The engines had not been shut off. They roared and moaned, changing pitch with every erratic maneuver the great ship made. When air currents, or the crazy sweep of its jammed elevators turned its nose upward, the labored beat of the steel propellers slowed the motors to a furious, complaining whine. When the nose dropped and the ship swept into a power dive, the engines, free of strain, rose to frenzied shriek as the revolutions mounted.
Agent “X” was struggling against time. He had taken a desperate chance to rid the ship of the criminals. He had gambled that they were not air-minded enough to stand for long the erratic movements of the plane. A greater fear had forced them to risk the chutes in order to escape a more certain death. But, in driving them out, the Agent was bringing destruction close to himself. For the ship was losing altitude with every sickening lunge.
“X” came to a steel cross piece in the duralumin wall head. It slowed the blade of his hacksaw. He made another cut parallel with it, sawed across the top, pulled fiercely at the metal panel. If he didn’t get through to the pilot’s cockpit and reach the controls in the next few seconds he would be smashed to a jelly in the shattered, battered wreck of the ship when it struck the ground.
Sweat bathed his body as his fingers tore the metal strip. There was a plaster-board lining beyond. That snapped and crumbled under the swift lunge of his fist; but the hole he had cut was still not big enough to get through — and the steel cross-piece was impeding his progress. He drew his hacksaw under it, sawed frantically, till the blade’s note rose above the engine’s roar.
THE plane was within a thousand feet of the ground now. It gave a sickening, forward lunge that lost another hundred feet of altitude.
Desperately he turned and bent above the floor opening. He drew the metal strips from under the jammed control cables where they passed through the pulleys. He unwound the other from the cables themselves. The cables came free. They slid through the pulleys as wind pressure forced the elevators level. The pulley wheels whined.
The ship’s erratic maneuvers ceased. It almost leveled out. But there was no hand at the controls. The plane was still a plaything of the wind and air currents. With the engines full on it began a long sickening power dive toward the earth.
Secret Agent “X” worked like a madman. There were houses below — there were sleeping humans all unaware of the great rocketing tri-motor above. What if the plane struck a building? He could vision the wild holocaust of death and destruction that would result. Hot flames searing the night landscape. Smoke like a funeral pyre.
He had cut below the steel cross-brace now. He pulled at the duralumin with fierce tugs, cutting his hands. He kicked the plasterboard lining through with lunges of his shoe. Then, at last, the hole was large enough. He stooped and shoved his head and shoulders through, drawing his body after him.
There was a deadly evenness about the ship’s forward movement now. It was like the calm before the storm. It was as though the plane, a sensate thing, had resigned itself to utter destruction.
Agent “X” rose to his feet, lunged down the aisle in the cabin between rows of empty seats. The interior of the great plane was almost as large as that of a railway car.
The pilot’s door ahead was open. A short flight of steps led up to it. Dials gleamed on the instrument panel in the glow of electric bulbs.
The plane had dual wheel controls — a mechanism familiar to Agent “X.”
He leaped into one of the leather-cushioned seats, stared through the front vision window — and his heart seemed to rise in his throat.
Directly ahead, not more than five hundred feet below, were the lights of a small country village. For a second he caught a glimpse of the main street; saw a cluster of people in front of a drug store staring up, attracted by the increasing roar of the three great motors.
The Agent gripped the wheel controls, and beneath his disguise the veins stood out on his forehead like knots. For the terrific blast of the air stream was holding the elevators and ailerons in their present position as rigidly as though they were frozen.
WITH all his might he drew back on the control, feet pressed against the rudder bars, praying that he could avert the threatening disaster, praying that he could keep the plane from plunging like a destructive meteor into that peaceful village below.
For age-long seconds it seemed hopeless. Through the shimmering arc of the middle propeller the lights of the village still showed, growing larger every instant. They appeared as steadfast as a target in a cannon’s sight. Muscles in the Agent’s arms and shoulders knotted, bulged.
Then gradually, like the bow of a ship swinging slowly up on a great swell and making the horizon line sink, the nose of the big plane began to rise.
The lighted street sank from sight. The propeller appeared to crawl up the side of a building, up, up, till the rooftop showed. The Agent gave a final, desperate pull on the wheel. The steel chains in the sprockets passing from the control wheel down to the cables were so tight that it seemed they must snap.
But the peaked roof of the building sank from sight, too. The upper branches of a tall elm tree rushed into view. The plane, almost level, hurtled through them with a sickening swish and clatter. The big steel propellers sliced leaves and twigs, sending them showering to the ground. The plane’s fat air wheels swept through the bigger branches as it lunged upward, beating the tree top with its widespread tail assembly.
The propellers caught the air, snarled with a new note. The three radial motors whined with the deep-voiced pull drone. Agent “X” fed gas to them; drew the wheel back almost to his lap — and the great plane roared upward, mounting dizzily after the tremendous momentum of its dive.
He had saved it from crashing; saved the villagers from the death that had swooped down at them out of the night sky; he had saved his own life.
But as the huge tri-motor climbed steadily into the night sky the Agent’s mind raced. He had won this round with the criminals, had escaped from an apparently hopeless trap. But his real battle was only just beginning.
When the altimeter showed four thousand feet, he left the controls for a moment and went back into the cabin. There was nothing here to identify the men who had been in the plane. They had taken the bank cash with them when they jumped. But the Agent tensed suddenly.
On a small shelf at the rear of the cabin compartment were the things they had taken from his own pockets; his make-up equipment, tool kit, amplifier, bullet-proof vest — everything. He put the vest on, thrust the other things back into his coat, went to the controls of the plane again. He banked, swung due west, and looked at the compass.
Familiar with all the terrain around the city, he could give a good guess as to where he was now. He stared out a side window. The faint gleam of river water below, a string of lights set along a highway, gave him his bearings. He identified the village he had almost crashed into. He swung the ship toward the west, followed the river for a few miles. Then he throttled the motors to mere idling speed, pointing the plane’s nose groundward.
Somewhere below was a small airfield belonging to an airplane company that had gone bankrupt during the depression. Agent “X” had passed it many times in his car. It was a possible landing place.
But it was marked by no lights, and the criminals had used all the landing flares. “X” switched on the electric landing lights in the wing. Under their glow he caught a faint glimpse of the field he sought. The ghostly tops of the old hangars guided him.
Landing the huge tri-motor here would be a ticklish business even in daylight. At night, only a man of iron nerve and consummate skill could achieve it without cracking up. But the Agent side-slipped neatly into the small field, yawed the plane’s tail back and forth to kill speed. The air wheels touched the dim stretch of rusty green with hardly a bump, and he came to a stop in the center of the field.