Obelists Fly High Read online

  The occupants of the room, however, evinced nothing but the most innocent intentions. All but one of the arrivals seemed plainly sleepy, and the exception was a young man carrying a portfolio who walked briskly through the lounge and closed the opposite door smartly behind him. With some curiosity Lord saw the door open again and three of the passengers from New York file in. Pons was not with them, but through one of the side windows he saw his friend waiting behind the limousine, from whose capacious rear trunk the hand baggage was being lifted. There was no mistaking the large form and grey hair of Dr Pons, who already was mopping his face with an outsize handkerchief.

  Lord’s first impression of the three who were coming in was simply that they were all tall men, and in the next moment he saw that two of them were slender, almost thin, while the other was well filled out, though by no means stout. At this earliest glance, across the airport lounge, he strove to place them, to decide which was which. One of the lanky men with the tweed suit and the brown, grained shoes, must be Craven the novelist, and the other thin one must be the philosopher; he wore a black artist’s tie, a sack coat with trousers that did not match, and his face, along with his figure, was thin and ascetic. That left the well-built man for the role of the Rev. Dr Bellowes. Well, there was nothing against it; he had on a conservative suit of dark material, across which ran a heavy gold watch-chain and around his neck hung a broad black ribbon that disappeared into an upper vest pocket and doubtless ended in a pair of glasses.

  Interrupting further observation, Mr Wiley appeared at the other end of the room, accompanied by the two girls. He looked about, then spying Cutter and the detective, raised an arm and beckoned them toward the exit to the field. Lord turned to his companion. ‘I guess it’s time we were on our way; the manager seems to want us. Oh, Tinkham, we’re going out to the field.’ He hoped Wiley had seen to it that there would be no last-minute hitch in the arranged programme.

  But as they followed Fonda and Isa out the door and looked down the footway to the embarkation point, he saw that he need not have worried. The genuine arriving ’plane had been taxied away; a twin transport stood just behind the big Boeing now at the end of the path, and several men were engaged in transferring mail sacks and hand baggage from the ’plane at the end of the footway to the one behind it. Lord found time to admire Mr Wiley’s efficiency; even the mail had been loaded into the decoy departing ’plane. There were only these few minutes in which anyone who might have planned harm to the ship could realise what ship would really be used; and these few minutes would avail such an evildoer little, with the manager of the Amalgamated terminus standing watchfully in front of the second transport.

  As they stood waiting while the deceptive ’plane was taxied back to the hangar by a surprised mechanic, Lord remembered the question he had noted for the surgeon. He turned to the man beside him and said, ‘By the way, Dr Cutter, I was discussing vivisection with Tinkham just now, and I gathered that there is a considerable controversy on the matter, especially as concerns the possible use of human subjects. I wondered how you stood on the point, but I suppose you support your assistant’s party.’

  Cutter, who had been watching the manoeuvring of the second ’plane, which had now drawn up opposite them, said, ‘What . . . ? Oh, vivisection. Yes, Captain, I have done a great deal of vivisection in my time and been a hearty believer in it; Tinkham has probably gotten a lot of his enthusiasm from me. I used to think it our most promising technique, but – ’

  ‘What the devil are you trying to do?’ cried the assistant from just behind them. Lord and Cutter both turned abruptly, to see Tinkham and an attendant apparently struggling for the possession of a small black bag carried by the former. The porter was maintaining that all satchels must go into the luggage compartment in the rear of the ’plane.

  ‘But you say there is no communication between the passenger cabin and this compartment,’ Cutter’s aide expostulated. ‘Well, then, you can’t have it, and that’s final. This bag contains a hypodermic and a new glonoin solute for Dr Cutter’s heart, in case it becomes affected by the altitude. It goes with me, in the cabin.’

  It was Lord’s first knowledge of any heart weakness, and he looked inquiringly at the surgeon. ‘Yes,’ the latter acknowledged, ‘it’s just possible that I might experience a slight heart attack if we go high enough. Most unlikely, but as a precaution we have agreed to take out some nitro-glycerine as a stimulant. I was bothered once when mountain climbing, although that was certainly brought on by the exertion. This is Tinkham’s suggestion, really; he insisted on it.’

