32 Caliber Part 13

Woods looked us over carefully. He was by far the calmest one of the party.

"Gentlemen, I have already sent to the papers a statement that I am able to produce testimony as to my whereabouts during every minute of the night when James Felderson was killed. When the trial comes, I shall produce that testimony. If you think that machine gun is any proof against me, just step inside and I'll show you that it is of an entirely different caliber from the gun that killed Felderson."

We hesitated for a second, I think because of the brazen effrontery, the splendid calmness of the man. A doubt began to form in my mind as to whether he had anything to do with the murder at all. Woods noticed my hesitation and turning to me said with a smile: "Surely you aren't afraid of me, Thompson, when you so readily trust me with both your sister and your fiancee."

I longed with all my soul to hit the man between the eyes, to crush that half-sneering smile into his face with my heel, but I let the insult pa.s.s and followed the others inside.

"Here is the machine gun, gentlemen. If you will notice, it is a 36 caliber and not a 32 at all. If you will wait one minute, I'll get you the magazine. That will prove it to you beyond a doubt."

He left the hangar and the coroner picked up the gun.

"I could have sworn that the gun I had hold of was a 32. The barrel seems too small for a 36. Why, look here! This is a 32. Here is the caliber marked on it."

From outside came the sputter and crack of an aeroplane engine. Simpson caught it first and dashed to the door.

"It's Woods' plane. He's going to escape."

We ran out of the hangar and across the field toward the aeroplane which, by now, was enveloped in blue vapor. Before we had gone half-way, it was taxi-cabbing across the field, careening first to one side and then to the other. Suddenly it swerved and turned in our direction. We stood there, a little breathless, to see what it would do. The engines of the plane droned higher as it came toward us.

Suddenly Simpson clutched my arm and yelled: "Look out! he's trying to run us down."

I ran wildly to one side of the field, not daring to look back but only trying to reach a place of safety. The sound of the engines came cras.h.i.+ng to my ears like the staccato roar of a hundred machine guns. My legs felt as if they were lead. I seemed to be standing still. One frightened glance over my shoulder showed the machine, like some monstrous vulture, bearing down on me. I could feel it gaining and gaining. The heavy drone of the engines seemed to fill the air with its noise. A pitiful sense of helplessness gripped me. I knew I was going to die like a rat in the jaws of a fox terrier. I screamed aloud in my terror and pitched headlong on the turf. With a roar, and a rush of wind that almost lifted me from the ground, the aeroplane pa.s.sed over me, its wheels no more than four feet from my head.

I am not sure to this day, whether Frank Woods tried to kill me or not. I don't know whether he was cheated of his game when I stumbled and the speed of his motor carried the plane off the ground, or whether he was just trying to put the fear of G.o.d in me. I will swear, however, that as the motor pa.s.sed over my head, I heard Frank Woods' voice raised in a demoniacal laugh.

As the drum of the motor pa.s.sed and I knew that I was safe for the moment, I raised my head to see if the devil should be planning to come back. With joy I saw he had risen to the height of fifteen or twenty feet. Suddenly the plane swooped up as though Woods were trying to loop. For a second it tipped sidewise like a cat boat reeling over in the wind, and then there was the sound of splintering wood and tearing silk, and the plane crashed miserably to the ground.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

RED CAPITULATES.

We hurried over to the smashed plane, the coroner leading. Woods, in his effort to run me down, had forgotten the telegraph wires at the end of the field. Too late, he had seen them and vainly tried to lift his machine clear of them. The wires had caught a wing and sent him cras.h.i.+ng to the earth.

We found him underneath the engine, quite dead, the fall having killed him instantly. We made an improvised litter out of one of the wings and carried him to the nearest hangar. As we placed an overcoat over the shapeless form, I heard a sniffle behind me and found the red-haired mechanician at my side.

"You didn't get him, you dirty cops. He got away from you, after all."

"Yes, he's safe now," I murmured.

"Sure! An' he would 'a' been always if he hadn't been daff' over women. He never had no luck when he played the women. His takin' that skirt out this afternoon was what give him the hoodoo."

The coroner came over to him.

"Now that we can't get him, will you tell us about the night Mr. Woods killed Mr. Felderson?"

The mechanic showed himself distinctly hostile to the coroner.

"Oh, no you don't, you fly cop! Think I'll spill the beans and get meself in Dutch? You can go to h.e.l.l!"

"I'll promise you won't be prosecuted if you will tell us what happened that night."

He looked us over suspiciously, but apparently rea.s.sured, he said: "Well, that's fair enough, especially since I didn't have nothin' to do with the croakin', although I know pretty much how it happened.

