He had thought he saw one of the indicators move. The bell had not rung—or he had not heard it—but he could have sworn that he had seen one of the disks tremble. He peered closer. For a full minute he watched the indicators, but now could discern no movement.
“Nerves!” he muttered angrily. “This darned house is making a woman of me.”
A glance at his watch showed that it lacked but five minutes to the hour. He strolled to the end of the kitchen passage, returned, and went into the hall to get his cap. The wind had risen. He could hear it swishing through the trees outside, a long, low whine in the pine-needles, in vivid contrast to the deadly stillness inside the house. He was returning to the pantry on his way to the back door, when he felt his heart jump—and then stand still. Clear and unmistakable, the tinkling of an electric bell.
Bill leapt into the butler’s pantry and his eyes scanned the double row of indicators on the wall. Not one of them moved by the fraction of an inch. A soft, faint whir sounded again. In some room of the house a finger was pressed upon an electric button. Bill went into the passage and listened. The sound was much clearer now. It seemed to come from behind the closed door across the corridor.
That door was of heavy oak, and the key was in the lock. Even without the white tag that hung from it, Bill knew it was a second entrance to the cellar, or so Charlie had told him. What if the door led to a part of the cellar that he had not already inspected? A moment’s thought made it plain that Mr. Evans must have left the key in the door to prevent the insertion of a duplicate from the cellar side.
The ringing stopped abruptly. Why on earth, Bill wondered, should there be an electric bell in the cellar? Charlie had mentioned no such thing, and who could have been ringing it, and why? For a few moments Bill could not decide whether to investigate or simply to ignore the matter. There was, however, the possibility that it was meant to be a message or a warning to him, and he decided to find out its meaning at once.
Extinguishing his flashlight, he gently turned the key in the cellar door. He pulled the door open and quickly stepped behind it. Nothing could be heard from the cellar, not a rustle, not a whisper. After waiting a moment or two, Bill ventured to move into the open doorway. A musty smell floated up the stairs—a smell of earth and stagnant air. With his outstretched foot, Bill explored until he found the first step. Very gingerly he descended into the darkness, his hand touching the stone wall at his side for guidance. When he reached the bottom, he paused again to listen. But he could hear nothing save his own breathing. Then, like a sudden stab through his brain, the bell pealed again.
This time it was quite close to him. He felt that if he reached out he could have touched it. The flashlight was still clenched in his hand. He hesitated, then pressed the button and held the light above his head. The cellar, vast and irregular, stanchioned by square stone pillars, lay before him, streaked by the wavering shadows cast by his light.
Bill saw at once that it was not the place he had gone over with Charlie. Arched wine-bins, mostly empty, made dim hollows along the walls. But still he could not locate the sound. With a final whir the ringing stopped, and the conviction swept into his mind that he had been listening, not to a call-bell, but to a telephone.
Yet he could see nothing that remotely resembled a telephone instrument. A bare heavy table with a couple of benches beside it stood in the middle of the floor, and he could see nothing else in the dimness save the blank, arched walls.
Ready to snap off his light at the first hint of any lurking enemy, Bill pushed forward and explored two short bays that ran out at right angles to the main wine cellar, but without result. Why, he deliberated, should there be a telephone in this underground spot? So far as his observation had gone, there was no phone upstairs, and a cellar seemed a mighty queer place to instal one. To conceal the instrument seemed stranger still. Bill noticed that a passage led off to the left. Avoiding some tumbled packing-cases on the floor, he went forward to see what he could find.
After he had gone about ten yards, he was brought up short by a heavy door. Like the one upstairs, this door also had its key in the lock. It was a primitive sort of lock and made a loud click as he turned it—too loud for Bill’s taste in the circumstances. He let a couple of seconds go by before venturing to proceed. His hand was on the key, ready to pull the door open, when something happened that made him stop and listen intently. He snapped off his light. From behind the iron-studded door he imagined—but was by no means certain—that he had heard a sound.
After a minute or two of silence he concluded that it must have been the wind stirring in a loose grating in the passage beyond. But presently he thanked his stars he had switched off the light, for suddenly he heard quite clearly the sound of footsteps, approaching on the other side of the unlocked door.
