Page 3

Page 3

Author: Various

Category: Humorous

Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/various/page,3,4323-astounding_stories_of_super-science,_june,_1930.html 

  Murder Madness

  PART TWO OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL

  _By Murray Leinster_

  "_As the madness grew, the two men fought. They weremurder mad. The local sub-deputy gave his guests the thrill ofwatching maniacs battling to the death._"]

  [Sidenote: Bell, of the secret "Trade," strikes into the SouthAmerican jungle to find the hidden stronghold of The Master--theunknown monster whose diabolical poison swiftly and surely isenslaving the whole continent.]

  Seven United States Secret Service men have disappeared in SouthAmerica. Another is found--a screaming homicidal maniac. It is rumoredthat they are victims of a diabolical poison which produces "murdermadness."

  Charley Bell, of the "Trade"--a secret service organization that doesnot officially exist--discovers that a sinister system of slavery isflourishing in South America, headed by a mysterious man known only asThe Master. This slavery is accomplished by means of a poison whichcauses its victims to experience a horrible writhing of the hands,followed by a madness to do murder, two weeks after the poison istaken.

  The victims get relief only with an antidote supplied through Ribiera,The Master's Chief Deputy; but in the antidote there is more of thepoison which again in two weeks will take effect. And so it is that aperson who once receives the poison is forever enslaved.

  Bell learns that Ribiera has kidnapped Paula Canalejas, daughter of aBrazilian cabinet minister--himself a victim--who has killed himselfon feeling the "murder madness," caused by the poison, coming overhim. Bell corners Ribiera in his home, buries the muzzles of twosix-guns in his stomach, and demands that he set Paula free.

  CHAPTER VI

  In this room the electric lights were necessary at all times. And itoccurred to Bell irrelevantly that perhaps there were no windowsbecause there might be sometimes rather noisy scenes within thesewalls. And windows will convey the sound of screaming to the outsideair, while solid walls will not.

  He stood alert and grim, with his revolvers pressing into Ribiera'sflabby flesh. His fingers were tensed upon the triggers. If he killedRibiera, he would be killed. Of course. And men and women he had knownand liked might be doomed to the most horrible of fates by Ribiera'sdeath. Yet even the death or madness of many men was preferable to thesuccess of the conspiracy in which Ribiera seemed to figure largely.

  Ribiera looked up at him with the eyes of a terrified snake. There wasa little stirring at the door.

  "Your friends," said Bell softly, "had better not come close."

  Ribiera gasped an order. The stirrings stopped. Paula came slowly intothe room quite alone. She smiled queerly at Bell.

  "I believed that you would come," she said quietly. "And yet I do notknow that we can escape."

  "We're going to try," said Bell grimly. To Ribiera he added curtly,"You'd better order the path cleared to the door, and have one of yourcars brought around."

  * * * * *

  Ribiera croaked a repetition of the command.

  "Now stand up--slowly," said Bell evenly. "Very slowly. I don't wantto die, Ribiera, so I don't want to kill you. But I haven't much hopeof escape, so I shan't hesitate very long about doing it. And I've gotthese guns' hammers trembling at full cock. If I get a bullet throughmy head, they'll go off just the same and kill you."

  Ribiera got up. Slowly. His face was a pasty gray.

  "Your major-domo," Bell told him matter-of-factly, "will go before usand open every door on both sides of the way to the street. Paula"--heused her given name without thought, or without realizing it--"Paulawill go and look into each door. If she as much as looks frightened, Ifire, and try to fight the rest of the way clear. Understand? I'mgoing to get down to a boat I have ready in the harbor if I have tokill you and every living soul in the house!"

  There was no boat in the harbor, naturally. But the major-domo movedhesitantly across the room, looking at his master for orders. ForRibiera to die meant death or madness to his slaves. The major-domo'sface was ghastly with fear. He moved onward, and Bell heard the soundof doors being thrust wide. Once he gave a command in the staccatofashion of a terrified man. Bell nodded grimly.

  "Now we'll move. Slowly, Ribiera! Always slowly.... Ah! That's better!Paula, you go on before and look into each room. I shall be sorry ifany of your servants follow after you, Ribiera.... Through thedoorway. Yes! All clear, Paula? I'm balancing the hammers verycarefully, Ribiera. Very delicate work. It is fortunate for you thatmy nerves are rather steady. But really, I don't much care.... Stillall clear before us, Paula? With the servants nerve-racked as theyare, I believe we'll make it through, even if I do kill Ribiera.There'll be no particular point in killing us then. It won't helpthem. Don't stumble, please, Ribiera.... Go carefully, and veryslowly...."

  * * * * *

  Ribiera's face was a gray mask of terror when they reached the door. Along, low car with two men on the chauffeur's seat was waiting.

  "Only one man up front, Ribiera," said Bell dryly. "No ostentation,please. Now, I hope your servants haven't summoned the police, becausethey might want to stop me from marching you out there with a gun inthe small of your back. And that would be deplorable, Ribiera. Quitedeplorable."

  With a glance, he ordered Paula into the tonneau. He followed her,driving Ribiera before him. There seemed to be none about but thestricken, terrified servant who had opened the door for their exit.

  "My friend," Bell told the major-domo grimly, "I'll give you a bit ofcomfort. I'm not going to try to take the Senhor Ribiera away with me.Once I'm on board the yacht that waits for me, I'll release him so hecan keep you poor devils sane until my Government has found a way tobeat this devilish poison of his. Then I'll come back and kill him.Now you can tell the chauffeur to drive us to the Biera Mar."

  He settled back in his seat. There were beads of perspiration on hisforehead, but he could not wipe them off. He held the two revolversagainst Ribiera's flabby body.

  * * * * *

  The car turned the corner, and he added dryly:

  "Your servants, Ribiera, will warn your more prominent slaves of myintention of going on board a yacht. Preparations will be made to stopevery pleasure boat and search it for me. So ... tell your chauffeurto swing about and make for the flying field. And tell him to drivecarefully, by the way. I've still got these guns on a very fineadjustment of the trigger-pressure."

  Ribiera croaked the order. Bell was exactly savage enough to kill himif he did not escape.

  For twenty minutes the car sped through the residential districts ofRio. The sun was high in the air, but clouds were banking up above thePao d'Assucar--the Sugarloaf--and it looked as if there might be oneof the sudden summer thunderstorms that sometimes sweep Rio.

  Then the clear road to the flying field. Rio has the largestmetropolitan district in the world, but a great deal of it is piled onend, and Rio itself built on most of the rest. The flying field isnecessarily some miles from even the residential districts, for thesake of a level plain of sufficient area.

  The car shot ahead through practically untouched jungle, interspersedwith tiny clearings in which were patchwork houses that might havebeen a thousand miles in the interior instead of so near the center ofall civilization in Brazil. Up smooth gradients. Around beautifullyengineered curves.

  * * * * *

  Bell put aside one revolver long enough to search Ribiera carefully.He found a pearl-handled automatic, and handed it to Paula.

  "Worth having," he said cheerfully. "I wonder if you'd mind searchingthe chauffeur: with that gun at his head I think he'd be peaceful. Youneedn't have him stop."

  Paula stood up, smiling a little.

  "I did not think I lacked courage, Senhor," she observed, "but youhave taught me more."

  "_Nil desperandum_," said Bell lightly. He relaxed deliberately.Matters would be tense at the flying field, and he would need to bewholly calm. There was little danger of an attempt at rescue
here, andthe necessity of being ready to shoot Ribiera at any instant was nolonger a matter of split seconds.

  He watched, while, bent over the back of the front seat, she extractedtwo squat weapons from the chauffeur's pockets.

  "Quite an arsenal," said Bell as he pocketed them. He turnedpleasantly to Ribiera. "Now, Ribiera, you understand just what I want.That big amphibian plane of yours is fairly fast, and once when I wasmerely your guest you assured me that it was always kept fueled andeven provisioned for a long flight. When we reach the flying field Iwant it rolled out and warmed up, over at the other end of the fieldfrom the flying line. We'll go over to it in the car.

  "And I've thought of something. It worried me, before, becausesometimes if a man's shot he merely relaxes all over. So while we'reat the flying field I'm going to be holding back the triggers of theseguns with my thumbs. I don't have to pull the trigger at all--just letgo and they'll go off. It isn't so fine an adjustment as I had justnow, but it's safer for you as long as you behave. And you might urgeyour chauffeur to be cautious. I do hope, Ribiera, that you won't lookas if you were frightened. If there's any hitch, and delay for lettingsome fuel out of the tanks or messing up the motors, I'll be verysorry for you."

  * * * * *

  The car swooped out into bright sunshine. The flying field lay below,already in the shadow of the banking clouds above. Hangars laystretched out across the level space.

  Through the gates. Ribiera licked his lips. Bell jammed the revolvermuzzles closer against his sides. The chauffeur halted the car. Paulaspoke softly to him. He stiffened. Bell found it possible to smilefaintly.

  Ribiera gave orders. There was a moment's pause--the revolver muzzleswent deeper into his side--and he snarled a repetition. The officialcringed and moved swiftly.

  "You have chosen your slaves well, Ribiera," said Bell coolly. "Theyseem to occupy all strategic positions. We'll ride across."

  The gears clashed. The car swerved forward and went deliberatelyacross the wide clear space that was the flying field. It halted nearthe farther side. In minutes the door of a hangar swung wide. Therewas the sputtering of a not-yet-warmed-up motor. The big plane cameslowly out, its motors coughing now and then. It swung clumsily acrossthe field, turned in a wide circle, and stopped some forty or fiftyfeet from the car.

  "Send the mechanic back, on foot," said Bell softly.

  Again Ribiera found it expedient to snarl. And Bell added, gently,while the throttled-down motors of the big amphibian boomed on:

  "Now get out of the car."

  Tiny figures began to gaze curiously at them from the row of hangars.The mechanic, starting back on foot, the four people getting out ofthe car, the big plane waiting....

  * * * * *

  With his revolver ready and aimed at Ribiera's bulk, Bell reached inthe front of the car and turned off the switch. The motor diedabruptly. He put the key in his pocket.

  "Just to get a minute or two extra start," he said dryly. "Climb up inthe plane, Paula."

  She obeyed, and turned at the top.

  "I will cover them until you are up," she said quietly.

  Bell laughed, now. A genuine laugh, for the first time in many days.

  "We do work together!" he said cheerfully.

  But he backed up the ladder. There was a stirring over by the hangars.The mechanic who had taxied the plane to this spot was a dwindlingspeck, no more than a third of the way across the field. But even fromthe distant hangars it could be seen that something was wrong.

  "Close the door, Paula," said Bell. He had seated himself at thecontrols, and scanned the instruments closely.

  This machine was heavy and large and massive. The boat-body betweenthe retractable wheels added weight to the structure, and when Bellgave it the gun it seemed to pick up speed with an irritatingslowness, and to roll and lurch very heavily when it did begin toapproach flying speed. The run was long before the tail came up. Itwas longer before the joltings lessened and the plane began to riseslowly, with the solid steadiness that only a large and heavily loadedplane can compass.

