Justice, Inc.

CHAPTER V The Camouflaged Plane

The agent at the Buffalo airport looked curiously at the man across the counter from him. He had a vague feeling that he’d seen the man before, somewhere — and yet he knew that he could not have.

The man was of average height, but seemed short because his shoulders were so broad and he was so stocky. He wore a flat-brimmed hat with a slightly Western look. His face was flat and broad, with deep, weather-bitten lines. He moved slowly, and looked almost sleepy, with his narrowed, expressionless eyes.

The eyes were very light gray, almost colorless.

“We don’t usually charter planes for so long, or to go such distances, Mr. Conroy,” the agent said. “You want it for work in Nevada, you say? Why don’t you get a plane from a Western company?”

“I told you,” said the man. “This work is to be kept secret. I’d rather have a pilot from two thousand miles away than do business with a local firm.”

He shifted slightly bowed legs under him as though lonesome for the feel of a horse on the open range.

“Like I said, I’m a prospector. I located this claim in a place where only prospectors and mountain goats can go. No chance of getting in machinery by burro. So I want a plane to drop a little light machinery by parachute. And I understand you have a plane with a trapdoor, which would be just the ticket.”

The agent hesitated quite a long time. Then he said:

“I’m afraid your information is incorrect. We have no planes with trapdoors.”

The man’s narrowed gray eyes expressed disappointment. His face remained dead-pan, expressed nothing at all.

“Oh. I understood you had such a plane. I’m sorry I bothered you. I’ll have to go somewhere else.”

He nodded and left the office.

It was dark, by now. Late dusk. Lights flooded the field, of course; but his figure could only dimly be seen as he went to the gate and the cab there. He got into the cab.

The broad shoulders were caused by rubber pads, that could be inflated, over the shoulder caps. Benson deflated them. The Western-looking hat held that shape because in brim and crown fine wire was laced in the felt, unseen.

Benson altered the hat till it was Homburg style. He prodded his face. It had been broad and rather flat, deeply lined. It now became subtly leaner, smooth and extra full around the lips. He slipped his spring topcoat off and put it on inside out. It had been gray, checked. Now it was solid brown with a narrow, formal velvet collar.

It had only taken thirty seconds to make the change, but that was enough for the cab driver, sitting stolidly in front and waiting for orders, to get impatient.

“Where to, boss?” he said over his shoulder, not bothering to look around.

“Ely Hotel,” said Benson.

And he slipped out the side of the cab opposite the airport gate. The cab drove off, empty. Benson went back into the field.

He was slim, dapper, younger-looking than his years. He no more resembled the “prospector from Nevada” than Jack Dempsey resembles Tom Thumb.

He went directly to the biggest hangar, in which the large airliners were kept. He walked with that curious air of authority which some men can acquire, and which causes people instinctively to let them pass even though sometimes ordinary mortals are not allowed to. Several mechanics and field men stared at him as he entered the hangar, but after a hesitation, did not offer to bar his way.

In the huge shed were two liners. One had the figures H61 on its bulging nose. And the other was numbered — S402.

S402! It was S404 that MacMurdie said that had the opening in the bottom. Benson stared at the figures with eyes that glittered disappointment, even though his face never moved in line.

Then those quick, pale eyes of his, trained in a hundred deadly ventures to see things normal eyes did not observe, noticed something.

The gray paint on the airliner’s fuselage was well-kept but not new.

The paint of the figures themselves did seem new.

The nose loomed far above him. But, standing under it and staring up with eyes like a hawk’s in their telescopic-microscopic powers, he made sure of it. The figures had been painted on that ship later than the fuselage. Quite recently, in fact.

“So they’ve prepared for investigation,” Benson whispered.

Someone might look at the ship in which two souls had fantastically and impossibly vanished. So somebody had switched numbers. It was the S404 that he had traveled in. It was the S404 that had the trapdoor. But this ship was numbered S402.

Benson moved to the side. He climbed up into the fuselage. Into the body of the big plane. Light from the hangar penetrated the airliner’s windows and gave him dim illumination.

There was a thick carpet on the floor. It seemed to run under the seats, but as he tugged at it a strip rose in his hands. He folded it back. And there, in the metal floor was an oblong crack six by three.

The trapdoor.

Benson was a strong man, to begin with. And he had been tempered in the fire of an almost unendurable tragedy till he was hardly a man; he was a machine of vengeance. But the sight of this thing brought back in a rush all the awful torture of his loss.

Through that oblong, gravelike in its dimensions, his Alicia and their wee Alice had been dropped. There was no doubt of it. It was the only thing to explain the bizarre disappearance.

Far over the grim black surface of Lake Ontario, those two he loved had been dropped. Slugged first, perhaps, to prevent outcry! Who knew? Equipped hurriedly with parachutes, just possibly, so they’d land alive? He tried fiercely to believe that — and could not. The only motive for such a thing would have been a kidnap plot against them. And he had received no ransom demand since the terrible trip.

Benson leaned forward. His forehead touched the back of one of the seats and rested there. His shoulders shook a little in the last extremity of torment.

And all the time — his face did not move a muscle. Not a line! It was a dreadful thing to see that dead face so changeless in spite of the raging tornado behind it.

Through that opening, into the black water thousands of feet below—

It was while he leaned shuddering there, for the moment as helpless as a child in his colossal grief, that the dark figure crept into the plane behind him from the hangar.

Ordinarily a thousand little nerves would have felt the tiny shift of the plane on its great landing wheels as a man’s weight was added to it. Ordinarily a sense of hearing miraculously keen would have caught the faint rasp of moving clothes. But coming up behind the steel-spring adventurer with the deadly cold eyes just now was as easy as approaching a blind man.