The situation called for swift action. In the blinding darkness, he quickly estimated whether he could possibly get through the cellar and up into the house in time to avoid discovery. It was not likely. But there was a shallow niche in the wall behind the door, and he slipped into it, praying that he would remain concealed when the door opened.
The footsteps grew louder, then drew to a stop. A pause, and then he heard the mumble of a voice from behind the door. Somebody was talking over the telephone in there—of that Bill felt sure. But the voice was too low for him to distinguish the words. Curiosity impelled Bill to risk pulling the door open half an inch, and he peered through the crack into the space beyond.
Instantly the voice ceased. The place was pitch dark, and though Bill stared till his eye-balls ached, he could see nothing. Then in the inky blackness he heard a slight rustle. What was the man doing? Even though Bill had used the utmost care in opening the door, this stranger must have heard him. Glued to the crack, he closed his eyes and listened.
At first he heard nothing—then it came again—a faint rustle. It was nearer now—almost at the door. Somebody or something was moving stealthily toward him.
Bill drew back and none too soon. Bang! A heavy body crashed against the farther side of the door. It slammed open and back against the cellar wall with a crash loud enough to wake the dead. Bill had just time to realize that had he remained at the crack he would have had a nasty blow, when sinewy arms gripped him and he found himself fighting for his life.
With unerring skill, the more amazing because of the inky darkness, Bill’s opponent grasped his right wrist, twisted it and the automatic dropped to the floor. The flashlight Bill had discarded at the man’s first spring. In vain he sought to slip his free hand beneath the other’s armpit to try for a half-Nelson or some other effective hold. The man was as sinewy and lithe as a snake, and blocked Bill’s every move. He triedjiu jitsu, but here again he was foiled; and only with the greatest difficulty was he able to keep those tenacious hands from his throat.
Panting and straining, the two swayed back and forth, crashing into packing cases, banging into walls, their hot breath on each other’s faces—twisting, slipping, recovering—and drenched in perspiration from their terrific exertions.
Then, in one of his lunges, Bill stepped on the electric torch—and instantly a dim glow spread along the floor and threw their figures and faces into relief against the gloom.
“Bill Bolton!” gasped the stranger, and released him.
“Osceola!”
Too winded for further speech the friends stared at each other.
“Great snakes!” exclaimed the young Seminole chief at last. “A jolly way you have of receiving callers!”
“Well, why on earth didn’t you come to the front door and ring the bell like a Christian?” growled Bill. “What’s the idea? Snooping in through the wine cellar and scaring me half to death? This confounded house is creepy enough without you adding to the spooks!”
“The front door,” retorted Osceola, “was out of the question. How did I know you were in the place? Sanders has his men posted all around here. He came out of the back door with another guy less than half an hour ago, and I saw them.”
Bill picked up the torch and the automatic before replying. “You don’t happen to know how they got in?” he asked. “I locked the back entry from the inside, so they couldn’t have come that way.”
Osceola shook his head. “No. They got in the same way I did. Their footprints are all over the place.”
“But which way is that?”
“There’s an old shed in the woods about fifty yards from the house. Mr. Evans told me about it. Once upon a time it was used for storing firewood, and it connects with the cellar by a kind of tunnel. They broke in there, picked the cellar lock, and went on up into the house.”
“But they couldn’t have come through this cellar—I found both doors locked.”
“They didn’t have to come through here. There’s a circular stair that leads from where the phone is, up through that wall and out into the hall above.”
Bill nodded, remembering the speed with which Sanders and his man had disappeared. “Just where and how does it connect with the hall?”
“There’s a sliding panel in the wall by the fireplace.”
“Humph! You and Sanders,” said Bill, “seem to know a lot more about this place than I do.”
“Mr. Evans put me hep. How Sanders got his information, I don’t know, but he’s evidently got it all down pat. That old brick shed out there takes some finding. It’s all overgrown with vines and bushes—I had a job finding it myself.”
“But tell me, Osceola—” Bill perched on the edge of the table, “how did you happen to be telephoning in here—how did you get here? I must get straightened out on this business before I hike over to see Parker at Twin Heads Harbor tonight.”
