Murder Madness

Murder Madness

PART TWO OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL

_By Murray Leinster_

[Illustration: "_As the madness grew, the two men fought. They were
murder mad. The local sub-deputy gave his guests the thrill of
watching maniacs battling to the death._"]

[Sidenote: Bell, of the secret "Trade," strikes into the South
American jungle to find the hidden stronghold of The Master--the
unknown monster whose diabolical poison swiftly and surely is
enslaving the whole continent.]


Seven United States Secret Service men have disappeared in South
America. Another is found--a screaming homicidal maniac. It is rumored
that they are victims of a diabolical poison which produces "murder
madness."

Charley Bell, of the "Trade"--a secret service organization that does
not officially exist--discovers that a sinister system of slavery is
flourishing in South America, headed by a mysterious man known only as
The Master. This slavery is accomplished by means of a poison which
causes its victims to experience a horrible writhing of the hands,
followed by a madness to do murder, two weeks after the poison is
taken.

The victims get relief only with an antidote supplied through Ribiera,
The Master's Chief Deputy; but in the antidote there is more of the
poison which again in two weeks will take effect. And so it is that a
person who once receives the poison is forever enslaved.

[Illustration]

Bell learns that Ribiera has kidnapped Paula Canalejas, daughter of a
Brazilian cabinet minister--himself a victim--who has killed himself
on feeling the "murder madness," caused by the poison, coming over
him. Bell corners Ribiera in his home, buries the muzzles of two
six-guns in his stomach, and demands that he set Paula free.


CHAPTER VI

In this room the electric lights were necessary at all times. And it
occurred to Bell irrelevantly that perhaps there were no windows
because there might be sometimes rather noisy scenes within these
walls. And windows will convey the sound of screaming to the outside
air, while solid walls will not.

He stood alert and grim, with his revolvers pressing into Ribiera's
flabby flesh. His fingers were tensed upon the triggers. If he killed
Ribiera, he would be killed. Of course. And men and women he had known
and liked might be doomed to the most horrible of fates by Ribiera's
death. Yet even the death or madness of many men was preferable to the
success of the conspiracy in which Ribiera seemed to figure largely.

Ribiera looked up at him with the eyes of a terrified snake. There was
a little stirring at the door.

"Your friends," said Bell softly, "had better not come close."

Ribiera gasped an order. The stirrings stopped. Paula came slowly into
the room quite alone. She smiled queerly at Bell.

"I believed that you would come," she said quietly. "And yet I do not
know that we can escape."

"We're going to try," said Bell grimly. To Ribiera he added curtly,
"You'd better order the path cleared to the door, and have one of your
cars brought around."

* * * * *

Ribiera croaked a repetition of the command.

"Now stand up--slowly," said Bell evenly. "Very slowly. I don't want
to die, Ribiera, so I don't want to kill you. But I haven't much hope
of escape, so I shan't hesitate very long about doing it. And I've got
these guns' hammers trembling at full cock. If I get a bullet through
my head, they'll go off just the same and kill you."

Ribiera got up. Slowly. His face was a pasty gray.

"Your major-domo," Bell told him matter-of-factly, "will go before us
and open every door on both sides of the way to the street. Paula"--he
used her given came without thought, or without realizing it--"Paula
will go and look into each door. If she as much as looks frightened, I
fire, and try to fight the rest of the way clear. Understand? I'm
going to get down to a boat I have ready in the harbor if I have to
kill you and every living soul in the house!"

There was no boat in the harbor, naturally. But the major-domo moved
hesitantly across the room, looking at his master for orders. For
Ribiera to die meant death or madness to his slaves. The major-domo's
face was ghastly with fear. He moved onward, and Bell heard the sound
of doors being thrust wide. Once he gave a command in the staccato
fashion of a terrified man. Bell nodded grimly.