  ‘And I still insist on it.’

  Before the younger man’s emphasis the attendant melted away, and the party proceeded down the pathway to the accommodation ladder before the ’plane. Just inside the cabin stood the junior pilot; he was grinning cheerfully and handing out a small package of chewing gum and an air log map to each passenger who entered. Lord placed Cutter in the rear seat just forward of the entrance doorway and himself took the rear seat opposite. Tinkham selected a seat several places ahead of the detective, and Fonda and Isa took the two foremost seats in the cabin on opposite sides of the aisle. In a moment the other four passengers came stumbling in awkwardly, making a difficult progress up the narrow passage between the chairs. Dr Pons, the last to enter, did not recognise Lord in the dimmer light of the cabin, and the detective thought this moment of departure not the one in which to greet him. Of the ten in the cabin, it was the chair in front of Lord that remained vacant. The junior pilot had gone forward to the cockpit and, passing up the two steps from the cabin, had left open the small connecting door. A porter had removed the accommodation ladder and just outside the entrance stood Wiley, watch in hand. ‘Time!’ called the manager, then glanced within, hand on the door. He smiled across at Lord. ‘Good luck,’ he said in a low voice.

  The door slammed.

  The motors roared; the tail of the ’plane slewed around and it began taxi-ing slowly away from the buildings. Around the cockpit partition appeared the head of the junior pilot. ‘Please adjust your safety belts everyone, for the take-off; you can release them when we are in the air.’

  It seemed a long time bumping across the field to the opposite side, but finally the ’plane swept around once more, facing nearly in the direction from which it had come, and stopped. With the landing-gear brakes clamped tightly the motors were opened to full throttle, the r.p.m.’s, oil and fuel pressures and temperatures tested and the radio and other instruments checked. All this took scarcely a minute.

  The final tests had been made, the brakes released. The roar of the motors diminished, then rose again as the ’plane moved off in response to the ‘All Clear’ signal from across the field. Gradually it gathered momentum, and the bumps became harder. The field, Lord noticed, was not as smooth as it looked. Outside, the ground was speeding past, and suddenly, although there seemed no difference through the windows, he realised that the bumps had stopped. They had taken off.

  Then the nose of the ’plane lifted perceptibly; they began to climb and the ground fell away rapidly. Lord looked at the altimeter on the cockpit partition and saw that the pointer was moving. He was just in time, in glancing back through the window, to see the hangar roofs sweep away beneath them, to see the lines of parked automobiles already tiny below and a stretch of the Elevated Highway he had travelled this morning, as the ’plane tilted slightly in a bank and the horizon lifted above the top of his window.

  ‘PX,’ chattered the Teletype in the Amalgamated control tower, ‘74 LEWIS CV D9.03 NK.’

  (Position report. Airplane No. 74. Senior Pilot Lewis. Destination Cleveland. Departed 9.03 a.m. Signed: Newark)

  ‘PX 74 LEWIS CV D9.03 NK.’

  3750 FEET

  The junior pilot stepped down into the cabin from the cockpit. He came the length of the cabin and opened the locker door on the starboard side; when he returned he carried a shallow cardboard box. After an hour’s flight the noise of the motors had al
ready become accustomed, and everyone heard his raised voice without difficulty.

  ‘We are in the cross-currents over the Allegheny Mountains. It will be a little rough for half an hour or less. By that time we shall have come into smooth air again, but in the meantime I will pass these aromatic buds around for any of you who may feel uncomfortable.’

  He came slowly down the aisle, pausing to instruct the partakers in the use of the little bulbs whose acquaintance Lord had made the previous morning. Most of the passengers partook, for the peculiar motion that a ’plane gains when flying through disturbed air was becoming noticeable.

  The well-built man in the dark suit, who had been the first to re-fasten his safety belt when the motion had begun, reached out his hand as the pilot approached. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know how to use ’em. A bit bumpy about here, what? Air pockets.’

  The pilot, radiating cheerful unconcern, recognised an experienced air traveller. ‘We used to call them pockets, sir. Of course they’re not pockets, really – just billows in the air, pretty much like billows in water. We ride up and down on them.’

