5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 81: what you’re looking at

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

WINGS OF THE DARK ANGEL X-shaped runways below. He leveled off at a thousand feet and started droning southward, cutting the revolutions back to nineteen hundred and fifty. No use wasting good gas to land at the immigration station, anyhow. He settled back and reached for a cigarette. “Smoke if you like,” he said to Burke. Burke grunted an answer and shifted the raincoat in his lap. The desert’s mesa gave way to a valley cut by irri- gation ditches, and the land below be- came checkered green squares of alfalfa and flax going to seed. They flew for ten minutes. “Puerto is just ahead,” Mead half grunted to the man beside him as he stuck the butt through a slit in the win- dow. The prop wash sucked it out of his fingers. In the rear view mirror, he could see the girl and Roy Duval. She sat staring out the cabin window, and he could have sworn there was weariness and even indecision on her face. Duval stared out the other window. Burke had shifted the raincoat, one hand out of sight in the folds. Now his voice came almost gently. “Friend, we aren’t going to land at the immigration station,” it murmured in Mead’s ear. “You’re going to swing wide of it for a few miles to get out of sight and then go right on across into Mexico.” He shifted his hand again in the rain- coat’s pocket. That sharp hump under the waterproofing wasn’t any pipe or finger. It was the barrel of an automatic pistol. Chapter II BRUPTLY Sam Mead turned in the seat and actually grinned at Burke. The grin turned into a sneer of contempt. “T didn’t really think that you’d make a good butler,” he said. “It was just that hat. All you need to complete the picture is a sharp nose and a long, hairless tail.” Burke had edged over closer, gun in the raincoat pocket still steady. His face was tolerant now. He was almost smiling. “Words,” he murmured, “don’t mean a thing—now. I’ll ask you to say them again tonight under different conditions. A little left rudder, Mead. Swing along 81 the Border for a few miles. I’ll tell you when to cross over.” “Just suppose I don’t? Then you'll blast me and order the plane to fly itself to wherever you’re going, huh?” “Mister,” Burke said, “in the old days, right after the first World War, I flew liquor across the Canadian Line in an old Breuget biplane. I haven’t had hold of the controls in more than fifteen years now and never flew a wheel job. But I still think I could make a good enough landing for the three of us to walk away from. It’s your move.” Mead took the hint. The man could do it. He eased over on the left rudder stirrup and watched the compass swing to due east. He looked at the man with the gun again. They had been speaking low enough that the girl and her fiancé in the back seat hadn’t heard. She still sat with her face to the window. “For a friend of Duval, the prospective bridegroom, you certainly want to see a marriage take place,” Sam Mead said sardonically. He reached over and turned on the radio, listening to the stutter that came from the concealed speaker above them. That speaker was on only the newest of planes, pushing the old-fashioned headphones back into the past with the old crystal receiving sets. “Maybe there isn’t going to be any marriage,” Burke said softly. “This is a snatch. It was planned three months ago when we swiped that puddle-jumper job of vours to use in getting into con- tact with old man Horton. But the dumb fool who took it let the main tank run dry before he cut in the wing tanks, and ° the motor cut out. He crashed.” “Where is he now?” Mead asked idly. “Buried, mister, buried,” Burke an- swered. “I don’t like failures. It set us back three months. By then, Roy was in love with Miss Horton. I got next to him, lent him money to take her out, played the good friend to help them elope to Mexico. That’s where you came in again.” The radio was on by now. Static gritted through, and Mead twisted the dials. He got one of the regular stations. It was a newscast. Helen Horton’s name came through, and now as an item flashed in, Mead saw in the mirror a CoOMmiclooo S (C(O)