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  “Where did she get a coat of arms?” Shorty wanted to know. “Her grandmother got tired of taking in washings and her grandfather was an electrician. They got together through sheer fatigue and developed the Reynolds electric washing machine. I wonder———”

  “You wonder what?” Bill snarled. “Do you think she was a phony? What are you getting at?”

  “I don't know,” Shorty said, “except that the whole thing sounds a little screwy to me. It's funny this Reynolds dame hasn't made any inquiries of you.”

  “About Red?” Bill asked. His teeth clamped down over his lower lip. “How did you know she hadn't?”

  “I guessed again,” Shorty drawled. “I don't like this thing, Bill. It isn't like you to stick your chin out this way.”

  “Like me!” Bill roared. “Listen. I'm slowly going nuts about this new light plane we're going to try to put on the market. Everything has gone wrong. I've been so busy I haven't had time to sleep or eat. I took this Reynolds thing in my stride and turned it over to Red and forgot about it. It merely looked like a routine investigation to me to be sure that there was no chance of young Reynolds being alive. What would you have done?”

  “The same thing you did, probably,” Shorty said. “But what do you say we give this Reynolds gal a ring on the phone and maybe ask her some questions? I'd like to know why she lost interest as soon as Red started off.”

  Bill reached for a Manhattan telephone book, turned the pages, and then took the telephone out of its cradle. He gave the Barnes Field operator a number and pressed the instrument to his ear.

  “Ask her,” Shorty said, “if she has heard from Red.”

  Bill nodded his head and a moment later spoke into the mouthpiece.

  “Hello, Miss Reynolds?” he said.

  “Who wishes to speak to Miss Reynolds, please?” a soft voice said in his ear.

  “I recognize your voice. Miss Reynolds,” Bill said. “This is Bill Barnes speaking.”

  “Just a moment, Mr. Barnes,” the voice said, “I will see if Miss Reynolds is in. I——”

  _Bill heard a receiver click and another woman's voice cut into the conversation.

  “Who is on the phone, please, Miss Johnson?” the second voice said.

  Bill's forehead creased in long, sharply etched lines as a receiver clicked again and no one answered the inquiry. He waited for a moment and then he spoke,

  “Hello, hello,” he said. “I am trying to get Miss Ruth Reynolds on the wire.”

  “This is Miss Reynolds speaking,” a voice said that Bill had never heard before. “Who is this, please?”

  “Who was on the wire a moment ago —on an extension, perhaps?” Bill asked quickly.

  “It must have been my secretary, Miss Johnson,” the voice said. “Will you kindly tell me who you are?”

  “Bill Barnes!” Bill barked. “I want to speak to Miss Reynolds!”

  “You are talking to Miss Reynolds, Mr. Barnes,” the voice said. “What do you wish?”

  “Don't you know me?” Bill asked. “I mean don't you know who I am?”

  “Of course I know who you are, Mr. Barnes,” she said. “But I don't know you.”

  “Did you come to my field on Long Island about a week ago. Miss Reynolds, and ask me to make a search for your brother?” Bill asked.

  “I have never been on your field,

  Mr. Barnes,” she said. She heard Bill's explosion of breath and added, “What is wrong?”

  “Plenty,” Bill snorted. “Miss Reynolds, will you please stay in your apartment until 'I arrive there? I'm going to take off from my field immediately and land at the seaplane landing at East Thirty-first Street. Your apartment is about Sixtieth Street, isn't it?”

  “I was just going out,” she said.

  “Can't you tell me——”

  “I'm sorry,” Bill said. “I can't tell you anything over the telephone. But you will be very interested in what I have to tell you and what I have to show you when I arrive in about twenty-five minutes. Good-by.”

  His face was a thundercloud as he slapped the telephone into its cradle. He lifted it off again and asked for “Scotty” MacCloskey, the dour old Scotsman who was the major domo of Barnes Field.

  “Warm up the Lancer, Scotty,” he said. “I'll be out in a few minutes.”

  “There seems to be something wrong,” Shorty said.

  “There is, wise guy,” Bill snapped in his exasperation. “Get out of that overall and grab a hat. We're going over to call on Miss Reynolds. She says she was never here.”