"Now we'll move. Slowly, Ribiera! Always slowly.... Ah! That's better!
Paula, you go on before and look into each room. I shall be sorry if
any of your servants follow after you, Ribiera.... Through the
doorway. Yes! All clear, Paula? I'm balancing the hammers very
carefully, Ribiera. Very delicate work. It is fortunate for you that
my nerves are rather steady. But really, I don't much care.... Still
all clear before us, Paula? With the servants nerve-racked as they
are, I believe we'll make it through, even if I do kill Ribiera.
There'll be no particular point in killing us then. It won't help
them. Don't stumble, please, Ribiera.... Go carefully, and very
slowly...."

* * * * *

Ribiera's face was a gray mask of terror when they reached the door. A
long, low car with two men on the chauffeur's seat was waiting.

"Only one man up front, Ribiera," said Bell dryly. "No ostentation,
please. Now, I hope your servants haven't summoned the police, because
they might want to stop me from marching you out there with a gun in
the small of your back. And that would be deplorable, Ribiera. Quite
deplorable."

With a glance, he ordered Paula into the tonneau. He followed her,
driving Ribiera before him. There seemed to be none about but the
stricken, terrified servant who had opened the door for their exit.

"My friend," Bell told the major-domo grimly, "I'll give you a bit of
comfort. I'm not going to try to take the Senhor Ribiera away with me.
Once I'm on board the yacht that waits for me, I'll release him so he
can keep you poor devils sane until my Government has found a way to
beat this devilish poison of his. Then I'll come back and kill him.
Now you can tell the chauffeur to drive us to the Biera Mar."

He settled back in his seat. There were beads of perspiration on his
forehead, but he could not wipe them off. He held the two revolvers
against Ribiera's flabby body.

* * * * *

The car turned the corner, and he added dryly:

"Your servants, Ribiera, will warn your more prominent slaves of my
intention of going on board a yacht. Preparations will be made to stop
every pleasure boat and search it for me. So ... tell your chauffeur
to swing about and make for the flying field. And tell him to drive
carefully, by the way. I've still got these guns on a very fine
adjustment of the trigger-pressure."

Ribiera croaked the order. Bell was exactly savage enough to kill him
if he did not escape.

For twenty minutes the car sped through the residential districts of
Rio. The sun was high in the air, but clouds were banking up above the
Pao d'Assucar--the Sugarloaf--and it looked as if there might be one
of the sudden summer thunderstorms that sometimes sweep Rio.

Then the clear road to the flying field. Rio has the largest
metropolitan district in the world, but a great deal of it is piled on
end, and Rio itself built on most of the rest. The flying field is
necessarily some miles from even the residential districts, for the
sake of a level plain of sufficient area.

The car shot ahead through practically untouched jungle, interspersed
with tiny clearings in which were patchwork houses that might have
been a thousand miles in the interior instead of so near the center of
all civilization in Brazil. Up smooth gradients. Around beautifully
engineered curves.

* * * * *

Bell put aside one revolver long enough to search Ribiera carefully.
He found a pearl-handled automatic, and handed it to Paula.

"Worth having," he said cheerfully. "I wonder if you'd mind searching
the chauffeur: with that gun at his head I think he'd be peaceful. You
needn't have him stop."

Paula stood up, smiling a little.

"I did not think I lacked courage, Senhor," she observed, "but you
have taught me more."

"_Nil desperandum_," said Bell lightly. He relaxed deliberately.
Matters would be tense at the flying field, and he would need to be
wholly calm. There was little danger of an attempt at rescue here, and
the necessity of being ready to shoot Ribiera at any instant was no
longer a matter of split seconds.

He watched, while, bent over the back of the front seat, she extracted
two squat weapons from the chauffeur's pockets.

"Quite an arsenal," said Bell as he pocketed them. He turned
pleasantly to Ribiera. "Now, Ribiera, you understand just what I want.
That big amphibian plane of yours is fairly fast, and once when I was
merely your guest you assured me that it was always kept fueled and
even provisioned for a long flight. When we reach the flying field I
want it rolled out and warmed up, over at the other end of the field
from the flying line. We'll go over to it in the car.

