Then Miss Forrest cried: “It’s a plane! They’ve — they’ve come for us! They’ve news for us!”
Her cries roused them. The Inspector yelled: “Mrs. Wheary! Bones! Somebody! Put on every light in the house! The rest of you get things that’ll burn — anything — get busy! Well build a bonfire out here so he can see us!”
They tumbled over one another in their haste. Bones began to hurl the terrace chairs over the rail. Mrs. Wheary vanished through one of the French windows. The women clattered down the steps and began to carry the chairs over the gravel and rocks away from the house. Ellery scrambled into the house and emerged a few moments later with two armfuls of old newspapers, magazines, and loose papers. The twins, their personal predicament forgotten in the excitement of the present, staggered off the porch under the weight of an overstuffed chair from the now brilliantly illuminated living room. They looked like scurrying ants in the darkness...
The Inspector squatted on his thin hams and struck a match with a hand that trembled slightly. The tall pile of inflammable miscellany dwarfed his slender figure. He applied the flame to the bed of paper beneath the pile and rose hastily. They crowded around, jealous of the hot breeze that was tearing at the tiny flame. And all the while they kept their staring eyes upon the heavens.
The flame licked hungrily at the papers and with a crackle caught the makeshift kindling they had piled at the bottom of the pyre. In an instant the bed of the pyre was ablaze, and they shielded their faces and retreated from the blast of heat.
They held their breaths as they watched the red light. It was very near now, and at their altitude the roar of the airplane was deafening. Difficult as it was to estimate how far above their heads the aviator was winging, they realized that he could not be more than a few hundred feet above the summit of the mountain. And the invisible craft with its single red eye swooped nearer and nearer.
Then suddenly it was thundering overhead and — past.
In that single instant they had caught sight dimly in the upward illumination of their bonfire against the crimson sky of a small monoplane with an open cockpit.
“Oh, he’s gone past!” moaned Miss Forrest.
But then the red light dipped and swerved to take a new direction, and it came swiftly back at them in a graceful arc.
“He’s seen the fire!” shrieked Mrs. Wheary. “Praise be, he’s seen us by the fire!”
The pilot’s maneuvers were baffling. He kept circling the crest of the mountain as if he were uncertain of the terrain, as if he did not quite know what to do. And then, incredibly, the red light began to recede.
“Good God,” said Dr. Holmes hoarsely, “isn’t he going to land? Is he leaving us?”
“Land? Nonsense!” snapped Ellery, straining aloft. “How could anything but a bird land on this tormented patch of rock? He’s leveling off for a straight swoop. What do you think he’s been doing up there — playing tag? He’s been studying the ground. I think — something is primed to happen.”
Before they could catch their breaths he was hurtling toward them with a scream of rushing wind and a thunder of propeller that made their eardrums ache. Down, down he came in a daring swoop that rooted them to the ground with horrified admiration. What was the madman attempting? All their numbed brains could imagine was that he was bent on suicide.
He was only a hundred feet away now, and so low that they unconsciously ducked. His landing gear barely cleared the tops of the trees at the margin of the summit. Then like lightning he was upon them — a rushing winged thing with belching vitals and hoarsely vibrating body — and past, away. Before they could recover he was past the summit, his wing tipped already as he climbed against the bloody moon in another spiral.
But now they understood that his madness had been cold sanity, and his foolhardiness courage.
A small white object had dropped like a plummet from the cockpit, hurled by a dark overhanging human arm, to fall with a crash not twenty feet from the fire.
The Inspector was over the treacherous ground like a monkey and clutching the fallen object in a twinkling. His fingers shook as he unwrapped several sheets of paper from the stone to which it had been bound.
They huddled about him, clawing at his coat.
“What is it, Inspector?”
“What does he say?”
“Is it — over?”
“For God’s sake, tell us!”
The Inspector squinted at the typewritten lines in the leaping light of the bonfire, reading feverishly. And as he read, the lines of his gray face lengthened, and his shoulders sagged, and all the glitter of hope and life went out of his eyes.
They read their doom in his face. Their grimy wet cheeks became flaccid, with the flaccidity of the dead.
The Inspector said slowly: “Here it is.” And he read in a low dull voice:
Temporary Headquarters
Osquewa
INSPECTOR RICHARD QUEEN:
I regret to have to inform you that the forest fire in Tomahawk Valley and this section of the Tepee range, and most particularly on Arrow Mountain where you are bottled up, is absolutely out of control. There is no longer any hope that we will be able to get it under control. It is climbing the Arrow very fast and unless a miracle happens will soon sweep the summit.
We have hundreds of people fighting it and the casualties have mounted day by day. Scores have been overcome by smoke or badly burned, and the whole hospital corps of this and surrounding counties is taxed to the limit. The list of dead is now twenty-one. We have tried everything, including blasting and cross fires. But now we have to admit we are licked.
There is no way out for you people at Dr. Xavier’s place on the Arrow. I suppose you know that already.
This message is being dropped by Ralph Kirby, the speed flyer. When you have read this note signal him and he will know you have got the message all right and will drop a load of medicines and foodstuffs for you in case you have run out. We know you have plenty of water. If there were any way to take you people off by plane we would do it, but it is impossible. I know the nature of the ground at the top of the Arrow and it is far too broken up to permit a landing without fatal damage to the machine and almost certain death to the pilot. Not even a gyroplane could make it, even if we had one, which we have not.
I have asked the advice of the forest rangers on your predicament and they suggest one of two things, or both. If the wind is right build a fire in unburned woods to fight the fire coming up. This is no good because the winds around the top are too tricky, always shifting. The other thing is to dig a wide trench at the edge of the timber on the summit in the hope that the fire will not be able to jump over it. You might also remove all the dry brush and vegetation around the house as an additional safety measure. Keep the house damped down. There is only one thing to do with the fire and that is to let it burn itself out. It has already devastated the timberland for miles and miles around.
Keep a stiff upper lip and make a real fight of it. I have taken the liberty of notifying Police Headquarters in New York City about where you are and the pickle you are in. They are keeping the wires hot. I am damn sorry, Inspector, I cannot do more. Good luck to all of you. I won’t say good-by.
(Signed) WINSLOWE REID,
“At least,” said Ellery with a wild and bitter laugh in the ghastly silence that followed, “he’s a newsy sort of chap, isn’t he? Oh, God.”
The Inspector, in a daze, stepped as close to the fire as he dared and waved his arms slowly, without energy. Instantly the airman still circling above straightened out again and repeated his former maneuvers. This time when he roared by above their heads a large round bundle dropped from the cockpit. He circled twice again, as if reluctant to leave, came close once more, waggled his wings in a grim salute, and then darted off into the night. None of them so much as stirred a finger until the red light vanished in the thickest darkness of the distance.