  ‘Quite.’ The passenger was brushing the tiny fragments of glass into the ashtray beside him. ‘I didn’t know that. Interesting. Thanks.’

  Dr Pons needed instruction, and welcomed it. He sat now in the vacant seat in front of the detective and, because he had screwed himself around in it to look backwards toward Lord, with whom he was talking, had not fastened his belt. His face, as he held to the back of the seat, was pasty, but after he had been shown how to inhale the contents of the offered bulb, and had relieved himself of a tremendous sneeze immediately afterward, his appearance showed marked improvement. The pilot adjusted the belt loosely around his liberal waist and departed forward. At the head of the cabin he entrusted his box of restoratives to Fonda, in case they should be wanted during his absence in the cockpit, and only remembered, after he had taken his own seat again, that he had originally meant to leave it with the more competent-looking Isa across the aisle. Somehow, in coming up the cabin, he had not noticed anyone but Fonda.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pons, ‘I’m going out to Hollywood. They pay good money for technical advice. Of course, it’s a racket, but I know the ropes now; I’ve been there before.’

  ‘Why fly, though? I don’t believe you really enjoy flying. Do you?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind it. I had to this time, anyhow; they’re making a picture about two girls in love with each other, and they have got into a jam and need to be helped out. They’re in a hurry, spending thousands of dollars a day to keep everyone on location, until I get there . . . Besides,’ Pons added with a return of his customarily broad, good-natured grin, ‘if I had known about this, I wouldn’t have missed out on it for anything. I suppose we can expect the shooting to start any minute now, old man.’

  Lord permitted a slow smile to crease the corners of his lips. ‘Just because you saw some shooting on the Meganaut you don’t need to expect gunfire to follow me around like a pet dog, doctor.’ He added more seriously, ‘As a matter of fact, this excursion isn’t exactly in the nature of a joke.’

  ‘No? I suppose not. What is it about, anyhow? Can you tell me?’

  The detective had found that while it was possible to be heard the full length of the cabin, and that without shouting, it was also possible by employing a correct modulation of the voice, to make one’s words audible for a distance of no more than two or three feet. Employing this tone, he said, ‘I know you can be trusted to keep quiet, doctor. Confidentially, I am guarding Dr Cutter, just across the aisle here, on this trip. He has received a death threat. Now, you know as much as I do.’

  Dr Pons pursed his lips for a soundless whistle. ‘You don’t say so?’ He lowered his voice and turned to eye the man in the seat opposite. He saw little more than a large shoulder, a grizzled cheek and the end of a beard touched with grey; Dr Cutter was sitting quietly looking out the window beside him.

  After a pause Pons turned back again to the detective. ‘You’re just guarding him on the trip?’ he asked, his voice still subdued. ‘Yes? Well, it doesn’t look so difficult; I don’t see how anyone could very well get at him where he is, and I suppose it will be like this all the way out. If you keep watching these people as you are now’ (for Lord, even while talking to his companion, had been letting his eyes rove continually along the two lines of seats ahead), ‘I don’t see how anyone can turn around or get out his chair to start something, without giving you plenty of warning . . . Have you any idea whom to look out for? It’s someone with us, I suppose?’

  ‘I don’t know who it is, or whether he or it is even with us. I’m just beginning to get acquainted with Cutter’s own party, and I haven’t even spoken to the rest of these people; don’t know much about them ... By the way, who is the man just ahead of Cutter, in the tweed suit?’

  ‘I can tell you that; I rode out with them from New York. The man in the tweed suit is some sort of philosopher, I understand. The fellow farther up, with the funny black tie, is a minister – Blows, Belows, something like that; and the dark suit ahead of you is an Englishman called Craven. None of them seemed desperate characters when I was talking to them.’

  Pons paused and Lord smiled, then explained that he had guessed them all wrong when he had first seen them entering the airport lounge at Newark. ‘Let’s get them right now,’ he added. ‘The lanky tweed is Isador Didenot, philosopher; the long thin one with the tie and the coat and trousers that don’t match is Manly Bellowes, and the big man of the gold watch-chain is Hugh L. Craven, English novelist.’ He murmured the names over again, while he inspected as much as he could see of the three passengers.

