Black Mask (Vol. 22, No. 2 — Mary 1939)

“I am also offering you the service of my plane. They know that, approve of that. You may have not met the Major, Mr. Holt. I have met him. He came to me with a great deal of money and a threat. He wanted government information that I alone could give him. I laughed at him, laughed at his threats.” His face twisted into a skeleton-like grimace. “Believe me, Mr. Holt, when I tell you I have never laughed since.”

Clay liked to talk, but he could remain silent. He was silent now.

Colonel Stone went on. “We started here with an easy assurance of victory, Mr. Holt; now there is panic. If I even showed my face upon the street, I would be killed. I move places in the night, move my plane in the night at a speed that no man could follow. Men such as Wilburt and the Judge suggest that you might kill. That is nonsense. We must be sensible people. The Major should be returned to the country from which he came.”

“I imagine they thought of that.”

“I told them of it. That is why my mystery plane has not crossed the ocean yet. That is why I am not flying alone. I am waiting to take a passenger back to his native land. A passenger, Mr. Holt, whom you will bring me. Major Ernest Hoff.”

Clay said suddenly, “That’s not a bad idea.”

“Bad?” Eyes burned far back like deep, live coals. “It’s good, Mr. Holt, very good. I can take the plane any place, day or night, twenty-four hours a day.”

Twenty-four hours a day. The words rang in Clay’s ears as he stepped out into the hall, took the freight elevator down, and, crossing to a drug store, telephoned Agatha at her apartment in New York.

She was there and she was stunned. Hard-boiled Clay had considered her and now she couldn’t talk from crying.

“Clay, Clay!” she kept saying over and over. “I can’t believe it’s you. I thought the plane blew up.”

“Sure, Princess,” Clay said, “but it’s me. And it’s a racket so big that the government can’t handle it without me. I’m coming right back and I want you to meet me at Benny’s Sea Food House.”

Clay walked to the street and flagged a passing taxi. “The airport,” he said. “Yeah, I know about the blow-up. But you only got to drive me to the field, not go up in the plane with me.”

Agatha was waiting for Clay when he strode into the brightly lighted Sea Food House. He said as he slid into the booth beside her: “It’s horrible, Awful. You might have dressed up and been the Princess. It’s Major Hoff and he’s been the cause of most of our plane disasters. I suppose he has some purpose besides the horrible death of innocent people.”

“You were not an innocent person to the Major, Clay.” And as he made a wry face at her, “Benny’s Sea Food House doesn’t call for a big dress up.”

“It’s my stomach, Awful. I thought it could stand most anything. Now, you — thick glasses, hair drawn back and parted in the middle, that little nose of yours that can be an asset now standing up as a liability.”

The man behind the counter pushed a waiter aside and came to Clay’s table. “Hello, Benny,” Clay said. “Oyster stew for me.” After Awful had ordered, he told her everything that had happened, finished with: “Personal enemies may have been on the planes, of course, but it’s beginning to make air travelers shy. The Major will probably be at the Walden tonight.”

“And just what do you intend to do?”

“Hell, Awful, I don’t know. But I’m going to see him.”

“You can’t simply walk into the Walden Grill and shoot him to death.”

“It’s a temptation, Awful. There were women on that plane, and a kid, too.”

“The law won’t protect you. Those two big men can’t protect you. It’ll just be a case of Clay Holt shooting a respectable visitor to death. It’ll be murder, and they’ll roast you for it. You’ve thought other things out. There must be some other way.”

Clay Holt shook his head. “The side of my office blown in this morning; a plane blasted to pieces in mid-air. Hoff’s afraid of me, Awful, and he has cause to be while I’m alive. He isn’t a man to wait or care how it’s done. So why should I care? Don’t you see, Awful, it’s for a hundred and thirty million people. What do I amount to? Who needs me alive?”

“I do,” she said.

“Against one hundred and thirty million? You’re not that important, Awful. Ah, Benny, that looks great!” He sipped from the bowl with his spoon.

Benny gone, Awful said, “If you can ship him on that mystery plane—”

“That Colonel Esmond Stone looked half cocked. There’s a mystery about the guy who is backing him — some big banker, or something. And this Major means business. Judge Van Eden and Carlton Wilburt are ready to blow up. I’m their last chance. What of the Major then if he knocks me over?”

Agatha laid her bag on the table, drew the zipper. A gun showed. She said, “He’d never suspect me, Clay. If you don’t come out on top, why I’ll walk straight up to him in the Walden and empty it into his chest.”

“Awful! I believe you mean it!”

“I do,” she told him solemnly. “When you talk as if you have to die to win, it turns things over way down inside of me.”