“Parker flew me up to Clayton from New Canaan,” the chief told him. “Then he drove me over here in his car—or that is, I left him where the road to Turner’s leaves the Harbor Highway, and came the rest of the way on foot.”
“Please start at the beginning, won’t you? I’m still all at sea—”
“All right, all right—don’t get all het up now! Well, Deborah Lightfoot, the girl I’m engaged to—”
“What!Not the girl on the island—Evans’ secretary?”
“She’s the girl—”
“But you never told me you were engaged!”
“Didn’t I? Well, we’re going to get married next year, just as soon as I’m graduated from Carlisle.”
“Gee, that’s fine,” said Bill. “I certainly congratulate you both. But say, let’s get on with the business end of this gab. Begin with Mr. Evans—when you saw him or heard from him first.”
“Have it your own way,” grinned Osceola. “I came out from New York on an early train to New Canaan yesterday afternoon, after seeing your father off for Washington. The servants were in a great state about the night before. It seems that the shooting woke them up after you and Charlie got out of the house. I read your note and reckoned that since neither you nor Charles nor the plane were on the premises, you’d managed to get off all right. You had told me in your note to stay put till I heard from you, so I stuck round the house all evening, waiting for a wire, or a phone call. I was especially worried about Deborah. She graduated from Barnard in June, and shortly after this Flying Fish affair was cleaned up, I got her the job with Mr. Evans. I knew she was up here in Maine with him, but from what you wrote, it looked as if old Evans had got himself mixed up in a thug war or something, and I didn’t want my girl to be stopping bullets. Mind you, Deb can take care of herself in a mixup better than most men. She’s a swell shot, and she can throw a tomahawk as true as any brave in the Seminole Nation.”
“Great guns! I had no idea she was a Seminole!”
“She sure is,” grinned his friend. “Deb is Sachem of the Water Moccasin Clan in her own right. She’s a sort of ’steenth cousin of mine—andbrains—well, she’s two years younger than I am and yet she’s a year ahead of me in college. She’s—”
“Whoa!” laughed Bill. “I’ll take it for granted and all that, that she’s the most wonderful girl in the world.... Get back to your story, now. You were worried because she was up here, you said?”
“Right, I was. But I decided to hang round your place for the night and wait for your message—which never came. If I didn’t hear by morning, my plan was to come along up here by train, whether you needed me or not.”
“And then Mr. Evans turned up, eh?”
“He did. The sound of the plane sent me running out to the hangar in the middle of breakfast. At first when I saw theLoening, I thought you had come back. Then old Evans piled out and introduced Parker, who had flown him down. I took them into the house and we had breakfast together.”
“Well, he’s got a nerve! Disappearing on us in the first place, and then taking my plane to do it in!”
“Yes, he said he hadn’t had a chance to let you know, or to ask your permission to use theLoening. Matters suddenly came to a head and he had to get to Stamford as soon as possible. It seems that some of Sanders’ crowd hang out there and they were up to something he couldn’t get the hang of.”
“Yes, I know—they’re coming up here in a boat of some kind. They’re after something that belongs to Mr. Evans.”
“That’s what he said. I mean, he described Sanders and told me that his crowd was trying to steal something from him.”
“Why doesn’t Evans move it to some safe deposit and let us out of all this hullabaloo!”
“Well, the funny part of it is, that he doesn’t know where it is—and apparently Sanders and his lads do!”
“Thatisa funny one,” grunted Bill. “Evans, the owner, doesn’t know where this valuable something is—and the would-be robbers do!”
“That’s what he told me, all right.”
“Well,whatis it that they’re raising such a rumpus about? Does Evans himself know?” Bill was getting sarcastic over the situation.
“Search me. He didn’t say.”
“Well, I think it’s the limit. Here I get all het up, thinking that at last I’m going to find out something definite about this mess—and you tell me you don’t know.”
“Evans thinks, I guess, that it’s less dangerous for us not to know. He’s a pretty good egg.”
Bill frowned, then began to chuckle. “Sanders offered me a couple of million or so, if I’d go in with him. Can you beat that? So whatever the blooming loot is, it’s worth money!”
“Looks like it. But let me finish. I was just starting to talk to Deb over the private line in the other room, when you came butting in and I had to ring off. You may not know it, but I’m rather anxious to finish that conversation.”
