by Norvell Page
He bent down and raised June to her feet and together, his arm supporting her, they went down the hill. The bottom was incredibly overgrown, but nothing could have stopped Wentworth now. He crashed through like a bull. On the far side, he stopped, peering upward. Laurel grew thickly ahead of him, screening the ground from view, but he could still see the smoke above the trees. What it portended, he did not know since there had been no house visible from the opposite ridge. But surely there were men here. They would be able to speed him on his way.
He turned, waited for June; then he pushed on again toward the laurel. He was looking at the ground when a rasping voice called out.
"You can stop right there, furriner!"
Wentworth glanced up sharply. A rifle muzzle yawned at him through a thick clump of laurel. . . .
Wentworth looked very calmly into the muzzle of the rifle. He had looked into similar eyes of death many times, but it was not that which calmed him now. It was his determination that nothing should stop him.
"Our plane crashed in a lake seven hills back," he said shortly. "I want a horse or some other means of getting to the nearest town. I'll pay for it . . . by check." He mentioned the method of payment as an afterthought. It would be very easy for the hidden man to shoot if he thought there was any chance for loot.
"We ain't got no hawses," he said flatly. "I reckon you better mosey back over them mar seven hills."
June Calvert was at Wentworth's shoulder. "Stop being a damned fool, Lemuel," she said. "We're not going back and you're going to help us to get out."
"Yuh know Lem?" another hidden man asked cautiously.
June Calvert said, "Oh, go to hell!" She walked to the right of the bushes where the rifle was poised. Wentworth was as puzzled as the rifleman obviously was, but he followed June. Two mountaineers came cautiously out of the laurel, tall, lanky, with squinting blue eyes.
"Where'd yuh ever meet up with Lem?" he demanded.
"I reckon I'll let Lem tell you that," June said steadily. "You tell him June Calvert said you were a damn'-sight faster with your rifle than you are with your brains. We want a flivver and we want it quick."
The older mountaineer blinked at June Calvert's words, moved his feet uncomfortably and spat tobacco juice at the bole of a tree.
"Wa'al," he mumbled, "if yuh know Lem, I reckon you be all right. We got a flivver over the hill a piece. You wantin' me to drive it?"
June shook her head, started up the hill. Wentworth followed her lead and the lanky mountaineer stood, with his arms folded over the muzzle of his rifle watching them go.
"Just leave the flivver at Pop Hawkins' store!" he yelled after them. "Tell him I'll be after it directly."
Wentworth felt the weariness drop from his legs. He went up the hill as freshly as he had started hours before. He ranged up beside June, glanced at her curiously. Her lips were curved in a wide smile and she seemed hard put to choke back a laugh.
"You tricked him," Wentworth whispered wonderingly. "How in the world did you do it?"
They topped the hill before June spoke, then she laughed. "I used to teach school in the mountains," she said. "There isn't a family of them that hasn't got a Lemuel in it. If there wasn't one in this family, the chances were that they knew somebody pretty well who had the name. It wasn't half as wide a shot as you might think. They've got a whiskey still on the hill. That's the reason for the rifle."
At the crest, Wentworth swept the valley beyond with a quick glance. It was fully five miles across and far down toward the north was the smoke of a small town. But, best of all, there was a narrow, rutted road only a few hundred feet down. They went toward it rapidly.
"It was a very clever trick, June," Wentworth said. "I owe you one for that."
"You owe me nothing," June said sharply. "I was as much in danger as you were. What time is it?"
It was five minutes after five and Wentworth's lips drew tight and hard against his teeth as he hurried toward the ancient Ford that was parked in the middle of the road below. Wentworth had to crank it, but once started, the motor ran smoothly. He backed up a sharp embankment, wrenched the wheels about and sent it bounding down the steep hill.
The road twisted and wound between trees and rocks and bulging roots of trees. There were two ruts and between them grass grew. A more modern car would have scraped off its crank case in the first mile, but the high-wheeled Ford bounded as lightly as a goat from bump to bump and they made incredibly good time. Once a creek, which they forded, splashed water as high as the carburetor and almost stalled the engine, but it caught again and hurled them joyously down the valley.
Five miles of that and the road swung into a wider, dirt highway in which two cars could pass by running one wheel into the ditch. Three miles more and they came to a town of a dozen shacks with a general store labeled: "P. J. Hawkins, Merchandise, Groceries, Dry Goods, Seeds, Plows, etc." Wentworth jerked to a halt before it and went inside.
The town was Hawkinsville, Penn., and the railroad was twenty miles straight down the valley. Pop Hawkins wasn't sure whether there was an airport there, but there might be one at Pittsburgh. He said Pittsburgh as some people whisper Heaven! Yep, one of the boys did hire his car out sometimes. He went to the porch.
"Lem!" he shouted. "Lem Conley!"
June, from the auto, winked at Wentworth. It was ten minutes before this Lemuel backed a wheezy Dodge from the stable and sent them rolling down the valley at a mad thirty-five miles an hour. Ordinarily, Wentworth would have enjoyed this out of the way corner of the world, but there was no time for dalliance. It was close to six o'clock. . . .
