Empire of doom, p.5
EMPIRE OF DOOM, page 5
HE did not see Renee, nor the two men, Smith and Reuters. Love was seated as before behind his huge walnut desk, the deep lines of his face accented, heavily shadowed by worry.
“I understand,” he began at once, “that you consider it too late now to try to trick these people with a fake payment.”
Wentworth nodded, introduced Delaney. “One of your foremen.”
“I know Delaney,” Love said stiffly.
There was a grim humor about Delaney's mouth as that fiery young redhead stared at the owner of the factory in which he was only a minor employee. He seemed to draw a certain humorous satisfaction from the situation, but he remained in the background, as did Crosswell.
Love's dark eyes fixed on Wentworth's face. “What do you recommend?”
“Immediate evacuation of Elkhorn. Move all the families to other towns. Close your factory, except for guards.”
Love's face darkened. “But that is impossible!” he cried, his tones angry. “It means the loss of millions and would accomplish nothing. My interests are wide and scattered. These criminals have only to shift their attack to some other point. If I did that I soon should be forced to suspend all my industries.”
Wentworth's mouth was shut tightly. He nodded slowly. “That is a possibility, but meantime, it would save the lives of these threatened people, and it would give us time to trace the Green Hand.”
Love took a quick turn up and down the room, agitation in his long striding legs, in the rigid posture of his back. He stopped abruptly and shook a bony finger in Wentworth's face. ‘You're deliberately trying to humiliate me,” he thundered.
Wentworth smiled gently. “I don't give a damn about you,” he said. “I'm only interested in preserving the lives of your workmen and their families.”
Love's sallow skin became almost apoplectic with a rush of angry blood. “Get out!” he roared.
“Oh, shut up,” said Wentworth wearily. “This is what you'll have to do. Evacuate the town secretly. Throw state troops about it armed with gas masks. I've been over the terrain with Delaney here. Outposts must be thrown— ”
Love had been speechless with fury. Now his voice burst out hoarsely. “Get out before I have you thrown out!”
Wentworth bowed stiffly. “Very well, but I'm warning you that unless you behave more reasonably I will take the matter out of your hands entirely and evacuate the town myself.”
Delaney beside him, he stalked toward the door. It was flung open, and Renee ran in, her dark eyes wide, her cheeks flushed. “Dad,” she cried, “surely you must see that you can't do this with your people!”
“Go to your room,” Love snapped.
The girl stared at him in amazement. Slowly her own small shapely body became rigid, too. A counterpart of Love's own harsh commanding gaze glared back at him. “I am not a servant,” she said. “Don't speak to me like one.” For a moment father and daughter stared angrily into each other's eyes.
It was Wentworth who interceded. “It is quite hopeless, Miss Love,” he said. “Your father is what is known as a rugged individualist. Cooperation would be impossible for him. Do not concern yourself about this.”
The girl turned toward him, anger still burning in her eyes. “But the people— ” Her appealing glance flicked to Delaney also.
Wentworth smiled. “Jack and I will see that they are removed from danger.” He bowed again and stalked out.
The girl ran after him, but it was Delaney to whom she appealed now. “Oh, Jack, do everything you can.” Her hand on Delaney's arm, her face, with its red generous mouth upturned to his. “Father is not really mean, or as blind as that. He means well. But the mere thought of criminals infuriates him.”
“So I see,” said Delaney dryly. He covered the girl's white hand with his large brown one.
“Oh, Jack . . .” choked the girl.
Wentworth broke in. “Another time, Jack. We've got to hurry now, Renee. There's work to be done. One hell of a lot of it. I think that gang may strike at any moment, now that they know Love won't pay.”
He strode out of the house with Delaney at his heels. They flung into a car and raced for Elkhorn. As they sped on Wentworth talked swiftly to Delaney. “I had hoped,” he said, “to get Love's cooperation in evacuating the city. That would have made it much simpler. Now there is no choice but to do it without his assistance. That may prove difficult. It is hard to convince a man who is healthy and well within his own home that within five minutes' time he and all his family may be dead.”
“Five minutes!” cried Delaney.