"And I've thought of something. It worried me, before, because
sometimes if a man's shot he merely relaxes all over. So while we're
at the flying field I'm going to be holding back the triggers of these
guns with my thumbs. I don't have to pull the trigger at all--just let
go and they'll go off. It isn't so fine an adjustment as I had just
now, but it's safer for you as long as you behave. And you might urge
your chauffeur to be cautious. I do hope, Ribiera, that you won't look
as if you were frightened. If there's any hitch, and delay for letting
some fuel out of the tanks or messing up the motors, I'll be very
sorry for you."

* * * * *

The car swooped out into bright sunshine. The flying field lay below,
already in the shadow of the banking clouds above. Hangars lay
stretched out across the level space.

Through the gates. Ribiera licked his lips. Bell jammed the revolver
muzzles closer against his sides. The chauffeur halted the car. Paula
spoke softly to him. He stiffened. Bell found it possible to smile
faintly.

Ribiera gave orders. There was a moment's pause--the revolver muzzles
went deeper into his side--and he snarled a repetition. The official
cringed and moved swiftly.

"You have chosen your slaves well, Ribiera," said Bell coolly. "They
seem to occupy all strategic positions. We'll ride across."

The gears clashed. The car swerved forward and went deliberately
across the wide clear space that was the flying field. It halted near
the farther side. In minutes the door of a hangar swung wide. There
was the sputtering of a not-yet-warmed-up motor. The big plane came
slowly out, its motors coughing now and then. It swung clumsily across
the field, turned in a wide circle, and stopped some forty or fifty
feet from the car.

"Send the mechanic back, on foot," said Bell softly.

Again Ribiera found it expedient to snarl. And Bell added, gently,
while the throttled-down motors of the big amphibian boomed on:

"Now get out of the car."

Tiny figures began to gaze curiously at them from the row of hangars.
The mechanic, starting back on foot, the four people getting out of
the car, the big plane waiting....

* * * * *

With his revolver ready and aimed at Ribiera's bulk, Bell reached in
the front of the car and turned off the switch. The motor died
abruptly. He put the key in his pocket.

"Just to get a minute or two extra start," he said dryly. "Climb up in
the plane, Paula."

She obeyed, and turned at the top.

"I will cover them until you are up," she said quietly.

Bell laughed, now. A genuine laugh, for the first time in many days.

"We do work together!" he said cheerfully.

But he backed up the ladder. There was a stirring over by the hangars.
The mechanic who had taxied the plane to this spot was a dwindling
speck, no more than a third of the way across the field. But even from
the distant hangars it could be seen that something was wrong.

"Close the door, Paula," said Bell. He had seated himself at the
controls, and scanned the instruments closely.

This machine was heavy and large and massive. The boat-body between
the retractable wheels added weight to the structure, and when Bell
gave it the gun it seemed to pick up speed with an irritating
slowness, and to roll and lurch very heavily when it did begin to
approach flying speed. The run was long before the tail came up. It
was longer before the joltings lessened and the plane began to rise
slowly, with the solid steadiness that only a large and heavily loaded
plane can compass.

* * * * *

Up, and up.... Bell was three hundred feet high when he crossed the
hangars and saw tiny faces staring up at him. Some of the small
figures were pointing across the field. The big plane circled widely,
gaining altitude, and Bell gazed down. Ribiera was gesticulating
wildly, pointing upward to the soaring thing, shaking his fist at it,
and making imperious, frantic motions of command.

Bell took one quick glance all about the horizon. Toward the sea the
sun shone down brilliantly upon the city. Inland a broad white wall of
advancing rain moved toward the coastline. And Bell smiled frostily,
and flung the big ship into a dive and swooped down upon Ribiera as a
hawk might swoop at a chicken.

Ribiera saw the monster thing bearing down savagely, its motors
bellowing, its nose pointed directly at him. And there is absolutely
nothing more terrifying upon the earth than to see a plane diving upon
you with deadly intent. A panic that throws back to non-human
ancestors seizes upon a man. He feels the paralysis of those ancient
anthropoids who were preyed upon by dying races of winged monsters in
the past. That racial, atavistic terror seizes upon him.

Bell laughed, though it sounded more like a bark, as Ribiera flung
himself to the ground and screamed hoarsely when the plane seemed
about to pounce upon him. The shrill timbre of the shriek cut through
the roaring of the motors, even through the thick padding of the big
plane's cabin walls that reduced that roaring to a not intolerable
growl.