It was seven, and the sun was slanting toward the hills, when the Dodge wheezed up to the railway station of Dry Town. There would be no more trains that night. Airplanes? Well, now, over the hill there in Goochland County, they was having a fair and a fellow did some dad-fool stunts up in the air. . . . No, 'twasn't fur, no more'n ten miles.
Wentworth almost despaired. He was dubious of the plane, too. Ships used for stunting would not be the racing type he would need if he were to reach Chicago before the Bat Man loosed his hordes upon Michigan City. But there was still a chance.
The Dodge labored up roads that seemed perpendicular, finally crested the mountain and swooped down into Goochland with bolts rattling like castanets. The aviator at the fair wheeled out an old Waco that would make ninety miles an hour in a pinch. . . .
The red ball of the sun was balanced on the horizon and they took off into its eye. A half hour later, they set down at Pittsburgh and Wentworth chartered a fast Boeing, the only speedy job available on the field. Two hours from Chicago. . . . and it was already deep twilight. How long before the Bat Man would release his murdering hordes?
Wentworth blindly watched the dark landscape sliding beneath the plane, the yellow lights of homes prick out. Those windows would be dark with death soon if the Bat Man were not overpowered. Michigan City was the only hope of contact with him, and yet—did Wentworth have the right to risk the lives, nay to sacrifice lives, at the amusement park tonight so that he could meet once more with the Bat Man if he was not already too late. It was true that many hundreds would die if he did not find and kill the man, but was he justified? Was he not thinking more of the urgency of rescuing Nita and Jackson and Ram Singh, than of those thousands at the park tonight?
Wentworth's lips twitched, became ironically twisted. He got heavily to his feet and walked through the cabin to the cockpit. There was only one pilot on this chartered trip and Wentworth dropped into the copilot's seat.
"Radio or wireless?" he questioned.
"Only wireless is working," the pilot yelled above the engine roar, "but I can send for you if you wish, sir."
Wentworth shook his head and leaned forward to the key, began tapping out the call signals for Chicago police. He had been wrong, he acknowledged to himself, in delaying so long with the warning, but he had hoped against hope that he could reach the city before the fatal hour.
HXW, he called, HXW, until, closing the circuit, he heard the answering call, WT, HXW, WT, HXW. Then he began to pound out his warning, identifying himself first of all, for he was known to Chicago police also.
"Bat Man raiding Michigan City tonight with poison bats," he rapped out while the pilot glanced at him, admiring his sending fist. It was rapid, but clear and rhythmic. "Have information from escaped prisoner of Bat Man. Suggest that park be cleared instantly and information put on radio to keep windows shut, throughout city."
"Commissioner MacHugh sends thanks," the wireless buzzed back at him. "Will follow suggestions."
Wentworth signed off and switched off the set, leaned back in the seat with his eyes gazing off into the black sky. Well, it was done. He had thrown away the only chance he had of saving Nita from the death of the vampires. He argued with himself that he could not have behaved otherwise, but his heart felt cold when he lurched to his feet and stumbled back into the cabin.
June Calvert frowned at his white, drawn face. "What's the matter?" she demanded sharply.
Wentworth shook his head. No use in destroying her hopes of Jackson's rescue. Actually, he was despairing before there was need of it. It still was possible that the plane would reach Michigan City before the bats flew their lethal way through the night. He walked restlessly back and forth along the aisle of the ship, hands locked behind him. June caught his arm as he passed and stopped him.
"Something has gone wrong!" she said. "I know it."
Wentworth shrugged. "We'll be too late, you know that. The Bat Man will have attacked and gone before we get there."
"No," June protested, her dark face flushed despite the drain of fatigue. "He couldn't do that."
"Why not?"
"He just couldn't, not after the struggle we've put up. Why, things don't work out that way!" June was desperate.
Wentworth smiled at her wanly. "I hope you're right, June." He resumed his pacing. Abruptly, the door of the pilot compartment flung open. "Chicago police calling you," he shouted.
Wentworth ducked into the cockpit and fitted the headset to his ears again, waited until police had ceased signaling, then sent his answer winging through space, followed by a question.
Chicago's reply came with staccato speed. "Please repeat warning. Commissioner MacHugh, seven others in headquarters killed by bats."
Wentworth leaned forward tensely as he hammered out his message again. Chicago answered that Michigan City was in hand, advised him to fly to Elgin, Illinois, and land at a field that would show a light. The Bat Man had been seen there, the police continued. Wentworth thanked them and signed off, but sat for a considerable while without ordering a change of course. An hour had rolled by and Columbus lay behind the plane. He turned to the pilot.
"Did that last sending seem the same tone, the same strength as the other?" he asked.
The pilot turned toward him, dropping the companion headset that he wore about his neck. "Funny you should mention it," he said. "I had the same feeling about it—that it wasn't the same."
Wentworth's lips parted in a grim smile. "A decoy message, if I'm not mistaken," he said flatly. "Hold for Michigan City."
The pilot nodded cheerfully. "Yes, sir. Will there be a fight?"