"The boss there come over to the plant--the International plant, you know--about two weeks ago and had me bring that plane out there over here. We always got along together, the boss and me. Wasn't pals or anything like that, but we understood each other. I'd seen, for a couple of months, that the boss had somethin' on his mind. I knew it wasn't any jane, because they never worried him none. He worried them a lot, but somehow he just took 'em as they come. He talked with me some--he claimed I was the best mechanician he had over there,--and I figured it out at last that what he was worryin' about was money. He spent a lot, an' was free an' easy, an' it worried him to figure that he was goin' to go bu'st pretty soon. The first day I was here, he brought a woman out, a swell looker--I didn't find out till afterwards that it was Felderson's wife--an' he kinda kidded her along about helpin' him over the rough spots by lendin' him a little of her dough. I sort of figured out he was goin' to run off with the woman, 'cause the next morning he come out and said we could take a month's lay-off if we wanted to, as he was goin' on his honeymoon. I thought he was goin' to take me along, but when he said that, I made up my mind to beat it back to the plant to keep from goin' bugs watchin' them other guys callin' theirselves mechanics, tinkerin' around them other busses when they didn't know their job. It's a darn wonder more of these fool dudes out here ain't been killed.

"Somethin' must 'a' slipped up, because he come out late that afternoon cussin' like the devil. He had one whale of a temper when he got started, the boss did. He took me with him in the buss and we cruised around the country for a while. Every time he spotted a straight stretch of road without too many trees, he'd come down and look it over. Finally we found that straight stretch of road out by the golf links at the country-club, an' that must 'a' suited him 'cause that was the only place we come to after that. He mounted that machine gun in there on the plane, an' it was then I decided he was a-goin' to slip somepin over on somebody. He didn't take me with him after that, but two or three times when he come into the field he'd swoop down on that there square target he made and put over in the corner and I'd hear the ratti-tat-tat of that machine gun a-goin'. I ast him what was he goin' to do with it an' he said: 'We're a-goin' out one of these nights and kill a skunk.'

"The afternoon of the night we went out to the country-club he come out here, kind of excited, but cool, if you know what I mean. You could see they was somethin' on his mind, but just the same he had his head with him every minute. Get me? He told me, as soon as it begin to get dusk, to take the plane out to the country-club and land on the links, about a half a mile from the club house, an' when I got there to flash my pocket lamp, until I see him light a cigarette on the club-house porch. I done as he told me, an' he come out. He wasn't dressed in a jumper, but just had a cap an' a rain-coat over his clothes. He told me to stay there, and after I started the engine, he streaked away. He left about eight o'clock and was back in fifteen minutes. He slipped me a fifty and told me to take the plane back an' to forgit 'at I'd brought it out. I ast him had he killed his skunk an' he laughed an' said, 'I made him pretty sick anyway.' I'd told the boys to have the flares out at the park as I was a-goin' to test the machine, so I didn't have no trouble in landin'."

He stopped and rolled a cigarette.

"That's all you know, is it?" the coroner asked.

"That's all I know, so help me Henry--but ain't it enough?"

He looked around at the three of us who had been listening intently to his story.

"I should say it is," said Simpson.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

I LISTEN TO MY FOREBEARS.

Helen had come home. She preferred living with mother and myself, rather than opening up Jim's house, which she had been told belonged to her. Yes, her memory of past events was still gone, and each night I sat with her and repeated bits here and there of the experiences through which she had lived. Every now and then a thought would come to her and she would be able to fill in parts of the narrative, but this was seldom. In a way, it was fortunate, for I was able to leave out all the sordid details of her past and give her only the recollections worth keeping. As soon as she is quite strong, Doctor Forbes is going to reconstruct the tragedy for her, and he says he has every reason to believe that he will be successful in restoring her memory. In the meantime, she is entirely happy and content, and more beautiful than ever.

Mary had not spoken to me for a month. Somehow we could not get together. I realized how hasty and peremptory I had been in commanding her not to go with Woods, and I tried in a thousand different ways to make her realize that I was sorry. Whenever I found we were to be invited to the same dance or supper party, I lay awake half the night before, planning how I would approach her; what she would say and what I would say. It was a delightful game to play, because I always came out the victor. I made her say and do just the things that would make a reconciliation easy, but when we actually met, it was vastly different.

We were both invited to the Rupert-Smiths' ball, and I made up my mind that before the evening was over, I would be back in her good graces, on the same old footing. As much as I hated being treated like a younger brother, it was far better than being treated like a stepchild.

As soon as I saw her come into the ballroom, I hurried toward her, but at that moment the orchestra began a fox-trot and she whirled away in the arms of young Davis, smiling into his face as though she adored him. Davis holds a girl so tightly that it is actually indecent, but she seemed to enjoy it.

I was by her side, almost before the music stopped, but she turned away without looking in ray direction and, literally hanging on Davis' arm, made her way from the ballroom.