* * * * *

But the plane passed ten feet or more above his head. It rose, and
climbed steeply, and passed again above the now buzzing, agitated
hangars, and climbed above the hills behind the flying field as some
men went running and others moved by swifter means toward the shaken,
nerve-racked Ribiera, on whose lips were flecks of foam.

Bell looked far below and far behind him. The incredible greenness of
tropic verdure, of the jungle which rings Rio all about. The many
glitterings of sunlight upon glass, and upon the polished domes of
sundry public buildings, and the multitudinous shimmerings of the
tropic sun upon the bay. The deep dark shadow of the banking clouds
drew a sharp line across the earth, and deep in that shadow lay the
flying field, growing small and distant as the plane flew on. But
specks raced across the wide expanse. In a peculiar, irrational
fashion those specks darted toward a nearly invisible speck, and
encountered other specks darting away from that nearly invisible
speck, and gradually all the specks were turned about and racing for
the angular, toy-block squares which were the hangars of the
aeroplanes of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Little white things appeared from those hangars--planes being thrust
out into the open air while motes of men raced agitatedly about them.
One of them was suddenly in motion. It moved slowly and clumsily
across the ground, and then abruptly moved more swiftly. It seemed to
float upward and to swing about in mid-air. It came floating toward
the amphibian, though apparently nearly stationary against the sky.
Another moved jerkily, and another....

* * * * *

Just before the big plane dived into the wide white wall of falling
water, the air behind it seemed to swarm with aircraft.

In the cabin of the amphibian, of course, the bellowing of the motors
outside was muffled to a certain degree. Paula clung to the seats and
moved awkwardly up to the place beside Bell. She had just managed to
seat herself when the falling sheet of water obliterated all the
world.

"Strap yourself in your seat," he said in her ear above the persistent
tumult without. "Then you might adjust my safety-belt. Well be flying
blind in this rain. I hope the propellers hold."

She fumbled, first at the belt beside his upholstered chair, and only
afterward adjusted her own. He sent a quick glance at her.

"Shouldn't have done that," he said quietly. "I can manage somehow."

The plane lurched and tumbled wildly. He kicked rudder and jerked on
the stick, watching the instrument board closely. In moments the wild
gyrations ceased.

"The beginning of this," he said evenly, "is going to be hectic.
There'll be lightning soon."

Almost on his words the gray mist out the cabin windows seemed to
flame. There was thunder even above the motors. But the faint,
perceptible trembling of the whole plane under the impulse of its
engines kept on. Bell kept his eyes on the bank and turn indicator,
glancing now and then at the altimeter.

"We've got to climb," he said shortly, "up where the lightning is,
too. We want to pass the Serra da Carioca with room to spare, or we'll
crash on it."

There was no noticeable change in the progress of the plane, of
course. Rain was dashing against the windows of the cabin with an
incredible velocity. Rain at a hundred miles an hour acts more like
hail than water, anyhow, and Bell was trusting grimly to the hope that
the propellers were of steel, which will withstand even hail, and a
hope that the blast through the engine cowlings would keep the wiring
free of water-made short circuits.

* * * * *

But the air was bad beyond belief. At times the plane spun like
thistledown in a vast and venomous flood that crashed into the
windows with a vicious rattling. Lightning began and grew fiercer. It
seemed at times as if the plane were whirling crazily in sheer
incandescent flame. The swift air-currents at the beginning of a
tropic thunderstorm were here multiplied in trickiness and velocity by
the hills of the Serra da Carioca, and Bell was flying blind as well.
The safety-belts were needed fifty times within twenty minutes, as the
big ship was flung about by fierce blasts that sometimes blew even the
rain upward for a time. And over all, as the amphibian spun madly, and
toppled crazily and fought for height, there was the terrific,
incessant crashing of thunder which was horribly close, and the
crackling flares of lightning all about.

"I'm going to take a chance," said Bell curtly above the uproar, with
the windows seeming to look out upon the fires of hell. "I think we're
high enough. The compass has gone crazy, but I'm going to risk it."

