table. He turned the pages until he came to the place where he had stopped reading and sat down again under a light. But he did not read. His eyes kept straying from the words before him to the face of Mordecai Murphy, and he could not help thinking that Murphy was a most amazing man.
The world knew that Mordecai Murphy was a paradox. The people who knew him knew that one moment he could be a person of rollicking good humor who bellowed peals of hearty laughter, and the next he could freeze them and make them feel as though they had ice water creeping up their spines.
No one knew anything about his antecedents. His enormous wealth was supposed to have come from South American oil and emeralds. He was said to have a finger in affairs in every part of the world. But no one knew which finger or which part of the world. He had been decorated by three nations during the War for his air feats. It was known that he made his home aboard the
He traded in men, making them his tools. His files were filled with dossiers on a, long string of men whose destiny he once held in the palm of his hand. Men he had saved from paying the penalty of their crimes. Men who had promised him great promises in return for his seeming acts of charity and kindness. To them he had been the great emancipator. The Saver of Souls.
But most of them knew now that he had saved them that he might force them to help him with his nefarious enterprises.
VI—BOUND FOR CROYDON
AS BILL took a position eight thousand feet above and behind the dun-colored amphibian he tried to piece together some of the startling facts that were racing through his mind.
When he thought back to the two encounters he had had with the man who called himself the Saver of Souls, he remembered that his tactics and strategy in combat were identical with the tactics of the pilot below him. There could be no doubt he was the Saver of Souls, the culprit who had plotted on two occasions to murder him.
But why had he led those other two planes in the destruction of the
All these possibilities flitted through Bill's mind, but he could not fit them together. The thing didn't make sense. He had anticipated making contact with the Transatlantic Airliner Memphis a little later in the day, but no one except himself knew that. He remembered that he had mentioned something of the sort to Scotty MacCloskey. But Scotty hadn't paid any attention and the subject was dropped.
While he tried to straighten the puzzle out Sandy interrupted him twice.
Each time he was told, unceremoniously, to “Shut up!” Now Sandy could stand it no longer.
“Hey, Bill!” he said. “I think you're right about that being the Saver of
Souls. You know he jumped me over
Chesapeake Bay. I remember that swerve in to the left just before he tripped his guns. He was coming in on my starboard side, out of line of my guns. Just before we passed he kicked his ship around so that his bullets would slash right across my nose.
He underestimated his speed or he would have knocked my head off. Then he zoomed as I stuck my nose down.”
“That's right,” Bill said.
“But I don't understand what this is all about Bill. I can't put it together. What—”
“Listen, kid,” Bill said. “Don't ask me any questions. I don't know any more about it than you. That's why I'm going to stay on his tail and find out.”
“You want to be careful he doesn't lead us into a trap,” Sandy advised with all the wisdom of his seventeen years.
“
I'll watch that,” Bill said, “while you see if you can pick up Tony Lamport on the radio.”
Sandy worked with painstaking care while Bill held the Lancer on the tail of that dun-colored ship. He tried to get Tony on both of their secret wave bands without success. Finally he gave up.
“We're out of range Bill,” he reported.
At the same time Bill became aware of the cloud wall ahead. At first it was almost imperceptible. But as they neared the Irish coast the little amphibian ahead became a mere dot in the damp, swirling fog that engulfed it.
Bill tried desperately to stay on its tail, hoping the front would break before he lost it entirely. He plunged the Lancer into it, holding the same airspeed and course, flying entirely blind. When he came out on the other side the dun-colored ship had disappeared.
He cursed softly as he reached for the master tuning control on his radio panel and picked up the radio operator at Foynes, near the mouth of the Shannon. He got the direction and force of the wind and learned that he would have unlimited ceiling.
Forty-three minutes later he took the Lancer into the Irish air terminal for a workmanlike landing.
The manager of the terminal and the superintendent of operations met him on the apron. Behind them were a score of “tin knockers,” mechanics, grease monkeys and inspectors. They were there to get their first glimpse of Bill Barnes and his famous Silver Lancer. He killed his power plant to avoid injuring them as they swarmed toward him. He waited until the manager had cleared a way for them, then he and Sandy dropped over the side.
In the manager's office Bill tried to keep the excitement out of his voice as he casually asked about the Memphis.
A worried expression fastened itself on the big Irishman's face. “We're worried about her, Barnes,” he said. “I thought perhaps you'd have some word about her. I thought you might have picked her up on your radio out over the Atlantic.”
“What's the matter?” Bill asked, quickly, to forestall a possible question he didn't want to answer.
“We don't know,” the manager said. “When she was three hours out we suddenly lost contact with her. She reported she was making good progress through a fog area. After that there was silence. We have made contact with steamers in her urea but they haven't been able to give us any information. Unless something went wrong with her motors she may be on the way back here. We're going to wait another half-hour before we send out an alarm. It may be only her wire-less that is out of order. We expect to hear from her at any time. But we can't help worrying. You must be worrying about her, too, being a large stockholder in Transatlantic.”
“I am,” Bill said. “I wonder if it is possible for me to get a telephone call through to the Duke of Malbury at Arunway Castle in Malthrop, England?”
“We can try,” the manager said, reaching for the telephone. “Ill start our operator working on it. You want to speak to the Duke of Malbury personally?”
“That's right. Have them try to locate him if he isn't at Arunway.”
Bill kept up a constant conversation while he waited for his connection to be made. He avoided answering direct questions about the Memphis a half-dozen times. He didn't want to tell this man about the things he had seen because he didn't know how the other would handle the situation. Bill realized he must get to the foundation of the thing and find the men who were responsible for the destruction of the Memphis if he was to save Transatlantic Transport. He knew it would be the death of the line if he could not tell the story and then prove it; He remembered quite distinctly how a ban had been put on the ships of a certain company after several unexplained mishaps. The company had disappeared into oblivion. And there was nothing he could do for the Memphis, her passengers or crew. They were beyond help.
He started nervously as a telephone bell clanged.
“Here's your party, Barnes,” the manager said. “They located him in London.”
Bill's hands were shaking as he took the instrument. “Hello, Mace,” he said into the mouthpiece to Norman Edward Chatagnier Eliott. Mace, the seventh Duke of Malbury, whom he had saved from death while he was excavating in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings in Egypt.
“Are you there, Barnes?” Norman Mace answered with his precise British accent. “This is delightful.”
“No, it isn't,” Bill said, hoping Mace would get the idea. “I'm at Foynes on the Irish coast, as you know. I'm