  III—A MESSAGE

  EIGHT minutes later Bill climbed in the forward cockpit of the big silver sesquiplane that was the Lancer.

  Following his regular custom, he checked over his ammunition counters and his two .50caliber machine guns and the 37mm. cannon mounted in the Vee of the cylinders.

  “Let's ride!” he said into the inter-cockpit telephone to Shorty, and released his hand brakes.

  He blasted the tail around and rolled down the concrete runway at terrific speed until he reached the center of the field where the various runways converged. Kicking his right rudder gently he nosed into the wind, rocked his control column gently forward to bring up the tail and then lifted the big ship into the air.

  The tip of Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Bridge flashed under his wings a few minutes later. He sped above the other bridges that span the East River, circled the seaplane landing once and struck the water with a cloud of spray and roared up to the inclined turntable. A uniformed attendant wheeled up a set of steps. As Bill went down them he shouted instructions at the attendant and raced toward the taxi stand with Shorty by his side.

  “If we don't get there fast, she won't wait,” Bill panted as he gave the driver the address and slumped back in the seat of a taxi.

  “That kind never will,” Shorty said.

  A maid answered the door and led them into the library of the Reynolds' twenty-room apartment.

  “Please sit down,” she said. “Miss Reynolds will be right in.”

  But Bill didn't sit down. Instead, he paced back and forth across the room. He was waiting to get a glimpse of Miss Ruth Reynolds. He heard the tap of high heels on the floor and faced the doorway. A short, rather stout girl of about twenty-six stepped into the room.

  Bill's heart turned over and his stomach contracted as he stared at the girl who stood there. He knew he was being rude, but he couldn't help it. He opened his mouth, but no words came forth. He bowed his head for an instant to hide the anger and chagrin in his eyes.

  “Mr. Barnes?” the girl said in a languid, bored way that made Bill more angry. He bowed again.

  “And Mr. Hassfurther,” he said, indicating Shorty. “Miss Reynolds, unless she has already gone, call your secretary quickly!”

  Miss Reynolds' eyes opened wide and her left hand fluttered toward her heart “Why, really———”

  “Please!” Bill snapped. “I should have told you over the telephone that I recognized your secretary's voice as the voice of the person who called on me last week and said she was Miss Ruth Reynolds.”

  Bill jabbed a hand into an upper waistcoat pocket and pulled a folded piece of paper from it. He spread it out under Miss Reynolds' gaze and said, “She left this with me.”

  Miss Reynolds stared at it for a moment and reached for a bell lanyard beside the doorway.

  “Is that your signature?” Bill asked.

  She nodded her head.

  “Tell Miss Johnson I wish to see her here at once,” she said to the uniformed maid, who appeared silently.

  “Will you please tell me more about it before she comes,” she then said to Bill.

  Bill told her the same things he had told Shorty a short time before, running his words together in his haste to finish before Miss Johnson appeared.

  But he needn't have hurried. The maid came back in a few minutes to say that Miss Johnson was neither in her office nor in her room.

  “It looks, Miss Ruth,” the maid
said, “as though she had gone and had taken all her things.”

  “That will be all, Patricia,” Miss .Reynolds said. “What in the world,” she said to Bill, “can be the object?”

  “That's what I'm going to find out,” Bill said grimly.

  “She didn't even know my brother.”

  “How long had she been with you?” Bill asked. “Where did you get her? Who recommended her?”

  “Just a moment,” Miss Reynolds said. “I'm frightfully bewildered already. Let me think.” She closed her eyes and tried to rub the creases out of her forehead with the tips of her fingers.

  “She had only been with me a short time,” she said. “Four weeks, perhaps. I can find out.”

  “Never mind now,” Bill said. “How did she happen to get the job?”

  “A—a friend sent her to me,” Miss Reynolds said. Her eyes were a little frightened now.

  “An old friend?” Bill persisted.

  “No,” she said. “I scarcely knew him. I—I met him—I see now I shouldn't have taken her—I met him at one of the fashionable night clubs, at a party. I don't remember much about him except that he was very charming. We were talking about the unemployed, and——”

  She started as Shorty grunted, his eyes flashing. Bill glared at him.

