The single propeller was about three times too big for the motor, a pilot would have said. And it had a sharper pitch than any propeller ever had before.
The plane stopped its stunting and straightened out again. It went fast, faster. It began to look like a line in the sky instead of a plane. It was going — what? Five hundred miles an hour? Six? There was no way of knowing, save that the ship kept on disappearing into a dark streak in the sky.
The pilot eased up, face as white, bewildered and fearful as had been the face of the sedan’s driver at the car’s unbelievable speed. A little more, and the motor would be torn right out of this old crate.
He banked, whirled, headed up.
The plane began going almost straight up into the sky. It was a fantastic angle of climb. It simply couldn’t be done. Yet this plane, in no way remarkable, was doing it — and not stalling.
The pilot leveled out once more; then he saw the small dirigible far off to the east.
The dirigible was cleverly painted. Blue-gray, it blended with the sky so that only because of a flash of the sun was the plane pilot able to glimpse it at all. And of course, in those last seconds of his life, he wasn’t able to see the occupants of the dirigible.
A man in the small hanging cabin was watching the plane through a telescope. A little earlier, he had watched the car go at its terrific pace over the salt flat. He nodded now, hat far down over his face so that only his eyes could be seen.
“That’s enough,” he said.
At the words, a man near him, sitting at a small table on which was what appeared to be a telegraph key, pressed that key. It was a radio-control button.
And eleven miles off, the incredible plane suddenly was no more!
A blinding flash of light appeared where the plane had been. Seconds later the sound of an explosion was heard in the dirigible.
And that was all!
CHAPTER V
The Girl and the Gun
The police weren’t looking for Xisco. The Avenger was. And he found news of him at a private airport.
The little man with the big ears had taken off in a private plane for the Newark airport and New York City. But before that he had scanned all weather reports and copied one down. The traces of his words were on the sheet of paper under the top of the telegraph-blank pad he had used. Graphite dust brought out the words.
And the report could be of only one district: Salt Lake City. Not Newark.
In the middle of the night The Avenger had taken off in his fast plane with Mac and Smitty and headed south and west. But there was destined to be a delay before Salt Lake City was reached.
During the morning, when they were within a hundred miles of the spot mentioned, they received the news flashes on Benson’s radio.
A plane, ownership and identity of pilot unknown, had apparently burst into bits yesterday afternoon over Utah. At least, it was thought to have been a plane, though such was the force of the explosion that it might have been a small meteor exploding on contact with the earth’s heavy atmosphere.
A rancher, however, had testified that he had seen a plane near the place of the explosion just previously. He said the plane had been going faster than he had ever seen one travel before.
Benson headed for the spot mentioned in the report and started cruising in wide circles.
“What are ye lookin’ for, Muster Benson?” asked Mac.
“Evidence of the plane wreck,” said The Avenger.
“The news flash said no one had been able to locate a wrecked plane—”
“Perhaps,” said Benson quietly, “the searchers were looking for pieces larger than there are to find.”
The barren land turned a thousand shades as the sun climbed. The flats were like giant saucers set in the earth. Far off, to the west, the rim of the largest flat of all could barely be seen.
“There’s a funny looking spot,” said Smitty suddenly, china-blue eyes widening as he stared down.
There was a section almost half a mile in extent that, at first, looked like the rest of the earth beneath. Then, as you stared harder, you saw that it had the curious aspect of having been recently seeded.
There were scattered black specks all over the circle, as if a great hand had scattered them thinly.
The Avenger’s plane shot down, lit like a feather in the midst of the black specks.
Except that down here the specks weren’t specks any more. They were fragments of a plane!
The fragments were such as to send a chill to your spine. No one of them was larger than a man’s two fists. Most were smaller. And all were fused and torn and ripped in an incredible way.
“Whoosh!” said Mac somberly. “Explosion, was it? I’ve never seen anything that could explode a plane like this.”
Benson didn’t seem to hear him. When he spoke, it was as though to himself.
“In all directions again,” he said softly. “The explosive acted in all directions, like the one at the Montreal police laboratory. Not just in the line of greatest resistance.”
Smitty was ranging swiftly around, staring at the twisted fragments. To an ordinary man, those pieces would mean nothing at all. But to Smitty they spelled a message that was increasingly curious as it became clearer.
“Funny,” he said. “I don’t see pieces of anything that looks like a gas tank.”
Benson nodded, colorless eyes taking on their icy sheen. He had noticed that from the start.
“Should we gather up a few of these?” said Mac distastefully, staring at the fragments.
The Avenger shook his head. He walked toward the plane. The three got in. But they didn’t go far.
Benson had barely lifted her from the level expanse and hurtled a dozen miles toward Salt Lake City when his marvelous eyes caught sight of something else. And again the plane whistled downward. Down to the middle of the biggest flat in sight.
There, conspicious in the paleness of the flat, was a large blackened area.
The three poked around that too.
“Somethin’ burned or exploded here,” said Mac.
Smitty nodded. The Avenger stooped and picked up something.
It was a little nubbin of a thing that had once been a hub cap; but it was so run together now, melted in some terrific heat, you couldn’t have told what it was save for a bit of the center medallion that retained traces of two letters.
“A car!” exclaimed Smitty. “A car burned here! But there was nothing said of any car in the dispatches.”
Benson stared from black spot to salt flat.
“It’s pretty plain,” he said quietly. “Automobiles only come to these places for speed runs. Therefore, there was a test car out here in the near past. It made its run, and then was consumed by fire.”
“Caught while she was speeding along,” said Mac sagely. “Too much strain on a hot motor.”
“In that case,” said Smitty, “there would be a long black trail of fire. Instead of this one spot. No, the car caught while it was standing still. Then, later, somebody was interested enough to haul it away. It couldn’t have been for salvage. A fire like that wouldn’t even leave salable junk.”
“A plane destroyed and a car burned up, within twenty miles of each other,” mused The Avenger, pale eyes flaring. Then he added, in the same expressionless tone, “Apparently, others are interested in this as well as ourselves.”
A speck had appeared on the horizon. It came across country, growing rapidly. As it raced nearer, the speck could be seen to be a closed truck. There was one man in the cab.
The van came to a stop between Benson, Mac and Smitty and their plane. It looked old, but had moved with a swift silence indicating that it was of an expensive make.