  * * * * *

  Up, and up.... Bell was three hundred feet high when he crossed thehangars and saw tiny faces staring up at him. Some of the smallfigures were pointing across the field. The big plane circled widely,gaining altitude, and Bell gazed down. Ribiera was gesticulatingwildly, pointing upward to the soaring thing, shaking his fist at it,and making imperious, frantic motions of command.

  Bell took one quick glance all about the horizon. Toward the sea thesun shone down brilliantly upon the city. Inland a broad white wall ofadvancing rain moved toward the coastline. And Bell smiled frostily,and flung the big ship into a dive and swooped down upon Ribiera as ahawk might swoop at a chicken.

  Ribiera saw the monster thing bearing down savagely, its motorsbellowing, its nose pointed directly at him. And there is absolutelynothing more terrifying upon the earth than to see a plane diving uponyou with deadly intent. A panic that throws back to non-humanancestors seizes upon a man. He feels the paralysis of those ancientanthropoids who were preyed upon by dying races of winged monsters inthe past. That racial, atavistic terror seizes upon him.

  Bell laughed, though it sounded more like a bark, as Ribiera flunghimself to the ground and screamed hoarsely when the plane seemedabout to pounce upon him. The shrill timbre of the shriek cut throughthe roaring of the motors, even through the thick padding of the bigplane's cabin walls that reduced that roaring to a not intolerablegrowl.

  * * * * *

  But the plane passed ten feet or more above his head. It rose, andclimbed steeply, and passed again above the now buzzing, agitatedhangars, and climbed above the hills behind the flying field as somemen went running and others moved by swifter means toward the shaken,nerve-racked Ribiera, on whose lips were flecks of foam.

  Bell looked far below and far behind him. The incredible greenness oftropic verdure, of the jungle which rings Rio all about. The manyglitterings of sunlight upon glass, and upon the polished domes ofsundry public buildings, and the multitudinous shimmerings of thetropic sun upon the bay. The deep dark shadow of the banking cloudsdrew a sharp line across the earth, and deep in that shadow lay theflying field, growing small and distant as the plane flew on. Butspecks raced across the wide expanse. In a peculiar, irrationalfashion those specks darted toward a nearly invisible speck, andencountered other specks darting away from that nearly invisiblespeck, and gradually all the specks were turned about and racing forthe angular, toy-block squares which were the hangars of theaeroplanes of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

  Little white things appeared from those hangars--planes being thrustout into the open air while motes of men raced agitatedly about them.One of them was suddenly in motion. It moved slowly and clumsilyacross the ground, and then abruptly moved more swiftly. It seemed tofloat upward and to swing about in mid-air. It came floating towardthe amphibian, though apparently nearly stationary against the sky.Another moved jerkily, and another....

  * * * * *

  Just before the big plane dived into the wide white wall of fallingwater, the air behind it seemed to swarm with aircraft.

  In the cabin of the amphibian, of course, the bellowing of the motorsoutside was muffled to a certain degree. Paula clung to the seats andmoved awkwardly up to the place beside Bell. She had just managed toseat herself when the falling sheet of water obliterated all theworld.

  "Strap yourself in your seat," he said in her ear above the persistenttumult without. "Then you might adjust my safety-belt. Well be flyingblind in this rain. I hope the propellers hold."

  She fumbled, first at the belt beside his upholstered chair, and onlyafterward adjusted her own. He sent a quick glance at her.

  "Shouldn't have done that," he said quietly. "I can manage somehow."

  The plane lurched and tumbled wildly. He kicked rudder and jerked onthe stick,
watching the instrument board closely. In moments the wildgyrations ceased.

  "The beginning of this," he said evenly, "is going to be hectic.There'll be lightning soon."

  Almost on his words the gray mist out the cabin windows seemed toflame. There was thunder even above the motors. But the faint,perceptible trembling of the whole plane under the impulse of itsengines kept on. Bell kept his eyes on the bank and turn indicator,glancing now and then at the altimeter.

  "We've got to climb," he said shortly, "up where the lightning is,too. We want to pass the Serra da Carioca with room to spare, or we'llcrash on it."

  There was no noticeable change in the progress of the plane, ofcourse. Rain was dashing against the windows of the cabin with anincredible velocity. Rain at a hundred miles an hour acts more likehail than water, anyhow, and Bell was trusting grimly to the hope thatthe propellers were of steel, which will withstand even hail, and ahope that the blast through the engine cowlings would keep the wiringfree of water-made short circuits.

  * * * * *

  But the air was bad beyond belief. At times the plane spun likethistledown in a vast and venomous flood that crashed into thewindows with a vicious rattling. Lightning began and grew fiercer. Itseemed at times as if the plane were whirling crazily in sheerincandescent flame. The swift air-currents at the beginning of atropic thunderstorm were here multiplied in trickiness and velocity bythe hills of the Serra da Carioca, and Bell was flying blind as well.The safety-belts were needed fifty times within twenty minutes, as thebig ship was flung about by fierce blasts that sometimes blew even therain upward for a time. And over all, as the amphibian spun madly, andtoppled crazily and fought for height, there was the terrific,incessant crashing of thunder which was horribly close, and thecrackling flares of lightning all about.

  "I'm going to take a chance," said Bell curtly above the uproar, withthe windows seeming to look out upon the fires of hell. "I think we'rehigh enough. The compass has gone crazy, but I'm going to risk it."

  Again there was no perceptible alteration in the motion of the ship,but he fought it steadily toward the west. And it seemed that heactually was passing beyond the first fierce fringe of the storm,because the lightning became--well, not less frequent, but lesscontinuous.

  * * * * *

  And suddenly, in a blinding flare of light that made every separateraindrop look like a speck of molten metal, he saw another airplane.It was close. Breath-takingly close. It came diving down out ofnowhere and passed less than twenty yards before the nose of theamphibian. It glistened with wet, and glittered unbearably in theincredible brightness of the lightning. Every spot and speck anddetail showed with an almost ghastly distinctness. But it dived onpast, its pilot rigid and tense and unseeing, plunging like a meteorstraight downward. The golden, iridescent mist of rain closed over itsbody. And it was gone.

  Ten minutes later Bell was driving onward through a gray obscurity,which now was no more than tinted pink by receding lightning-flashes.The air was still uneven and treacherous. The big plane hurtleddownward hundreds of feet in wild descending gusts among the hills,and was then flung upward on invisible billows of air for otherhundreds of feet. But it was less uncontrollable. There were periodsof minutes when the safety-belts did not come into use.

  * * * * *

  And later still, half an hour perhaps, the steadiness of the air gaveassurance that the plane was past the range of the Serra da Cariocaand was headed inland. He drove on, watching his instruments andflying blind, but with a gathering confidence in an ultimate escapefrom the swarm of aircraft Ribiera had sent aloft in the teeth of thestorm to hunt for him. The motors hummed outside the padded cabin. Thegirl beside him was very quiet and very still and very pale.

  "We want to get out of this before long," he said in her ear, "andthen we can find out where we are, and especially begin to make someplans for ourselves."

  Her eyes turned to him. There was a curious stiffness in her manner.It might have seemed reserve, but Bell recognized the symptoms of awoman whose self-control is hanging by a thread. He smiled.

  "Hold on a while yet," he said gently. "I know you want to cry. Butplease hold on a while yet. When we reach friends...."

  Her hands went to her throat, and he could feel the effort of willthat kept her voice steady.

  "Friends? We have no friends." She managed a smile. "The SenhorRibiera explained to me when I arrived at his house how it was that noquestions would be asked about my disappearance. My father is dead.The newspapers this morning said that it was not known whether hekilled himself or was assassinated. The Senhor Ribiera has givenorders to his slaves. The newspapers of this afternoon will inform ahorrified world that you and I, together, murdered my father that wemight flee together with such of his riches as he had actuallygathered together for me to take away. We are murderers, my friend.Cables and telegraph wires are reporting the news. The daughter of theMinister of War of the Republic of Brazil was assisted by her lover tomurder her father. She has fled with him. Now--where are we still tofind friends?"

  * * * * *

  Bell stared, for the fraction of an instant. One thought came to him,and was checked. The Trade does not exist, anywhere. The Trade wouldnot help. And murderers are always duly handed over when theGovernment of the United States is requested politely to do so byanother nation. Always. And so far as the whole civilized world wasconcerned they were murderers. Even the employees of the flying fieldwho were not subject to The Master would swear to the strictlyaccurate story of their escape together.

  "It is just scandalous enough and horrible enough," said Bell quietly,"to be reprinted everywhere as news. You're right. We haven't anyfriends. We're up against it. And so I think we'll have to hunt downand kill The Master. Then we'll be believed. And there are just two ofus, with what weapons we have in our pockets, to attack. How manythousands of slaves do you suppose The Master has by now?"

  And, quite suddenly, he laughed.

  CHAPTER VII

  The sun was sinking slowly when the plane appeared above the valley.There was only jungle below. Jungle, and the languid river which nowflowed sluggishly into a wide and shallow pool in which drowned treesformed a mass of substance neither land nor marsh nor river. Theriver now contracted to a narrow space and showed signs of haste, andeven foaming water, and then again flowed placidly onward, sometimeseven a hundred yards in breadth. Shadows of the mountains to the westwere creeping toward the opposite hill-flanks, darkening the thickfoliage and sending flocks of flying things home to their chosenroosts.

  The sound of the plane was a buzzing noise, which grew louder to asharp drone as it seemed to increase in size, and became a dullmonotonous roar as it dipped toward the waters of the stream. Itfloated downward, very gently, and circled as if regarding a certainspot critically, and resumed its onward flight. Again it circled,anxiously, now, as if the time for alighting were short.

  It seemed to hesitate in mid-air, and dived, and circled up-stream andcame down the valley again. It sank, and sank, lower and lower, untilthe white of its upper wings was hidden by the tall trees on eitherside.

  A _jabiru_ stork saw it from downstream, solemnly squatting on foureggs which eventually would perpetuate the race. The _jabiru_ wasabout forty feet above the water and had a clear view of the stream.The stork squatted meditatively, with its long, naked neck projectingabove the edge of its nest.

  * * * * *

  The plane dipped ever lower, its reflection vivid and complete uponthe waveless stream below it. Ten feet above the water. Five--andswift ripples from the rush of air disturbed the unbroken reflectionsbehind. It was almost a silhouette against the mirrored appearance ofthe sunset sky. And then a clumsy-seeming boat body touched water witha vast hissing sound, and settled more and more heavily, while thespeed of the plane checked markedly and its motors roared onsenselessly.

  Then, ab
ruptly, the plane checked and partly swung around. The_jabiru_ half-rose from its eggs. The motors were bellowing wildlyagain. As if tearing itself free, the plane sheered off from someinvisible obstacle, one of its wing tip floats splashed water wildly,and, with the motors thundering at their fullest speed, it went towardthe shore with a dragging wing, like some wounded bird.

  It beached, and the _jabiru_ heard a sudden dense silence fall. A manclimbed out of the boatlike body. He walked to the bow and dropped tothe shore. He peered under the upward slanting nose of the boat-thing.The _jabiru_, listening intently, heard words.