I finally caught her alone while she was waiting for some yokel to get her a gla.s.s of punch.

"Mary, may I have a dance?" I blurted out.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Thompson, but my program is full," she answered sweetly--too sweetly.

"But there aren't any programs," I insisted.

"Nor have I any dances left," she countered.

"Mary, I'm awfully sorry--"

"Oh! There you are, Mr. Steel," she laughed over my shoulder, "I almost thought you had forgotten me." I fled, leaving that a.s.s, Steel, cooing the most puerile rot about how he couldn't forget her and so forth.

I called up Anne McClintock before the McClintock dinner and begged her as my guardian angel to put me next to Mary. She agreed on condition that she could put that Sterns woman, the parlor Bolshevic, on the other side of me. I consented, and through the entire dinner, Mary talked to old Grandfather McClintock about the labor disputes although she doesn't know the difference between a strike-out and a lock-out. She actually seemed perfectly contented to shout into that old man's ear all evening, though I did everything to get her attention except spill my plate in her lap. Afterward I heard her telling that Sterns woman what a charming couple we'd make. I tried to call on Mary twice and both times she was out--to me.

Finally people began to see that there was a serious difference between us and they avoided inviting us to small parties together, so that I saw her at only the largest, most formal and most stupid functions.

I had told Helen one day that I would be late to dinner on account of an important case. About three o'clock in the afternoon, however, I found that a certain book I needed was at the house, so I jumped into the car and went up after it. Mary's electric was out in front. For a moment I contemplated flight, Mary so obviously disliked me, but being determined that no girl in the world could keep me from going where I pleased, I trotted up the steps.

The door opened just as I reached the porch, and disclosed Mary hastily saying "Good-by" to Helen. The sight of her leaving, so as to avoid meeting me, angered me and some piratical old forebear of mine came down from above or came up from below at that moment and perched on my right shoulder.

"Treat 'em rough!" he whispered.

I hurried over to the door, walked in and slammed it after me.

Helen laughed and said: "Warren, dear, aren't you getting noisy?"

"Helen," I said, "will you please go into the other room?"

"Helen, stay here!" Mary ordered.

"I shall do neither the one nor the other. I shall go up-stairs." She turned to leave.

"If you go, Helen, I'll go with you," Mary announced.

Another ancestral spook with dwarfed, hairy body and gorilla arms, climbed to my left shoulder, sat down on his hunkers and whispered in my ear: "Treat 'em rough!"

"You're going to stay right here!" I commanded, grabbing her by the hand.

"Let go of my hand!" Mary demanded. "I am not going to stay here."

The sight of her sweet indignant face made my heart jump to my throat. Helen laughed and went up-stairs.

"Mary--" I began, my voice softening.

My ancient forebears made wry faces at each other and hopped down from my shoulders.

"He's a fool!" announced the cave man.

"I'll say he is," answered the pirate.

"I'm not going to stay here a minute longer. Will you please get out of my way?" Mary said coldly.

"No, I won't!" I yelled. "I've had about enough of this, Mary. You think you can dangle me on the end of a string, like a d.a.m.ned jumping- jack, until you see fit to let me have a little rest."

My guiding ancestors hopped back on my shoulders.

"That's the stuff to give 'em!" yelled Hunkers.

"Treat 'em rough!" shouted Captain Kidd.

"You know I was right when I objected to your going with Frank Woods. It wasn't a friendly thing to do, after the way he messed up things in my family."

"Well, if you hadn't been so dictatorial--"

"Why shouldn't I be dictatorial?" I shouted, while my ancestors held their sides with laughter, "and this being my house I'm going to talk as loud as I please. If the girl I love, as no man ever loved a girl before, tries to go out with a man I think is wholly unworthy of her, why shouldn't I object? I'll do it again. I want you and I'm to have you, if I've got to fight for you. Even if I have to fight you for you."

Suddenly Mary buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook.

"Don't cry, Mary! I know I've--"

"I'm not crying, I--I'm laughing," she gurgled, dropping into a chair. "Bupps, you do look so funny when you get excited."

I went over to her and made her make room for me on her chair, and then I put my arms around her.

"Mary, lover-darling, why did you go out with Frank Woods that day?"

"Why, Bupps, I was hunting the same proof that you were. I felt all along that Frank was guilty."

"I'm a brute!"

"You're a foolish boy," she said, twisting one of my few locks of hair.

She snuggled closer.

"Dearest of dearests, when are you going to stop teasing me?" I asked.

"Never, Buppkins!" she replied. "I just discovered that it brings out your strong points."

"Do you remember what you said when I tried to ask you to marry me?" I whispered. She shook her head.

"You told me to wait until Helen was well."

"You know, Bupps--the first thing I said to Helen this--this afternoon was--"

"What?"

"'How--how well you're looking.'"