The figure behind Benson paused a moment. Then its arm went up. Light glittered on a heavy wrench. The arm came down—

At the Hotel Ely, MacMurdie waited in the lobby. He had gone to the address of the friend given him by Benson. Under his arm was a small but heavy package. MacMurdie did not know what was in the package. He was waiting for Benson to come and take it, and tell, if he pleased, what he’d found out at the flying field.

But Benson did not come. And MacMurdie’s dour blue eyes went more coldly blue than ever.

Something in the man with the dead, white face from which the pale eyes peered so icily, had got under the skin of the lonely Scot. He was as worried by Benson’s continued absence as he would be if he’d known the man for ten years instead of as many hours.

There was a commotion at the desk. MacMurdie looked in that direction. A taxicab driver was arguing with the clerk.

“—looked back into the rear, and the guy wasn’t there. All the way to the airport and back on the meter. I want my dough.”

MacMurdie got up and walked toward the desk. The clerk said something he couldn’t hear.

“He’s said to come here to the Hotel Ely. He must be registered here. Naw, I don’t know his name. But I want my dough for that trip to the airport and back.”

MacMurdie’s knobby, mallet-like hand came down on the driver’s shoulder.

“Who are ye talking about, mon?”

“Some guy, looked like he was from the West. Picked me up outside a tailor shop downtown here. Had me take him to the airport. Then he took a run-out powder somewhere between the gate and here. And I’m stuck for the fare.”

“What did he look like?”

“I don’t remember much, except his eyes. They were very light gray.”

MacMurdie’s bony hand tightened till the driver yelped, then loosened.

“Wha’ is the bill?”

“Four dollars and ten cents.”

MacMurdie got out an ancient leather purse, with a clip snap. He opened it, took out four one-dollar bills, a nickel and five pennies.

He counted it carefully into the man’s hands.

“You throw your dough around in tips, don’t you?” said the driver sarcastically.

“Only a fool is prodigal wi’ his money,” said the Scot. “And now ye can take me out to that airport, as fast as you can navigate.”

He handed the small, heavy package to the clerk.

“Keep this till Muster Benson and me return.”

He felt like adding dourly, “If we do return.” But he didn’t.

He entered the airport gate from the cab with his hat pulled down low. He had been fired from here. They’d not let him in if they saw him.

He got past the office all right, and out to the hangar. They were wheeling out one of the big ships. S402 was painted on her nose. One of the mechanics waved to the Scot. They’d all liked him when he worked here. But another of the men, a fellow with dark hair growing down on his forehead and mean dark eyes set too close together, backed out of MacMurdie’s sight and then began running toward the airport administration building.

MacMurdie went up to the plane. The man who had waved, grinned at him.

“So they bounced you, Mac?” he said. “What was wrong? Drunk again?”

“I don’t touch the spirit of the vine, as well ye know, Tommy,” MacMurdie said. “ ’Twas a personal disagreement. Is this the S402? And how did it get the duralumin patch in the wing, and Dunlop-tread tires on the landin’ wheels, like the S404?”

“Why, now that you mention it,” said Tommy, staring, “you’re right! That’s funny! A guy was painting around here the other day, freshening up the numbers. I wonder if the dope could have got the wrong— Hey, Stock.”

Stock was the boss mechanic. MacMurdie waited with muscles tense for the answer to the call. But there wasn’t any answer.

“Stock!”

“He ain’t here,” said another of the men, coming from under the transport’s wing. “Guy got sick in the hangar a while ago. Some bird I never saw before. And Stock took him out — to a doctor’s, I guess. Anyhow, he ain’t back.”

MacMurdie was listening as though life depended on catching every last syllable with his big, outstanding ears.

“Guy sick in the hangar? Who?”

“I don’t know. I tell you I never saw him before. Somebody in from off the street. He was hanging around this boat, the S402, last I saw him. Then Stock and another guy came out supporting him like he’d keeled over in a faint. Don’t know what happened or where they went, but Stock ain’t back yet—”

From the office came the agent and two men who kept their hands near their armpits. MacMurdie saw them out of the corners of his somber blue eyes. And MacMurdie left. Fast!

He moved toward the airport gate, and the three moved to intercept him. They got to the gate at about the same time.

“MacMurdie! What the devil are you doing—”

The Scot didn’t take time to reply to the agent. He didn’t wait for the hands of the other two men to be withdrawn from under their lapels.

The two were little and ratlike. They had only one thing to fight with — guns. And they were handicapped because they couldn’t quite make up their minds to use them in the presence of so many airport attendants.

So while they were chewing their lips, the Scot’s long, bony arms swept out.

Each hamlike hand got a man’s collar. He jerked the two forward, then flung them back, with his huge right foot in the path of their feet. They tripped against the agent. The three went down.

MacMurdie leaped into the cab.

“Away from here, mon! Fast!”

The cab started forward. In a minute MacMurdie would give a definite address. He thought he knew where to go next.

He knew Stock, the boss mechanic, pretty well. Knew him as thoroughly as he disliked him. Stock had a small farm ten miles out of town. A shack of a place. If the “guy who was sick” was Benson, as MacMurdie was sure, and if Stock and others wanted to get rid of him, it was quite likely they’d take him to that secluded, desolate farm.

MacMurdie leaned forward to tell the driver to go out there. But before he could do that, there was action from behind.

One of the ratlike little gunmen had his automatic braced on his forearm, pistol-gallery style. Its sight was square on the hat to be seen in the back window of the cab, now thirty yards away.

The man squeezed the trigger. There was a galvanic movement of the hat, and then it went slowly forward out of sight.

“There!” said the man. “That’ll fix ’im! Got him square through the head. That’ll learn guys to come poking around here on things that don’t concern them!”