  Then, quite suddenly and quite abruptly, and generally with theunostentatious efficiency with which Nature manages such things in thetropics, night fell. It was dark within minutes.

  * * * * *

  The noise of Bell's scrambling back onto the deck of the amphibian'shull could be heard inside the cabin. He opened the door and slippeddown inside.

  "There ought to be some lights," he said curtly. "Ribiera did himselfrather well, as a rule."

  He struck a match. Paula's eyes shone in the match-flame, fixed uponhis face. He looked about, frowning. He found a switch and pressed it,and a dome-light came into being. The cabin of the plane, from a placeof darkness comparable to that of the jungle all about, becamesuddenly a cosy and comfortable place.

  "Well?" said Paula quietly.

  Bell hesitated, and took a deep breath.

  "We're stuck," he said wryly. "We must have struck a snag or perhaps arock, just under water. Half the bottom of the hull's torn out.There's no hope of repair. If I hadn't given her the gun and beachedher, we'd have sunk in mid-stream."

  Paula said nothing.

  "Things are piling on us," said Bell grimly. "In the morning I'll tryto make a raft. We can't stay here indefinitely. I'll hunt for mapsand we'll try to plan something out. But I'll admit that this businessworries me--the plane being smashed."

  * * * * *

  He passed his hand harassedly over his forehead. To have escaped fromRio was something, but since Paula had told him Ribiera's plans, itwas clearly but the most temporary of successes. Cabinet ministers arenot so commonplace but that the scandalous and horrifying crime thatwas imputed to Bell and Paula would be printed in every foreigncountry. Newspapers in Tokio would include the supposed murder intheir foreign news, and in Bucharest and even Constantinople it wouldmerit a paragraph or two. Assuredly every South American country woulddiscuss the matter editorially, even where The Master's deputies didnot order it published far and wide. There would be pictures of Belland of Paula, labeled with an infamy. In every town of all Braziltheir faces would be known, and those who were The Master's slaveswould hunt them desperately, and all honorable men would seek them fora crime. Even in America there would be no safety for them. The Tradedoes not exist, officially, and a member of the Trade must get out oftrouble as he can. As an accused murderer, Bell would be arrestedanywhere. As worse than a mere murderess, Paula....

  She was watching his face.

  "This morning," she said queerly, "you--you quoted '_Nildesperandum_.'"

  Bell ground his teeth, and then managed to smile.

  "If I looked like I needed you say that," he said coolly, "I deserveto be kicked. Let's look for something to eat, and count up ourresources. The thing to do is, when you fall down--bounce!"

  He managed a nearly genuine grin, then, and to his intense amazement,she sobbed suddenly and bent her head down and began to weep. Hestared at her in stupefaction for an instant, then swore at himselffor a fool. Her father....

  * * * * *

  Half an hour later he roused her as gently as he could. It washelplessness, as much as anything else, that had made him leave heralone; but a woman needs to weep now and then. And Paula assuredly hadexcuse.

  "Here's a cup of coffee," he said practically, "which you must drink.You can't have had anything to eat all day. Have you?"

  That question had haunted him too. She had been a prisoner inRibiera's house for half an hour, possibly more. And Ribiera had inhis possession, and used, a deadly, devilish poison from some unknownnoxious plant. Its victim took the poison unknowingly, in a morsel offood or a glass of water or of wine. And for two weeks there was nosign of evil. And then the poison drove its victim swiftly mad--unlessthe antidote was obtained from Ribiera. And Ribiera administered theantidote with a further dose of poison.

  If Paula had eaten one scrap of food or drunk one drop of water whileRibiera's captive....

  She understood. She looked up suddenly, and read the awful anxiety inhis eyes.

  "No. Nothing." She caught her breath and steadied herself with aneffort of the will. "I understand. You tried not to let me fear. But Iate nothing, touched nothing. I have not that to fear, at least."

  "Drink this coffee," said Bell, smiling. "Ribiera was a luxuriousdevil. There's canned stuff and so on in a locker. He was prepared fora forced landing anywhere. Flares and rockets will do us no good, butthere are a pair of machetes and a sporting rifle with shells. Wedon't need to die for a bit, anyhow."

  * * * * *

  Paula obediently took the coffee. He watched her anxiously as shedrank.

  "Now some soup," he urged, "and the rest of this condensed stuff. AndI've found some maps and there's a radio receiving outfit if--"

  Paula managed to smile.

  "You want to know," she said, "if I can endure listening to it. Yes.I--I should not have given way just now. But I can endure anything."

  Bell still hesitated, regarding her soberly.

  "I've heard," he said awkwardly, "that in Brazil the conventions...."

  She waited, looking at him with her large eyes.

  "I hoped," said Bell, still more unhappily, "to find this placeMoradores, where you said you had some relatives. I hoped to find itbefore dark. But before I landed I knew I'd missed it and couldn'thope to locate it to-night. I thought--"

  "You thought," said Paula, smiling suddenly, "that my reputation wouldbe jeopardized. And you were about to offer--"

  Bell winced.

  "Of course I don't mean to act like an ass," he said apologetically,"but some people...."

  "You forget," said Paula, with the same faint smile, "what thenewspapers will say of us, Senhor. You forget what news of us thecables have carried about the world. I think that we had better forgetabout the conventions. As the daughter of a Brazilian, that remark isheresy. But did you know that my mother came from Maryland?"

  "Thank God!" said Bell relievedly. "Then you can believe that I'm notthinking exclusively of you, and maybe we'll get somewhere."

  Paula put out her hand. He grasped it firmly.

  "Right!" he said, more cheerfully than ever before. "Now we'll turn onthe radio and see what news we get."

  * * * * *

  Into the deep dark jungle night, then, a strange incongruity wasthrust. Tall trees loomed up toward the stars. A nameless littlestream flowed placidly through the night and, beached whereimpenetrable undergrowth crowded to the water's edge, a big amphibianplane lay slightly askew, while a light glowed brightly in its cabin.More, from that cabin there presently emerged the incredible sound ofmusic, played in Rio for _os gentes_ of the distinctly upper strata ofsociety by a bored but beautifully trained orchestra.

  The _jabiru_ stork heard it, and craned its featherless neck to staredownward through beady eyes. But it was not frightened. Presently,instead of music, there was a man's voice booming in the disconnectedsounds of human speech. And still the _jabiru_ was unalarmed. Likemost of the birds whose necks are bald, the _jabiru_ is a usefulscavenger, and so is tolerated in the haunts of men. And if man'sgratitude is not enough for safety, the _jabiru_ smells very, verybadly, and no man hunts his tribe.

  * * * * *

  Bell had been listening impatiently, when a sudden whining, whistlingnoise broke into th
e program of very elevated music, played utterlywithout rest. The sound came from the speaker, of course.

  He frowned thoughtfully. The whistling changed in timbre and becameflutelike, then changed again, nearly to its original pitch and tone.

  Paula was not listening. Her mind seemed very far away, and onsubjects the reverse of pleasurable.

  "Listen!" said Bell suddenly. "You hear that whistle? It came on allat once!"

  Paula waited. The whistling noise went on. It was vaguely discordant,and it was monotonous, and it was more than a little irritating. Againit changed timbre, going up to the shrillest of squealings, and backnearly to its original sound an instant later.

  Bell began to paw over maps. The plane had been intended for flightover the vast distances of Brazil, and there was a small supply ofcondensed food and a sporting rifle and shells included in itsequipment. Emergency landing fields are not exactly common in the backcountry of South America.

  "Here," said Bell sharply. "Here is where we are. It must be where weare! No towns of any size nearby. No railroad. No boat route. Nothing!Nothing but jungle shown here!"

  * * * * *

  He frowned absorbedly over the problem.

  "What is it?" asked Paula.

  "Someone near," said Bell briefly. "That's another radio receiver, anold fashioned regenerative set, sensitive enough and reliable enough,but a nuisance to everyone but its owner--except when it's a godsend,as it is to us."

  The music ended, and a voice announced in laboriously classicPortuguese, with only a trace of the guttural tonation of the_carioca_, that the most important news items of the day would begiven.

  Paula paled a little, but listened without stirring. The voiceread--the rustling of sheets of paper was abnormally loud--a bit offoreign news, and a bit of local news, and then....

  She was deathly pale when the announcement of her father's death wasfinished, and she had heard the official view of the policereported--exactly what Ribiera had told her it would be. When thevoice added that a friend of the late Minister of War, the SenhorRibiera, had offered twenty contos for the capture of the fugitivepair, who had escaped in an airplane stolen from him, she bit her lipuntil it almost bled.

  * * * * *

  "I know," he said abstractedly. "It's as you said. But listen to thatwhistle."

  The news announcement ceased. Music began again. The whistlingabruptly died away.

  "I just found some coils," said Bell feverishly, "that plug in to takethe place of the longer-wave ones. I'm going to try them. It's ahunch, and it's crazy, but...."

  There were sharp clickings. The radio receiver was one of thoseextraordinarily light and portable ones that are made for aircraft. Inseconds it was transformed into a short-wave receiver. Bell began tomanipulate the dials feverishly. Two minutes. Three. Four.

  The speaker suddenly began to whine softly and monotonously.

  "Regeneration," said Bell feverishly, "on a carrier-wave. It can't befar off, that receiving set."

  Suddenly a voice spoke. It was blurred and guttural. Infinitelydelicate adjustments cleared it up. And then....

  Bell listened eagerly, at first in triumph, then in amazement, and atlast in a grim satisfaction. Reports from Rio on a short-wave band ofradio frequencies were passing from Ribiera to some other placeapparently inland. It was Ribiera's own voice, which quivered withrage as he reported Bell's escape.

  "_I do not think_," he snapped in Portuguese, "_that full detailsshould be spoken even on beam wireless. I shall come to the_ fazenda_to-morrow and communicate with The Master direct. In the meantime Ihave warned all sub-deputies in Brazil. I urge that all deputies beinformed and instructed as The Master may direct._"

  * * * * *

  Another voice replied that The Master would be informed. In themeantime the deputy for Brazil was notified.

  This list of bits of information chilled Bell's blood. This man, ofVenezuela, had been denied the grace of The Master by the deputy inCaracas. He would probably use the passwords and demand the grace ofThe Master of sub-deputies in the State of Para. To be seized andCaracas informed. The deputy in Colombia desired that the son ofColonel Garcia--upon a hunting-party with friends in the Amazonbasin--should be attached to the service of The Master. His father hadbeen so attached, and it was believed had smuggled a letter into theforeign mail warning his son. If possible, that letter should beintercepted. And from Paraguay the deputy requested that the family ofSenor Gomez, visiting relatives in Rio, should be induced to regardthe service of The Master as desirable....

  The orders ceased abruptly. Ribiera acknowledged them. The whiningwhistle cut off. And Bell turned to Paula very grimly indeed.

  "Pretty, isn't it?" he asked in a vast calmness. "Apparently everynation on the continent has some devil like Ribiera in charge of theadministration of this fiendish poison. Every republic has some fiendat work in it. And they're organized. My God! They're organized! TheMaster seems to supply them with the mixture of poison and itsantidote, and they report to him...."

