But the dark biplane possessed stupendous climb also. It pulled out of its dive, soared up on stubby wings, turned and relentlessly followed.
“They’re killers, Mr. Martin,” screamed Jim Hobart hoarsely. “It looks like a tough spot. What do you figure it means? Who are they?” His voice rose above the droning blast of the engine.
Agent “X” answered grimly.
“Part of a gang I’m trying to get a line on, Jim. They must have been doing some snooping of their own, found I was interested in them and figured I was going to Chi. That’s where their headquarters are.”
“Gangsters from Chi,” muttered Hobart. “I thought the end of prohibition had put a finish to their racket.”
“This is a bigger racket than alky ever thought of being, Jim. You’ll get a line on it if we—”
The sinister crackle at breaking glass interrupted his words. A burst from the plane behind had side-swiped the cabin of the Oriole, shattered a window. Cold air streamed in. The Agent’s eyes blazed. Then he gave a sudden exclamation. For a tongue of flame was licking the inside of a partition between the two windows. Incendiary bullets.
THE flame threatened to catch the plane’s cloth-covered interior, whipped on by the wind that was coming through the broken window. “X” dropped the control stick an instant, snatched a small extinguisher from beneath the instrument panel, and sent a hissing jet of chemical toward the burning spot. The flame went out; but the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun sounded again.
Grimly Agent “X” set himself to avoid those probing bullets. The men behind him knew their job. Their ship seemed as fast as his. A few incendiary bullets through the wings, and their own plane would become a flaming inferno. He was amazed that the gang he was fighting was aware of his intention of going to Chicago. It proved that the Octopus had a thousand eyes as well as a thousand sinister claws.
A smudge of smoke on the horizon showed now. Chicago! It wasn’t more than twenty miles distant. A sudden gleam came into the Agent’s eyes. Following the mysterious instruction of the Octopus, men were trying to kill him. He was to be wiped out before Van Camp arrived in the city, before some sinister meeting of the criminals took place. Perhaps the only way he could avoid suspicion was to appear to die.
For a second he cut the motor, talked quickly as the plane fell in another swift side-slip.
“I’m going to gamble, Jim — let them think they’ve got us. It’s the only way. When we hit, get away from the ship as fast as you can and keep under cover.”
“You mean — you’re going to crash?”
Agent “X” nodded grimly. He was fighting a crime corporation capitalized for millions, fighting men who stopped at nothing to achieve their sinister purposes. He stood ready now to sacrifice the Oriole, a ship that had cost altogether eight thousand dollars. But the vast resources given into his hands had been for the purpose of combating crime. Money was no object if the spending of it would bring criminals to justice.
As though he were wounded, or as though something had happened to the mechanism of the ship in that last burst. Agent “X” threw the Oriole into a series of erratic maneuvers. These were cunningly calculated to save them from the probing bullets of the plane behind as well as to lose altitude.
He dropped the nose into a sickening spin, making sky and ground below mingle in a mad, dizzying scramble. White-faced, but game to the limit, Jim Hobart clung to his seat, strained against his safety belt.
Agent “X” knew without looking that the other plane was following, ready to administer a coup de grace when he straightened out.
He jerked the monoplane out of the spin, but instantly, as incendiaries screamed close to his wings, he pulled the plane’s dive into the beginnings of another loop. At the top of it he seemed to lose all control. The orange ship dropped off on one wing, swept downward as though strung on a giant pendulum. From side to side it swept in a series of breath-taking plunges, like a dry leaf fluttering earthward.
And, as it lost altitude, Agent “X” reached under the instrument board and pulled toward him the handle of a small lever. There was a hiss, a roar, and instantly the air behind the plunging plane was filled with dense black smoke. It seemed that the incendiaries had fired the ship.
Hobart, not catching the significance of “X’s” tug on the lever, jerked his head around, eyes aghast. For the sky behind them was veiled in a pall of smoke.
“We’re afire!” he yelled, above the rumbling of the motor. But Agent “X” shook his head, pointing to the lever.
“That’s what I want them to think!” he said.
He had loosed a chemical into the feed line which came back through the engine exhaust in this dense, black vapor. Like the “smoke pots” used in movie shots of aerial warfare, it gave the effect of fire.
HE sat at the controls tense-faced now. The realistic crash landing he planned was a death-defying trick. Below were open fields interspersed with clumps of second-growth trees, their green tops feathering in the morning breeze.
The Agent opened a small trap in the floor, stared down. A deft touch on the ailerons, and the plunging plane slipped more to the left. Agent “X” calculated the distance down to the last foot. Above, ready to administer more leaden death if he should pull out of the aerial contortions that seemed the plunges of a doomed plane, was the other ship. He could faintly see it through the swirling plumes of smoke.
He let the Oriole side-slip swiftly toward the woods, judging the height of the trees. The wind was singing a devil’s paeon in struts and wires now. Agent “X” yelled to Hobart.
“We may have a bad crack-up. I’m going to take a chance. Don’t forget — get out of the plane as soon as we hit.”
Agent “X” did not elaborate; but he had a reason for his words. He wanted to make their crash as conclusively realistic as possible.
At the last second, as the ship swooped toward the woods, “X” brought the nose up to kill air speed. The orange plane “mushed” down among the pliant trees. Automatic wing slots opened up and checked the speed still more. The plane settled on the tops of the trees. Its weight tore branches. The weight of the engine pulled the nose down. It plunged into the green sea of foliage like some sea monster sinking below waves.
Branches made a terrific racket against the sides of the cabin fuselage. The light of the sky was blotted out by the green darkness of the leaves. Agent “X” had cut the switch. He braced himself, shouted to Hobart as the plane finally struck the ground.
There was soft forest loam here. It acted as a shock absorber, checked the concussion of the plane’s fall. With a grinding, cracking series of bumps the plane came to a standstill.
Agent “X” unsnapped his safety belt, kicked the side door open.
“Out — quick!” he said.
The lanky Hobart tumbled onto the forest floor. Agent “X” grabbed his suitcase, pitched it out ahead of him, then reached under the plane’s instrument panel again. He threw a small, inconspicuous switch. A faint noise like a concealed buzzer sounded somewhere inside the engine cowling.
Agent “X” tumbled out after Hobart, grabbed the ex-dick’s arm. “This way! Run!”
Under cover of the trees, while the black plane circled low overhead, they plunged forward across the forest floor. Fifty feet and Agent “X” suddenly pulled Hobart down on the ground, flat on his face.
As he did so there was a roar behind them. A mighty wind seemed to howl and shriek through the branches. The slender wings and gleaming fuselage of the Oriole blew into a myriad pieces as an electrically discharged time bomb exploded in the interior of the ship.