  ‘Ugh!’ cried Pons, shaking in his seat. ‘Gosh, what a jolt! How much longer do you think this will keep up?’

  ‘Don’t know. But there,’ his friend pointed through the window, ‘that ought to be Bellefonte, according to the log; we’re half-way through the mountains, at any rate.’

  Dr Pons craned his neck around and, peering through the glass, saw a valley in the Allegheny hills opening out beneath them. As he watched, it spread out right and left, and the ’plane swam steadily across it; almost directly below, as the cabin tilted momentarily, appeared a marked-out field, a tower, a radio mast, a large yellow number painted on a black background – 52 B.

  ‘That’s Bellefonte, all right,’ Lord confirmed, consulting his air log. ‘The field is 745 feet by this map, but there’s still some higher ground beyond before we ease off for Cleveland.’ While he spoke the motors took on a slightly deeper note, and the nose of the transport lifted gently as it climbed to surmount the greater altitudes around Clearfield thirty miles ahead.

  ‘Those three men,’ he continued, ‘have you come to any psychological conclusions about them, doctor?’

  The psychologist, glad to have his attention withdrawn from the motion, said, ‘Not very many. From what I know of the minister, I’d say he was out for personal publicity. I don’t know anything about Didenot, except that he’s a philosopher, and a philosopher – Well, I used to be interested in philosophy as an undergraduate, but I gave it up and, really, I just can’t think in those terms any more – don’t know what they’re talking about. My own approach is entirely different . . . The Englishman is typical. Silly aloofness; gives me a pain . . . That’s not much, I guess, but I didn’t know about their possible importance when I was riding out with them. From what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t pick any of them as your assailant, but then, of course, I haven’t seen enough of them yet.’

  ‘I don’t consider them very seriously myself, except that, so far, it may be anyone. I think the threat meant business, and I can’t afford to play favourites at this point; it would be too costly to be wrong.’

  ‘What about your own party?’

  ‘Cutter’s assistant and his two nieces. Innocent enough looking, too.’

  ‘H’m. Well, maybe.’ The psychologist considered, and Lord knew what was coming. ‘Two girls and a young
man. Any love affair there? Jealousy? Avuncular objection to a suitor?’

  ‘Not that I know of. But we’ll discuss it later.’ Dr Cutter, Lord noticed, had become restless and was casting inquiring glances in his direction. He loosened his belt and prepared to get up.

  ‘Just as you say.’ Dr Pons was unabashed as he began screwing himself around forward in his own seat. ‘One of them might be upsetting. That girl up in front, in this line of seats, I’d say, is a real captivatress.’

  Lord grinned broadly, but to himself; he had been right in one guess, at all events.

  2800 FEET

  Cleveland lay behind them. They had spent only a few minutes there, while the ’plane was refuelled and the pilots had visited the administration building. It had been almost exactly eleven o’clock, Central Time, when they had sped across the field and taken the air again for the hop to Chicago. Sixty minutes to zero hour, Lord had thought, mentally turning back the hands of the cabin clock which had then still registered Eastern Time.

  They had flown to the south of Toledo without pausing, while the air field Teletype reported their passage. Now they were flying over western Ohio, approaching the Indiana line, clear enough on the map, but unlikely to be identified below. To the south appeared a little cluster of buildings – Archbold, said the log map – while out the starboard windows the outlines of Intermediate Field No. 18 could just be glimpsed to the north.

  Lord sat in his seat as alertly as ever. His preparations had been made, every preparation he could think of, and the time of their testing was drawing near. Across the aisle Dr Cutter rode, chin in hand. He pressed his lips together, stretching them tightly across his teeth; it made of his mouth a clear-cut scar above the beard, like those which his deft surgeon’s fingers so skilfully made in the tegument of human bodies. His face, lean and square, beneath whose surface the muscles formed the hard, harsh angles of modernistic sculpture, was turned forward along the parallel rows of seats coming down the cabin from the rear wall of the pilots’ cockpit.