else, something that “X” couldn’t understand. She sank back limply into the unconsciousness from which his shouted questions had half aroused her.
HE looked tensely about. There was a bluff at the top of the beach. He saw it silhouetted against a glow in the sky. The glow seemed like lights. He picked the girl up bodily, cradled her in his arms, and strained forward up the sand. He labored up the bluff.
There were lights beyond—a cross roads with a spray of three electric bulbs strung on a pole. Far down one of the roads two spots of radiance were approaching. He ran with the girl in his arms across a rough field. Holding the girl beside him, he waited and signaled the car whose lights he had seen.
It was a farmer’s truck, coming into the city with crates for early morning shipment. The man on the driver’s seat stared at “X” skeptically, then saw the girl.
“We capsized in the water,” said Agent “X.” “This girl has fainted. I’ve got to get her back to the city.”
The farmer nodded. “Get in,” he said.
For many minutes they bumped and jounced over the dark night road, coming at last to the outskirts of the city. Agent “X” saw a taxi. He thanked the farmer and transferred his burden to the swifter vehicle.
The driver didn’t know the address, but a directory in a drug store telephone booth gave it.
In twenty minutes the cab drew up before a large apartment house. It was a luxurious place, with a canopy over the sidewalk and a gilded foyer. The doorman had long since gone off duty, but the night switchboard operator let Agent “X” and his limp burden in. Rosa Carpita was breathing regularly. She was in a state of exhaustion from the fright she had had and her long submergence in the water.
The switchboard girl summoned a janitor who showed the Agent to Miss Carpita’s apartment. “X” turned to the man, spoke quickly.
“Get a doctor,” he said. “This young woman almost drowned. She needs care at once.”
Secret Agent X – The Complete Series Volume 1 (Annotated) Page 33