Wentworth's eyes glittered. “It may be five minutes. It may be five days. But if I were those criminals, I think I should strike at once.”
They were silent then for minutes, while the motor roared, dragging them along smooth roads at a mile a minute pace. The cold air whined and whistled past. Wentworth's hand, numb within a glove, began to stiffen about the steering wheel. He slapped life back into it against his knee.
“There's this about it,” said Delaney. “If they are sure of themselves, it would be a hell of a sight more effective if they waited until the soldiers were all there, then turned loose the gas.”
Wentworth nodded. “Troops are already there,” he said. “I called the Governor this afternoon.”
“You called the Governor!” Delaney repeated slowly. “Good Lord, then the attack is certainly on tonight. They'll turn loose that gas. . .”
He leaned forward, clenched fists on his knees.
“Can't you get any more speed out of this car?” he demanded, savagely. “God help us to reach there before the massacre begins!”
CHAPTER SEVEN The Green Hand Strikes
CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Spider Is Crippled
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN On to Washington
CHAPTER SEVEN The Green Hand Strikes
THEY had left Loveland Boulevard now and were whirling on the Elkhorn Pike. Wentworth's foot pinned the accelerator to the floor. Lights bored a tunnel of whiteness through the black night.
“To reach there before the massacre starts, will not be sufficient,” he said. “We must reach there in time for you to get the people away. That is your job. They know you and will be more apt to heed what you say.
“I am going to the troop's headquarters, try to get the major to send soldiers over the city to order the people out. I don't know whether he will do it without word from Love, but I'll try to persuade him. If I fail, you will have to get some men together and broadcast the appeal. Those people have got to leave the city!”
The white pools of the street lights of Elkhorn began to glow in the distance, then the warm yellow windows of homes. Wentworth tore on. A warning shout and whining rifle bullet reminded him of the guard about the town. He clamped on brakes then, slid to a halt with tires screaming. A soldier with ready rifle, bayonet fixed, darted to the car.
“Take me to Major Bentwood at once,” Wentworth ordered.
The soldier glared suspiciously, the bayonet leveled at Wentworth's throat. “What the hell's the big idea?” he demanded, “of scooting into town at sixty miles an hour?”
“I'm in a hurry,” Wentworth snapped. “Get me to Major Bentwood at once.”
The sharpness of his words stiffened the soldier. He recognized authority in that voice. He shouted “Sergeant of the Guard!” Fifty feet away his cry was picked up by another sentry and relayed, voices ringing on the cold night air, until a man in a motorcycle sidecar whizzed up and skidded to a stop beside the car.
Through successive relays of officers that required endless time, Wentworth finally gained the presence of Major Bentwood. The Major was obdurate to all suggestion of evacuating the city.
“Foolish,” he grunted. “We can take care of them.”
Wentworth wasted no time in arguing. He put through a call to the Governor and requested orders that the town be evacuated.
Finally the wrangle was won, and patrols of soldiers started out to evacuate the city. Wentworth waited only for the order, then raced swiftly to a nearby airport, Delaney insisting on accompanying him. As Wentworth's car swerved into the field, a plane motor roared out. A black biplane two-seater was on the line, and as Wentworth drove near, a dark faced man in a turban, climbed from the rear cockpit and salaamed.
“Good work, Ram Singh,” said Wentworth, “you made a fast trip.” The Hindu's dark eyes glinted with pleasure. “You ordered it, Sahib,” he replied.
Wentworth was swiftly drawing on helmet and flying jacket: He climbed into parachute harness while he talked. Ram Singh did the same. He looked strange with goggles over his turban.
“Get back to Loveland,” Wentworth told Delaney. “Locate Wilhelm Reuters and let me know what he does tonight. There is something I don't like about that man.”
Delaney frowned. “I think I ought to get back to Elkhorn and help them there.”
“You can't do a damn thing,” Wentworth told him. “They've got more soldiers than they know what to do with. The town is being evacuated. There'll be nothing to gain by your going back, and it's important that Reuters be followed. You can be of much greater service if you do that.”
