“I believe,” said Forsythe, “that the letter is addressed to the young lady—if you don’t mind, Ching.”
She took it from Ching’s reluctant fingers. Forsythe gave his whole attention to his eating, quite as though the matter was of very small importance.
Patricia read it once to herself and then glanced sideways at Forsythe. She knew he would take it from her in any case despite his original politeness in the matter.
She looked back and read it aloud.
Dear Sis:
I think we’ve got a bonanza! I’ve gotten out something like eighty thousand dollars in two weeks’ work and there’s chances to get more. I found an old dredge which came from god-knows-where and a crew of Japanese colonists are working it for me under my direction. In case anything happens to me and should this ever reach you, I have buried the eighty thousand in dust at the foot of a white rock which has a profile like an old man’s face. We won’t have to worry about anything anymore!
She turned to Forsythe again. “You…you really think he’s alive?”
“Certainly,” said Forsythe, pushing back his plate. “I’ve thought it all along.”
“But how could you know unless…”
“He’s an engineer, isn’t he? You also know of that dredge, Ching.”
“Sure I do,” cried Ching. “An American brought it upriver chunk by chunk and assembled it. But his men revolted and he had to skin out with nothing much more than his life. Why, that thing’s been there for ten years!”
“We’ll find him at the dredge,” said Forsythe. “Working.” He stood up and made a gesture toward the door. “Roll out the ship, boys. We’ve got to fly about a hundred kilometers. We’ll start in a few hours and meantime we can check over the crate. You’re through at this stand, Lin.”
Lin’s brass face lifted worriedly. “You not come back? No wantchee this place no more?”
“No.”
“You…you got a dream?” persisted Lin.
“A hunch?” Forsythe laughed, but there was a false note in his voice.
Ching was alarmed. “Hey, are you kidding me or what? You’ve gotten hunches about getting bumped off before.”
“Not like this one,” said Forsythe quietly, lighting a smoke. “Never mind. Let’s start working on the ship.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Wings of Death
THE silver attack plane’s engine battered the surface of the Amur, so low that the slipstream sent yellow waves leaping back from the blast of passage.
The yellow day was nearing a hazy close and long streamers of red had begun to creep toward the zenith like wounds in the cobalt of the sky.
The ship was badly overweighted and no one knew as well as Forsythe that an attack against it in number would result disastrously for himself.
Ching had rigged a board across the roomy gunner’s pit and Lin sat there, eyes glazed, looking at the river lashing out behind them like a saffron snake.
Patricia and Ching were crowded together on the gunner’s seat. The girl was so enrapt with the anticipation of seeing her brother that she did not mind being crowded—in fact she hardly noticed it.
Only Ching and Forsythe knew how they were raising the odds against themselves. But without beacons by which to land they could not go at night, and though they could feel the intensity of spying eyes behind every rock along the riverbank, and though they could sense the passage of radio waves which told of their going, it was for Forsythe to order and Ching to obey.
Suddenly a flash of light against the setting sun caused Ching to glance westward. He stiffened, eyes nailed to the far-off brace of dots which grew in size even as he watched.
He seized the inter-cockpit phone. “Kawasaki pursuits coming!”
Forsythe’s goggles flashed redly as he glanced up. His black gauntlet yanked back on the stick and the attack shot skyward with diminishing engine pitch. It leveled out at two thousand. The Japanese ships were still boring in.
Forsythe gripped the phone. “Buckle your belts and leave your machine guns alone! I’ll handle this from the front.”
Ching nodded though Forsythe could not see. Ching could not have said a word at that moment. Forsythe knew he was going to die. That time seemed to be coming all too soon.
“Do you think they’ll attack us?” said Patricia, trying to appear calm.
Ching nodded and tightened his belt. He had Lin hold on solidly to the drum racks.
The Japanese ships were spaced one above the other. With the sun streaming crimson around them, they climbed steadily to gain the best advantage of their foe.
Forsythe clamped the earphones over his helmet and twisted a dial to get the Japanese signal band.
A falsetto voice shrieked in upon him. A pilot was calling his headquarters.
“He is sighted! Shall we attack or wait?”
There was a pause and then, “ATTACK! Captain Shinohari is taking off immediately and should be there within two hours.”
The phone clicked off but Forsythe let it crackle in case other orders whipped across the flaming sky.
The planes were high above them now, banking, starting to come over the top and down.
Patricia saw the blurring flash of the props stabbing straight at her. Above the roar of tortured steel she heard the shattering crescendo of machine guns.
The Kawasakis dropped like shot gulls out of a sky the color of flame, spattering long black lines which wove a spider’s web about the attack plane. Tracer shredded as their props blasted through it.
Down, down, down, gun and engines going full and raving.
Forsythe held it until it seemed the Japanese would smash them out of the sky. And then, abruptly, Forsythe stabbed the nose of the attack skyward, straight at the nearest prop.
Louder guns battered at Patricia’s ears and she knew they were Forsythe’s. She looked straight ahead, conscious of the world upended crazily and twisting further yet.
In the blink of an eye the Japanese planes had vanished, but even before she realized it, the world had tipped over in the other direction like a mad compass being rocked wildly on its gimbals.