  “I told him I had been having a frightful time getting a competent secretary, and he said he knew of one he could send to me,” she went on.

  “He would have said the same thing if you had wanted a personal maid or a cook,” Shorty broke in.

  “But why?” she asked.

  “Because your brother cracked up in the Bering Sea last summer,” Shorty said. “He wanted to get Bill, or Red, or all of us up there.”

  “I don't follow that,” she said. “He told me this Miss Johnson came of a very fine old family. Her family had lost all their money in the crash and she was working as a social secretary to pay her way. I wanted to help her. She was very capable.”

  “If you had wanted a pocket picked she would probably have done that “very well, toe,” Shorty said. “She was a plant.”

  “But why?” Miss Reynolds wailed again.

  “We don't know that yet,” Bill said. “But we do know that one of my men is in very grave danger. You see, we don't live the same kind of life you do. Now we've got to find the answer to this one.” He handed the signed, blank check to her. “I would advise you to be a little more careful about what you sign.”

  Miss Reynolds' face turned a bright crimson.

  “If there is anything I can do,” she

  began as the maid came back into the room.

  “Some one wishes to speak to a Mr. Barnes on the telephone,” she said. “The person says it is very important.”

  Miss Reynolds pointed to a telephone that stood on a table. “Use that extension,” she said.

  “Hello, Bill,” Tony Lamport's excited voice said in Bill's ear.

  “Yes, Tony. What is it?”

  “It's Red, Bill,” Tony said. “He just made contact with me. There was something very peculiar about it. He talked as though he was under wraps —as though some one was telling him what to say. He said he was down off the Alaska Peninsula and had smashed his radio when he crashed. He said he just got it fixed so that he could contact us. He managed to get to a small island and gave me the position of it.”

  “What else?” Bill asked tensely.

  “That was about all,” Tony said. “His voice kept getting lower and lower and then faded out entirely. I've been standing by constantly trying to pick him up again. But he hasn't come in again.”

  “O. K.,” Bill said. “I'll be back there in a little while.”

  “Oh, one other thing he said,” Tony said. “I didn't get what he meant. He said something about watching your nozzle injectors on your Diesels when you come after him.”

  “Did you write that down?” Bill asked.

  “Yes. I took the whole thing down.”

  “Tell Scotty to check over the transport, the Eaglet and a Snorter,” Bill ordered. “I'll be back there soon.”

  He put the instrument back in its cradle and told Shorty what Tony had told him. Little furrows gathered between Shorty's eyes as he listened. Miss Reynolds watched them both breathlessly.

  “He's in a jam,” Shorty said. “Some one was standing over him while he talked—some one with a gun in Ins hand.”

  “A gun?” Miss Reynolds said.

  “Good-by, Miss Reynolds,” Bill said. “I'm sorry if we've startled you. I'll let you know about this thing later.”

  “Please do,” she said. “I'm afraid you'll think I'm awfully stupid.”

  “Not awfully—extremely,” Shorty said under his breath.

  They were on their way back to the seaplane landing in a taxi when Shorty suddenly slapped Bill hard on the knee.

  “I've got it!” he said. “Nozzle injectors! Red was warning us that he was in trouble.”

  “I don't get it,” Bill said.

  “Remember the code word we arranged when I went out to the Philippines on my own? Remember, we took the name of the largest island, Luzon, and changed it around, spelled it backward? N-0-Z-U-L. Then we called it 'nozzle.' That was to be the code word I would send you it I got in a jam. And you came when I sent it.”

  “I remember now,” Bill said grimly. “That's the explanation all right. Smart boy, that Red.”

  “Too smart to leave there,” Shorty said.

  “Leave there!” Bill roared. “Fellah, we're shoving for Alaska as soon as Scotty is through checking over our ships'.”

  IV—OFF FOR ALASKA

  BEVERLY BATES, the brown-eyed Bostonian, who was the fifth member of Bill's little squadron, was waiting on the apron with Scotty MacCloskey when Bill and Shorty killed the engines in the Lancer.

  “What about Red?” Bev asked as Bill slid out of the Lancer.