“Oh, go to the phone now, if you must,” said Bill resignedly. “I’ll wait.”
“No, I’ll get this off my chest first. You’re in almost as much of a sweat as old Evans was at breakfast this morning. He wouldn’t talk while the waitress was in the room, so things were a bit jerky. But when we’d finished eating, and one of your cars was waiting to run him down to Stamford, he told me about Sanders. Then he described this place, told me how to get into it through the sub-cellar, and where the short-line phone to the island was hidden. He suggested that Parker take some sleep, and then fly me up here so I could keep an eye on Deborah. To finish the story, Parker and I took turns flying the bus, and here I am.”
“Did Mr. Evans say what I was supposed to be doing?” inquired Bill. “He left while Charlie and I were asleep. I’ve had no instructions.”
“Yes, he wants you to keep careful watch on the Sanders crowd, so you can locate what they’re trying to steal.”
“Huh! A nice, soft job that! How am I going to find something when I don’t know what it is? The man’s got bats in his belfry!”
“Well, I don’t know—but that’s what he said. By the way, where’s Charlie—upstairs?”
“He is not—and that’s another thing that gets my goat. While his father flies on without a word—Sanders gets the boy!” Bill went on to tell Osceola of the day’s happenings. “You see,” he concluded, “I’m between two fires. It’s the dickens of a mess. If I go to Stamford, and pretend to play in with that gang, I can’t be watching them up here—and if I don’t go there’s no telling what Sanders may do with that kid. My plan before you came along was to meet Ezra Parker at the Harbor, and see what his advice would be.”
“Good idea,” said Osceola thoughtfully. He had been squatting on his heels, Indian fashion, and now stood up. “Hello!” he cried. “There goes that telephone again. I guess Deb got tired of waiting.”
“How did she know you were here? It was that bell jingling that brought me down here.”
“I called her up when I got in the cellar. Jim answered and said she was out on the rocks—so she called me back.” He hurried off to the other end of the cellar with Bill close behind him holding the light.
Osceola fumbled with a brick in the wall, it came away in his hands and he pushed his arm into the cavity. A panel in the wall swung outward, revealing the fact that it was not brick at all, but cleverly painted wood. The ringing of the bell immediately became louder, for in the open niche stood a telephone.
The chief picked up the receiver. “Hello, hello—” Bill heard him say. “Yes, this is Osceola. Yes, Deb, I’m all right. Bill is here. We mistook each other for Sanders’ men in the dark—that’s why I rang off. But everything is okay now. No, I don’t mean exactly that ... Sanders has kidnapped Charlie and.... What are you saying? Great guns—is that so? Yes, I can hear firing. Hang on as long as you can—don’t give up—we’ll be with you just as soon as possible!”
He hung up, slammed shut the camouflaged panel and turned to Bill.
“The devil to pay! Deb and old Jim are barricaded in the hut on Pig Island. Sanders’ men have got the place surrounded!”
“We’re a pretty pair of fools!” cried Bill.
“I agree with you.” Osceola, usually stoical under trying conditions, was visibly upset. “While we’re scrapping and swapping stories, that girl of mine is being kidnapped by those ruffians!”
“But they haven’t got into the house yet,” Bill reminded him.
“But what can those two do against so many! After what Sanders said to you, we should have been prepared for this. For the love of Mike, Bill, hold that light steady! I can’t find the brick that manipulates the panel to the woodshed tunnel.—There—that’s better!”
A section of the cellar wall opened and the light from the torch shone on a flight of stone steps leading into the earth.
“Wait a jiffy, till I pick up my rifle—” The young Seminole disappeared, then returned with the gun in his hands. “Lucky I decided to tackle you with my fists rather than shoot in the dark! Got everything you need?”
“Yep.”
“Then turn the light on the wall to your left—third brick from the bottom—there!”
He pulled it out, fumbled in the aperture for a moment and the cellar door slid shut.
“Gosh, it’s dark—” Bill went down the steps and along the tunnel, sending the light beam before him. “How did you manage to navigate without a flash?”
