“I did what I had planned doing with all three ships,” Murphy said. “I bailed out after I had locked the controls so that it would dive into the Irish Sea off Maughold Head. Sneed was waiting there in a car to bring me down to Castletown.”
“You're sure you lost Barnes?” Duncan asked anxiously.
“Certain,” Murphy said. “But how did he happen to be there? If he had been engaged to convoy the Memphis across the Atlantic we never would have got a crack at it. He would have been on us before we could fire a gun. There is a chance that he just happened to be flying above the North Atlantic and picked, up an S.O.S. from the Memphis. But if he did that why didn't the shore stations get it? The only word that has come out about the Memphis up to now is that the land stations suddenly lost contact with her. After so many hours destroyers and planes were sent out to look for her, but the theory is that for some reasons her radios went bad.”
“They'll know better after Barnes talks,” Duncan said.
Murphy leaned over and snapped a button on a small radio that was built into a bookcase. He twirled the dials for a moment as he looked at the watch on his wrist.
“——interrupt our program,” a voice said through the loudspeaker, “to bring you further news about the Airliner Memphis of the Transatlantic Transport Airways that left Ireland this morning on its maiden voyage with passengers and cargo. The planes that were out searching for her had to return to their bases when night overtook them. But a half-dozen destroyers and other ships that were in the vicinity of the position she was last heard from are speeding toward the spot. It is still hoped that only her wireless has gone out of order and that she is continuing on her journey to New York, although captains of ships along her route say she has not passed above them. Of course, she may be flying high to avoid the areas of fog that are forecast along her regular course. We will bring you further news about the Memphis as soon as it is received. This is——”
Murphy clicked off the radio and a little smile curled the corners of his mouth. “They'll have to do a lot of searching,” he said. “A few things that wouldn't sink may have escaped the fire, but not many. They'll find, patches of oil and come to the conclusion that something caused an explosion and that she was lost with all hands aboard.”
“Until Barnes talks,” Duncan said dryly.
“But he hasn't talked yet,” Mordecai Murphy said. “And I don't think he ever will. He doesn't like publicity and he works as a lone wolf a great deal of the time. He only has four flyers working with him since Hawkins and Henderson were lulled. You see, he has a pretty big interest in Transatlantic Transport himself. If the stock begins to toboggan because of the loss of the Memphis it is going to hurt him. He will have enough sense not to talk until he has proof of his story. He knows his story will be discredited because he is a large stockholder in Transatlantic. He knows the newspapers would laugh at him if he said that he just happened to be flying the Atlantic and saw the ship shot down in flames. A thing like that could happen only to a man like Barnes. But people wouldn't believe it unless he has conclusive proof. That's why he isn't talking yet.”
“But he will talk,” Duncan said. “If he recognized you by that flying trick you spoke of they'll comb the earth for you and they'll find you. This isn't any little personal fight between you and Barnes. It's an international incident. It's like those mysterious submarines that were sinking shipping in the Mediterranean that aroused the whole world and brought half the sea power of the world there. You don't seem to realize that it is a big incident. It——”
“Sh——” Murphy Said, extending the palm of one hand outward. “You talk too damned much, Duncan. I told you I did not believe Barnes would ever talk. I'll tell you why: I have a dozen agents waiting to inform me where Barnes has landed, in both Ireland and England. Sneed, my secretary, made contact with them as soon as I landed this afternoon and gave instructions.
“I am expecting to have word from one of them at any minute. When I know where Barnes is I will take steps immediately to seal Barnes' lips forever. I would rather do it myself, in the air. But that is not feasible now. I'm not asleep, Duncan. I have never been caught napping. If I had been I would be dead or in jail. And,” he added as an afterthought, “so would you.”
Duncan's face became even more florid than it had been and it took no little effort for him to hold back the words that sprang to his lips.
“I see,” he said finally. “We'll both hang if you don't succeed. He has got to be silenced.”
“He will be silenced. And International Airways will have the bulk of the Atlantic trade. Transatlantic will never be able to recover from the blow.”
“That was our idea,” Duncan said quietly. He got to his feet, crossed the lounge and picked a book up from a 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 Haman when he was not visiting one of his half-dozen homes scattered around, the globe. Many items appeared about him in the press. But never anything definite. He was truly a man of mystery.
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 Memphis? Had he, in some mysterious manner, been instrumental in arranging things so that he could get another chance at Bill far out over the lonely Atlantic? Had he thought that with the aid of the two other planes he would be successful? Did the fact that Bill owned a large block of Transatlantic stock have anything to do with the set-up? Had he in some way been able to influence Bill's men on Barnes Field so that they sent him out to be murdered without knowing what they had done?
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.