Suddenly, some of the hardness and cruelty faded from his face. By studying him closely, one 'could see behind H the mask he wore. One could see youth and courage and .1 clean perfection. Then it vanished and one could see I only the empty shell of what he once had been.
He became Slip Ogden, racketeer, again. He unfolded the newspaper clipping and handed it to Lippy.
“I assume you can read well enough to manage it,” he said.
The faces of Lippy and Ugly were contorted into tortured frowns as they studied the clipping—both reading with their lips moving. The item was under a New York date line and read:
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York yesterday received word that a shipment of $6,600,000 in gold was on the way here from Japan. This will be the fourth consignment of about this amount to be reported since last Saturday. It will bring the total of gold sent here by Japan since the middle of last March to $197,400,000.
When the gold movement from Japan began last spring, it was customary for the Japanese authorities to announce engagements of the metal as soon as, or even before, shipment from Japan was made. In the most recent series of shipments, however, the practice has been followed of notifying the Reserve Bank here of the consignment of the metal only a few days before the ship carrying it was due to dock at San Francisco. This delay in reporting is due, it is thought in financial circles, to a desire to keep the shipments secret until vessels carrying them have left the zone of hostilities in the Far East.
The foreheads of the two gangsters were still wrinkled as they looked up from their laborious reading. Their eyes were frankly puzzled.
“One of those little shipments,” Slip said, softly, “is earmarked for us.”
“They're sendin' it to us?” Ugly asked, trying hard to get the thing through his dense head.
“If we go an' take it, eh, boss?” Lippy said.
Slip nodded.
“Piracy!” Ugly said and rubbed his throat. “They'll sun-cure us on the end of a rope.”
“They didn't sun-cure Sir Henry Morgan,” Ogden said.
“Is he a pirate?” Ugly asked.
“Not any more,” Ogden said with that upward quirk of his mouth that was half a laugh and half a sneer. “He has been dead about two hundred and fifty years. He captured a number of Spanish cities and lots of Spanish gold along the Spanish Main in his day. They took him back to England for trial, but instead of sun-curing him— as you so quaintly put it—Charles II knighted him and made him lieutenant-governor of Jamaica.”
“Ha, ha!” Lippy Freeman said.
Slip was looking at Ugly and Ugly, seeing the look in his eyes, began to tremble. He had seen Slip look at men like that before. He had never seen the men again— unless he had been the man Slip had designated to wipe them out.
II—MISTAKEN IDENTITY
MR. I. KINTER HASSFURTHER, better known .to the flying profession as “Shorty,” threw the switch on his radio panel as a tiny light gleamed scarlet, and spoke into his microphone.
“Shorty acknowledging, Tony. Go ahead—go ahead,” he said to Tony Lamport, superintendent of communications on Barnes Field, Long Island.
“Where are you, Shorty?” Tony asked. “Bill wants to know.”
“Just at the moment,” Shorty said, looking down under his wing tip, “I can see the cadet corps at West Point marching out on the field for their afternoon drill. I'm thinking about going down to join them. I always did want to be a soldier. You know—'There's something about a soldier, something about a soldier that is grand, grand, grand,' ” he began to sing.
“Shut up!” Tony snapped at him. “Bill told me to tell you to whip up your horses. He's worried about Red.”
“What's the matter with Red?” Shorty asked quickly. All the banter was gone from his voice.
“Bill will tell you when you get in,” Tony said. “Hurry up!”
“I'm practically there,” Shorty said and he pushed open the throttle of his supercharged, twin Diesels and laid the nose on Barnes Field.
A few minutes later he cut his gun, fishtailed down to reduce his speed and rolled his Snorter up on the apron.
Young “Sandy” Sanders, the kid ace of Bill Barnes' famous little squadron of fliers, was standing on the steps of the administration building, waving his arm at him as he climbed out of the cockpit of the big amphibian and started across the concrete.
“Hurry up, flatfeet!” Sandy shouted. “Bill wants to see you.”
“All right, my diminutive little pal,” Shorty said. The grin was gone from his lips and the twinkle from his blue eyes as he opened the door of Bill's office. He knew that
Bill didn't cry “Wolf!” unless there was some reason.
Bill pushed a hand through his tousled, blond hair.
His bronzed face took on an expression of relief as he
saw his right arm and chief of staff come through the doorway.
“Hello,” he said. “Any luck in Toronto?” The words rushed out like the opening of a safety valve on a steam engine.
“I'll tell you about that later,” Shorty said. “What's this about Red? Where is lie?”
“I wish I knew!” Bill snapped. “The last we heard from him was three days ago from Nome.”
“Nome!” Shorty said. “What's he doing in Alaska? The last———”
“I forgot,” Bill said, “you left here before he did. The afternoon you hopped up to Toronto, fourteen thousand dollars' worth of automobile drove on the field. That's when the trouble started. I was thinking that you left here after he did.”
“What about the fourteen thousand dollars' worth of automobile?” Shorty asked. “What was in it?”
“What is usually in an automobile that starts trouble?” Bill asked, bitterly. “A woman, of course.”
“All right,” Shorty said impatiently. “Let's have it.” He and “Red' Gleason had started flying Spads and Nieuports and S. E. 5s over the French lines when they were kids and combat work was in its infancy. They were closer than brothers.
“You remember young Dick Reynolds, the electric washing machine heir?” Bill asked him.
“Pockets full of doubloons and head empty,” Shorty said. “I remember him. The Douglas people built him an air yacht and he started for Russia with some of his drunken pals to get some caviar. They disappeared over the Bering Sea last summer. Right?”
“Check,” Bill said. “It was his sister who came around in the fourteen thousand dollars' worth of gilt and brocade. She wanted me to go find him.”
“Just like that,” Shorty said.
“Just like that,” Bill repeated. “She wanted me to take the whole outfit and the BT-4, loaded with supplies to look for him. She had a signed check in her hand and told me to fill it in for any amount I wanted to name.”
“Yeah,” Shorty said. “What happened after you refused?”
“How did you know that?” Bill snapped.
“I guessed,” Shorty said dryly. “You never did like mugs who waved dough in your face. She put on the 'grand-dame' act and you said, 'phooey!'“
“Right again,” Bill said. “But I told her one of my men would go up to investigate if one of them wanted to. I told her I would leave the decision with them “
“And Red volunteered,” Shorty said. “She must have had what it takes. Red likes the gals like he likes arsenic. She must have been a beauty!”
“She was,” Bill said. “Tall and statuesque, I think you'd call her, with limpid brown eyes.”
“Come on, Bill, what happened?”
“Red said he would go,” Bill answered. “He hopped the next morning, following the regular air routes to Vancouver, Ketchikan, Skagway and Nome. We heard from him last after lie had left Nome. He was on his way down to Unalaska, a town on the island by the same name in the Aleutian Islands. The place is an outfitting station for ships passing from the Pacific to the Arctic.”
“Then what?”
“He checked in with Tony when he was off the tip of the Alaska Peninsula. That was three days ago. Since