“My race, as you know, see better in the dark than you pale-faces. But it wasn’t easy, just the same. Some of the roof is down farther ahead, and I barked my shin on one of the stone blocks. Rotten air in here too. Mr. Evans said that Turner was quite a guy at smuggling in his day. He told me that the house is a regular warren of secret passages. What time is it, anyway?”
“Just eleven-forty-five. Parker ought to be over the house in fifteen minutes. That is, if he comes.”
“He will—” declared the Seminole. “He said he would.”
“If he wakes up in time, you mean. After those two long hops, he’ll be a dead ’un.”
“Oh, not so bad. I flew the plane most of the way up here,” confessed Osceola. “So Parker caught plenty of sleep on the trip.”
“Good boy! Your instructor is proud of you. Look out—here are those blocks you tripped over before.”
They scrambled over the debris and a few moments later came to another flight of stone steps. Osceola manipulated the sliding door at the top very much in the same manner as he had closed the one to the cellar. Bill switched off his light and they entered a small, one-roomed building. Here the Indian led him past a broken doorway and through a dense thicket of evergreen and brambles. When they reached the more open woods, Osceola paused.
“I ambled over these woods the day we corralled our friend the Baron,” he remarked. “And I took a look at the outside of Turner’s then. Keep the moon on your right and you’re bound to hit the harbor. It’s between two and a half and three miles over there.”
“And where do you think you’re going?” asked Bill in surprise.
“Over to the cove and out to Pig Island!”
“But you’ve no boat.”
“I’ll swim out.”
“Why, you’re crazy, Osceola! I know you’re a marvel in the water, but there isn’t a swimmer living who could breast that current. Believe me, I tried it, and I know.”
“Well, I can make a try at it, too, can’t I?”
“What’s the use? Hike along with me and we’ll be over there with theLoeningin half the time you could swim that distance in easy water. Anyway, there’s your rifle—you’d have to leave that behind. Don’t be a sap, old fella. You can’t fight ten or a dozen of the Sanders tribe with your fists!”
Osceola, who had led his class at Carlisle, and would captain the football team in the fall, was a young man whose brain worked fast. Moreover, he was never afraid to admit he might be wrong and to profit by another’s advice.
“Okay,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. “I guess I let myself get carried away a bit. I’ll go with you. Let’s be on our way.”
“Good egg. I know you’re worried half sick about Deborah, and I don’t blame you. You lead on, old scout. We’ll make it, yet!”
Osceola started off at a sharp dog trot that he could keep up for hours if need be. Bill ran lightly behind him, glad to be in the open air and away from that uncanny house at last.
A ten-mile breeze blowing in from the sea rustled the treetops and shadows cast by a full moon danced over the undergrowth. Clouds were banking to the eastward, the salt tang of the ocean was in the air. Bill sensed rain or a storm and was glad that the cloud formation, creeping upward, would shortly blot out the silvery light. Should they be forced to land on Pig Island in moonlight nearly as bright as day, the odds would be all with their enemies.
Osceola, with that natural bump of direction which is inherent in all races of American Indians, struck an overgrown deer track and followed it. Bill, running on his second wind, saw the young Chief slacken his pace for an instant, then dart ahead at a stiffer gait.
“Here he comes!” the Indian called over his shoulder. “If we hustle, we’ll reach the shore soon after he lands.”
The white lad could hear nothing but the soft thud of his own footsteps and the gentle swish of the night wind in the treetops. Then, dimly at first, came the almost imperceptible drone of an engine far away. Within a very few minutes, the hum grew to a roar and the dark shape and tail-light of an airplane passed above their heads, flying low in the same direction they were traveling.
Osceola slowed down to a brisk walk. The ground sloped upward and rocky outcroppings made running impossible. Then he stopped altogether and waited for his companion.
“There we are!” He pointed forward and down.
Bill, who was not sorry for the breather, saw that they stood on the crest of the rise. Straight ahead the ground slanted sharply downward. Through breaks in the foliage, a wide stretch of moonlit water could be seen. Floating gently on the rippling cove near the shore lay the seaplane.
“You’re a wonder, Osceola! How were you able to draw a bead on Parker like that? I was sure we were in for at least a mile’s tramp along the shore before we’d get within hailing distance.”