"Pretty apt to be," Wentworth nodded. He got to his feet and started toward the cabin. He heard something hit with a rapid hammering thud just behind him, heard the pilot gasp and whipped about. The pilot was sagging forward over the controls, his head and body a mess of blood and across the twin windshields of the cockpit ran a stitching of bullet holes where machine gun lead had struck . . . !
Chapter Thirteen
When The Bats
Fly!
AN INSTANT AFTER THE DISCOVERY, Wentworth was hurled toward the front of the ship as it answered the pilot's push on the controls. Wentworth's lips moved with his furious curses as he fought to reach the co-pilot's seat. A glance at the altimeter showed him that he must move swiftly, for already the ship had plunged a thousand feet. The gauge showed nine hundred feet!
No need to wonder about the shooting. That decoy message actually had been used to trace his plane so that a killer from the Bat Man could locate him with a radio direction-finder and shoot him down. And it would have succeeded had he moved a moment later or a few minutes sooner. Had he left the cockpit, he could not have reached the controls in time and had he been later, the bullets would have sewn him to the seat as they had the pilot.
The altimeter read five hundred feet when Wentworth got his hand on the stick and began to ease it back. The ship continued to drop at terrific speed and the wings shook with the strain of his attempt to lever out of the dive. For long seconds, it seemed the mighty ship would plunge its engines into the earth, but finally the nose began to lift. Something scraped along the fuselage, tossed the ship wildly. Wentworth tripped off the lights, peered downward through the bullet-pocked windshield and saw the treetops just beneath. The plane's momentum pulled it through.
In a trice, it was zooming and Wentworth caught a glimpse of fiery exhaust blossoms high up in the heavens where the murder ship was circling to watch the finish of its work. Wentworth was grimly thankful that his own exhausts were muffled, so that his flight would not be detected. He made the big Boeing hop hedges for a dozen miles before he dared to let it surge upward toward the skies again. He had no means of defense but he thought it probable that he could outrace his attacker in a straight-away pursuit. He did not sight the plane again as he drove on his course toward Michigan City.
He could turn now to the pilot in the seat beside him, but there was nothing he could do there. The man had made no sound or movement since the bullets had drilled him. His breath had not even rattled in his throat. There could be no doubt he was dead. Wentworth's face was impassive, but there were cold fires of rage in his blue-gray eyes. Another man who served the Spider, even though briefly, had died. Was he forever to bring only death to those who helped him?
Grimly, he tugged the throttle of the ship wide until the motors were raving out there in the darkness and the propeller whine rose viciously. He must reach Michigan City before the Bat Man could strike and flee.
It occurred to Wentworth suddenly that June Calvert had made no sound since the shooting and he peered back into the cabin, saw her stretched on the floor with a bloody wound across her temple. It did not seem to be deep, but Wentworth could not leave the controls to investigate. He bent more tensely over the wheel.
Ahead of him was the glow of Michigan City, its thousand lights reaching up challengingly toward the sky. Still the radio did not speak of an attack there. Perhaps he was in time after all! He realized the ship was vibrating dangerously, as he continued to push it at peak speed, but he could not slacken off now. Within fifteen minutes, he would be circling over the myriad lights. . . .
The radio squealed into action. "Calling all Michigan City cars. Calling Michigan City cars. Two men reported killed by bats in front of caroussel. Car twenty-four investigate. Proceed with caution. All others stand by."
It had started then, this new mad murder-jag of the Bat Man. His warning had come too late. . . .
He berated himself bitterly for his neglect, his selfishness in keeping the secret so long. Now Death would stride with seven-league boots across the park, taking great swaths of lives with each sweep of his keen scythe. . . . Wentworth was directly over Michigan City now, swinging in great circles about its borders, searching for some trace of the Bat Man. He could see the bats, even from his height, clouds of fluttering killers. A touch on his shoulder startled him. He looked up into June Calvert's face. It was very pale and he knew that she had seen the pilot's body. The air made a keen hissing through the bullet holes that effectively prevented speech.
Twice more, Wentworth swung about the resort, then, suddenly, he spotted his enemy, the Bat Man. With great wings spread, he was gliding over the fleeing thousands who left many dead behind. With a great shout, Wentworth gunned the ship, put the nose down and dived
directly on the Bat Man. If he struck him, the propellers would be ruined, motors would fly apart, death would hurl the ship downward. Wentworth knew those things, but it did not matter.
This black, gliding thing was the creature who had destroyed so many hundreds of lives, who had killed this brave man beside him, who had snatched Nita from his side. There was a snarling smile on the Spider's lips as, resolutely, he hammered downward at the Bat Man. Only two hundred feet from him, now only a hundred and fifty and the motors bellowed like hungry lions.
When Wentworth was only a hundred feet away, the Bat Man glided smoothly to the right. Wentworth wrenched the plane about in an effort to follow, but his momentum was too great. He shot on past the slowly moving man and plunged toward the milling crowds below. With a frantic effort, he pulled the great ship's nose upward, whirled it in a virage and darted to the attack again. He was handling the powerful Boeing as if it were a light pursuit ship and the wings quivered and vibrated, the engines labored.