A smoothed and inclosed field, almost surrounded with small buildings, appeared. Varrhus dashed toward it desperately, the white-winged biplane vengefully after him. The black flyer dropped like a stone and the biplane dived straight for it. In that last dive Teddy worked his one-pounder as coolly as if at target practice. Flash! Flash! The black flyer crumpled and fell the last fifty feet as an inert mass.
Teddy jumped from the biplane as it flattened out and settled to the ground. With his automatic pistol drawn and ready, he darted toward the partly wrecked black machine. As he drew near a sallow face came weakly to a window of the cabin. An automatic flashed from beside the face and Teddy heard a queer sound and a fall behind him. He did not stop, but rushed on, shooting viciously at the face in the opening. He reached the wreck, wrenched open the door, and swung into the cabin with utter disregard for danger.
A tall, lean, sallow man was sitting exhausted in the pilot's seat of the black flyer. His right arm was crimsoned from a wound in his shoulder, and blood spurted in little frothy jets from a second wound in his neck. Teddy's fire had been better directed than he knew. As he entered with pistol ready, the sallow man raised his head erect by a tremendous effort. A hooked nose, a merciless mouth, and blazing eyes filled Teddy with repulsion. The sallow man stared at him superciliously.
"I am Wladislaw Varrhus, dictator of all the earth," he said in a metallic voice. "I command—I—command."
Speech failed him. His head dropped and he fell limply from the cushioned seat.
CHAPTER XI.
Teddy felt the fallen man's breast, but he was not breathing. In any event there was nothing that could have been done for him. An artery had been cut by a splinter of the one-pounder shell that had smashed the roof, and he had bled quietly to death, only trying desperately to land and get assistance before he died. The sight of Teddy and Davis sprinting toward him with drawn pistols had been too much for his hatred, however, and he had fired his automatic at them even as he was dying. Teddy found Davis lying on the ground with a bullet in his hip.
"I'm all right, Gerrod," said Davis cheerfully when Teddy went to him. "Just see if there are any more chaps in these houses before you bother with me."
Teddy explored the place thoroughly. There were many signs of human occupancy, but no one save Varrhus himself had been there when they landed. He returned to Davis to find him weakly trying to improvise a pad to stop the bleeding. Teddy lifted him and carried him to the house that seemed to be most used. In a little while Davis was quite comfortable and contented. He lit a cigarette and calmly began to read one of the newspapers that littered the place, while Teddy continued his explorations.
The landing field was a small one, no more than a hundred and fifty yards long by seventy-five wide. At one end was an unpretentious but comfortable dwelling, in one of whose rooms Davis was at that moment resting. At the other end a shed evidently formed the hangar for the black flyer. Along the sides of the inclosure were long sheds, some of them empty, some containing supplies of various sorts. Half a dozen cold bombs, complete except for the mysterious treatment of their surface that gave them their strange property, lay on the floor of one of the sheds along the sides. Another shed, long disused, had provided quarters for workmen. Teddy found the single exit that led from the inclosure. It opened on the wide hillside and afforded a view of miles without a sign of human habitation. The remnant of a wheel track that had obviously not been traveled for months led away from the door. Along that primitive road the materials for building the inclosure and the black flyer had evidently been brought. Teddy went back to Davis.
"Gerrod," said Davis amiably, "I'm a fake. I'd lost quite some blood, you know, and I was pretty weak, but while you were gone I saw a small black bottle on a shelf over there, and I managed to crawl over to it. Wherever we are, prohibition hasn't struck in, and I took just enough to feel all right again. I believe I can drive back. It wasn't more than a two-hour drive anyway, was it?'
"Between two and three," said Teddy, smiling. "We were making terrific speed, though. We're probably in Newfoundland somewhere."
"Or Iceland. To tell the truth, I'm quite indifferent. Suppose you help me out to the machine again."
"I want to see what I can find in the laboratory first," said Teddy.
The laboratory was of the smallest. Whatever experiments had been necessary to perfect the cold bombs and the black flyer had been made elsewhere. Teddy found a number of notebooks, which he took. He found many chemicals, some in considerable quantities, in receptacles about the laboratory, but no clew to the mysterious process that had enabled Varrhus to threaten the world's security. He left Varrhus where he lay. Both he and Davis confidently expected to return and investigate thoroughly both the cold bombs and the black flyer. Davis, especially, was anxious to examine that strange machine in detail, but his wound was painful and he wished to have it properly dressed. Besides this, the whole world was waiting anxiously to learn its fate, whether Varrhus' ambitious plans were to be frustrated or whether it would have to put its neck beneath the heel of the mad dictator.
Teddy lifted Davis in the machine, and after some difficulty they started off. Davis circled above the small clearing until it was tiny beneath them.
"Course is southwest," he remarked to Teddy. "We'll notice where we land and then a northeast course will bring us back here again or nearly."
"Right," said Teddy abstractedly. His mind leaped ahead to the moment when he would see Evelyn again. He had seen her just before starting for Noman's Reef and she had seemed pale and anxious. He was not sure, but he hoped he was right in believing that she was more anxious than she would have been had she looked on him merely as a friend or comrade.
The biplane sped over the sea across which it had flown in such desperate haste that morning. Davis was weak, but for straightaway flying modern machines need but little attention. The new inherently stable aëroplanes are so safe that an amateur could pilot one in midflight. And Davis had taken a small quantity of stimulant to supplement his strength. At that, however, his endurance was severely taxed before he flattened out and taxied across the landing field on Staten Island. Mechanics rushed out to greet him and help him from the machine.
"Varrhus is dead and the black flyer is smashed," said Davis cheerfully, and incontinently fainted.
Teddy made a hasty report to the commandant of the forts and rushed to New York. The second cold bomb had exploded that morning and the city was panic-stricken, but as his taxicab sped uptown the extras began to appear announcing the removal of the menace to the world. The frightened crowds changed to happy, cheering ones. If Teddy's identity had been suspected as he passed swiftly through the streets, he would never have gotten through. He would have been dragged from the motor car to be cheered and recheered. As it was, he made his way quickly to Evelyn's home.
He sprang up the steps and burst open the door, not waiting for the servant to open it. As he rushed into the hall, Evelyn came into it through an open door. She saw him, and her face was suffused with joy.
"You're safe!" she cried joyfully, and burst into happy tears.
Teddy took her quite naturally into his arms and held her there a moment. She sobbed quietly on his shoulder for a second, clinging to him, then pushed him away and stared at him while a hot flush overspread her face.