“Not a plane near here all day. By the way, isn’t it possible that Mr. Royle and Miss Stuart merely took that way of escaping the crowds? Perhaps — it would be natural — they wanted a really private honeymoon.”
“And hired some one to tie up Ty Royle and Bonnie Stuart and kidnap the plane?” said Ellery dryly. “I hardly think so, Doctor.”
“Well, let me know when you get word,” said Dr. Junius. “Mr. Stuart went rabbit-hunting this morning and hasn’t got back yet.”
Ellery thanked him, disconnected, and called Palm Springs. But Jacques Butcher could not be located. So Ellery left a message and telephoned Reed Island. Sam Vix was not about — he had flown off somewhere: Ellery could not clearly get his destination.
“Then Mr. Royle’s plane hasn’t landed on Reed Island?”
“No. We’ve been waiting. Is something the matter? They should have been here by this time.”
Ellery sighed and hung up.
The police appeared, county men; swarms of newspaper reporters descended, a plague of locusts. In a short time the field was more blackly populated than at the take-off, and it was necessary to summon police reserves. Meanwhile, searching planes from the municipal airport and the nearest Army field were darkening the sky, streaming southwestward on the probable route of the red-and-gold monoplane.
The afternoon lengthened; toward sunset a small two-seater skimmed in from the west and the Boy Wonder leaped to the ground from the cockpit and ran for the hangar.
He put his arms about Bonnie and she sobbed against his chest while Ty paced up and down consuming cigaret after cigaret.
“Here it is!” shouted an airport official, dashing up. “An Army scout has just sighted a red-and-gold monoplane on a barren plateau in the Chocolate Mountains! No sign of life.”
“A wreck?” asked Ty harshly.
“No. It’s just grounded there.”
“That’s strange,” muttered Ellery, but he said nothing more as he saw the expression on Bonnie’s face. He had seen expressions like that on the faces of condemned criminals reprieved at the eleventh hour.
And so more planes were commandeered, and a small fleet rose from the airport in the dusk and preened their wings in the setting sun.
And soon, in the darkness, they were feeling their way over the San Bernardino Mountains, guided by radio. Then they followed a brightness in the hills to the south, which grew into flares on a flat, deserted plateau.
When they landed Army men challenged them with drawn revolvers. There seemed a curious diffidence in their manner, as if they were indisposed to talk in the evening under the white stars in the cold pale light of the flares.
“My father—” began Ty, breaking into a run. His red-and-gold plane rested quietly on the plateau, surrounded by men.
“My mother—” said Bonnie, stumbling after him.
A helmeted officer said something in a low voice to Jacques Butcher, and he made a face and instantly smiled in the most peculiar way; and he beckoned to Ellery and Lew and called out to Bonnie: “Bonnie. Just a minute.”
And Bonnie stopped, her face turned sidewise in the ghostly light, looking frightened and yet trying not to look frightened; and Ty stopped, too, very abruptly, as if he had come up to a high stone wall.
And Ellery and Jacques Butcher entered the cabin of Ty’s plane, and some one shut the door behind them.
Outside, Ty and Bonnie stood a few feet apart, two rigid poles in a mass of stirring humanity. Neither said anything, and both kept looking at the closed door of the monoplane. And no one came near them.
The sky was so near, thought Bonnie, so close here in the mountains at night.
The cabin door opened and Jacques Butcher came out with a strong heavy step, like a diver walking on the bottom of the sea. And he went up to Ty and Bonnie and stood between them and put his right arm about Bonnie’s shoulder and his left arm about Ty’s, and he said in a voice that hissed against the silence of the plateau:
“The pilot is missing, Bonnie. Ty. What can I say? Jack and Blythe are in that plane...”
“In the plane,” said Bonnie, taking a half-step forward. And she stopped. “Inside?” she asked in a small-child, wondering voice. “Why don’t they... come... out?”
Ty turned and walked off. Then he stopped, too, his back dark and unmoving against the stars.
“Bonnie. Darling,” said Butcher thickly.
“Butch.” Bonnie sighed. “They’re... they’re not...?”
“They’re both dead.”
The sky was so close.
Part Two
Chapter 6
Chocolate Mountains
The sky was so close. Because it was falling down. Down the chute of a trillion miles. Down through the pinhole stars. Down to the gorse-covered plateau. Down on Bonnie’s head.
She pressed her palms to her eyes. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”
“Bonnie,” said Jacques Butcher.
“But it can’t be. Not Blythe. Not mother.”
“Bonnie. Darling. Please.”
“She always said she’d never grow old. She always said she’d live a million, million years.”
“Bonnie, let me take you away from here.”
“She didn’t want to die. She was afraid of death. Sometimes in the middle of the night she’d start to cry in her sleep, and I’d crawl into bed with her and she’d snuggle up to me like a baby.”
“I’ll get one of these Army pilots to fly you back to Los Angeles—”
Bonnie dropped her hands. “It’s a horrid joke of some kind,” she said slowly. “You’re all in a conspiracy.”
Tyler Royle came stalking back, his face blank against the pale background of the flares.
As he passed he said: “Come on, Bonnie,” as if only he and Bonnie existed in a dark dead world.
And Bonnie turned from Butch and followed Ty with something of the otherworldly stiffness of a Zombie.
Lew Bascom came up to Butcher, who was standing still, and said hoarsely: “For gossakes, how do you get outa here?”
“You grow a pair of wings.”
“Nah,” said Lew. “I’m — pooped.” He stuck his fat face out over the gorse and made a sickish, retching sound. “Butch, I gotta get off this damn table-top. I need a drink. I need a lot o’ drinks.”
“Don’t bother me.”
“I never could stand a stiff. Are they... are they—”
Butcher walked away. Ty and Bonnie seemed to be floating in the weird aura of mingled flarelight and starshine. They merged with and were lost in the black figures about the resting plane.
Lew sank to the harsh grass, clutching his belly and shivering in the wind. After a moment he struggled to his feet and waddled towards an Army plane, its propeller roaring for a take-off.
“You gettin’ outa here?” he shrieked.
The pilot nodded, and Lew scrambled into the rear cockpit. His hat flew off in the backwash of air. He sank low in the cockpit, trembling. The plane trundled off.
In the red-and-gold monoplane a man in flying togs was saying: “Hijacked by a pilot who made pretty sure he wouldn’t be recognized — and then this. It looks funny, Mr. Queen.”
“Funny?” scowled Ellery. “The Greeks had another word for it, Lieutenant.”
John Royle and Blythe Stuart half-sat, half-lay in upholstered swivel chairs in the cabin, across the aisle from each other. Their luggage, baskets of flowers, the wicker hamper were in the aisle between them. The lid of the hamper stood open. On the floor under Royle’s slack left hand lay the half-eaten remains of a ham sandwich. One of the thermos bottles from the hamper stood beside it. The empty cap-cup of the bottle was wedged between his thighs. His handsome features were composed. He looked as if he had fallen asleep.