She had a sick sensation as the bottom dropped out. Centrifugal force crushed her into the pit, and then as they banked violently she felt herself flung against the retaining cleats of the Matsubi.
She had shut her eyes and now she opened them again to see the Rising Sun emblazoned on a fuselage straight ahead. The Japanese was rolling down and away, broadside to them. They spanned the distance like a horse taking a hurdle and suddenly the Japanese was gone.
Patricia lightened and pressed upward against the belt; the bottom was falling out again. Her ears ached to the screaming blast of engines and guns. She was choked with acrid cordite and felt blinded with noise.
Straight over her head she saw a Japanese plane. It was upside down. Straight over her head—and yet the earth was there and the Amur was a flash of yellow in the sun.
An unseen fist slammed her down again and the earth was gone, the plane was gone. She was clutching the cowl so hard that pain was white-hot in her fingers. But she dared not let go.
Slammed bodily against cowl, Ching, seat and belt, head whirling as she strove to keep her long-gone sense of balance, she glimpsed the tail of a ship straight ahead. She heard Forsythe’s guns open up.
She was crushed downward once more. She looked up as they looped. There was the plane, inverted, overhead, against the earth. As she stared, it fell off on one wing. Streamers of smoke, like a stab of ink through white water, shot from the reeling plane.
She saw a Japanese with a parachute pack trying to get out and then sky had replaced the sight.
Far off she heard the triphammer chatter of machine guns. The horizons tipped smoothly and whirled like a merry-go-round. The remaining Japanese plane was coming head-on, trying for a
last resort—a collision.
Forsythe hurdled it. The earth tipped the other way and then slid upward in a long sheet of brown and green and yellow until it was on top of them.
Machine guns were loud. Forsythe was firing once more. Patricia opened her eyes. The vision of a punctured Rising Sun fled across her sight, gone in an instant.
The world went right once more. The left wing slapped over to point at the earth and the attack flew smoothly around and around, seeming to stand still while the earth spun.
Forsythe stayed there for a full minute, turning, looking over the side with the dying sunlight crimson on his goggles.
Patricia followed his gaze. She could hear a screaming chant dimly through her engine-deafened ears. She had to look closely at the earth to see it.
Abruptly a whole hill exploded. Wings and tattered fabric blasted outward from a violent ball of smoke and flame. The concussion reached them like an easy bump.
Forsythe evened out the attack and started in a slow dive back toward the river. She could see his goggles flashing as he looked around the sky.
Suddenly she felt very sick. Weakly she steadied her head in her hands, sobbing.
Ching was beaming at the earth behind them. He turned with a grin and said, “No chance of him slipping, yet! He sure nailed those devils!” He saw her, then. “Hello, what’s wrong? Yeah, I know. You can’t tell which is up yet. Cheer up. We’re almost there!”
CHAPTER NINE
Shinohari’s Squadrons
WITH dusk hazy upon the earth under a scarlet-bannered sky, they sighted the dredge.
It stood in a backwash of the Amur and looked like some gigantic animal skeleton of prehistoric days propped up in the black water. The chain buckets were running up and returning empty in an endless stream. Water poured out from pipes and steam rose busily over the shacks on the deck of the barge.
Forsythe banked once around it, flying low. He could see men diving hastily down the swinging catwalk which connected the dredge with the shore. Another man in a white shirt stood on the deck, staring up.
Forsythe stabbed away from there like a silver arrow and picked up a nearby field. Gun cut and wires shrilling, he settled down for a landing upon the dark ground.
Before the ship stopped rolling, the man in the white shirt was seen sprinting over the river bank toward them. No one else could be seen anywhere. The top of the dredge was visible against the sunset of yellow and flame, and Forsythe, looking at it, thought of the gallows.
The man in the white shirt bobbed up beside the pilot’s pit. He was young and tanned and eager, eyes bright with hope. Eyes as courageous and swift as Patricia’s.
“Hey, what’s it all about?” cried Bob Weston. “One glimpse of your crate and those cutthroats ran like quail yellin’ ‘Akuma-no-Hané!’” He glanced away before Forsythe could answer and incredulity flooded in upon him to hold him for a frozen instant of amazement. Joy exploded in him and with a whoop he leaped up into the stirrup so hard that the ship rocked. He pried up the hood.
Patricia grabbed him and held him tightly as he lifted her down to earth. They said nothing because they couldn’t talk. Patricia’s eyes were shining with tears and happiness as she held him off and looked at him.
Forsythe, looking down at them, felt suddenly cold and lonely. She would never look at him that way. Never.
Ching and Lin got out and scouted with drawn automatics up to the bluff and lay there, protected by the edge, looking all around for possible ambush.
Bob Weston finally subsided enough to turn and shout at Forsythe: “Gee, you don’t know how I want to thank you! Those guys went out of here as though they’d been shot from guns. Say, what was that they were shouting about?”
“It means ‘The Devil With Wings,’” said Patricia slowly.
Bob’s eyes grew big and he gaped with amazement, releasing his sister and taking a step back.
