"Listen," came his coarse-toned protest, and there was a baffled look in his small, wide-set eyes. "I don't savvy this business, honest! What are we gonna do? I thought we was bein' paid to mess around with that railroad—wreckin' them trains an'—"
"If you was bein' paid to think, you'd sure be out of luck!" Slick cut in with his harsh staccato. "Stop worryin'. The guy who gives us our orders knows his stuff, an' I don't mean maybe. You ain't workin' for no mobster, punk. You're workin' for the Tycoon!"
Awe threaded his voice as he pronounced that title—and the awe communicated itself at once to the burly Ape, who winced and was silent. Luke remained immobile, but the dangling cigarette in his thin lips bobbed slightly, as if to express his own feeling of respect.
"Yes, an' the Tycoon knows his stuff," repeated Slick. "Maybe it's the swag on that plane." His eyes narrowed. "But I ain't trying to figure it. Whatever it is, it's gonna put dough in our pockets."
He broke off as once more the loudspeaker came to life.
"Pat Bentley calling—Visibility worse—I think I'll go down a ways—"
"He thinks he'll go down," Luke echoed, his words significant despite his expressionless tone.
"Yeah." Slick's malignant smile flickered again. "He don't know the half of it!" He moved hurriedly across the floor. "Got to be ready now! Any minute the time'll come. Any minute!"
* * *
Through the high-swirling cloud banks piled seemingly against the very stars, the huge-winged Douglas transport sliced downward, twin motors thundering, propellers churning the mists.
At times those mists swallowed the big plane completely. Then it would reappear, a great, silvery, birdlike shape, with lights showing from its cabin, and green and red running lights on its wing tips.
Below, through gaps in the mist, mountains showed dark, jutting peaks, gaping valleys. Presently, as the heavier clouds were left drifting above, the big monoplane leveled in its flight, straightened to roar ahead.
In the cozy, lighted cabin, ultramodern in its appointments, the dozen passengers gratefully unstrapped the belts they had been cautioned to fasten during the descent. They settled back comfortably, secure in the knowledge that this plane was in capable hands, and that even through mist the invisible but complicated network of radios and beacons which had made sky-travel as fully developed as any railroad on signal-marked tracks, helped guide the ship safely through the night.
"Coffee?"
A trim-uniformed stewardess, her cap set jauntily over her copper-tinted hair, emerged from her compartment to pass down the corridor with her tray. She was pretty in an efficient, capable-looking way. As if she regarded all the passengers as helpless patients as long as they were in the air, she treated them with firm solicitude.
"Now, Madame—" She was speaking to the rather stout but mink-coated wife of a big Chicago business man, who had fought for tickets on this first, new run of the airline. "—do take coffee. It will steady your nerves."
She passed the cup over, continuing her journey. Most of the passengers were men—men of wealth and position.
Two had brought wives; another a daughter. The cabin had the air of an exclusive, privileged society.
But not all of its occupants were so comfortably blase. In Seat Number 1, directly behind the closed-off pilot's compartment, a thin man in a black Homburg hat leaned out across the aisle. He had a scrawny, pallid face, its leanness accentuated by the tension that etched it. The cords of his neck stood out like whipcord. His eyes, in which all the personality of the man seemed concentrated, were dark, burning. He clutched a black briefcase in his arm as he spoke.
"I tell you, Garth, I feel nervous," came his low whisper, lost in the vibration of the motors. "Why did you insist on our taking this plane?"
Max Garth, a chunky man, muffled in a great-coat, from which his hatless head, large, square, and with a shock of greying, reddish hair spoke without leaning from the opposite seat. He wore thick-lensed glasses which gave his eyes a hard, concentrated stare.
"Cool down, Truesdale!" His low voice had a hard, brittle terseness, as if emotions were something he neither understood nor tolerated. Those who knew Max Garth—and he was famous in his profession of geology—knew him to be one of those cold men of science whose brains work only in cold logic, without sentiment. "You know it was a break—getting on this plane! Now nothing can go wrong. The whole affair will turn out as we expected. Why, the trip's almost over." He was reasoning as if with a child. "What is there to worry about?"
And like a child, David Truesdale relaxed a trifle. He, too, was a scientist: one of the country's foremost mining engineers, who had done noteworthy work in ventilating mines. But his work had become a shell into which he retired from worldly life, and he displayed that naivete which is so bewildering in men otherwise brilliant.
"Guess you're right, Garth. It's just nerves." He passed a blue-veined hand nervously over his pallid face.
"And don't hug that briefcase so," Garth said sourly. "Maybe you'd better give it to me!" His voice had an edge in it as it dropped still lower. "You don't want to attract attention."
Truesdale's clutch tightened on the briefcase as these words seemed instantly to bring back his fear. His eyes were burning, bright. "What's the use?" he began fearfully. "If someone knows—and he must know—"
"Are you going to bring up those threats again?" Garth's glasses seemed to glare. "Are you going to take the phone call of some crank seriously?"
"But if you had heard that voice over the phone!" Truesdale said shakily.
"I did," Garth returned coolly.
"What?" The eyes of David Truesdale went wide. "You mean, he—he threatened you too, this person who calls himself—" His voice was a frightened whisper. "—the Tycoon?"
Garth stiffened a little at that title; but his voice was contemptuous.
"Yes," he conceded. "He called. And gave me the same time limit. Nine o'clock tonight."
"But you never said a word about it."
"Because there's nothing to say, except to the police, when we get to New York."
Abruptly Garth broke off. He had turned in his seat, and his glare-glassed eyes caught sudden sight of pretty Nancy Clay, the stewardess, standing directly behind the two seats with her coffee tray. She was staring at them both, her lips half parted.
Garth darted a warning look at Truesdale who seemed oblivious of her presence. He spoke to Truesdale in a tone momentarily harsh:
"Well, forget about it! It's all a joke of no importance."
But the stark, haunted fear in Truesdale's eyes did not lessen. He started to speak again, then gulped and shut his lips tightly. Only then did he seem to become aware of the stewardess, as she came forward.
"Coffee, gentlemen?"
Garth shook his head. Truesdale growled a shaky: "No thank you, Miss."
"Come, come," she insisted. "It will warm you up. Make you feel fit for the landing."
"When do we land, stewardess?" Garth demanded.
She flicked around the wrist of the hand gripping the tray to look at her watch.
"Little more than three-quarters of an hour now," she said. "We're scheduled to land at nine-forty-five. It's now exactly two minutes to nine." She smiled, glancing at the closed partition in front of the two seats. "And if I know our pilot, we'll make that schedule!"
On the other side of the partition, his strong young hands gripping the Dep-wheel, Pat Bentley turned to his co-pilot.
"You can take over soon, Bill. I want to tell Newark now that everything's okay."
His eyes glanced through the oblique windows in the nose of the ship, at the dim mountains