“Nothing mysterious about it. That’s a cove off the main harbor you’re looking at. Parker told me of his rendezvous with you. I knew about this cove, and made it a bit more definite, that’s all. I’ll give him the signal and we’ll go on down.”
Two sharp barks of a fox came from Osceola’s throat. Immediately the idling hum of the airplane motor increased to a roar, awakening forest echoes and the amphibian commenced to move through the water toward the shore. Without a word the two friends scrambled down the rocky incline to meet it.
“Is that you, chief?” called Ezra Parker’s voice as they neared the water.
“Sure is. And I’ve got Bill Bolton with me.”
“Good enough,” answered the aviator, as they came onto the narrow beach. “How be yer, Bill?”
“Rearin’ to go, Ezra—and I reckon that’s what we’ve got to do, pronto!”
“Anything up?”
“Plenty. Sanders has got Charlie, and the gang’s over at Pig Island right now, trying to capture Deborah and old Jim.”
“Gosh all hemlock!” exploded Ezra. “Things are popping, that’s certain.”
“And that’s not the half of it,” cut in Osceola. “If Bill doesn’t hike down to Stamford, Connecticut, and prove to members of the Sanders outfit down there that he is out of this thing for keeps—those devils threaten to put Charlie out of the way, and Deborah too, if they can get her!”
“Well, that sure is the limit!” Ezra’s tone was filled with concern. “Jump aboard, boys, while I run her out in the harbor. There’s no telling who may be sneakin’ ’round in these woods. No sense takin’ any more chances than we have to.”
The Chief swung himself on to the amphibian’s deck which ran from amidships forward to her nose below the two cockpits and inverted motor. Bill meanwhile quickly doffed his clothes, which together with Sanders’ automatic he flung to the Seminole. He waded into the water, pushed the plane out until she floated clear, and walked out until he could grasp a wing tip. After much heaving and hauling, for the water was up to his armpits, he managed to swing the plane around until her nose was pointed toward the mouth of the cove.
“Thanks, Bill,” said Ezra, and Osceola gave his pal a hand aboard. “This place is too narrow for manœuvering. I was wonderin’ how I could get her out of here.”
“Gimme a towel!” Bill’s teeth were chattering. “There’s one in the locker in your cockpit, Ezra. Lucky you didn’t try swimming over to the island tonight, Osceola. If anything is colder than this Maine ocean when the sun’s off it, I’ve yet to find it.”
With Osceola he piled into the rear cockpit. Then while, Parker taxied the plane out to mid-harbor, Bill got into his clothes. Parker snapped off the ignition and twisted around in his seat.
“Now let’s have the lowdown on this, Bill.”
Bill climbed down to the deck and gave him a short outline of the events of the day and evening. “Kind of between the devil and the deep sea, aren’t we?” he finished grimly. “Time’s more than money now. So hop in aft with the chief, and let me in the fore cockpit. I’m going to fly the bus. There ought to be a couple of repeating rifles and ammunition in the locker aft. Pass one of them out to me, will you, Osceola? Ezra can use the other. You two, stick on head-phones. While I’m driving, see if you can’t come to some decision about this Stamford business.”
As Parker climbed out of the fore cockpit and went aft, Bill hopped into the vacated pilot’s seat. A rifle and ammunition were passed to him. He made sure that the magazine was full, then pulled forth a helmet and goggles from a small locker. These he put on, cast a hurried glance aft and satisfying himself that his companions were ready for the take-off, he switched on the ignition.
Bill sent the amphibian roaring into the night wind, pulled her off the rippling waters of the harbor and skimming the twin bluffs at the entrance, sent his bus speeding seaward. A bank to starboard brought Pig Island dead ahead and Bill saw that the moon glare, playing on the islet, threw every detail into bold relief. On the instant he changed his plan.
Counting on the heavy cloud formation which was slowly spreading upward from the east, his first idea had been to land near the shore, and after securing the plane on one of the beaches, to rush the besiegers under cover of darkness. Now that the moonlight doomed such procedure to certain failure, he proceeded to climb.