  * * * * *

  Paula nodded.

  "That was what my father had written down for you," she said quietly."Any man who can be lured to eat or drink anything these men haveprepared is lost. He gains no pleasure, as a drug might give. He isentrapped into a lifetime of awful fear, knowing that a moment'sdisobedience, a moment's reluctance to obey whatever command theygive, will cause his madness."

  "I'm trying to think what we can work out of this," said Bell shortly."Some things are clear. There's a radio receiving set nearby, whichlistened to those short-wave reports. Within five or six miles, atmost. We're going to find that to-morrow. And there's a central point,a _fazenda_, where one may talk direct with The Master, whoever andwherever he may be. And--judging by Ribiera--my guess is that TheMaster has the same hold upon them that they have on their underlings.Ribiera is too arrogant a scoundrel to make obsequious reports if hewere not afraid to omit them." He was silent for a moment, thinking.Then he said abruptly, "Try to get some sleep, if you can. That pistolof Ribiera's--you have it handy? Keep it where you can reach it in thedark. I'm going to watch, though."

  Paula settled herself comfortably, and looked queerly across the dimlylit little cabin at him.

  "My friend," she said with the faintest of quavering smiles, "Pleasedo not reassure me. I have the courage of endurance, at least. And--Ido not fear you."

  * * * * *

  It seemed to Bell, listening in the darkness that fell when he turnedoff the switch, that she stayed awake for a long time. But when shedid sleep, she slept heavily.

  Bell had a raft of canes afloat beside the amphibian when she waked.He was sweat-streaked and bitten by many insects. He was tired, andhis clothes were rags. But the raft was nearly twenty feet long, itwould easily float two persons and what small supplies the planecarried, and it could be handled by a long pole.

  "Hullo," he said cheerfully when she climbed on top of the waterloggedhull of the plane. "We're nearly ready to start off. I'm sorry I can'tadvise you to try to refresh yourself in the river. There are somefish in it that are fiends. One of them took a slice out of the sideof my hand."

  "_Piranhas!_" she exclaimed, and was pale. "You should have known!"

  _Piranhas_ are small fresh-water fish of the Brazilian rivers, nevermore than a foot and a half long, which prove the existence of adevil. Where they swarm in schools they will tear every morsel offlesh from a swimmer's body as he struggles to reach shore, and leavea clean-stripped skeleton of a mule or horse if an animal should essayto swim a stream.

  "I'll ask, next time," said Bell ruefully. "I'd planned a swim. But ifyou'll fix some coffee while I finish up this raft, we'll get going. Idon't think we're far from some place or other. I heard what soundedsuspiciously like a motor boat, about dawn."

  * * * * *

  She
looked at him anxiously.

  "Of course," said Bell, smiling, "if the boat belonged to whoeverlistened in on the Rio broadcast _and_ the short-wave news, he won'tbe especially friendly, though he should be glad to see us. But I'vebeen studying the map, and I have a rather hopeful idea. Let's havecoffee."

  He grinned as long as she was in sight, and when he went into thecabin of the plane he seemed more cheerful still. But the idea offloating down this nameless little jungle stream upon a raft of caneswas not one that he would have chosen. It was forced upon him. Totravel through the jungle itself was next to impossible with a girl,especially as they were dressed for city streets and not at all forbattling with dense and thorn-studded undergrowth. And to stay withthe plane was obviously absurd. Sooner or later they had to abandonit, though the moment they did desert it they would be encounteringnot only the impersonal menace of the jungle, but the actual enmity ofall the human race. The raft was the only possibility.

  * * * * *

  It floated smoothly enough when they started off, with Bell workinginexpertly with his long pole to keep it in mid-stream. He was, ofcourse, acutely apprehensive. In country like this a rapid could beexpected anywhere. The jungle life loomed high above their heads oneither side, and the life of the jungle went on undisturbed by theirpassage. Monkeys gaped at them and exchanged undoubtedly wittycomments upon their appearance. Birds flew overhead with raucous andunpleasant cries. Toucans, in particular, made a most discordant din.Once they disturbed a tiny herd of peccaries, drinking, which regardedthem pugnaciously and trotted sturdily out of sight as they cameabreast.

  But for one mile, for two, the stream flowed smoothly. A third.... AndPaula pointed ahead in silence. A dug-out projected partly from theshoreline. Bell wielded his long pole cautiously now, and drew closerand ever closer to the stream bank. Paula pointed again. There waseven a small dock--luxury unthinkable in these wilds.

  The raft touched bottom. And suddenly from somewhere out of sightthere came a horrible and a bestial sound. It was a scream ofblood-lust, of madness, of overpowering and unspeakable rage.Following it came cackling laughter.

  Paula went white.

  "The _fazenda_," said Bell softly, "of the sub-deputy who waslistening in on Ribiera last night. And it sounds as if someone werevery much amused. Some poor devil...."

  Paula shuddered.

  "I'm going ashore," said Bell, smiling frostily. "There's nothing elseto do."

  CHAPTER VIII

  Crouched at the edge of the jungle, where the clearing began, Paulaheard four shots. Two in quick succession, and a wait of minutes. Thena third, and another long wait, and then the last. Then silence. Paulabegan to shiver. Bell had helped her ashore from the raft and insistedon her waiting at the edge of the jungle.

  "Not that you'll be any safer," he had told her grimly, "but that Imay be. One person can move more quickly than two. And if I'm chasedI'll plunge for the place you're hidden, and you can open fire. Thenthe two of us might hold them off."

  "Why?" Paula said slowly.

  And Bell caught at her wrist.

  "Don't let me hear you talk like that!" he said sharply. "We're goingto beat this thing! We've got to! And being desperate helps, but beingin despair doesn't help a bit. Buck up!"

  He frowned at her until she smiled.

  "I will not despair again without your permission," she told him."Really. I will not."

  He found her a hiding-place and went cautiously out into the clearing,still frowning.

  * * * * *

  He had been gone five minutes before the first shot sounded, and quiteten before the last rang out dully, and was echoed and re-echoedhollowly by the jungle trees. And Paula lay waiting by the edge of theclearing, Ribiera's pearl-handled automatic in her hand--Bell hadcarried the rifle from the plane. Small insects moved all about her,and she heard soft rustlings as the life of the jungle went on overher head and under her feet, and terror welled up in her throat.

  She was trembling almost uncontrollably when Bell came back. He walkedopenly toward her hiding-place.

  "Paula."

  She came out, trying to steady her quivering lips.

  "We're all right," said Bell grimly. "This is the _fazenda_ of asub-deputy. I suspect, also, it's an emergency landing field forRibiera on the way to that place he talked to last night. There's atwo-place plane here with both wheels and floats, in a filthy littleshed. It seems to be all right. We're going to take off in it and tryto make Moradores, where your people are. What's the matter?"

  Her face was deathly pale.

  "I thought," she said with some difficulty, "when I heard the shots--Ithought you were killed."

  Bell shook his head.

  "I wasn't," he said grimly. "It was four other men who were killed."

  * * * * *

  He led her carefully past the house. It was a fairly typical _fazenda_dwelling, if more substantial than most. It was wholly unpretentious,with whitewashed walls, and the effect of grandeur it would give tonatives of this region would come solely from the number of buildings.There were half a dozen or more.

  "I killed four men," repeated Bell coldly. "And I'm damned glad of it.That scream we heard.... I know pretty well what happened here lastnight. Remember, Ribiera spoke of using a beam-wireless to make hisreport. He must have had a short-wave beam set somewhere on theoutskirts of Rio, aimed at whatever headquarters he reports to. He'sgoing up to that headquarters some time to-day, by plane, of course.He needed emergency landing fields along the route, and here he pickedout a native and made him a sub-deputy. Charming...."

  Moving past the buildings, Paula caught sight of massive wooden barsset in the side of a building. Something crumpled up and limp laybefore them.

  "Don't look over there," said Bell harshly. "There was a woman in thishouse and she told me what happened, though I'd guessed it before. Thesub-deputy was here last night with a party of friends. Newlyenslaved, some of them. He entertained them.... Up at Ribiera's placea girl told me she and her husband had been shown a Secret Serviceman. He went mad before their eyes. It was an object-lesson for them,a clear illustration of what would happen to them if they everdisobeyed. I imagine that something of the sort is used by all TheMaster's deputies to convince their slaves of the fate that awaitsthem for disobedience. The local man had brought a party up to watchtwo men go mad. After that sight they'll be obedient."

  * * * * *

  He reached a shed, huge, but in disrepair. Monster doors were ajar.Bell heaved at them and swung them wide. A small, trim, two-seatedplane showed in the shadowy interior.

  "This is for emergency use," said Bell grimly, "and we face anemergency. I'll get it out and load it up. There's a dump of gas andso on here. You might look around outside the door, in case the oneman who got away can find someone to help stop me."

  He set to work checking on fuel and oil. He loaded extra gas in thefront cockpit, a huge tin of it. Another would crowd him badly in thepilot's cockpit in the rear, but he stowed it as carefully as hecould.

  "The local sub-deputy," he added evenly, "has added to the thrill byhaving the two men put in one cage. He let his guests observe theprogress of the madness the damned poison produces. And presently, asthe madness grew, the two men fought. They were murder mad. The localsub-deputy gave his guests the thrill of watching maniacs battling tothe death. He left early this morning with his party, and I imaginethat everyone was suitably submissive to his demands for the future.There were four men and a woman left as caretakers here. I found thefour men before the cage, baiting the poor devil who'd killed theother last night. That's why we heard the scream. When I came up withmy rifle they stared at me, and ran.

  * * * * *

  "I got one then, and as a matter of mercy I put a bullet through theman who'd gone murder mad. The"--Bell sounded as if he were acutelynauseated--"the man he'd killed was still in t
he cage. My God!... ThenI went looking for the other three men. Wasting time, no doubt, but Ifound them. I was angry. I got one, and the others ran away again. Alittle later the third man jumped me with a knife. He slit my sleeve.I killed him. Didn't find the fourth man." Bell moved to the front ofthe plane. "I'll see if she catches."

  He swung on the stick. It went over stiffly. Again, and again. With abellow, the motor caught. Bell shouted in Paula's ear.

  "We'll get in. Use the warming-up period to taxi out. We want to getaway as soon as we can."

  He helped her up into the seat, then remembered. He rummaged about andflung a tumbled flying suit up in the cockpit with her.

  "If you get a chance, put it on!" he shouted. He stepped into asimilar outfit, reached up and throttled down the motor, and kickedaway the blocks under the wheels. He vaulted up into place. And slowlyand clumsily the trim little ship came lurching and rolling out of theshed.

  * * * * *

  The landing field was not large, but Bell took the plane to its edge.He faced it about, and bent below the cockpit combing to avoid theslip stream and look at his maps again, brought from the bigamphibian. Something caught his eye. Another radio receiving set.

  "Amphibian planes," he muttered, "for landing on earth or water. Andradios. I wonder if he has directional for a guide? It would seemsensible, and if a plane went down the rest of them would know aboutwhere to look."

