101 Mystery Stories

29 Drum Beat Stephen Marlowe

The big man sitting next to me in the window seat of the turboprop that was flying from Duluth, Minnesota, to Washington, D.C., looked at his watch and said, “Ten after seven, Drum. We’re halfway there. If I were running away and out over the ocean somewhere, they’d call it the point of no return.”

“You’re not running away, Mr. Heyn,” I said.

He smiled a little and agreed. “No, I’m not running away.”

And then the ticking started.

Heyn’s eyes widened. He’d been living with uncertainty and fear too long. The physical response was instant: the widening of the eyes, the sudden rictus of the mouth, a hand clutching at my wrist on the armrest between us.

The wordless response said: You read the papers, don’t you? This wouldn’t be the first bomb planted aboard an air liner, would it? And I’m a marked man, you know I am. That’s why you’re here.

I stood up quite calmly, but a pulse had begun to hammer in my throat, as if in time to the ticking. For a moment I saw the deep blue of the sky beyond Heyn’s head and then on the luggage rack over it I saw the attaché case. It wasn’t Sam Heyn’s. Heyn’s was next to it, monogrammed.

The ticking came from the unmarked case. It was very loud, or maybe that was my imagination. It sounded almost like a drum — each beat drumming our lives away and the lives of forty other innocent people in the turboprop.

I looked at the attaché case. I didn’t touch it. Time-rigged, sure; but who could tell what kind of a spit-and-string mechanism activated it? Maybe just lifting it from the rack would set it off.

A minute had passed, Heyn asked, “Find it?”

I nodded mutely. A little boy squirmed around in the seat in front of Heyn. “Mommy,” he said, “I hear a clock.”

Mommy heard it too. She gave Heyn and me a funny look. Just then a stewardess came by with a tray. She stopped in the aisle next to my seat, in a listening attitude.

“Is that yours?” Her smile was strained. “With a clock in it. I hope?”

“It’s not mine.” I squeezed near her in the narrow aisle. Close to her ear I said softly. “It may be a bomb, miss. That’s Sam Heyn in the window seat.”

Her back stiffened. That was all. Then she hurried forward to the pilot’s compartment. Heyn looked at me. A moment later over the PA a man’s voice said:

“Whoever owns the unmarked attaché case above seat seventeen, please claim it. This is the captain speaking. Whoever owns...”

I heard the ticking that was like a drum. Faces turned. There was talking in the cabin of the turboprop. No one claimed the attaché case.

Sweat beaded Heyn’s forehead. “When, dammit?” he said. “When will it go off?”

The captain came back. He had one of those self-confident, impassive faces they all have. He looked at the attaché case and listened to it. A man across the aisle got up to speak to him.

“Sit down, please,” the captain said.

Then a voice said: “Bomb...” and the passengers scrambled from their seats toward the front and rear of the cabin. In the confusion I told the captain quickly. “My name is Chet Drum, I’m a private investigator bringing Sam Heyn here to testify in Washington before the Hartsell Committee. If he can prove what the Truckers’ Brotherhood’s been up to in the Midwest, there’s going to be trouble.”

“I can prove it.” Heyn muttered.

I stared at the attaché case. I heard the ticking. It didn’t look as if he’d get the chance.

“We could unload it out the door,” the captain told me.

“Cabin’s pressurized, isn’t it?”

“So?”

“Who the hell know s how it’s rigged? Change of pressure could be enough to set it off.”

The captain nodded. He raised his voice and shouted. “Will you please all resume your seats?” Then he said, “If we could land in a hurry...” His face brightened. “Jesus, wait a minute.” He looked at his watch. “Seven-nineteen,” he said. Nine minutes had passed since the ticking started. “All we need is four thousand feet of runway. There’s a small airport near New Albany...”

He rushed forward. Seconds later we were told to fasten our seat belts for an emergency landing. The big turboprop whined into a steep glide.

The attaché case ticked and ticked.

We came in twice. The first time the wind was wrong, and the captain had to try it again. Buzzing the field, I saw a windsock tower, two small lonely hangars and three shiny black cars waiting on the apron of the runway.

Three black cars waiting for what?

I felt my facial muscles relax. I smiled idiotically at Sam Heyn. He frowned back at me, mopping sweat from his forehead. “Well, well, well,” I said.

He almost jumped from his seat when I reached over his head and lifted down the ticking attaché case. The man across the aisle gasped. We were banking steeply for our second run at the field. I carried the attaché case forward and through the door to the crew compartment.

The copilot had the stick. The captain looked at me and the attaché case. “Are you nuts or something?”

“I almost was.”

He just stared. The flaps were down. We were gliding in.

“Keep away from that field,” I said. The copilot ignored me.

I did the only thing I could to make them listen. I smashed the attaché case against a bulkhead, breaking the lock. The captain had made a grab for me, missing. I opened the case. There was a quiet little clock inside, and a noisy big one. The little one had triggered the big one to start at seven-ten. That was all.

No bomb.

“They knew your route,” I said. “They figured you wouldn’t dare ditch a time bomb, knew you’d have to land here if you heard it ticking at seven-ten. Three shiny black cars waiting at an airport in the middle of nowhere. They’re waiting for Heyn.” I pointed. “If you radio down below, you can have them picked up by the cops.”

It was seven-thirty. “I never want to live through another twenty minutes like that,” the captain said.

Neither did I. But Sam Heyn would get to Washington on schedule.