  Bill saw the same expression of desperate concern in Bev's eyes that he had seen in Shorty's when he told him about Red. He knew the thoughts that were in the back of both their minds. He knew they were thinking about the two tragedies that had broken the long period of good fortune which had attended Bill and his squadron since its conception. They were thinking about Mort Henderson and Cy Hawkins— wondering it Red Gleason was to be next.

  What, Bill asked himself before he answered Bev, is behind this thing? Is it some one who is trying to even an old score with Red, or are they striking at me? He shook his head angrily and answered Bev.

  “Come into my office,” he said. Then he turned to Scotty MacCloskey.

  “You've got your men on a Snorter and the carrier-transport?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Scotty said. “But you didn't tell me about equipment. I don't know where you're going.”

  “Alaska,” Bill said. “Arrange for a supply of fuel in Seattle and find out whether we can get more in Juneau, Alaska. Double the emergency equipment and ammunition supply. Put the regular crew in the carrier. Be sure to check Sandy's ship carefully. We may need her. How soon will they be ready?”

  “I ought to have a couple of days to be sure. Bill,” old Scotty said cautiously.

  “A couple of days!” Bill roared. “You mean a couple of hours! Check the Lancer, too. Shorty will fly her. Bev will have the Snorter. Sandy and I will handle the carrier-transport. Make it three hours. I want 'em on the line then.”

  Scotty MacCloskey spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders. He was a careful man and he wanted to be certain that the ships were ready. But he knew there was no use in arguing because Bill knew the condition of his ships as well as he did.

  A few minutes later Bill, Shorty, Bev Bates, and young Sandy leaned over a chart spread out on a drawing board in Bill's private office. Shorty spread a caliper and laid it on two points along the string of mountainous dots that were the Aleutian Islands.

  “From what I find,” Shorty said, “it's one of those small ones between Rat and Andreanof Islands. It is almost directly on the route the Graf Zeppelin
took on its world flight across the Pacific in 1929.”

  “What about steamship lines?” Bill asked.

  “It's about a hundred miles north of the Yokohama-Vancouver lane and tour hundred north of the Yokohama-San Francisco route,” Shorty said.

  “Listen, Bill,” Bev Bates broke in, “have you formed any opinion about this thing? Have you any ideas?”

  “No,” Bill snapped, “I haven't.”

  “Do you think young Reynolds' attempted flight to Russia has anything to do with it?” Bev asked.

  “No,” Bill said. “That was just one of those stupid gestures that do more to harm aviation than to help it. It wasn't a drunken flight as the news-papers intimated. It was quite thoroughly planned. But it had no purpose. Like a lot of other people, young Reynolds wanted to get himself some publicity. Some one wants to get us up there and is using this method to do it.”

  “What for?” Sandy asked, his freckled face serious.

  “Hell, kid,” Bill said, “I'm no gray-bearded oracle.”

  “Say, Bill,” Shorty said, “you didn't ask Ruth Reynolds about the man who sent the phoney secretary to her. Maybe, if we could locate him, we could get a lead.”

  “I thought of it,” Bill said, “but decided against it. She said she met him at a party in a night club. That was part of this game. He was supposed to meet her and plant that girl in her house.”

  “I don't get it,” Bev said. “Why all that elaborate planning if Reynolds or his sister have nothing to do with it?”

  “They do have something to do with it,” Bill said. “They served some one as an authentic and reliable background to get Red up there so that some one could grab him. They want us up there, too. They knew that we would come after Red. It's a clever little trap.”

  “Anyway, we'll be ready for them,” Shorty said.

  “I hope so,” Bill said and reached for a telephone. He asked to be connected with Scotty.

  Barnes Field was a bedlam of feverish activity when Bill and his men went out on the apron at dusk. The sixteen-foot props of the big carrier-transport gleamed dully as Martin, the head mechanic, blasted the three thousand horses in the two Barnes-Diesels. The twin props of the Snorter and the silver Lancer were ticking over slowly on the apron beside the transport. The goggled, white-helmeted heads of Shorty and Bev Bates jutted above the rims of the two fast amphibians a moment later.