  Paula reached about and touched his shoulder. She pointed. There was amovement at the edge of the jungle and a puff of smoke. A bullet wentthrough the fusilage of the plane, inches behind Bell. He frowned,grasped the stick, and gave the motor the gun.

  It lifted heavily, like all amphibians, but it soared over the groupof buildings some twenty or thirty feet above the top of the wirelessmast and went on, rising steadily, to clear even the topmost trees onthe farther side of the stream by a hundred feet or more.

  It went on and on, roaring upward, and the jungle receded ever fartherbelow it. The horizon drew back and back. At two thousand feet theearth began to have the appearance of a shallow platter. At threethousand it was a steep sided bowl, and Bell could look down and tracethe meandering of the stream on which he had landed the night before.Not too far downstream--some fifteen miles, perhaps--were the squalid,toy sized structures of a town of the far interior of Brazil. He neverlearned its name, but even in his preoccupation with the managementof the plane and a search for landmarks, he wondered very grimlyindeed what would be the state of things in that town. If in Rio,where civilization held sway, Ribiera exercised such despotic thoughsecret power, in a squalid and forgotten little village like this therule of a sub-deputy of The Master could be bestial and horriblebeyond belief.

  * * * * *

  Eastward. Bell had overshot the mark the night before. Before he hadlocated himself he was quite fifty miles beyond the spot Paula hadsuggested as a hiding place. Now he retraced his way. A peak juttingup from far beyond the horizon was a guiding mark. He set the plane'snose for it, and relaxed.

  The motor thundered on valorously. Far below was a vast expanse ofthick jungle, intercepted but nowhere broken by occasional smallstreams and now and then the tiny, angular things which might behouses. But houses were very infrequent. In the first ten miles--witha view of twenty miles in every direction--Bell picked out no morethan four small groups of buildings which might be the unspeakablyisolated _fazendas_ of the folk of this region.

  "Ribiera was coming this way," he muttered.

  He fumbled the headphone of the radio set into place. The set seemedto be already arbitrarily tuned. He turned it on. There was amonotonous series of flashes, with the singing note of a buzzer inthem. A radio direction signal.

  "Ribiera's on the way."

  Bell stared far ahead, without reason. And it seemed to him that justthen, against that far distant guiding peak, he saw a black speckfloating in mid-air.

  * * * * *

  He pulled back the joy stick. Detached, feathery clouds spread acrossthe sky, and he was climbing for them. Paula looked behind at him, andhe pointed. He saw her seem to stiffen upon sight of the otheraircraft.

  In minutes Bell's plane was tearing madly through sunlit fleecymonsters which looked soft and warm and alluring, and were cold anddamp and blinding in their depths. Bell kept on his course. The twoplanes were approaching each other at a rate of nearly two hundredmiles an hour.

  And then, while the harsh, discordant notes of the radio signalsounded monotonously in his ears, Bell stared down and, through a riftbetween two clouds, saw the other plane for an instant, a thousandfeet below.

  The sun shone upon it fiercely. Its propeller was a shimmering,cobwebby disk before it. It seemed to hang motionless--so short wasBell's view of it--between earth and sky: a fat glistening body as ofa monstrous insect. Bell could even see figures in its cockpits.

  Then it was gone, but Bell felt a curious hatred of the thing. Ribierawas almost certainly in it, headed for the place to which he hadspoken the night before. And Bell was no longer able to think ofRibiera with any calmness. He felt a personal, gusty hatred for theman and all he stood for.

  * * * * *

  His face was grim and savage as his own plane sped through the clouds.But just as the two aircraft had approached each other with thecombined speed of both, so they separated. It seemed only a momentlater that Bell dipped down below the clouds and the other plane wasvisible only as a swiftly receding mote in the sunlight.

  "I wonder," said Bell coldly to himself, with the thunder of the motorcoming through the singing of the air route signal, "I wonder if he'llsee the ship I cracked up last night?"

  Paula was pointing. The shoulder of a hill upthrust beneath thejungle. The tall trees were cleared away at its crest. Small,whitewashed buildings appeared below.

  "Good landing field," said Bell, his eyes narrowing suddenly. "On thedirect route. Fifty miles back there's another landing field. Iwonder...."

  He was already suspicious before he flattened out above the house,while dogs fled madly. He noticed, too, that horses in a corral nearthe buildings showed no signs of fright. And horses are always afraidof landing aircraft, unless they have had much opportunity to growaccustomed to them.

  The little plane rolled and bumped, and gradually came to a stop. Bellinconspicuously shifted a revolver to the outer pocket of his flyingsuit. Figures came toward them, with a certain hesitating reluctancethat changed Bell's suspicions even while it confirmed them.

  * * * * *

  "Paula," he said grimly, "this is another landing field for Ribiera'semergency use. It sticks out all over the place. Relatives or norelatives, you want to make sure of them. You understand?"

  Her eyes widened in a sudden startled fear. She caught her breathsharply. Then she said quietly, though her voice trembled:

  "I understand. Of course."

  She slipped out of the plane and advanced to meet the approachingfigures. There were surprised, astounded exclamations: A bearded manembraced her and shouted. Women appeared and, after staring, embraced.Paula turned to wave her hand reassuringly to Bell, and vanishedinside the house.

  Bell looked over his instruments, examined the gas in the tank, andbegan to work over his maps in the blaring sunlight. He cut out theswitch and the motor stopped with minor hissings of compression. Themaps held his attention, though he listened keenly as he worked forany signs of trouble that Paula might encounter.

  He was beginning to have a definite idea in his mind. Ribiera hadtalked to a headquarters somewhere, by beam radio from Rio. Beamwireless, of course, is nothing more or less than a concentration ofa radio signal in a nearly straight line, instead of allowing it tospread about equally on all sides of the transmitting station. Itmakes both for secrecy and economy, since nearly all the power used atthe sending apparatus is confined to an arc of about three degrees ofa circle. Directed to a gi
ven receiving station, receiving outfits toone side or the other of that path are unable to listen in, and thesignal is markedly stronger in the chosen path. Exactly the sameprocess, of course, is used for radio directional signals, one ofwhich still buzzed monotonously in Bell's ears until he impatientlyturned it off. A plane in the path hears the signal. If it does nothear the signal, it is demonstrably off the straight route.

  * * * * *

  Bell, then, was in a direct line from Rio to the source of a radiodirection signal. Fifty miles back, where the big amphibian hadcrashed, he was in the same air line. To extend that line on into theinterior would give the destination of Ribiera, and the location ofthe headquarters where direct communication with The Master wasmaintained.

  He worked busily. His maps were in separate sheets, and it took timeto check the line from Rio. When he had finished, he computed grimly.

  "At a hundred miles in hour...." He was figuring the maximum distancewhich could plausibly be accepted as a day's journeying by air. Hesurveyed the maps again. "The plateau of Cuyaba, at a guess. Hm....Fleets of aircraft could practise there and never be seen. An armycould be maneuvered without being reported. Certainly the headquartersfor the whole continent could be there. Striking distance of Rio,Montevideo, Buenos Aires, La Paz, and Asuncion. Five republics."

  * * * * *

  Certainly, from his figures, it seemed plausible that somewhere up onthe Plateau of Cuyaba--where no rails run, no boats ply, and notelegraph line penetrates; which juts out ultimately into thatunknown region where the Rio Zingu and the Tapajoz have theirorigins--certainly it seemed plausible that there must lie theheadquarters of the whole ghastly conspiracy. There, it might be, thedeadly plants from which The Master's poison was brewed were grown.There the deadly stuff was measured out and mixed with its temporaryantidote....

  Paula came back, a young man with her. Her eyes were wide and staring,as if she had looked upon something vastly worse than death.

  "He--Ribiera," she gasped. "My uncle, he owned this place. They--havehim here--alive--and mad! And all the rest...."

  Bell fumbled in the pocket of his flying suit. The young man withPaula was looking carefully at the plane. And there was a revolver ina holster at his side. An air of grim and desperate doggedness wasupon him.

  "This is--my cousin," gasped Paula. "He--and his wife--and--and--"

  * * * * *

  The young man took out his weapon. He fired. There was a clanging ofmetal, the screech of tortured steel. Bell's own revolver went off thefraction of a second too late.

  "You may kill me, Senhor," said the young man through stiff lips. Hisrevolver had dropped from limp fingers. He pressed the fingers of hisleft hand upon the place where blood welled out, just above his rightelbow. "You may kill me. But if you and my cousin Paula escaped.... Ihave a wife, Senhor, and my mother, and my children. Kill me if youplease. It is your right. But I have seen my father go mad." Sweat,the sweat of agony and of shame, came out upon his face. "I foughthim, Senhor, to save the lives of all the rest. And I have spoiledyour engine, and I have already sent word that you and Paula are here.Not for my own life, but...."

  He waited, haggard and ashamed and desperate and hopeless. But Bellwas staring at the motor of the airplane.

  "Crankcase punctured," he said dully. "Aluminum. The bullet went rightthrough. We can't fly five miles. And Ribiera knows we're here--orwill."

  CHAPTER IX

  There was the sound of weeping in the house, the gusty and hopelessweeping of women. Bell had been walking around and around the plane,staring at it with his hands clenched. Paula watched him.

  "I am thinking," she said in an attempt at courage, "that you said Imust not despair without your permission. But--"

  "Hush!" said Bell impatiently. He stared at the engine. "I'd give alot for a car. Bolts.... How many hours have we?"

  "Four," said Paula drearily. "Perhaps five. You have smashed the radioin the house?"

  Bell nodded impatiently. He had smashed the radio, a marvelouslycompact and foolproof outfit, arbitrarily tuned to a fixed shortwave-length. It was almost as simple to operate as a telephone. Therehad been no opposition to the destruction. Paula's cousin had disabledtheir plane and reported their presence. He was inside the house now,sick with shame--and yet he would do the same again. In one of therooms of the house, behind strong bars, a man was kept who had been anobject-lesson....

  "Is there any machinery?" asked Bell desperately. "Any at all aboutthe place?"

  Paula shook her head.

  "It may be that there is a pump."

  Bell went off savagely, hunting it. He came back and dived into thecockpit of the plane. He came out with a wrench, and his jaws setgrimly. He worked desperately at the pump. He came back with twoshort, thick bolts.

  He crawled into the plane again, tearing out the fire wallimpatiently, getting up under the motor.

  "We have one chance in five thousand," he said grimly from there, "ofgetting away from here to crash in the jungle. Personally, I preferthat to falling into Ribiera's hands. If your cousin or anybody elsecomes near us, out here, call me, and I'll be much obliged."

  * * * * *

  There was the sound of scraping, patient, desperate, whollyunpromising scraping. It seemed to go on for hours.

  "The wrench, please, Paula."

  She passed it to him. The bullet had entered the aluminum crankcase ofthe motor and pierced it through. By special providence it had notstruck the crankshaft, and had partly penetrated the crankcase on theother side. Bell had cut it out, first of all. He had two holes in thecrankcase, then, through which the cylinder oil had drained away. Andof all pieces of machinery upon earth, an aircraft motor requires oil.

