The Agent looked at his watch under a tiny light on the gyro’s instrument panel. Ten fifteen.
The blimp below was moving steadily out to sea. The off-shore gale increased. The clouds below began to thin. Far ahead on the horizon Agent “X” caught a glimpse of the lighted portholes of a ship.
The blimp began to descend now. It dropped slowly two thousand feet, passed through the thin veil of clouds. Straight toward the ship it went. Agent “X” waited. Sometimes he lost sight of the craft below. But for a few seconds only. Then his sharp eyes caught again that nosing black shape. To catch the Octopus red-handed was his plan tonight.
The clouds had disappeared entirely now. The ship on the black surface of the sea below had grown larger. Ten minutes more and it was directly underneath.
The blimp made a wide circle. Its silent motors drove it ahead at three times the speed of the Morencia. It came up behind the boat, nosed directly over it. The speed of the blimp decreased until it was flying at the same rate as the boat. Agent “X” cut his gyro motor until its idling speed just kept the craft level.
The wisdom of his move in using a gyro was now evident. In an ordinary plane he would have had to circle, run the risk of being seen from those on board the blimp. The helium-filled bag of the blimp prevented him from seeing the signal lights that must have flashed.
For a brief instant, through powerful binoculars, he saw a pinpoint signal light on the deck of the Morencia. The watcher below must have had glasses trained on the night sky. The Octopus would never have run the risk of signals that casual eyes of ship’s officers might see.
IN the next fifteen minutes the blimp rode evenly above the harbor-bound steamer. What took place during those fifteen minutes Agent “X” could not see. But he knew that a daring, well-rehearsed robbery was in progress. He guessed that five million in gold was leaving the sea craft below and being hoisted to the aircraft above.
For suddenly the blimp increased its speed, began to rise, and the Agent tilted the vanes of his gyro up also. The robber was leaving the scene of his robbery with his spoils. Once Agent “X” looked back, and saw that brilliant lights had flashed up on the deck of the Morencia.
Searchlights from the ship’s pilot house began to comb the sea frantically. The steamer veered away from its course, wallowed in the Atlantic swells. The theft of the gold had evidently been discovered. Whoever 84–11 was, he had done his part well. But “X” knew he was only a minor cog in that vast machine of crime which the Octopus headed.
He continued to follow the blimp, mile after mile toward shore. To trace it to its secret hangar was his purpose. To take the Octopus and the stolen gold together. But suddenly the Agent’s eyes narrowed. Looking ahead now he could not see the twinkling lights of shore which should have been there. Something vast and gray loomed up. High above the gray mass a whitish rim of starlight was visible. “X” knew what that gray mass was. Fog.
His heart sank. The blimp wasn’t rising. It was heading straight toward the fog bank. Once in that moist gray mass where the cold sea winds had been vaporized by the warm air of the land, and the blimp would be swallowed up. With its motors muffled there would be no way for “X” to follow. He would lose it and the sinister trail of the Octopus again.
This thought made him desperate. It drove him to consider a plan which was daring to the point of sheer bravado. But there was no alternative now. Either he must take a chance inhumanly great, perform a dare-devil stunt — or lose the Octopus perhaps for weeks or months while his crimes went on. The Secret Agent made his decision there, far above the black, lonely sea.
Grimly he thrust the stick of the gyro forward, brought the craft down toward the bag of the blimp. Down, until he was so close that the wheels of the gyro seemed to hover only a few feet from that great black shape.
THE Agent stared over the edge of the cockpit, stared tensely at the craft below. He saw the woven shroud lines that made a network over the big bag, helping to support the cabin gondola beneath.
The blimp had picked up speed now. Its task accomplished, it was forging ahead at seventy-five miles an hour. Agent “X” swung his gyro slightly ahead of the other craft, came down again till the gyro’s wheels were almost on a level with the top of the big bag. He tested the controls, found them stable. Then resolutely he climbed over the side of the cockpit. The gyro swayed, but did not veer from its course.
Agent “X” stepped on the stubby single wing of the gyro, got down on hands and knees and slid his legs quickly underneath.
He reached up, gave the throttle a deft touch, slowed the gyro’s motor a fraction. The blimp began to catch up. Agent “X” slid down perilously to the gyro’s undercarriage. He snaked his body lower. Twisted beneath the gyro’s fuselage, gripped a cross piece.
Over his shoulder he could see the dark blot of the great blimp. Its bag seemed gigantic now. It was like some great devouring monster of the air. The Agent lowered his feet, hung by his hands.
The nose of the blimp slid underneath him slowly. The gyro’s speed was almost synchronized now. He hung as the blimp’s bag slid forward foot by foot. An air current made the gyro bob once. Ten feet suddenly separated “X” from the blimp’s bag. He was hanging in space between the two crafts. Another air current swung the gyro down. For a moment it seemed that the wind-vane plane was going to crash on top of the other.
Then Agent “X’s” feet touched the thick fabric of the blimp’s back. It was similar to the back of some great pachyderm. He reached down with one hand, grabbed a shroud line, let go of the gyro’s landing gear.
He crouched clinging to the top of the blimp as the gyro continued to sail on. Slowly it slid backwards as the blimp’s speed out-distanced it. Once the air wheels of the gyro did touch. A slight shudder passed over the helium filled bag beneath “X.” It might have been attributed to a gust of wind. The gyro fell away in the darkness behind, sacrificed as he had sacrificed the Oriole.
“X” had accomplished the seemingly impossible. He was alone on the Octopus’s strange craft.
Chapter XXIV
AS the blimp nosed into the fog bank like a great fish, Agent “X” began the desperate climb down over the craft’s side. The clutch of the wind was terrific now. A steady stream of cold, moist fog whipped against his face. The fog was like the slimy tentacles of an Octopus trying to snatch him away to death. But the Agent moved carefully, inch by inch, foot by foot.
He made sure of each hold before he let go the one he had. The fog was a blessing in a way. It was so thick that it veiled completely the faint light of the stars. It cloaked his movements in an impenetrable veil of blackness.
He came to the maximum bulge of the blimp’s bag, began to work inward. Before him, along the slanted shroud lines, he saw the faint glow of a small light. It was forward, toward the blimp’s control room.
“X,” too, worked forward. The light came through a small port in the gondola’s side. “X” located one of the two motors that propelled the craft. It was slightly away from the side of the gondola, giving the propeller room to revolve. “X” avoided those terrible whirling blades, one flick of which meant death.