Obelists Fly High Page 3

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘As you will appreciate, the trip is most important. I intend to accompany the party on your ’plane.’

  ‘Dear me, is there any danger?’ asked the president doubtfully. ‘Perhaps it would be better if he went by train.’

  Lord realised that, gently as he was leading up to the subject, a change of approach was necessary. Mr Marley, it was evident, possessed a certain timidity of outlook. Indeed, he was continuing, ‘We should not care to have any unpleasantness on one of our ’planes. We have not lost a passenger in over ten years. Our business is ordinary, prosaic transportation, as safe as any other kind. But we still have to be very careful, very careful. If there is any danger – ’

  ‘Well,’ said the detective, ‘is there any? Of course, if you consider the trip too hazardous, we shall have to consider that aspect fully.’

  His companion exploded protestingly, and Lord silently congratulated himself. ‘No hazard at all, none at all. We haven’t lost a passenger in ten years. A lighted boulevard from coast to coast, from coast to coast. Seventeen airports, seventy-nine intermediate fields, over a hundred lighted emergency fields, over five hundred beacons, two-way radio, weather reports every – ’

  ‘Just as I thought,’ said Lord. ‘An ordinary, every-day matter, flying now.’

  ‘Sixty million miles’ experience in handling passenger traffic,’ said the president.

  ‘Of course, I’m going simply as a precautionary measure. In a case so important as this one . . . Under the circumstances . . . ’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the president of Amalgamated, who knew nothing whatever about the circumstances, but who had achieved his present office largely by appearing wise under all conditions. ‘To be sure, yes . . . What ’plane are you taking, Captain Lord?’

  ‘That I don’t know yet. The earliest to-morrow, and the fastest. Speed is essential. I must attend to that for the whole party as soon as we reach the field.’

  ‘Bless my soul, we’re nearly there now.’ The big limousine slid down an incline from the elevated structure to a broad arterial highway which continued across the Jersey fields, flashed past a large arrowed sign – ‘Newark Airport’ – and turned left around a traffic circle. ‘Our early ’plane leaves at nine o’clock, gets you into Reno before two that night. San Francisco, four a.m. . . . So we can reach Los Angeles before seven. Competition . . . Well, well, here we are.’

  Mr Wiley, the manager of Amalgamated’s eastern terminus, had a small office to himself just beyond the broad waiting-room and ticket counter. ‘Every consideration, Mr Wiley,’ said the president, ‘every consideration. Anything he wants.’ The president smiled a thin smile and bustled off for his inspection; Miss Spedie undulated behind him, a closed but ready note-book in her manicured hand,

  The detective made known to Mr Wiley his desires as to reservations. Mr Wiley pressed a button. The reservation card of to-morrow’s nine a.m. cross-continent ’plane appeared upon Mr Wiley’s desk.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘Not always easy to accommodate five people on that ’plane as late as this. Only four booked so far, though. I’ll have our offices notified that five more places are taken . . . Five, you said?’

  ‘Said five. Amos Cutter, Fonda Mann, Isa Mann, Tinkham (don’t know his first name) and myself, Michael Lord.’

  ‘Oh, going yourself?’

  ‘Yes. By the way, who are the four passengers who are booked already?’

  ‘H’m. That’s an unusual question. Still, you’re the police.’ Mr Wiley drew the reservation card slowly toward him.

  Lord had been appraising the manager closely, and now concluded that he was a different type than the president. ‘I am going to confide in you,’ he decided. ‘This is confidential – I mean it. For no one else, either in your company or out of it . . . We have information that an attempt may be made to injure Dr Amos Cutter during his proposed trip. I am going along to protect him, if necessary. You will see that every precaution must be taken. That is why I asked you what I did, and why I shall have several other things to ask you.’

  The manager hesitated. Then, ‘Will the ’plane be in any danger, Captain Lord? I must insist that you be perfectly frank with me about that.’

  ‘No. We have no reason to suppose that there will be any danger whatsoever to your ’plane. The threat, such as it is, is directed entirely against Dr Cutter. Just the same, I will speak about the ’plane in a minute. But first, about the other passengers?’

