The taillights of the Checker disappeared. Shayne was in the shopping district in the old part of town. He waited exactly fifteen minutes, then pulled a fire alarm.
A siren blew at once. The engine came careening along the high-crowned cobblestone street less than six minutes later, good time for what must have been a volunteer company. The engine was a big LaFrance pumper, probably a castoff from some fire department in the States. It was beautifully painted and polished.
Shayne leaped on the running board. “The airfield!”
The airfield was on flat ground two miles east of town. In a moment they could see the flames. Ward had started a blaze against the outer wall of a small-plane hangar, and it was burning nicely. The fire truck shot through the main gate, its bell clanging. Arriving at the fire, Shayne helped himself to one of the rubber coats and helmets on the side of the truck, picked a fire ax out of the rack, and, leaving the firemen to look after the fire, set off at a run toward the main hangar area.
Passing a guard, he shouted, “Telephone!”
The chartered DC-8 had been taxied into the first of the big hangars. Shayne found a padlocked side door and broke off the padlock with the fire ax. Inside, using the pencil flash, he found a tool closet and ditched his fireman’s gear.
Then he picked his way across the oil-spotted floor to the big plane. He maneuvered a mobile flight of stairs into place and entered by the forward door.
The tail cone was at the rear of the galley, entered through a sliding panel beneath the ovens. The space looked small and uncomfortable. Shayne crawled inside and found that he was able to slide the door shut after him. There was nothing between him and the skin of the airplane but a double layer of control wires in their fiber sheaves. Having proved that the cone would hold him, he wriggled back out to the galley. He found two or three pillows in the stewardess’s closet and stuffed them into the cone to make the ride easier. Then he opened a midget bottle of cognac, which he carried to the last seat in the passenger cabin. In a matter of minutes after finishing his drink, he had fallen asleep.
He was awakened by the sound of the hangar door opening.
He checked his watch. Unless it had stopped again, the time was 4:25. Looking down, he saw a thin flashlight beam moving toward the plane.
He dropped his empty glass into the drying rack in the galley and slid feet first into the cone, leaving the sliding door open a half inch. A moment later someone climbed the steps and entered the plane. Putting his eye to the crack, he saw the moving flashlight, behind it a pair of woman’s legs. The skirt seemed to be part of the light blue stewardess uniform. She seemed to be looking for something in the aisle. Stooping with her back to Shayne, she stripped back a section of carpet and pulled up a hatch cover. It blocked her from view.
Shayne hesitated. He could hear metallic noises in the plane’s belly. He opened the door all the way. But before he could make up his mind to move, the woman climbed out.
Startled by something, she turned off her light. The hatch cover dropped back in place. Shayne began to work his way out into the galley. A dark shadow was moving up the aisle away from him. Then high heels rang on the metal steps. He reached a window in time to see the flashlight glide across the hangar to the outer door.
He waited several minutes to be sure he was alone. Then he found the break in the carpet and lifted the aisle hatch.
The thin pencil of light showed a narrow luggage compartment running the width of the airplane. He stepped onto the top of a long metal container. It shifted beneath his weight. Apparently it rested on rollers. He lifted the hinged lid and pulled up one of the bags, a heavy fabric two-suiter. He forced the lock.
Inside, carefully swaddled in cotton waste, he found a standard four-hundred-ounce gold bar.
After thinking about it for a moment, he handed it up to the cabin and relocked the bag. Then he set to work. Twenty minutes later all the gold had been removed from the luggage and was stacked neatly in the aisle. He closed the luggage container, lowered the hatch, and replaced the carpet. There were twenty-five golden loaves. He arranged them in stacks in the tail cone.
The work had made him hungry. He had an early breakfast of croissants and cognac in the galley and then slid into the cone, arranging himself carefully amid the stacks of gold.
He was very tired. With the help of the strategically placed pillows, he was soon asleep.
CHAPTER 15
The big front doors of the hangar went up with a clang, awakening Shayne. A thin sliver of daylight came into the dark cone through the crack in the door. When he heard movement aboard the plane, he closed the door the rest of the way and rearranged his cramped body so it wouldn’t interfere with the free movement of the control wires. If the plane kept to schedule, it would be leaving in ninety minutes.
A tractor hooked onto the plane’s nose and towed it out onto the field. Shayne heard the fuel tanks being filled. The stewardesses entered the galley and began talking in confidential tones about the party in the hotel the night before. Joe Lassiter, the pilot, had drunk gallons, and he was suffering from the usual morning-after symptoms now.
“But he doesn’t frighten me half as much as some of the ice cubes I’ve flown with on scheduled runs,” one of the stewardesses commented. “He makes his mistakes on the ground.”
Time went by, the plane filled, and eight o’clock came and went. The stewardesses were kept busy. At 8:20, with the engines still warming up, both girls were in the galley at the same time, stealing a few quick gulps of coffee.
“Three passengers still missing,” one girl said. “Samuel Thompson-I don’t even remember what he looked like, do you?”
“Definitely. I had a tentative date with him at eleven o’clock last night and he never showed up. Just as well. He was sort of a creep.”
“A hell of a time for Georgie-boy to take off. Who’s going to look after the baggage?”
“You and me, naturally. Funny about Mike Shayne. I wonder what happened to him.”
The first girl made a shivering sound. “Now there’s one of the sexiest creatures God ever made.”
Shayne grinned in the darkness. The other girl said scornfully, “Sue, don’t let your glands run away with you. He scares me. I wouldn’t mind partying with him, but-”
A buzzer sounded.
“Yes, Mr. Moss. No, Mr. Moss. Let him wait. That man has a mean pair of eyes. What was the Hochberg woman telling you about Shayne?”
“He expects to catch up to us in Caracas. I don’t know if I’m imagining things, but I don’t think she was this tense yesterday. What a kooky bunch. I just hope Shayne-well, you have to admit that was weird in the casino last night.”
“I’ll tell you one thing about that stud. He can take care of himself.”
Shayne, in the tail cone, hoped she was right.
Presently the noise of the motors rose to an excited whine. The plane began to move. The jets cut loose and blew them into the air.
The pilot completed a long climbing turn and leveled off. The wires on both sides of Shayne moved imperceptibly, responding to small changes made in the cockpit. The only sound was that of air whispering along the fuselage.
The next time the stewardesses were both in the galley they were talking about a new passenger who had come aboard at St. Albans. Again, something out of the ordinary had happened, for passengers rarely joined a tour a day after it was underway. And this passenger, too, was anything but ordinary: a swarthy, handsome Brazilian with jumpy eyes. He had asked for a double Scotch and drunk it like medicine.
Suddenly the plane was shaken by a sharp explosion.