Delaney eyed him suspiciously, then nodded. “O. K.,” he said. “I thought for a moment you were trying to give me a soft job. But I guess you really mean it.”
“I do,” said Wentworth, shortly. “Good luck.” He strode across the slip-stream of the propeller, bending against the blasting wind, and clambering to the cockpit. Ram Singh mounted also. Machine guns were ready to Wentworth's hand, pointed forward through the propeller.
In the after cockpit, Ram Singh had twin guns also, mounted upon a Scarf ring. Wentworth jazzed the motor, felt its warm, quick pickup, waved his hand for the chock to be yanked from beneath the wheel and shot the black ship roaring across the field. The tail lifted, he eased back on the stick and the powerful plane slipped clear, zoomed and spiraled steeply upward.
WENTWORTH'S mind was racing as he sought altitude. It was apparent that the criminals who called
themselves the Green Hand had a spy in his camp. They had known of him and his visit to the factory at Elkhorn, had connected him with the bearded trapper. So Wentworth, in all his planning, had stressed the fact that he expected an attack by land. He wished to force an attempt from the skies. And he himself, with his deadly plane, would sweep the heavens above Elkhorn.
Up and up he pushed the black ship. At ten thousand feet Loveland was clearly visible, a twinkling mass of lights on the horizon. Beneath him, the smaller area that was Elkhorn showed its regular crisscross of street lights. Wentworth circled, waiting. A single plane could carry ample store of the gas to wipe out the entire town. Its incredible power of expansion— a tiny capsule had filled the cabin with instant death, had struck down two men— would make two or three pounds of the stuff sufficient to wipe out half the town.
Auto headlights were streaming away from Elkhorn now, running away on all roads, the townspeople evacuating before the prod of soldiers' guns. At least that part of his job had been well done. If any died tonight, it would be the soldiers who were prepared to battle, and their lungs would be protected by gas masks, their bodies by chemically prepared clothing against vapor, for Wentworth had given the Governor all the information he possessed about the gas.
For an hour and a half, while the stream of autos continued to pour from the town, thinning gradually until it was apparent that the last of the citizens were leaving. Wentworth circled without sighting another ship, without finding anything suspicious either in the air above or in the panorama of earth stretched out below, black and powdered with lights.
Then came a blow on his shoulder! Ram Singh's warning! He jerked his head about, heard the chatter of the Hindu's gun and, against the night sky, saw a ship slamming down at him from above. Twin flames flickered behind the propeller. Wentworth kicked the rudder, vaulted the ship in a swift whirling Immelman. He saw the fiery streaks of tracer bullets slice past only inches away.
THE attacking ship shot past below him. Wentworth whirled, dove toward its tail. The ship zipped into a power dive, roaring earthward with motor wide open.
Wentworth threw his own craft into a steeply pounding dive behind the other. Useless to fire his machine guns. Too great a distance separated him from the fiery exhausts of the other ship. Try as he would, he could not close that gap. And the other plane was racing straight toward Elkhorn!
Wentworth was positive.
It was apparent the ship wished to get close to the ground before dropping its gas bombs. Probably they were fragile receptacles that the wind would whirl and might throw astray if they fell from too great altitude.
Wentworth knew he must overtake the other ship, must stop its rain of deadly bombs. Desperately he threw his own plane into a vertical dive, motor straining at top speed. The earth rushed upward at a terrific pace. But now, at last, Wentworth was descending faster than the gas plane. Watching it closely, for the moment when he would pass it, Wentworth kept his thumbs on the trigger of his machine guns.
At long last, that moment came. He was traveling at incredible speed, his plane shaking and whining with the ripping of the wind. The ship was built to stand the wrench and stress of acrobatics in the air, but few craft ever had been called upon to stand the strain of such a vertical dive and the sudden snap out of it that Wentworth now planned.
Already they had shot past Elkhorn, were out over the dark plains beyond the city. It was safe to try the desperate stratagem Wentworth had determined upon. With rigid hand, feet steady upon the rudder, he strained back on the stick, jabbing the trigger of the machine gun. He saw the streaking course of his burning bullets speed first almost straight at the earth, then as the quivering ship answered the stick, the lead swept upward into the path of the plane ahead.
