“You can have anything I’ve got, if you pull out of this, Smitty.”
“I don’t want anything but just to work for you.”
Mac passed over his careful drawing.
“Ye’re a suicidal fool, Smitty. But ye have your points, you overgrown gorilla. Though, of course, ye haven’t a chance in this.”
“You’re a wet blanket, Scotch,” said Smitty, studying the drawing.
And then he was gone, with Benson staring after him with that strange light in his eyes, and MacMurdie’s sandy ropes of eyebrows pulled down low.
“I wouldn’t tell him to his face,” Mac said, “but he’s a very brave mon.”
Benson only nodded.
“And I wouldn’t want to be the man he’s after,” added the Scot dourly.
The men Smitty was after, and over whom, though they didn’t yet realize it, the looming dead face of a man whose soul was as lifeless as his features drew ever closer, were on their way to the Buffalo airport.
That is, four of them were. The four were in an ordinary taxi. They were the big fellow with the black pads of hair on the backs of his hands, who had been a passenger the night Benson went to the men’s lavatory, two of the three ordinary-looking men who had also been along, and a newcomer — a dapper, slim man of forty, who was continually smiling with his lips but not with his eyes.
“Rena has the trunk?” the smiling man said.
“Yeah,” replied the big fellow with the hairy hands.
“The plane is booked solid?”
“You dummy! of course. Think we’d have other passengers?”
“You did, one night, I hear.”
The big man snapped out an oath.
“They didn’t stay aboard long! And a thing like that can’t happen again. We got it fixed so it can’t.”
The cab dumped them at the airport — four men who were dressed and who acted like any other four businessmen on the verge of a fast trip by plane. Each had a suitcase, of airplane weight. They walked toward the runway.
There, on the flat stretch, a transport stood with idling props. On its nose was painted S402. But it was the S404, all right — the one with the trapdoor. Somebody had decided that the switching of numbers was such a good idea that they’d make it permanent.
The four walked slowly; and in a moment, three other people from another cab caught up to them. There was a light trunk strapped to the back of the cab. The driver and an airport man got the trunk and carried it over the level field to the plane. They stowed it in the tail.
The three from the second cab were two men, average and unremarkable-looking as were the ones in the first taxi, and a woman. The woman was rather pretty, save for a hard line around the mouth. These, too, had innocent-looking airplane luggage with them in addition to the trunk. No one would have any suspicions about them, merely on looking them over. Seven people bound for Montreal by plane. One with a trunk. So what?
They climbed aboard. The props idled a little faster. A third cab drew up at the gate with a scream of brakes. From this cab leaped a figure that looked nine feet tall and five broad.
The giant lit running and raced toward the plane. He was a bizarre figure. For all his size, he had a hump on his back. It made you wonder how tall the tremendous hunchback would have grown if his spine had stayed straight.
“Hold that plane!” he yelled. “I’ve got to get aboard. Got to get to Montreal in a hurry!”
Aboard, the big fellow with the black pads of hair leaped to the door of the pilot’s compartment.
“Get going!” he snapped. “Some fool is trying to get on. Hurry!”
“I can’t get away till they take the chocks from under the wheels,” said the pilot. He waved wildly to the men on the ground to remove the blocks.
Near the steps still in place up to the plane door, the humpbacked giant who had ran from the cab was gesticulating and arguing with a field attendant.
“I don’t care if the plane is full! I’ve got to get aboard. I’ll sit in the aisle. And don’t try to tell me a ship like this one can’t get off the ground with just one passenger over capacity! These boats can take an extra half-ton overload and walk off with it.”
The attendant still barred the way. The humpbacked giant simply plucked him up by the collar, held him kicking two feet off the ground in one hand, and then set him aside a yard to the right.
They were closing the plane door. The giant got it, and forced it out against the pull of three men with seeming effortlessness. Then he was inside, beaming good nature and stupidity on the passengers.
“Sorry to cause a disturbance, folks, but I had to get aboard.”
The big fellow with the hairy hands was still at the pilot’s compartment. The pilot had heard the giant enter.
“Do I stall here till you can throw him off?” he said in a low tone.
“Yes!” the big man answered savagely. Then: “No. Here comes a couple of airport guys not on our payroll. We can’t stick around and have a brawl that’ll end with the cops sticking their bills in. That flat-faced, over-grown cripple! Well… nothing for it but to pull away fast.”
The door was slammed and secured. The pilot gave her the gun. The big ship flashed along the runway and majestically rose.
And in one of the seats always so curiously vacant when this crowd booked the plane, sat Smitty, beaming good nature with all his vast face and staring with amiable lack of intelligence at the others.
The pilot said just one word to the man with the black pads of hair.
“Where?”
“Just before we drop the other,” snapped the big fellow. “East end of the lake, as soon as you pick up the beacon light in the distance. We’ll fix the big dope like we fixed that other dummy who was fool enough to force his way on board. This guy got on at Buffalo — but he’ll never get off at Montreal.”
CHAPTER XII
Smitty Takes the Risk
A trip in a big transport plane, particularly at night, is not very exciting. The motion is smooth, there is nothing to see out of the windows, and the subdued roar of the motors is lulling. Passengers feel more like dozing than anything else.
The seven in the Montreal plane acted as dull and sleepy as any normal passengers would. Now and then, the big fellow with the hairy hands would lean forward and say something to the man who was always smiling with his lips but not the rest of his face. But that was about the only sign of life any of them gave.
Only the tremendous fellow with the hump on his back seemed excited. He looked as if this were his first plane trip. He stared out the window and down, trying to see something in the June dark, and then grinned at his fellow passengers. He looked like a huge kid with a new red sled. But it wasn’t fooling the fellow with the perpetual, meaningless smile.
“I make the guy now,” this man said to the big fellow across the aisle from him, voice low enough to be drowned from other ears by the motor hum. “He drove Leon’s car.”
The big fellow whistled soundlessly.
“So he’s not the dope he looks to be! Leon’s chauffeur, huh? I suppose he thinks he’s disguised, with that hump on his back. Might as well try to disguise Pikes Peak!”
“He must be hired by this Benson guy,” said the smiling man. But his smile was a little worried. “So now what?”
The other shrugged. “You know what. It woudn’t make any difference if he was as harmless as he’s tryin’ to look. Any way it lays, he goes out the trapdoor just the same.”
“He’s awful big. And did you see him lift the monkey at the field in one hand?”
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Got that stuff in your suitcase?”
“Sure.”
“Go and get it.”