  Bell's scraping had been to change the punctured holes of the bulletinto cone shaped bores. The aluminum alloy was harder than purealuminum, of course, but he had managed it with a knife. Now he fittedthe short bolts in the bores, forced the threads on them to cut theirown grooves, and by main strength screwed them in to a fit. Hetightened them.

  He came out with his eyes glowing oddly.

  "The vibration will work them loose, sooner or later," he observedgrimly, "and they may not be oil tight. Also, the crankshaft may clearthem, and it may not. If we go up in the ship in this state we may getfive miles away, or five hundred. At any minute it may fail us, andsooner or later it will fail us. Are you game to go up, Paula?"

  * * * * *

  She smiled at him.

  "With you, of course."

  He began to brush off his hands.

  "There ought to be oil and gas here," he said briefly. "Another thing,there'll probably be some metal chips in the crankcase, which maystop an oil line at any minute. It's a form of committing suicide, Iimagine."

  He went off, hunting savagely for the supplies of fuel and lubricantwhich would be stored at any emergency field. He found them. He waspouring gasoline into the tanks before what he was doing was noticed.Then there was stunned amazement in the house. When he had thecrankcase full of oil the young man came out. Bell tapped his revolversuggestively.

  "With no man about this house," he said grimly, "Ribiera will put inone of his own choice. And you have a wife and children and they'll beat that man's mercy. Don't make me kill you. Ribiera may not blame youfor my escape if you tell him everything--and you're hurt, anyway.Either we get away, and you do that, or you're killed and we get awayanyhow."

  He toppled two last five gallon tins of gasoline into thecockpits--crowding them abominably--and swung on the prop. The enginecaught. Bell throttled it down, kicked away the stones with which hehad blocked its wheels, and climbed up into the pilot's cockpit. Withhis revolver ready in his lap he taxied slowly over to a favorablestarting point.

  * * * * *

  The ship rose slowly, and headed west again. At three thousand feet hecut
out the motor to shout to Paula.

  "One place is as good as another to us, now. The whole continent isclosed to us by now. I'm going to try to find that headquarters and dosome damage. Afterwards, we'll see."

  He cut in the motor again and flew steadily westward. He rosegradually to four thousand feet, to five.... He watched hisinstruments grimly, the motor temperature especially. There wereflakes of metal in the oil lines. Twice he saw the motor temperaturerise to a point that brought the sweat out on his face. And twice hesaw it drop again. Bits of shattered metal were in the oiling system,and they had partly blocked the stream of lubricant until the engineheated badly. And each time the vibration had shifted them, orloosened them....

  They had left the big amphibian no earlier than nine o'clock. It wasnoon when they took off for the _fazenda_ of Paula's kin. But it wasfive o'clock and after when they rose from there with an engine whichmight run indefinitely and might stop at any second.

  Bell did not really expect it to run for a long time. He had worked asmuch to cheat Ribiera of the satisfaction of a victory as in hopes ofa real escape. But an hour, and the motor still ran. It wasconsistently hotter than an aero engine should run. Twice it had goneup to a dangerous temperature. One other time it had gone up for aminute or more as if the oiling system had failed altogether. But itstill ran, and the sun was sinking toward the horizon and shadows werelengthening, and Bell began to look almost hopefully for a clearing inwhich to land before the dark hours came.

  Then it was that he saw the planes that had been sent for him and forPaula.

  * * * * *

  There were three of them, fast two-seaters very much like the one hedrove. They were droning eastward, with all cockpits filled, from thatenigmatic point in the west. And Bell had descended to investigate abarely possible stream when they saw him.

  The leader banked steeply and climbed upward toward him. The othersgazed, swung sharply, and came after him, spreading out as they came.And Bell, after one instant's grim debate, went into a maple leaf divefor the jungle below him. The others dived madly in his wake. He hearda sharp, tearing rattle. A machine-gun. He saw the streaks of tracersgoing very wide. Gunfire in the air is far from accurate. Amachine-gun burst from a hundred yards, when the gun has to be aimedby turning the whole madly vibrating ship, is less accurate than arifle at six hundred, or even eight. Most aircraft duels are settledat distances of less than a hundred yards.

  It was that fact that Bell counted on. With a motor that might go deadat any instant and a load of passengers and gas at least equaling thatof any of the other ships, mere flight promised little. The otherships, too, were armed, at any rate the leader was, and Bell had onlysmall arms at his disposal. But a plane pilot, stunting madly to dodgetracer bullets, has little time to spare for revolver work.

  * * * * *

  Bell had but one advantage. He expected to be killed. He looked uponboth Paula and himself as very probably dead already. And heinfinitely preferred the clean death of a crash to either the life ordeath that Ribiera would offer them. He flattened out barely twentyyards above the waving branches that are the roof of the jungle. Hewent scudding over the tree tops, rising where the jungle rose,dipping where it dropped, and behind him the foliage waved wildly asif in a cyclone.

  The other planes dared not follow. To dive upon him meant too muchchance of a dash into the entrapping branches. One plane, indeed, didtry it, and Bell scudded lower and lower until the wheels of the smallplane were spinning from occasional, breath taking contacts with thefeathery topmost branches of jungle giants. That other plane flattenedout not less than a hundred feet farther up and three hundred yardsbehind. To fire on him with a fixed gun meant a dive to bring the gunmuzzle down. And a dive meant a crash.

  * * * * *

  A stream flashed past below. There was the glitter of water,reflecting the graying sky. A downward current here dragged at thewings of the plane. Bell jerked at the stick and her nose came up.There was a clashing, despite her climbing angle, of branches upon therunning gear, but she broke through and shot upward, trying to stall.Bell flung her down again into his mad careering.

  It was not exactly safe, of course. It was practically a form ofsuicide. But Bell had not death, but life to fear. He could afford tobe far more reckless than any man who desired to live. The plane wentscuttling madly across the jungle tops, now rising to skim the top ofa monster _ceiba_, now dipping deliberately.

  The three pursuing planes hung on above him helplessly while theshort, short twilight of the tropics fell, and Bell went racing acrossthe jungle, never twenty feet above the tree top and with the boughsbehind him showing all the agitation of a miniature hurricane. Asdarkness deepened, the race became more suicidal still, and there wereno lighted fields nearby to mark a landing place. But as darkness grewmore intense, Bell could dare to rise to fifty, then a hundred feetabove the tops, and the dangers of diving to his level remainedundiminished. And then it was dark.

  * * * * *

  Bell climbed to two hundred feet. To two hundred and fifty. With morefreedom, now, he could take one hand from the controls. He could feelthe menace of the tumultuously roaring motors in his wake, but he wassmiling very strangely in the blackness. He reached inside his flyingsuit and tore away the front of his shirt. He reached down andbattered in the top of one of the five gallon gasoline tins in thecockpit with the barrel of his revolver. He stuffed the scrap of clothinto the rent. It was wetted instantly by the splashing. Anothersavage blow, unheard in the thunder of the motor. In the peculiarlycalm air of the cockpit the reek of gasoline was strong, but clearedaway. And Bell, with the frosty grim smile of a man who gambles withhis life, struck a light. The cloth flared wildly, and he reached hishands into the flame and heaved the tin of fuel overside.

  The cloth was burning fiercely, and spilled gasoline caught inmid-air. A fierce and savage flame dropped earthward. Spark on thecloth, and the cloud of inflammable vapor that formed where theleaking tin fell plummetlike, carried the flame down when the wind ofits fall would have blown it out.

  The following planes saw a flash of light. They saw a swiftlydescending conflagration tracing a steep arch toward the tree tops.They saw that flaming vanish among the trees. And then they saw a vastupflaring of fire below. Flames licked upward almost to the treetops....

  Bell looked back from two thousand feet. Wing-tip lights were on,below, and disks of illumination played upon the roof of the jungleabove the fire. The three planes were hovering over the spot. But athick dense column of smoke was rising, now. Green things shrivelingin the heat, and dried and rotted underbrush. Altogether, the volumeof smoke and flame was very convincing evidence that an airplane hadburst into flame in mid-air and crashed through the jungle top to burnto ashes beneath.

  * * * * *

  But Bell climbed steadily to five thousand feet. He cut out the motor,there, and in the shrieking and whistling of wind as the plane wentinto a shallow glide, he spoke sharply.

  "Paula?"

  "I am all right," she assured him unsteadily. "What now?"

  "There's a seat pack under you," said Bell. "It's a parachute. You'dbetter put it on. God only knows where we'll land, but if the motorstops we'll jump together. And I think we'll have to jump before dawn.This plane won't fly indefinitely. There's just one chance in amillion that I know of. There'll be a moon before long. When it comesup, look for the glitter of moonlight on water. With the wing-tiplights we may--we may--manage to get down. But I doubt it."

  He moved his hand to cut in the motor again. She stopped him.

  "If we head south," she said unsteadily, "we may reach the Paraguay.It is perhaps two hundred miles, but it is broad. We should see it.Perhaps even the stars...."

  "Good work!" said Bell approvingly. "_Nils desperandum!_ That's ourmotto, Paula."

  He swung off his course and headed south. He was flying hi
gh, now, andan illogical and incomprehensible hope came to him. There was no hope,of course. He had had, more than once, a despairing conviction thatthe utmost result of all his efforts would be but the delaying oftheir final enslavement to The Master, whose apparent impersonalitymade him the more terrible as he remained mysterious. So far theyseemed like struggling flies in some colossal web, freeing themselvesfrom one snaring spot to blunder helplessly into another.

  But the moon came up presently, rounded and nearly full. The sky tookon a new radiance, and the jungle below them was made darker and morehorrible by the contrast.

  And when there were broad stretches of moonlit foliage visible on therising slopes beneath, Bell felt the engine faltering. He switched onthe instrument board light. One glance, and he was cold all over. Themotor was hot. Hotter than it had ever been. The oil lines, perhapsthe pump itself....

  * * * * *

  Paula's hand reached back into the glow of the instrument board. Heleaned over and saw her pointing. Moonlight on rolling water, farbelow. He dived for it, steeply. The wing-lights went on. Faint disksof light appeared far below, sweeping to and fro with the swaying ofthe plane, bobbing back and forth.

  It seemed to Bell that there had been nothing quite as horrible asthe next minute or two. He felt the over-heated, maltreated motorlaboring. It was being ruined, of course--and a ruined motor meantthat they were marooned in the jungle. But if it kept going only untilthey landed. And if it did not....

  White water showed below in the disks of the landing lights' glow. Ittumbled down a swift and deadly _raudal_--a rapid. And then--black,deep water, moving swiftly between tall cliffs of trees.

  Bell risked everything to bank about and land toward the white water.The little plane seemed to be sinking into a canyon as the trees roseoverhead on either side. But the moonlit rapid gave him his height,approximately, and the lights helped more than a little.

  * * * * *

  He landed with a terrific crash. The plane teetered on the very vergeof a dive beneath the surface. Bell jerked back the stick and killedthe engine, and it settled back.

