5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 80: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

80 He’s probably there by now, with every highway patrol car in the state hunting for us. Mr. Burke, here, hired a car for us, and we drove on through to this town and then headed for the nearest airport. Yours.” She paused, almost out of breath. “And now?” Sam Mead inquired lazily, enjoying the scowls of both Burke and the bridegroom-to-be. “We want you to fly us across into Old Mexico. My father has a private estate down in the desert about two hundred miles from here. It’s closed now. It has a private landing strip, and you could set us down right there. He’d never dream of looking for us in that place and even if he does, we'll be married and in Mexico, and by the time he finds us, things will have cooled off. I just need a little time to convince him that Roy is not a fortune hunter. Now, will you take us?” “Sure,” he said, getting lazily out of the chair. “We could have been on our way by now if your friend Burke, here, had used some sense. By the way, where does he come into the picture ?” “Mr. Burke? He’s a friend of Roy’s and came along to help.” “Oh,” Sam Mead said. “I thought he was the butler.” Something like an inarticulate snarl broke from behind as Mead turned his back and went inside the office. Gear and spare parts and tires were scattered around the desk. An extra prop stood in a corner, yellow and varnished. He wrote on a pad: Tobie—Gone on a charter to the Horton estate somewhere down in Sonora. Back tonight or tomorrow morning. Then he picked up his canteen and filled it from the iced water in a fifteen- gallon container on the floor. Many years ago a forced landing and a five-hour walk through burning hot sun had taught him a lesson. He slung the canteen over his shoul- der and went out, locking the door. “All right,” he said. “Let’s roll! Twen- ty-five dollars an hour, including return ‘trip. All my ships are registered with the immigration boys down at Puerto, forty miles from here. There’s a landing strip right beside the station. We’ll have FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE to check in and tell them when I'll be back. Won’t take more than fifteen minutes.” “All right,” Helen Horton said in a tired voice. Hot sand made crunching sounds un- der her high-heeled shoes as Duval walked beside her toward the tie-down line. Some guys, thought Sam, get all the breaks. He put their bags in the luggage com- partment behind the rear seat and mo- tioned for the girl and her fiancé to get in. He closed the door and went around to the left-hand side, untying the ropes from the anchor rings on the strut. Burke was already in when Sam Mead slid under the left of the dual wheels, racked the canteen above his head, and closed the door. His eyes went to the gas gauge. Full. He made it a rule to keep them full on the line. [' WAS going to be a heavy load, but he knew the ship. He turned to Burke, sitting surlily beside him. Burke obvi- ously was boiling over that one about being the butler. But, thought Sam, that’s what a guy gets for wearing a Homburg in the desert. He turned to Burke. “Keep your hands off the controls. Ditto your feet away. from the rudder stirrups. And for Pete’s sake, put that raincoat back among the baggage. It gets on my nerves.’ “Tl keep the raincoat in my lap,” was the icy reply. “And for your infor- mation, Mr. Mead, I’ve been in a plane before.” Mead spun the starter and then taxied out on the runway he one day hoped to oil, warming up the motor on the way down to the opposite end of the field. He trundled down, swung around, and set the brakes, checking both left and right mags at fifteen hundred revolu- tions. Oil pressure was up, and the cyl- inder head temperature gauge climbed to required temperature. “We're off,” he said laconically and pushed in the throttle between the dual wheels. The ship rose lazily. and he made a perfunctory circle of the airport while gaining altitude. Flying’s greatest dan- ger was on take-offs, and if the motor cut out at full throttle, there were the AMICLOOO (CO) S (C(O)