  Mr Wiley now appeared thoroughly interested; as the president had inferred, his was a prosaic life. He hitched his chair over and placed the reservation card between himself and the detective. ‘There they are,’ he pointed out. Isador Didenot, Hugh L. Craven, L. R. Pons, Rev. Manly Bellowes. Just names; that’s all I know about them.’

  ‘Well, of all – ’ Lord was staring at the form in front of him with every appearance of astonishment. After a moment’s silence he asked, ‘You say you know nothing but their names? You don’t know whether this L. R. Pons is Dr L. Rees Pons, for example?’

  Wiley grinned ruefully. ‘Guess I spoke out of turn,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t know whether his name is L. Rees Pons or not, but I have seen him. He’s the only one I have, though. He made his own reservation at the field here, yesterday, I think, and I showed him over the place. A large man, two hundred and eighty pounds, I’d say; affable, moon-faced. Do you know him, Captain?’

  ‘I should say I did. Just by chance he was with me on my two most successful cases. This looks like a good omen . . . Well, well, Dr Pons, journeying again . . . Did he have grey hair, by the way?’

  ‘Yes, this man had grey hair. I noticed it especially because he seemed too young for grey hair.’

  ‘That’s the man, all right. And you’re correct; he is only about forty. Now these others. Let’s see, Manly Bellowes – there can’t very well be more than one of those. He must be the fellow with the church on Fifth Avenue – or is it Park Avenue? I’ve never heard him myself, I’m not much of a church goer, but I believe he’s something of a sensationalist – got a big following for a minister these days.’

  The manager did not commit himself; doubtless he, too, held no records for attendance at public worship.

  ‘And Hugh L. Craven,’ Lord continued, ‘will turnout to be the English novelist, unless I’m much mistaken. So there would seem to be three of your passengers out of the running for any criminal honours right off the bat. The Didenot man I’ve never heard of, however . . . Just as a matter of routine, can you let me know when and where each of them made his reservation?’

  ‘Sure I can get that for you. When do you want to know?’

  ‘Oh, any time this afternoon. If you wouldn’t mind telephoning it over to Headquarters for me. And now, I wonder if I can look at the ’plane we shall be taking, or at one like it. Just to familiarise myself with the arrangements. What are they, tri-motors?’

  ‘No.’ The manager’s voice deepened with unexpected pride, as he prepared to lead his visitor forth from the office. ‘We fly nothing but twin-motored Boeings on the cross-continent route now. They’re the fastest transport ’planes in the world – two Wasp motors rated at 550 horsepower each, seventy-four-foot wing-spread, with a cruising speed of 170 miles an hour. You’ll see, they’re the sweetest ships yet.’

  The immense hangar, into which they emerged directly from the passage behind Wiley’s office, arched high above them, its cantilevered roof, mostly transparent, letting great shafts of sunlight through to splash the wide floor area with brightness. The day had cleared now and was warmer, and both ends of the hangar, made up entirely of folding doors, had been thrown open. Except for an aviation show he had once attended, Lord had never seen so many ’planes under one roof. Single-seated open mail ’planes, two-seaters, cabin ’planes, and no less than four of the big transports seemed to his surprised eyes to be almost stacked on various parts of the floor. On several of them mechanics were working with the aid of spotlights dangling
from the roof, despite the general sunlight.

  Across an open space the manager led the way to one of the transports; with its silvered wings spread widely and gracefully from beneath its streamlined, torpedo fuselage it seemed, even under the hangar roof, as if poised for flight. The detective felt something of Wiley’s enthusiasm for this beautiful machine. Stepping in front of it, he noticed the long tapered snout with a hinged door at its forward end, probably for mail, and the two big rotary motors protruding one from each wing, a short distance on either side of the fuselage. ‘Landing lights,’ said the manager, as Lord stopped to look at the transparent sections on the leading edges of the wings. ‘The navigation lights are here,’ pointing to the red and green glass sections, also inset in the wing surfaces at their tips.

  The pilots’ covered cockpit was just visible above and at the rear end of the snout, with an unobstructed view in four directions, forward, to starboard, to port and upward. Behind, and slightly below it, the windows of the cabin stretched along the side of the fuselage to the single door on the starboard side, half-way down the ’plane’s body. To this door they walked and, Wiley having unlocked it, pulled themselves into the interior.