Wentworth strained harder at the stick. The roar of the motor was deafening. Vibration wracked the ship. But slowly, slowly the nose came up until the fiery streak of the tracer bullets merged with the whirling glint of the gas plane's propeller, ripped a line of flame up the belly of the criminal's ship.
The plane staggered like a drunken bird, slid off to one side, recovered, slipped again. Wentworth sought to ease the tension of his own valiant ship. Too late a ripping crack! A wing folded upward and ripped loose, crumpled by the terrific force of that long power dive and its sharp ending.
WENTWORTH jerked loose his belt buckles, twisted about. “Out” he yelled at Ram Singh. “Bail out!”
The turbaned head nodded. The ground was dangerously near now, the plane was whirling in a lopsided
flat spin toward the earth. Wentworth climbed high in his cockpit, but waited until Ram Singh put a foot upon the side and sprang out into space. There was barely time enough for the parachute to operate before Ram Singh would reach the earth.
Wentworth, hesitating that moment, to make sure that Ram Singh leaped successfully, had dropped below the minimum requirements of the chute! If he leaped now, ripped out the tiny bell of cloth that would yank out the big parachute, it could not possibly open in time. It might break his fall somewhat, but he was almost certainly doomed.
Wentworth did not make the attempt. Instead, watching the enemy's plane ahead burst into flame, and plunge downward, he stood upon the seat of his cockpit, made sure his feet were free, and jerked the rip cord.
The plane was not falling in a straight line, but spinning downward at an angle, still swept onward by the downward plunge of his terrific speed. That speed helped Wentworth now. It snapped open the parachute, jerked Wentworth with a sickening lurch from the cockpit.
His feet struck the tail, caught for a heart sickening instant, then jerked clear. He swung with slow, narrowing oscillation beneath the white bell of his chute, a scant hundred feet from the earth. The gas plane struck in flames, rebounded and exploded with a booming roar that spattered fire and black fragments over the landscape. Below him, Wentworth saw Ram Singh make a successful landing, saw the sail collapse and then his own black plane dived into a thicket.
This much Wentworth saw, then he himself was forced to bend his knees and relax his body for the shock of the landing. He spilled to the ground, sprang up slashing the parachute cords with a knife, and raced to Ram Singh. The Hindu was jogging to meet him. Wentworth waved his hands and shouted. “Run, run the other way. Gas, gas from the ship. The wind is toward us.”
The Hindu turned and raced back the way he had come. But, though he ran at top speed, Wentworth swiftly overtook him and together they sped on into the night, racing across wind to escape the crawling tentacles of gas that would creep from that wrecked ship, spreading desolation and horror over whatever part of the land they touched.
Wentworth could recall no homes in the path of the gas, and the wind was freshening. The chances were it would dissipate its strength before it reached any human habitation. But they too were directly in its path. For a mile they staggered on, lungs gasping for breath, plunging through underbrush, leaping ravines, dragging with heart-rending slowness over ploughed fields, soft with the mud of recent snow.
But finally they were clear and began to circle, making their slow way back to Elkhorn. Not a car passed along the road they trudged and they were forced to travel on foot all the way. It took three hours.
Elkhorn. Its lights blazed as brightly as ever; white street lamps circled in the wind, moving eerie shadows. But the homes were dark, and— a curse ripped from Wentworth's throat— huddled, pitiful bodies spotted the street ahead! He broke into a pounding run, brought up sharply beside one, a soldier crumpled in death, his gas mask making his face hobgoblin-like, his futile rifle tossed upon the cold earth.
WENTWORTH dropped on his knees beside him, tugged off the disguising mask, then sat upon his heels limply staring with horror-widened eyes at the dead face. Despite the protecting mask, his face was eaten by the hell gas, its flesh dyed a sickly green.
Great Lord! A gas that masks were futile against! Wentworth reeled to his feet and stared white-faced at this desolation. Bodies everywhere upon the streets, still cold bundles of rags. He had shot down the plane, but in its mad dive, it had dropped those gas bombs which had spread this horror upon the face of the earth.