Again there was no perceptible alteration in the motion of the ship,
but he fought it steadily toward the west. And it seemed that he
actually was passing beyond the first fierce fringe of the storm,
because the lightning became--well, not less frequent, but less
continuous.

* * * * *

And suddenly, in a blinding flare of light that made every separate
raindrop look like a speck of molten metal, he saw another airplane.
It was close. Breath-takingly close. It came diving down out of
nowhere and passed less than twenty yards before the nose of the
amphibian. It glistened with wet, and glittered unbearably in the
incredible brightness of the lightning. Every spot and speck and
detail showed with an almost ghastly distinctness. But it dived on
past, its pilot rigid and tense and unseeing, plunging like a meteor
straight downward. The golden, iridescent mist of rain closed over its
body. And it was gone.

Ten minutes later Bell was driving onward through a gray obscurity,
which now was no more than tinted pink by receding lightning-flashes.
The air was still uneven and treacherous. The big plane hurtled
downward hundreds of feet in wild descending gusts among the hills,
and was then flung upward on invisible billows of air for other
hundreds of feet. But it was less uncontrollable. There were periods
of minutes when the safety-belts did not come into use.

* * * * *

And later still, half an hour perhaps, the steadiness of the air gave
assurance that the plane was past the range of the Serra da Carioca
and was headed inland. He drove on, watching his instruments and
flying blind, but with a gathering confidence in an ultimate escape
from the swarm of aircraft Ribiera had sent aloft in the teeth of the
storm to hunt for him. The motors hummed outside the padded cabin. The
girl beside him was very quiet and very still and very pale.

"We want to get out of this before long," he said in her ear, "and
then we can find out where we are, and especially begin to make some
plans for ourselves."

Her eyes turned to him. There was a curious stiffness in her manner.
It might have seemed reserve, but Bell recognized the symptoms of a
woman whose self-control is hanging by a thread. He smiled.

"Hold on a while yet," he said gently. "I know you want to cry. But
please hold on a while yet. When we reach friends...."

Her hands went to her throat, and he could feel the effort of will
that kept her voice steady.

"Friends? We have no friends." She managed a smile. "The Senhor
Ribiera explained to me when I arrived at his house how it was that no
questions would be asked about my disappearance. My father is dead.
The newspapers this morning said that it was not known whether he
killed himself or was assassinated. The Senhor Ribiera has given
orders to his slaves. The newspapers of this afternoon will inform a
horrified world that you and I, together, murdered my father that we
might flee together with such of his riches as he had actually
gathered together for me to take away. We are murderers, my friend.
Cables and telegraph wires are reporting the news. The daughter of the
Minister of War of the Republic of Brazil was assisted by her lover to
murder her father. She has fled with him. Now--where are we still to
find friends?"

* * * * *

Bell stared, for the fraction of an instant. One thought came to him,
and was checked. The Trade does not exist, anywhere. The Trade would
not help. And murderers are always duly handed over when the
Government of the United States is requested politely to do so by
another nation. Always. And so far as the whole civilized world was
concerned they were murderers. Even the employees of the flying field
who were not subject to The Master would swear to the strictly
accurate story of their escape together.

"It is just scandalous enough and horrible enough," said Bell quietly,
"to be reprinted everywhere as news. You're right. We haven't any
friends. We're up against it. And so I think we'll have to hunt down
and kill The Master. Then we'll be believed. And there are just two of
us, with what weapons we have in our pockets, to attack. How many
thousands of slaves do you suppose The Master has by now?"

And, quite suddenly, he laughed.


CHAPTER VII

The sun was sinking slowly when the plane appeared above the valley.
There was only jungle below. Jungle, and the languid river which now
flowed sluggishly into a wide and shallow pool in which drowned trees
formed a mass of substance neither land nor marsh nor river. The
river now contracted to a narrow space and showed signs of haste, and
even foaming water, and then again flowed placidly onward, sometimes
even a hundred yards in breadth. Shadows of the mountains to the west
were creeping toward the opposite hill-flanks, darkening the thick
foliage and sending flocks of flying things home to their chosen
roosts.