  A vast, a colossal silence succeeded the deafening noise of twelvecylinders exploding continuously. There were little hissing sounds asthe motor cooled. There was the smell of burnt oil.

  "All right, Paula?" asked Bell quietly.

  "I--I'm all right."

  The plane was drifting backward, now. It spun around in a statelyfashion, its tail caught in underbrush, and it swung back. It driftedpast cliffs of darkness for a long time, and grounded, presently, witha surprising gentleness.

  "Do you know," said Bell dryly, "this sort of thing is gettingmonotonous. I think our motor's ruined. I never knew before thatmisfortunes could grow literally tedious. I've been expecting to bekilled any minute since we started off, but the idea of being stuck inthe jungle with a perfectly good plane and a bad motor...."

  He fished inside his flying suit and extracted a cigarette. Then helit it.

  "Let's see.... We haven't a thing to eat, have we?"

  * * * * *

  There was a little slapping noise. Bell became suddenly aware of ahorde of insects swarming around him. Smoke served partially to drivethem off.

  "Look here," he said suddenly, "we could unfold a parachute and coverthe cockpits for some protection against these infernal things thatare biting me."

  "We may need the parachute," said Paula unsteadily. "Does--does thatsmoke of yours drive them away?"

  "A little." Bell hesitated. "I say, it would be crowded, but if I cameup there, or you here...."

  "I--I'll come back there," she said queerly. "The extra cans ofgasoline here...."

  She slipped over the partition, in the odd flying suit which looks somuch more odd when a girl wears it. She settled down beside him, andhe tried painstakingly to envelope her in a cloud of tobacco smoke.The plague of insects lessened.

  There was nothing to do but wait for dawn. She was very quiet, but asthe moon rose higher he saw that her eyes were open. The night noisesof the jungle all about them came to their ears. Furtive littleslitherings, and the sound of things drinking greedily at the water'sedge, and once or twice peculiar little despairing small animal criesoff in the darkness.

  * * * * *

  The jungle was dark and sinister, and all the more so when the moonrose high and lightened its face and left them looking into weird,abysmal blackness between moonlit branches. Bell thought busily,trying not to become too conscious of the small warm body beside him.

  He moved, suddenly, and found her fingers closed tightly on the sleeveof his flying suit.

  "Frightened, Paula?" he asked quietly. "Don't be. We'll make out."

  She shook her head and looked up at him, drawing away as if to scanhis face more closely.

  "I am thinking," she said almost harshly, "of biology. I wonder--"

  Bell waited. He felt an intolerable strain in her tensed figure. Heput his hand comfortingly over hers. And, astoundingly, he found ittrembling.

  "Are all women fools?" she demanded in a desperate cynicism. "Are weall imbeciles? Are--"

  Bell's pulse pounded suddenly. He smiled.

  "Not unless men are imbeciles too," he said dryly. "We've been througha lot in the past two days. It's natural that we should like eachother. We've worked together rather well. I--well"--his smile wasdistinctly a wry and uncomfortable one--"I've been the more anxious toget to some civilized place where The Master hasn't a deputybecause--well--it wouldn't be fair to talk about loving you while--"he shrugged, and said curtly, "while you had no choice but to listen."

  * * * * *

  She stared at him, there in the moonlight with the jungle moving aboutits business of life and death about them. And very, very slowly thetenseness left her figure. And very, very slowly she smiled.

  "Perhaps," she said quietly, "you are lying to me, Charles. Perhaps.But it is a very honorable thing for you to say. I am not ashamed,now, of feeling that I wish to be always near you."

  "Hush!" said Bell. He put his arm about her shoulder and drew hercloser to him. He tilted her face upward. It was oval and quiteirresistibly pretty. "I love you," said Bell steadily. "I've beenfighting it since God knows when, and I'm going to keep on fightingit--and it's no use. I'm going to keep on loving you until I die."

  Her fingers closed tightly upon his. Bell kissed her.

  "Now," he said gruffly, "go to sleep."

  He pressed her head upon his shoulder and kept it there. After a longtime she slept. He stirred, much later, and she opened her eyes again.

  "What is it?"

  "Damn these mosquitos," growled Bell. "I can't keep them off yourface!"

  CHAPTER X

  For four hours after sunrise Bell worked desperately. With the few andinadequate tools in the plane he took apart the oiling system of themotor. It was in duplicate, of course, like all modern air engines,and there were three magnetos, and double spark plugs. Bell drainedthe crankcase beneath a sun that grew more and more hot andblistering, catching the oil in a gasoline can that he was able toempty into the main tanks. He washed out innumerable small oil pipeswith gasoline, and flushed out the crankcase itself, and had at theend of his working as many small scraps of metal as would half fill athimble. He showed then to Paula.

  "And the stars in their courses fought against Sisera," he quoteddryly. "Any one of these, caught in just the right place, would havelet us down into the jungle last night."

  She smiled up at him.

  "But they didn't."

  "No.... God loves the Irish," said Bell. "What's that thing?"

  Paula was fishing, sitting on a fallen tree in the cloud of smoke froma smudge fire Bell had built for her. She was wearing the oily flyingsuit he had found in the shed with the plane, and had torn strips fromher discarded dress to make a fishing line. The hook was made out ofthe stiff wire handle of on
e of the extra gasoline tins. "Hook andleader in one," Bell had observed when he made it.

  * * * * *

  He was pointing to a flat bodied fish with incredible jaws that lay onthe grass, emitting strange sounds even in the air. It flapped aboutmadly. Its jaws closed upon a stick nearly half an inch thick, and cutit through.

  "It is a _piranha_," said Paula. "The same fish that bit your hand. Itcan bite through a copper wire fastened to a hook, but this hook is solong...."

  "Pleasant," said Bell. Something large and red passed before his eyes.He struck at it instinctively.

  "Don't!" said Paula sharply.

  "Why?"

  "It's a _maribundi_ wasp," she told him "And its sting.... Childrenhave died of it. A strong man will be ill for days from one singlesting."

  "Still more pleasant," said Bell. "The jungle is a charming place,isn't it?" He wiped the sweat off his face. "Any more little petsabout?"

  She looked about seriously.

  "There." She pointed to a sapling not far distant. "The _palo santo_yonder has a hollow trunk, and in it there are usually ants, which arecalled fire-ants. They bite horribly. It feels like a drop of moltenmetal on your flesh. And it festers afterwards. And there is a fly,the _berni_ fly, which lays its eggs in living flesh. The maggot eatsits way within. I do not know much about the jungle, but my fatherhas--had a _fazenda_ in Matto Grosso and I was there as a child. The_camaradas_ told me much about the jungle, then."

  Bell winced, and sat down beside her. She had Ribiera's pearl handledautomatic within easy reach. She saw him looking at it.

  "I do not think there is any danger," she said with a not veryconvincing smile, "but there are _cururus_--water snakes. They growvery large."

  "And I asked you to fish!" said Bell. "Stop it!"

  * * * * *

  She hauled the line ashore, with a flapping thing on the end of it.Bell took the fish off and regarded her catch moodily.

  "I'd been thinking," he said moodily, "that Ribiera suspects we'redead. I'd been envisioning ourselves as marooned, yes, but relativelysafe as long as we were thought to be dead. And I'd thought that if welived a sort of castaway existence for a few weeks we'd be forgotten,and would have a faint chance of getting out to civilization withoutbeing noticed. But this...."

  "I will stay," she said steadily. "I will stay anywhere or goanywhere, with you."

  Bell's hand closed on her shoulder.

  "I believe it," he said heavily. "And--if you noticed--I had beenthinking of letting down the Trade. I'd been thinking of not trying tofight The Master any longer, but only of getting you to safety. In asense, I was thinking of treason to my job and my government. Isuspect"--he smiled rather queerly--"I suspect we love each otherrather much, Paula. I'd never have dreamed for anyone else. Go over tothe plane and don't fish any more. I'll rustle the food for both ofus."

  She stood up obediently, smiling at him.

  "But kill that _piranha_ before you try to handle it," she advisedseriously.

  Bell battered the savage thing until it ceased to move. He picked itup, then, and sniffed the air. Paula had been in a cloud of acridsmoke. She could not have detected the taint in the air he discovered.He went curiously, saw a broken branch overhead, and then sawsomething on the ground.

  * * * * *

  He came back to the plane presently, looking rather sick.

  "Give me one of the machetes, Paula," he said quietly. "We broughtthem, I think."

  "What is the matter?"

  He took the wide-bladed woods knife.

  "A man," he said, nauseated. "He either fell or was thrown fromsomewhere high above. From a plane. He was United States SecretService. There's a badge in his clothes. Don't come."

  He went heavily over to the spot beyond the smudge fire. He workedthere for half an hour. When he came back there were earth stains onhis hands and clothing, and he carried a very small brown package inhis hand.

  "He had a report ready to send off," said Bell grimly. "I read it.It's in code, of course, but in the Trade...."

  He set to work savagely on the engine, reassembling it. As he worked,he talked in savage, jerky sentences.

  "The Service man at Asuncion. One of the seven who vanished. He'dlearned more than we have. He was caught--poisoned, of course--andpretended to surrender. Told a great deal that he shouldn't, in orderto convince The Master's deputy. The key men in nearly every republicin South America are in The Master's power. Paraguay belongs to him,body and soul. Bolivia is absolutely his. Every man of the officialclass from the President down knows that he has two weeks or less ofsanity if The Master's deputy shuts down on him--and he knows that atthe crook of the deputy's finger he'll be assassinated before then. Ifthey run away, they go murder mad. If they stay, they have to obeyhim. It's hellish!"

  * * * * *

  He stopped talking to make a fine adjustment. He went on, somberly.

  "Chile's not so bad off, but the deputy has slaves nearly everywhere.Ecuador--well, the President and half of Congress have been poisoned.The man I found was trying to get a sample of the poison for analysis.He'd learned it was unstable. Wouldn't keep. The Master has to sendfresh supplies constantly all over the continent. That accounts forthe deputies remaining loyal. If The Master had reason to suspectthem, he had only to stop their supply.... They couldn't stock up onthe deadly stuff for their own use. So they're as abjectly subject toThe Master as their slaves are to them. No new slaves are to be madein Paraguay or Bolivia, except when necessary. It's believed that insix months the other republics will have every influential mansubjected. Every army officer, every judge, every politician, everyoutstanding rich man.... And then, overnight, South America willbecome an empire, with that devil of a Master as its overlord."

  He lifted one of the oil pumps in place and painstakingly tightenedthe bolts that held it.

  "Picture it," he said grimly. "Beasts as viceroys, already takingtheir pleasure. Caligulas, Neros, on viceregal thrones all over thecontinent.... And every man who shows promise, or shows signs of honoror courage or decency, either killed or sent mad or...."

  * * * * *

  Paula was watching his face closely.

  "I think," she said soberly, "that there is something worse."

  Bell was silent for an instant.

