THE beat of the tri-motor’s engines deepened. He could hear the swish of the idling propellers now, the click of the valves. Metal grated directly ahead of him. He was lifted, thrust into a small space which he identified as a compartment in the tail of the big plane’s fuselage. There was sheet metal all around him now. The pressure of the machine gun and the clutching fingers were withdrawn. Agent “X” was a prisoner in the body of a big plane about to take off in the night to some unknown destination.
He waited till the throbbing rumble of the plane’s motors deepened into a vibrant roar; waited till he felt the huge craft moving forward for the take-off. Then, in the stuffy darkness of the compartment where he had been thrust, his fingers went to work.
He peeled the tape from eyes and mouth, flexed his cramped lids and lips. No slightest ray of light penetrated the narrow compartment imprisoning him. It was windowless, ventless. The only air was that which seeped in around the edges of the door. It was a baggage compartment in what had once been a passenger air liner.
The sheet metal around him was vibrating now with a steady motion indicating that the great plane had taken off, was rising upward into the night sky.
Putting his ear close to the metal ahead he detected the faint sound of men’s voices in the cabin. He reached into his pocket and made an unpleasant discovery.
His pockets had been emptied. Everything had been taken out: wallet, keys, knife, and chromium tools. His tubes and vials of makeup material were gone. His captors had removed even the small, portable sound amplifier which had so often stood him in good stead.
But one thing the gangsters had overlooked — not knowing yet with whom they dealt. In the sole of the Secret Agent’s shoe was a combination file and hacksaw, its blade made of tempered steel and a strip of glass-thin black diamond set in special cement.
Before removing this from its hiding place Agent “X” felt along the walls and ceiling of the compartment. It was made of soft, lightweight corrugated duralumin, riveted together. By pressing against the metal which was hardly thicker than tin, he located the points where it was fastened to the framework of the big fuselage.
Then, his face keenly intent in the darkness, he took the implement from his shoe and set to work. He punctured the duralumin floor with the point of the instrument. The razor-thin blade sliced through the metal as “X” drew it back and forth. The roar of the plane’s engines covered the faint, rasping sound it made. He worked with energetic speed. No telling how soon the plane might land — though at the moment it seemed to be climbing steadily. The pressure in his ears told him it had already reached an altitude of several thousand feet.
He made parallel cuts in the metal floor of the compartment, then cut crosswise at top and bottom and took the panel out. A space was disclosed beneath his feet. He reached down, groped in the darkness with tense fingers. His hands encountered a metal cable that moved snakily beneath his touch. It ran through pulleys that had pivotal fastenings. There was another cable at the other side of the hole he had cut. These were the plane’s controls, going to rudder and elevators.
AGENT “X” worked with his hacksaw again. He cut out another panel in the compartment’s flooring, as far forward as he could. Then he sawed several narrow strips of duralumin, tapering the ends. The thinnest strips could be used like flexible wire. They would suit his strange purpose nicely.
He put his hacksaw away temporarily and hunched forward, bracing his knees. He judged that the plane had left the city far behind now. Below must be a stretch of small towns and open country. He took a grip on the cable of the elevator control, wrapped his fingers around it, suddenly pulled with all his might.
The abruptness of the maneuver drew the control away from the pilot’s grasp, made the big plane’s nose dip down — and Agent “X” shoved a strip of metal between the cable and one of the pulleys, wedging it in.
The plane had now gone into a steep dive. He wrapped a strip of the duralumin around the cable and the pulley, holding it in that position. The quick tugs on the forward section of the cable indicated the pilot’s frantic attempts to free the controls and right his ship.
Agent “X” left him no time to recover. He seized the rudder cable next; jerked on that as he had on the other, felt the big plane swing its nose around. It heeled over on one wing, threatening suddenly to go into a deadly flat spin, and again Agent “X” wedged the control so that the pilot up forward was helpless.
The Secret Agent sat back on his heels, waiting tensely. The pitching and rocking of the ship threw him off his balance, hurled him against the wall of the compartment. The engines were cut down for a moment as the pilot sought desperately to free his wedged controls. Above the rumbling pop of the idling motors and the rising sigh of wind in the wings, Agent “X” heard the shouts of excited, frightened men. He heard stumbling feet up forward, heard a crash as a loosened seat or table struck one wall.
The great plane careened, did a falling leaf maneuver; hung for an instant dizzily. Then it slid off on one wing, plunging toward the earth far below, as though all the fiends of destruction were driving it down to its doom.
Chapter IV
IN the rocking, shuddering compartment of the plane’s fuselage, Agent “X” thrust his feet through the holes he had cut in the flooring and braced himself. The tail assembly thrashed from side to side as though the ship were a plaything of gigantic forces.
“X” heard the rising voices of men in the cabin. One of them screamed in terror. Thudding sounds pounded above the vibrating whine and mutter of the motors. Some one shouted an abrupt command.
Agent “X,” every muscle in his body taut to avoid the danger of being pitched against the metal walls, took out his hacksaw again. Quickly he cut a hole through the thin sub-flooring of the compartment A spurt of night air, chill as ice water, struck his face. But below, all was darkness.
He bent down, gripping a tubular steel brace, adjusting his eyes to the air blast that increased as the ship dropped.
Suddenly a brilliant flash of light stabbed upward. After the utter darkness inside the compartment, it almost blinded him. It was as though the night flamed with purple fire.
The light continued. It was the livid glow of a landing flare dropped by the pilot of the plunging plane. Agent “X” saw terrain then — fields, fences and clumps of trees far below. Here and there the square dot of a house showed, with smaller dots that were outlying buildings. These were farms. They were over open country.
The plane, utterly out of control, yawed sickeningly, great wings fanning the air, tail sweeping from side to side. The shouts of the men up forward rose in a frenzy of terror.
Abruptly Agent “X” bent lower, staring down through the rent in the metal. Something like a circular white flower blossomed beneath the ship, starkly outlined by the landing flare against the darker countryside. It was an opening parachute. One of the plane’s passengers had jumped.
Another and another chute appeared as “X” watched, a grim light of triumph in his eyes. He widened the hole in the flooring with quick, tense thrusts of his hacksaw to open up a fuller range of vision. He counted the chutes as they blossomed out till twelve had appeared. The gangster criminals were leaving the plane, deserting it as rats desert a sinking ship.
The Secret Agent rose abruptly from his bent position. He stabbed the sharp point of the hacksaw forward, puncturing the wall between the prison compartment and the plane’s cabin.