  Now the cabin itself lay before them; it was longer than Lord had supposed, and narrower. Along each side was a line of seats, five in each line, a window beside every seat. The seats, he found, were adjustable to any inclination, even the almost horizontal; in the wall beside them were individual reading lights, individual ventilators (for the windows could not be opened), and a combination cigarette lighter and ashtray. Also safety belts. Lord looked up from his inspection of a cigarette lighter.

  ‘Oh, yes, you can smoke. Except for the carpet and some wood and felt sound-insulation behind the walls, these are all-metal ’planes.’ Wiley showed him the system of general, as contrasted with individual, ventilation, and how it warmed the ’plane in winter and cooled it in summer. ‘The dome lights are out late at night, of course, but you can still read with your own light, if you want to.’

  Lord pointed to a round, stiff paper carton in a holder beside each seat. Wiley grinned. He said, ‘If you get sick. We have other measures, too.’ He produced a shallow box of small glass bulbs, rather like small electric light bulbs. ‘You break one of these in a handkerchief and inhale. It’s a gas of some kind; harmless, but does the trick for most people.’

  ‘Is that so? That’s ingenious. Never heard of it. Can I try one?’

  ‘Sure thing. Here.’

  Lord took the tiny object, dropped it into his handkerchief. As he hesitated, the manager extended thumb and forefinger. ‘This way.’ Lord crushed the nut-like hardness and bent his head quickly, breathed in. He was surprised at the absence of any distinctive odour, but a wave of cool clarity swept through his nostrils and throat. Or he thought it did.

  Up the aisle, past the six lateral braces across it, over which they stepped awkwardly, they came to the cabin’s forward partition. A narrow door here, with a glass window; on one side a large clock, on the other an altimeter. Wiley held the door open, and the detective looked in. The pilots’ cockpit. To right and left he saw intricately adjustable chairs, with the inevitable safety belt, and tilted forward in front of them, the dual control shafts sticking up from the flooring, surmounted by what looked like half an automobile steering wheel; half a circumference, its open ends joined by a diameter. Buttons on the shafts. Between the control sticks a box-like contrivance from which short levers protruded, and directly ahead the instrument panel, crowded with dials, pointers, gauges. He motioned toward an unusual one at the top, a large dial bearing a shaded cross-bar, over which hovered a miniature ’plane behind the glass.

  ‘The Sperry Artificial Horizon. All these ’planes are completely equipped for blind flying.’

  Metal struts across the glassed sides and over the glass roof. Lord found himself gaping without comprehension. ‘Thanks. Let’s go back.’

  They came again to the back of the cabin, with its three doors; the one by which they had entered, and in the rear partition one on the left (shelves, Thermos flasks, sandwich trays, coffee cups, blankets), and one on the right to a tiny wash-room and toilet. ‘There’s nothing beyond this but the baggage compartment and, behind that, the control wires through the tail. The baggage compartment does not connect with the rest of the ’plane; has its own door on the other side of the fuselage.’

  They came back, the manager carefully closing the doors behind them. They jumped from the cabin door to the concrete of the hangar. Just opposite them the president stood pointing with a small stick at a replica of the ’plane they were quitting; he was dictating fussily to his graceful secretary.

  Lord grinned.

  COLLEGE

  He rode back to the city, alone, in the biggest limousine he had ever seen. ‘Amalgamated Air Transport,’ it announced to all it passed. ‘Amalgamated.’ ‘Amalgamated Air Transport.’

  It was just as they were leaving the Holland Tunnel that he experienced a sudden idea. He thought it over; and the more he thought, the better he liked it. At Thirteenth Street and Seventh Avenue he knocked on the back of the chauffeur’s partition and had himself put down. As the man drove on, Lord was disappearing into a subway entrance – ‘Uptown.’

  At the college of Physicians and Surgeons his card – his own this time – secured immediate attention at the office. Not so immediate was the appearance of the man to whom he was eventually directed. Dr Gesell, finally located at the end of a gloomy corridor, regarded the detective with watery eyes peering through thick-lensed spectacles.