Ruffled slightly, Forsythe growled, “I don’t bite.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean anything. But…but gee! I’ve heard about you so much since I’ve been up here I…” He was still backing away. He dragged his eyes from Forsythe’s goggles and turned to stare his question at Patricia.
“He…he kidnaped me and brought me up here,” she began.
Anger clouded Bob’s imperious face but before it could spread to action, she caught his arm.
“Please,” she begged. “You don’t understand. I don’t either. He’s doing something against the Japanese and we…we sort of fit into the plan. I…I think he’ll let us go free.”
Darkness was dropping steadily upon them. The mist was curling whitely up from the river in the still air. Forsythe stood wearily up in his pit, looking at Patricia. She could never know the blow her tone had dealt him.
Even in the thickening gloom, the trickle which ran sluggishly down the front of his black jacket showed a glossy red like a streak painted there with lacquer.
He dropped to the ground, landing heavily and reaching out for the stirrup to support himself. He straightened up then. Fumbling inside his leather coat for a cigarette, he brought out the pack. It was soggy. He stared at it for an instant and then crumpled it in his hand. Drops of red dripped from the end of his fingers very slowly as he held them out, watching the blood fall.
Ching came back, gun in hand.
“They’ve beat it,” said Ching. “Do you think those ships got word through to their headquarters?”
“I heard it,” said Forsythe tonelessly. “Shinohari is on his way.”
“He’ll bring squadrons with him!” cried Ching. “We’d better take off quick!”
“No,” said Forsythe. “I…”
“You’re hit!” cried Ching. “Wait. Let me see!”
Forsythe thrust him back and left a dark print on Ching’s white jumper.
Patricia and Bob, standing together, saw the streak which ran so slowly on the black leather of the jacket. Patricia clung hard to Bob’s arm. Her face was a pale heart in the dropping night.
“You’ve got gold?” said Forsythe to Bob Weston.
“If you’ve come for that, I can’t stop you from taking it,” replied Bob dispiritedly. “I bought this dredge sight unseen with my last cent down in Port Arthur. And I no more than started it going when a little guy with a pockmarked face barged in and took over. He put Japanese soldiers to work with me and made me show them how. I…I thought for a minute there I was saved.”
His voice grew sharper. “Yes, I’ve got gold!” cried Bob. “Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in dust! Take it!”
Forsythe was standing erect with an effort. “Take it easy, lad. This ship wouldn’t carry an extra hundred pounds, much less thousands. Is there a car across the river?”
“No, but there’s one on this side and a bridge,” replied Bob doubtfully.
“You’ve got gas for it?”
“Sure. I haven’t used any.”
Forsythe looked up at the darkening sky. A pale amber haze to the east showed where the moon would shortly appear.
“You haven’t got too much time,” said Forsythe. “Load your gold into the car and get across the river into Russia.”
“But there’s fighting around here,” protested Bob.
“That fighting was ordered to cover up this gold operation.” Forsythe smiled and fished absently again for a cigarette. He remembered then and brought his wet fingers back before him. “Not even the Imperial staff knows about this thing, Weston.”
“But I thought the Japanese government…”
“Never mind that,” said Forsythe wearily. He fumbled in his pockets and finally brought out a card. “Here. Take this. When you reach the railroad, show them this and bribe the officials. Get to Vladivostok. Ching will make sure you get through.”
“What’s that?” said Ching quickly.
“Y
ou’re going with them. Both you and Lin,” said Forsythe.
“But what about you?” demanded Ching.
Forsythe glanced up at the sky. “I have an appointment very shortly. With Captain Shinohari.”
Patricia stifled a gasp.
Angrily Forsythe barked, “Get going! You’ve got until the moon rises.”
“I won’t leave you!” said Ching.
“You’ve got your orders.”
Ching hung his head, trying to think of some way to change Forsythe’s mind. But his mind was a whirl of despair. He finally reached into the rear cockpit and hauled out a small kit. From it he took a wad of bandages and handed them to the white man.
Forsythe tucked the gauze under his jacket.
Bob Weston was moving away, pulling Patricia with him.
“Wait,” snapped Forsythe. “Come back!”
Bob and Patricia came closer to him and the glinting goggles stared blankly at them through the night.
“Weston,” said Forsythe. “You’ll wait for a little while—a few days—in Vladivostok. And if…and when I show up I can help you get your gold out of the country. Don’t get me wrong. I want none of it. But…you didn’t realize before that you were responsible for Miss Weston. You won’t forget that again?”
Bob nodded wonderingly.
“And one more thing!” barked Forsythe.
Bob looked attentively as Forsythe sank down to sit on the catwalk. He wondered when he saw the black-garbed figure grinning at him.
“Give me your cigarettes,” said Forsythe.
Hastily Bob brought a package forth and handed them over. Forsythe lit one and inhaled deeply. The red spark throbbed as he pulled on it again.
Suddenly Bob understood. He reached out his hand. Forsythe started to take it and changed his mind, shifting over to his left. And even then Bob felt the thick dampness which ran from the cuff to the back of the hand.
Bob turned and Patricia stumbled after him, looking back. Lin looked forlornly at Forsythe and then trudged away. Ching dallied, hoping Forsythe would forget his order.