The sound of the plane was a buzzing noise, which grew louder to a
sharp drone as it seemed to increase in size, and became a dull
monotonous roar as it dipped toward the waters of the stream. It
floated downward, very gently, and circled as if regarding a certain
spot critically, and resumed its onward flight. Again it circled,
anxiously, now, as if the time for alighting were short.

It seemed to hesitate in mid-air, and dived, and circled up-stream and
came down the valley again. It sank, and sank, lower and lower, until
the white of its upper wings was hidden by the tall trees on either
side.

A _jabiru_ stork saw it from downstream, solemnly squatting on four
eggs which eventually would perpetuate the race. The _jabiru_ was
about forty feet above the water and had a clear view of the stream.
The stork squatted meditatively, with its long, naked neck projecting
above the edge of its nest.

* * * * *

The plane dipped ever lower, its reflection vivid and complete upon
the waveless stream below it. Ten feet above the water. Five--and
swift ripples from the rush of air disturbed the unbroken reflections
behind. It was almost a silhouette against the mirrored appearance of
the sunset sky. And then a clumsy-seeming boat body touched water with
a vast hissing sound, and settled more and more heavily, while the
speed of the plane checked markedly and its motors roared on
senselessly.

Then, abruptly, the plane checked and partly swung around. The
_jabiru_ half-rose from its eggs. The motors were bellowing wildly
again. As if tearing itself free, the plane sheered off from some
invisible obstacle, one of its wing tip floats splashed water wildly,
and, with the motors thundering at their fullest speed, it went toward
the shore with a dragging wing, like some wounded bird.

It beached, and the _jabiru_ heard a sudden dense silence fall. A man
climbed out of the boatlike body. He walked to the bow and dropped to
the shore. He peered under the upward slanting nose of the boat-thing.
The _jabiru_, listening intently, heard words.

Then, quite suddenly and quite abruptly, and generally with the
unostentatious efficiency with which Nature manages such things in the
tropics, night fell. It was dark within minutes.

* * * * *

The noise of Bell's scrambling back onto the deck of the amphibian's
hull could be heard inside the cabin. He opened the door and slipped
down inside.

"There ought to be some lights," he said curtly. "Ribiera did himself
rather well, as a rule."

He struck a match. Paula's eyes shone in the match-flame, fixed upon
his face. He looked about, frowning. He found a switch and pressed it,
and a dome-light came into being. The cabin of the plane, from a place
of darkness comparable to that of the jungle all about, became
suddenly a cosy and comfortable place.

"Well?" said Paula quietly.

Bell hesitated, and took a deep breath.

"We're stuck," he said wryly. "We must have struck a snag or perhaps a
rock, just under water. Half the bottom of the hull's torn out.
There's no hope of repair. If I hadn't given her the gun and beached
her, we'd have sunk in mid-stream."

Paula said nothing.

"Things are piling on us," said Bell grimly. "In the morning I'll try
to make a raft. We can't stay here indefinitely. I'll hunt for maps
and we'll try to plan something out. But I'll admit that this business
worries me--the plane being smashed."

* * * * *

He passed his hand harassedly over his forehead. To have escaped from
Rio was something, but since Paula had told him Ribiera's plans, it
was clearly but the most temporary of successes. Cabinet ministers are
not so commonplace but that the scandalous and horrifying crime that
was imputed to Bell and Paula would be printed in every foreign
country. Newspapers in Tokio would include the supposed murder in
their foreign news, and in Bucharest and even Constantinople it would
merit a paragraph or two. Assuredly every South American country would
discuss the matter editorially, even where The Master's deputies did
not order it published far and wide. There would be pictures of Bell
and of Paula, labeled with an infamy. In every town of all Brazil
their faces would be known, and those who were The Master's slaves
would hunt them desperately, and all honorable men would seek them for
a crime. Even in America there would be no safety for them. The Trade
does not exist, officially, and a member of the Trade must get out of
trouble as he can. As an accused murderer, Bell would be arrested
anywhere. As worse than a mere murderess, Paula....

She was watching his face.