  ‘Er ist ein braver Mann,’ said Dr Gesell. ‘Sehr skilful, a gr’at surgeon. Who would wish to hurt him I do nodt know. Sometimes,’ said Dr Gesell, ‘life, I think, it a bad dream iss.’

  They talked.

  Half an hour later they were standing on the steps of the old building, already partly deserted for the new quarters of the College at the Medical Centre still farther uptown. Dr Gesell’s old-fashioned frock coat flapped slightly in the breeze, and his bald head was now covered by a grim bowler. ‘It iss the time; it is nodt the rest,’ he murmured. ‘I vill see.’

  ‘Gut morning, sir.’ Dr Gesell began a progress, ungainly but somehow dignified, along the sunlit street.

  ARMY BUILDING

  Downtown again, where the shade of deep chasms still held dullness and the wind blew briskly between skyscrapers. The mouth of Wall Street, sucking in and gushing forth pedestrians simultaneously between its brand new lips, two great despite-the-depression towers that flank its entrance. The end of Broadway, with its open plaza and little park, a reminder of the old days when Broadway was broad. Past the north end of the Customs House and down a slight decline toward water.

  Whitehall Street.

  Colonel Swickerly was the best dressed army officer of Lord’s experience. No less than four rows of ribbons decorated his breast, just above the embroidered wings. His boots, incredibly polished, like mirrors at an amusement resort, reflected everything in the room distortedly.

  ‘You’re not giving us much time.’ The colonel’s small, pointed moustache twitched with his smile. ‘We can do it, of course, but must have that request in writing from the Commissioner . . . Meantime, I’ll get on to Washington for final authority.’

  Lord got up. ‘Thank you, Colonel.’

  ‘Good hunting, Captain Lord.’

  AND HEADQUARTERS

  The only times when Police Headquarters show no lights are those rare occasions when the main fuses in the cellar are blown, but not always are there lights in the Commissioner’s office. To-night, however, there was a subdued glow from his windows high above the street. The glow was reflected from the yellow flood that, spreading downward from its two green-shaded points of origin, made the Commissioner’s desk a pool of brightness in the large dim room.

  Darrow, in informal evening dress, leaned back in his chair, his white shirt-front gleaming in the full rays of the desk lights. Lord still wore his mufti of the
morning; in fact, since his rendezvous in Central Park late that afternoon he had had no more than time to snatch a hasty dinner and return to Center Street. The daisy in the Commissioner’s lapel, he noted absently, seemed as fresh as its early morning counterpart. Number three daisy, no doubt.

  Darrow said, ‘It’s nearly nine o’clock. Let’s see where we stand. Now here are these reports.’ He shuffled through the pile of papers stacked neatly beside him.

  ‘In the first place the threatening note is a blank. There are no prints on it. The paper cannot be identified; the three big pad companies all make that grade, and probably a dozen or so smaller companies put it out, too. Same for the envelope. Waterman’s Fountain Pen Ink was used, probably with a #2 Spencerian nib. A good many people have ink and pens of that description; as a matter of fact, a number of hotels, and not only the large ones, supply their public writing desks with Waterman’s Ink. Printed capitals, of course, effectively disguise the handwriting; they’re even less characteristic than a typewriter, nothing there.

  ‘So there’s not much meat in the note. The only conclusion I can see is that the person who wrote it is not an ignorant tramp or anyone of such a category, but then there is no attempt to make us think so. The cheap paper is plainly a device to avoid tracing, that’s all. Either the combination of means employed in preparing the note was exceedingly lucky, or else, which seems more likely all around, the writer is quite clever enough to write untraceably.’

  Darrow laid aside the laboratory report and spread before him several other papers – the reports of his three operatives, together with a combined résumé. ‘Cutter,’ he continued, ‘went directly from here to the Grand Central, bought his tickets and then went home. His assistant arrived at his apartment about noon and they came out together at two-thirty, took a cab to the Medical Centre. He performed his operation, a long one; he left, again by cab, at 3.48. He then went to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, downtown, remaining until 6.30, when he left, stopped in at the University Club for a few minutes and proceeded to a restaurant in the East Fifties, where he had dinner. A report has just been telephoned in that he has now returned to his apartment, apparently for the night. Two other plain-clothes men are taking over now, to see that nothing happens to him.’