  "For me," he said bitterly, "it is. Before The Master dares to makehis coup public, he must be sure that there will be no foreigninterference. So, he must establish a deputy in Washington. Arelatively few chosen men, completely enslaved, could hold back ourGovernment from any action. Leaders in Congress, and members of theCabinet, working, in defense of The Master because his defeat wouldmean their madness.... He would demand no treason of them at first. Hewould require simply that he should not be interfered with. But hisplans include the appointment of deputies in the United States lateron. I don't think he can subdue America. I don't think so. But hecould--and I think he would--send whole cities mad. And if you thinkof that...."

  * * * * *

  He was silent, working. A long, long time later he swung on thepropeller. The motor caught. He throttled it down and watched itgrimly. The motor warmed up to normal, and stayed there.

  "It will run," he said coldly. "Those two plugs in the crankcase maycome out at any time. I've tightened them a little. They'd workedloose from the vibration. But--well.... That Service man was headingfor Asuncion. He'd been found out. They probably shot him down inmid-air after he'd gotten away. His plane may be crashed anywhere inthe jungle within a mile or so. And I've two bearings on the _fazenda_where Ribiera went, now. One from Asuncion through here and one fromRio. I want to go back there to-night and dump burning gasoline on thebuildings, to do enough damage to disorganize things a little. ThenI'm going to try to make it to a seaport. We can stow away, perhaps."

  He shut off the motor.

  "
We'll start at dusk. There'll be lights there. This report says it'snearly a city--of slaves. We want the darkness for our getaway."

  Paula looked at the sky.

  "We have three hours," she said quietly. "Let us cook and eat. Youmust keep up your strength, Charles."

  She said it in all seriousness, with the air of one who has entireconfidence and is merely solicitous. And Bell, who knew of at leastthree excellent reasons why neither of them should survive untildawn--Bell looked at her queerly, and then grinned, and then took herin his arms and kissed her. She seemed to like it.

  And they lunched quite happily on _piranha_ and _pacu_--which issmaller--and drank water, and for dessert had more _piranha_.

  * * * * *

  The long afternoon wore away slowly. It was hot, and grew blistering.Insects came in swarms and tormented them until Bell built a secondand larger smudge fire. But they fastened upon his flesh when he wentout of its smoke for more wood.

  They talked, as well as they could for smoke, and looked at each otheras well as they could for smarting eyes. It was not at all theconventional idea of romantic conversation, but it was probably a gooddeal more honest than most, because they both knew quite well thattheir chance of life was small. A plane whose motor was precariouslypatched, flying over a jungle without hope of a safe landing if thatpatched-up motor died, was bad enough. But with the three nearestnations subservient to The Master, whose deputy Ribiera was, and allthose nations hunting them as soon as they were known to be yetalive....

  "Would it not be wise, Charles," asked Paula wistfully, "just for usto try to escape, ourselves, and not try--"

  "Wise, perhaps," admitted Bell, "but I've got to strike a blow while Ican." He was staring somberly at the little plane, fast upon a mudbank, with the tall green jungle all about. "The deputies and alltheir slaves have their lives hanging by a thread--the thread of aconstant supply of the antidote to the poison that's administered withthe antidote. The deputies--Ribiera, for instance--don't realize that.Else they wouldn't dare do the things they do. But let them realizethat the thread can be broken, and what their slaves would do to thembefore they all went mad.... You see? Let them learn that a blow hasbeen struck at the center of all the ghastly thing, and they'll befrightened. They'll be close to mutiny through sheer panic. And theremay be slip-ups."

  * * * * *

  It was vague, perhaps, but it was true. The subjection of the poisonedmen and women was due not only to terror of what would happen if theydisobeyed the deputies, but to a belief that that thing would nothappen if they did obey. If Bell could do enough damage to the_fazenda_ of The Master to shake the second belief, he would haveshaken the whole conspiracy. And a conspiracy that is not a completesuccess is an utter failure.

  It was close to sunset when they heard a droning noise in thedistance. Bell went swiftly to the cockpit of the plane and searchedthe sky.

  "Don't see it," he said grimly, "and it probably doesn't see us. We'reall right, I suppose."

  But he was uneasy. The droning noise grew to a maximum and slowly diedaway again. It diminished to a distant muttering.

  "What say," said Bell suddenly, "we get aloft now? We'll follow thatdamned thing home. It's going from Asuncion to that place we want tofind. This is on that route. Whoever's in it won't be looking behind,and it's close to darkness."

  * * * * *

  Paula stood up.

  "I am ready, Charles."

  Bell swung out on the floats and tugged at the prop. The motor caughtand roared steadily. While it was warming up, he stripped off the restof his shirt and tore it into wide strips, and tied the rags in thehandles of the gasoline tins in the two cockpits.

  "For our bombs," he explained, smiling faintly. "You'll want to wearyour chute pack, Paula. You know how to work it? And we'll divide theguns and what shells we have, and stick them in the flying suitpockets."

  He made her show him a dozen times that she knew how to pull out thering that would cause the parachute to open. She climbed into thefront cockpit and smiled down at him. He throttled down the motor toits lowest speed and shoved off from the mud bank. Clambering up,while the plane moved slowly over the water under the gentle pull ofthe slow-moving propeller, he bent over and kissed her.

  "For luck," he said in her ear.

  The next instant he settled down at the controls, glanced a last timeat the instruments, and gave the motor the gun.

  * * * * *

  The plane lifted soggily but steadily and swept up-stream toward therolling water of the _raudal_, which tumbled furiously about anobstacle half of stones and shallows, and half of caught and rottingtree trunks. It rose steadily until the trees dropped away on eitherside and the jungle spread out on every hand. It rose to a thousandfeet and went roaring through the air to northward, while Bellstrained his eyes for the plane on ahead.

  It was ten minutes or more before he sighted it, winging its waysteadily into the misty distance above the jungle. Bell settled downto follow. The engine roared valorously. For half an hour Bell watchedit anxiously, but it remained cool and had always ample power. Paula'shead showed above the cockpit combing. Mostly she looked confidentlyahead, but once or twice she turned about to smile at him.

  The sun seemed high when they rose from the water, but as it nearedthe horizon its rate of descent seemed to increase. They had been inthe air for no more than three-quarters of an hour when it was twiceits own disk above the far distant hills. Almost immediately, itseemed, it had halved that distance. And then the lower limb of theblaring circle was sharply cut off by the hill crests and the sun sankwearily to rest behind the edge of the world.

  It seemed as if a swift chill breeze blew over the jungle, in warningof the night. The trees became dark. A shadowy dusk filled the aireven up to where the plane flew thunderously on. And then, quiteabruptly, stars were shining and it was night.

  * * * * *

  Bell remembered, suddenly, and switched on the radio as an experiment.The harsh, discordant dashes sounded in his ears through the roaringof the motor. A beam of short waves was being sent out from hisdestination. While he was on the direct path the monotonous signalscould be heard. When they weakened or died he would have left the way.

  But they continued, discordant and harsh and monotonous, while thelast faint trace of the afterglow died away and night was complete,and a roof of many stars glittered overhead, and the jungle lay darkand deadly below him.

  For nearly half an hour more he kept on. Twice he switched on theinstrument board light to glance at the motor temperature. The firsttime it appeared a little high. The second time it was normal again.But there was little use in watching instruments. If the motor failedthere was no landing field to make for.

  A sudden faint glow sprang into being, many miles ahead. The pinkishglare of many, many lights turned on suddenly. As the plane thunderedon the glow grew brighter. An illuminated field, for the convenienceof messengers who carried the poison for The Master to all the nationswhich were to be subjected.

  The glow went out as Bell was just able to distinguish long rows oftwinkling bulbs, and he saw the harsher, fiercer glow of floodlights.He reached forward and touched Paula's shoulder. Conversation wasimpossible over the motor's roar. Her hand reached up and pressed his.

  Then he saw other lights. Bright lights, as from houses. Arc lights asfrom storage warehouses, or something of the sort. A long, long row oflighted windows, which might be dormitories or perhaps sheds in whichThe Master's enslaved secretaries kept the record of his victims.

  * * * * *

  The earth flung back the roaring of the little plane's motor. Bell hadbut little time to act before other planes would dart upward to seekhim out. He dived, and the wing tip landing lights went on, sendingfierce glares downward. Twin disks of light appeared upon the earth.Sheds, houses, a long row of shacks as
if for laborers. A dryingfield, on which were spread out plants with their leaves turningbrown. A wall about it....

  "The damned stuff," said Bell grimly.

  He swept on. Jungle, only jungle. He banked steeply as lights flickedon and off below and as--once--the wing tip lights showed men runningfrantically two hundred feet below.

  Then a stream of fire shot earthward, and Bell held up his hand andarm into the blast of the slip stream. It blew out the blaze that hadlicked at his flesh. He stared down. The gas can had left a trailingstream of fluid behind it as it went spinning down to earth. All thatstream of inflammable stuff was aflame. The can itself struck earthand seemed to explode, and the trailing mass of fire was borne onwardby the wind and lay across a row of thatch-roofed buildings. Anincredible sheet of fire spread out. The stuff in the drying yard wasburning.

  Bell laughed shortly, and flung over another of his flaming bombs, andanother, and the fourth....

  * * * * *

  He climbed for the skies, then, as rectangles of light showed belowand planes were thrust out of their lighted hangars. Four hugeconflagrations were begun. One was close by a monster rounded tank,and Bell watched with glistening eyes as it crept closer. Suddenly--itseemed suddenly, but it must have been minutes later--flame rushed upthe sides of that tank, there was a sudden hollow booming, and firewas flung broadcast in a blazing, pouring flood.

  "Their fuel tank!" said Bell, his eyes gleaming in the ruddy lightfrom below. He shut off his landing lights and went upward, steeply."I've played hell with them now!"

  A thousand feet up. Two thousand. Two thousand five hundred.... Andsuddenly Bell felt cold all over. The instrument board! The motor washot. Hot! Burning!

  He shut it off before it could burst into flames, but he heard thesquealing of tortured, unlubricated metal grinding to a stop. Heleveled out. It was strangely, terribly silent in the high darkness,despite the roaring of wind about the gliding plane. The absence ofthe motor roar was the thing that made it horrible.

  "Paula," said Bell harshly, "one of those plugs came out, I guess. Themotor's ruined. Dead. The ship's going to crash. Ready with yourparachute?"

  * * * * *

  It was dark, up there, save for the glare of fires upon the undersurface of the wings. But he saw her hand, encarmined by that glare,upon the combing of the cockpit. A moment later her face. She turned,light-dazzled, to smile back at him.

  "All right, Charles." Her voice quavered a little, but it was verybrave. "I'm ready. You're coming, too?"

  "I'm coming," said Bell grimly. Below them was the city of The Master,set blazing by their doing. If their chutes were seen descending....And if they were not.... "Count ten," said Bell hoarsely, "and pullout the ring. I'll be right after you."

  He saw the slim little black-clad figure drop, plummetlike, and prayedin an agony of fear. Then a sudden blooming thing hid it from sight.Thick clouds of smoke lay over the lights and fires below.

  Bell stepped over the side and went hurtling down toward the earth inhis turn.

  (_To be continued_)

  [Advertisement: ]

 

‹ Prev Next ›