"This morning," she said queerly, "you--you quoted '_Nil
desperandum_.'"

Bell ground his teeth, and then managed to smile.

"If I looked like I needed you say that," he said coolly, "I deserve
to be kicked. Let's look for something to eat, and count up our
resources. The thing to do is, when you fall down--bounce!"

He managed a nearly genuine grin, then, and to his intense amazement,
she sobbed suddenly and bent her head down and began to weep. He
stared at her in stupefaction for an instant, then swore at himself
for a fool. Her father....

* * * * *

Half an hour later he roused her as gently as he could. It was
helplessness, as much as anything else, that had made him leave her
alone; but a woman needs to weep now and then. And Paula assuredly had
excuse.

"Here's a cup of coffee," he said practically, "which you must drink.
You can't have had anything to eat all day. Have you?"

That question had haunted him too. She had been a prisoner in
Ribiera's house for half an hour, possibly more. And Ribiera had in
his possession, and used, a deadly, devilish poison from some unknown
noxious plant. Its victim took the poison unknowingly, in a morsel of
food or a glass of water or of wine. And for two weeks there was no
sign of evil. And then the poison drove its victim swiftly mad--unless
the antidote was obtained from Ribiera. And Ribiera administered the
antidote with a further dose of poison.

If Paula had eaten one scrap of food or drunk one drop of water while
Ribiera's captive....

She understood. She looked up suddenly, and read the awful anxiety in
his eyes.

"No. Nothing." She caught her breath and steadied herself with an
effort of the will. "I understand. You tried not to let me fear. But I
ate nothing, touched nothing. I have not that to fear, at least."

"Drink this coffee," said Bell, smiling. "Ribiera was a luxurious
devil. There's canned stuff and so on in a locker. He was prepared for
a forced landing anywhere. Flares and rockets will do us no good, but
there are a pair of machetes and a sporting rifle with shells. We
don't need to die for a bit, anyhow."

* * * * *

Paula obediently took the coffee. He watched her anxiously as she
drank.

"Now some soup," he urged, "and the rest of this condensed stuff. And
I've found some maps and there's a radio receiving outfit if--"

Paula managed to smile.

"You want to know," she said, "if I can endure listening to it. Yes.
I--I should not have given way just now. But I can endure anything."

Bell still hesitated, regarding her soberly.

"I've heard," he said awkwardly, "that in Brazil the conventions...."

She waited, looking at him with her large eyes.

"I hoped," said Bell, still more unhappily, "to find this place
Moradores, where you said you had some relatives. I hoped to find it
before dark. But before I landed I knew I'd missed it and couldn't
hope to locate it to-night. I thought--"

"You thought," said Paula, smiling suddenly, "that my reputation would
be jeopardized. And you were about to offer--"

Bell winced.

"Of course I don't mean to act like an ass," he said apologetically,
"but some people...."

"You forget," said Paula, with the same faint smile, "what the
newspapers will say of us, Senhor. You forget what news of us the
cables have carried about the world. I think that we had better forget
about the conventions. As the daughter of a Brazilian, that remark is
heresy. But did you know that my mother came from Maryland?"

"Thank God!" said Bell relievedly. "Then you can believe that I'm not
thinking exclusively of you, and maybe we'll get somewhere."

Paula put out her hand. He grasped it firmly.

"Right!" he said, more cheerfully than ever before. "Now well turn on
the radio and see what news we get."

* * * * *

Into the deep dark jungle night, then, a strange incongruity was
thrust. Tall trees loomed up toward the stars. A nameless little
stream flowed placidly through the night and, beached where
impenetrable undergrowth crowded to the water's edge, a big amphibian
plane lay slightly askew, while a light glowed brightly in its cabin.
More, from that cabin there presently emerged the incredible sound of
music, played in Rio for _os gentes_ of the distinctly upper strata of
society by a bored but beautifully trained orchestra.