At six hundred feet, he leveled off and sent theLoeningspeeding in a circle around the island. The house, a one-story bungalow, built of native stone with hollow tile roof, stood on a craggy knoll near the center of the island. Bill saw that this slight eminence held unusual factors of defense. Not only was it impossible to look down on the house from any other point on the island, but the rocky ground sloped steeply on all sides from the top of the knoll. The one bad feature of the place was the number of large boulders nature had splattered up and down the incline. Behind twelve or fifteen of these big stones and completely ringing the little fortress above them, crouched the party of armed men.
As he circled, Bill saw the flashes from the gangster’s rifles and the answering flashes from the house. He noticed that there was method in the attack, and one that was likely to succeed in the capture of the bungalow. There would come a spurt of firing from one section of the attacking group on the hill, which naturally drew the two in the house to that side in order to repel a possible assault. Immediately the men on the farther side, out of range from the house, would dash ahead to take refuge behind boulders further up the knoll. Once under new cover, they would start a fusillade which gave the men on the opposite side a chance to advance. Three of the gang kept together and every time they moved, they picked up a heavy log and carted it up to the next boulder. It was evident that once Sanders got his crew well up to the house, these men, covered by the fire of their companions, would dash forward and batter in the door with their ram.
Three bodies lying stark on the hillside bespoke the courage and straight shooting of the besieged, but the rush must come soon, and the ultimate capture of the place was inevitable. “Unless we get busy—and get busy pronto!” muttered Bill.
He gave a lightning glance behind him. Ezra Parker and Osceola were firing from the rear cockpit, but so far without apparent result. To hit an object on the ground with a rifle bullet from a speeding airplane is a difficult feat, but Bill knew that the odds were against the gangsters. For it is even more difficult to hit an airplane in flight, that is, if she is being driven by an experienced pilot.
Much to the disgust of Osceola, who did not understand the manœuver, Bill levelled off and headed out to sea. A quarter of a mile from the island, he turned in his seat, and having attracted Parker’s attention, mouthed the words—“Hold fast!”
The two who were squeezed in the small cockpit aft nodded their understanding. For an instant or two longer Bill waited, then assured that they were secure, he sent the plane into a wingover. This manœuver is essentially a climbing turn followed by a diving turn, the two aggregating 180 degrees. The engine is kept running and control is maintained throughout.
A wingover is entered from level flight. At first it is merely a normal turn in which the nose is gradually raised, and slipping and skidding are to be avoided as usual. Elevation of the nose may be commenced simultaneously with the application of the bank. If so, the stick must be pulled back very slowly at first, as otherwise a stall will result and the wingover will be unsatisfactory. In flight training, unless the student’s judgment is particularly accurate, it is advisable for him to delay elevation of the nose until a bank of 15 to 20 degrees has been reached.
Bill steadily increased the bank until the amphibian was in a fairly steep reverse control turn with the nose well above the horizon, and headed approximately 90 degrees from his original course. He then gave the plane down rudder.
Inasmuch as a fairly good speed had been obtained, very little rudder was needed. Had the plane’s speed been close to the stalling point, he would have used more. At the same time Bill was careful to use the ailerons firmly to prevent the bank from increasing.
As the nose dropped below the horizon in response to the rudder, the plane assumed the position of a steep reverse control spiral, except that the engine was running. He kept it momentarily in this position; then as it approached a heading of 180 degrees from the entering course, he recovered as if from a spiral, at the same time raising the plane’s nose to level.
The entire manœuver of the wingover was executed, of course, in a fraction of the time it takes to describe it. Bill used it solely because he wished to bring the amphibian back on a course headed for the house on the island in the least time possible. He now waved a hand to his companions to make ready. Then he picked up the rifle he’d been sitting on, rested its barrel on the cowl of the cockpit and pushed forward the stick.
Over went the nose and down shot the plane in a breath-catching dive to be leveled off with a jerk, just beyond the breakers. Then with all three rifles pouring streams of spitting fire, Bill sent the airplane hurtling across the knoll at an altitude of less than ten feet above the heads of the cowering gangsters.
Up zoomed the amphibian on the farther side of the hill, gained altitude over the water, did another wingover and swept back across the knoll, but this time behind the house.
