Before they could train the gun the plane rose in a wide, graceful arc, and headed south toward New York.
Chapter XXVII
An Act of God
One hasty glance showed McCoy why they had not seen the hangar from the boat. A huge canvas curtain, painted to resemble the face of the cliff, had hidden the mouth of the cave. It was counter-weighted, so that a touch had sent it up and let the plane escape.
He led his men back on the run, telling one of them to cut through to the main road, meet Hardy and the raid car, and lead them to the house.
The other men from the boat had scattered through the building. Morgan had found Mrs. Evans unharmed in one of the upper rooms and set her free. The police had found her jewels and Dorothy’s. A room on the ground floor held the corpse of an emaciated young girl in a gorgeous bed.
The cellar had yielded another gruesome find. This was the body of an elderly foreigner, swarthy and fat, his face still convulsed with agony. His color and the puncture in his wrist indicated that he had been poisoned.
Dorothy had regained her senses and now lay weeping and shuddering in the arms of Mrs. Evans. The sailor’s bullet had shattered the bone of Dan’s leg above the knee. The wound had been roughly bandaged. Dan was still unconscious.
But McCoy had time for none of this. He was in search of a telephone. In the upper hall he found one.
He got Burke at headquarters and told him to send out a general alarm for McHenry’s amphibian plane, locally and as far as possible throughout Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It was a large order. McCoy had no great hopes of immediate success, but in the end the plane would be found and McHenry traced and captured.
As he concluded, Morgan’s voice boomed in his ear.
“Don’t hang up yet!”
“Wait a minute, Burke,” McCoy complied.
He turned to find Hal as well as Morgan at his side, the younger man wheezing through a bruised and swollen throat.
“Why not catch McHenry yourself?” inquired Morgan.
McCoy glared.
“He got away in a plane! How the hell do I know where he’ll come down?”
“I think we do know!”
“Well? Well?”
“Well! Well!” Morgan echoed. “McHenry told Evans his story. He’s Wallace. He’s got Pap-who’s-is in his power. Collared his money and his yacht and came here to get revenge. His job’s done. Pap’s dead. But the yacht’s somewhere! He’s got a seaplane—”
“Burke!” yelled McCoy. “Gimme the chief!”
The captain sweated over that appeal to his superior. And the police commissioner backed his men. Given a sketchy knowledge of the situation, he promised to ask for a naval seaplane and the fastest Federal rum chaser available. McCoy was to come down river in the police boat. The chaser would be waiting at the Battery.
“I’m going along!” croaked Hal as McCoy hung up. “I told McHenry I’d get him for killing dad!”
“Right!” nodded McCoy, and, turning, plunged down the stairs again.
In a storm of fierce orders he arranged for a guard on the house, transportation to New York for Dan, Dorothy and Mrs. Evans when Hardy arrived, and a search for the chauffeur. Then he was away and racing down the road, with Morgan, Hal and six of the men from the boat lumbering after him.
He yelled an order before he reached the police boat. She was cast off as they tumbled aboard. In a moment she backed clear of the wharf and headed south.
As the fast little vessel tore downstream like a vibrant living thing, Hal croaked and wheezed out the story Wallace had told him.
Then McCoy explained the chief’s plan of campaign. To locate McHenry’s plane was out of the question. But the naval plane was to quarter the harbor mouth and the sea beyond in search of the yacht. The chaser would follow to sea and stand by. If the plane located the yacht, it was to come back and lead the chaser in pursuit.
All this, if the yacht Circe were not actually in port. But it seemed more likely that she would be standing off the harbor mouth, or out at sea.
It was sheer deductive gambling. But the chief knew Morgan’s guesses and thought this one worth testing.
As they neared the Battery, a steel gray chaser shot to meet them, seemed about to ram the police boat and curved alongside with a flurry of spray, its high bows wet and glistening in the sun.
McCoy, Morgan and Hal scrambled aboard her, to find a crew of youngsters who feared neither man, beast, nor devil.
The hard-eyed young commander put himself at McCoy’s orders, adding that he and his crew had seen McHenry’s plane come down the Hudson and head straight out to sea.
“Pity we couldn’t follow it then,” he observed.
“Follow it now,” said McCoy evenly.
Hal had thought the police boat fast. But the chaser tore through the water like a bullet, the bow rising higher and higher as their speed increased.
He clung to the quivering rail of the bridge while the wind whipped his clothing and rainbows danced in the flashing spray. Staten Island wheeled past. At length the shores began to open and recede. Now they were crashing into the long Atlantic swells.
The lightship was to be their rendezvous with the plane. When they neared it and drew alongside, the commander hailed the blunt-bowed craft.
“Ain’t — seen — no — plane!” came faintly across the water to them. “Fog — just — cleared — hour — ago.”
The only man-made thing in sight except the lightship was a tramp steamer to southward.
Morgan touched the commander’s arm and pointed, his face pale green.
“Since your craft has wings,” he groaned, “suppose we hail the tramp.”
The commander looked at McCoy. McCoy nodded. They wheeled and tore south.
The little steamer grew larger and more distinct. Suddenly the commander whistled.
“Look at her stem!”
They drew nearer the rusty craft. Now even the landsmen could see that her stem sloped back from her forefoot. Nearer still and they saw that her bows were buckled in clear from the waterline. The chaser ranged alongside.
“Seen a plane?” bawled the commander.
A man on the tramp’s bridge took up a megaphone.
“Plane — came — over — us — half — hour — ago.”
“Seaplane?”
“Su-ure!”
“What course?”
“Dead — astern — our — course.”
“What happened to your bows?”
The man on the bridge leaned forward and the megaphone waggled in his hand.
“Rammed — yacht — Circe — last — night — fog — no — lights — no — horn — cut — her — in — two!”
“My God!” muttered Morgan.
“Anybody saved?” McCoy prompted the commander.
He yelled the question.
“Three — seamen — she — sank — quick!”
“Where away?”
“West — south — west — thirty — knots!”
“Can you make port?”
“Yes — got — her — plugged!” floated down to them.
The commander waved his hand. There was a hasty consultation on the bridge. Wallace had been heading for his rendezvous with the yacht. He had seen the wreckage and returned to land. There was nothing to do but go back to the lightship and wait for the naval flyer to find them.
“There’s a plane now!” shouted Hal suddenly.
It was low down to the north, making for the lightship. The commander signaled for full speed and they leaped away to intercept it.
Presently the flyer saw them, wheeled in a wide arc and came drifting overhead, his engine throttled down. Something dropped, breaking out a tiny parachute an instant later. The commander maneuvered his craft so that the message floated down just back of the bridge.