Again and again Bill repeated these telling evolutions. First one side, then the other was raked with fire from the plane. Then he would zoom the house itself in order to further confuse the besiegers.
On the plane’s eighth trip, Sanders’ forces broke. Flesh and blood could no longer stand this death-dealing hail of lead from a plane impossible to hit. Dragging their wounded with them, the routed gangsters dashed pell mell down to the shore. They piled into two motorboats beached in a cove and in less than no time, these two crafts were racing toward the mainland with everything wide open.
Bill let them go. Defense of the old man and the girl in the house on the hill was one thing: the shooting down of cowed men huddled in a couple of boats quite another. When he was convinced that the rout was a permanent fact, he landed the plane on the water, taxied into the same sandy cove from which the gunmen had departed, and beached her.
Deborah was waiting on the sand for them. Osceola was the first overboard and a moment later the two were clasped in each other’s arms.
Bill grinned at Ezra. “So far,” he said, “as you and I are concerned, well, we might be a couple of other rocks for all they mind!”
“That’s all right,” returned the older man as they went about making the plane secure. “They’re in love. We don’t exist for them just now. Don’t be so superior—you’ll be that way yourself some day!”
“Not me,” scoffed Bill.
“Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I was like you before the right girl came along. I don’t suppose you’ve thought any more about the orders Sanders gave you?”
“You mean, not to interfere any more with his plans and to report to that guy in Stamford?”
“Yes. And this little adventure has torn the first part of that to pieces!”
“You mean the consequences to Charlie of course—”
“Just that. Sanders will now take it for granted you’ve decided to stick to the ship in spite of his threats. There’s no use crying over the milk we’ve spilt tonight, lad. We had a job to do, and I’m throwin’ no bouquets when I tell you it was done noble! Too bad we couldn’t have wiped out the entire crew while we were about it. By the way, I didn’t spot His Nibs in that gang, did you?”
“No, Sanders wasn’t with his men. Guess distance lends enchantment with Mr. Sanders when there’s a good chance of stopping lead! That guy hires men to do his fighting. Take it from me, he is sound asleep in his little white bed, wherever that may be—and I only wish I knew where!”
“That,” said Ezra with a chuckle, “is a worthy thought—but it doesn’t get us any forrider with the matter in hand, does it?”
Bill was silent for a moment. Vaguely conscious that the rising cloud formation had at last obscured the moon, and the darkness after the brilliant moonlight seemed inky black, he wracked his brain for a means to outwit their enemy.
Suddenly he laughed. “What a pack of blithering idiots we are!” he almost shouted. “Look here, Ezra! Sanders doesn’t know I was in the bus. It’s dollars to a penny postage stamp, he thinks I’m asleep in my own bed at Turner’s!”
“Maybe. That is, if he doesn’t send someone in there again to-night to find out.”
“Not Sanders. That guy has a Jehovah complex. He knows he’s a world beater and doesn’t hide his knowledge under any bushel, either. Why, he’s so sure he put cold, naked fear into me he’d bet on it!”
“You’re probably right,” agreed Ezra. “He’s been over to my dump a couple of times. He’s got one of those Buhl-Verville Airsters, with a man to chauffeur him ’round. Nice little job, too. A three-place biplane—he can fold the wings back. When they’re folded, the hangar space required is only 9 feet by 13½ feet by 25!”
“That,” commented Bill, “is very likely the reason he picked on it—handy bus to hide. But what has a Buhl-Verville CW3 got to do with the price of spinach?”
“Nothin’, except your high-hat friend had me up to fix one of his shock absorbers. They’re of the Oleo rubber disc type on those crates. You see, under loading conditions, these rubber discs are in compression and an internal perforated plunger piston simultaneously travels into a loaded oil chamber at the lower end of the strut—”
“And,” interrupted Bill, “this absorbs the impact energy and neutralizes the effect of the rebound, which is so prevalent with the ordinary rubber spring shock absorbers. It cushions the landing shocks to the extent of saving the whole airplane structure from strains which are occasioned by shocks in bad landings over rough ground!”
“You win,” laughed Parker. “Up here in this out-of-the-way neck of the woods one forgets that there are other idiots crazy enough to waste time messing ’round with airbusses.”
“Thanks! But—”