The _jabiru_ stork heard it, and craned its featherless neck to stare
downward through beady eyes. But it was not frightened. Presently,
instead of music, there was a man's voice booming in the disconnected
sounds of human speech. And still the _jabiru_ was unalarmed. Like
most of the birds whose necks are bald, the _jabiru_ is a useful
scavenger, and so is tolerated in the haunts of men. And if man's
gratitude is not enough for safety, the _jabiru_ smells very, very
badly, and no man hunts his tribe.

* * * * *

Bell had been listening impatiently, when a sudden whining, whistling
noise broke into the program of very elevated music, played utterly
without rest. The sound came from the speaker, of course.

He frowned thoughtfully. The whistling changed in timbre and became
flutelike, then changed again, nearly to its original pitch and tone.

Paula was not listening. Her mind seemed very far away, and on
subjects the reverse of pleasurable.

"Listen!" said Bell suddenly. "You hear that whistle? It came on all
at once!"

Paula waited. The whistling noise went on. It was vaguely discordant,
and it was monotonous, and it was more than a little irritating. Again
it changed timbre, going up to the shrillest of squealings, and back
nearly to its original sound an instant later.

Bell began to paw over maps. The plane had been intended for flight
over the vast distances of Brazil, and there was a small supply of
condensed food and a sporting rifle and shells included in its
equipment. Emergency landing fields are not exactly common in the back
country of South America.

"Here," said Bell sharply. "Here is where we are. It must be where we
are! No towns of any size nearby. No railroad. No boat route. Nothing!
Nothing but jungle shown here!"

* * * * *

He frowned absorbedly over the problem.

"What is it?" asked Paula.

"Someone near," said Bell briefly. "That's another radio receiver, an
old fashioned regenerative set, sensitive enough and reliable enough,
but a nuisance to everyone but its owner--except when it's a godsend,
as it is to us."

The music ended, and a voice announced in laboriously classic
Portuguese, with only a trace of the guttural tonation of the
_carioca_, that the most important news items of the day would be
given.

Paula paled a little, but listened without stirring. The voice
read--the rustling of sheets of paper was abnormally loud--a bit of
foreign news, and a bit of local news, and then....

She was deathly pale when the announcement of her father's death was
finished, and she had heard the official view of the police
reported--exactly what Ribiera had told her it would be. When the
voice added that a friend of the late Minister of War, the Senhor
Ribiera, had offered twenty contos for the capture of the fugitive
pair, who had escaped in an airplane stolen from him, she bit her lip
until it almost bled.

* * * * *

"I know," he said abstractedly. "It's as you said. But listen to that
whistle."

The news announcement ceased. Music began again. The whistling
abruptly died away.

"I just found some coils," said Bell feverishly, "that plug in to take
the place of the longer-wave ones. I'm going to try them. It's a
hunch, and it's crazy, but...."

There were sharp clickings. The radio receiver was one of those
extraordinarily light and portable ones that are made for aircraft. In
seconds it was transformed into a short-wave receiver. Bell began to
manipulate the dials feverishly. Two minutes. Three. Four.

The speaker suddenly began to whine softly and monotonously.

"Regeneration," said Bell feverishly, "on a carrier-wave. It can't be
far off, that receiving set."

Suddenly a voice spoke. It was blurred and guttural. Infinitely
delicate adjustments cleared it up. And then....

Bell listened eagerly, at first in triumph, then in amazement, and at
last in a grim satisfaction. Reports from Rio on a short-wave band of
radio frequencies were passing from Ribiera to some other place
apparently inland. It was Ribiera's own voice, which quivered with
rage as he reported Bell's escape.

"_I do not think_," he snapped in Portuguese, "_that full details
should be spoken even on beam wireless. I shall come to the_ fazenda
_to-morrow and communicate with The Master direct. In the meantime I
have warned all sub-deputies in Brazil. I urge that all deputies be
informed and instructed as The Master may direct._"

* * * * *

Another voice replied that The Master would be informed. In the
meantime the deputy for Brazil was notified.

This list of bits of information chilled Bell's blood. This man, of
Venezuela, had been denied the grace of The Master by the deputy in
Caracas. He would probably use the passwords and demand the grace of
The Master of sub-deputies in the State of Para. To be seized and
Caracas informed. The deputy in Colombia desired that the son of
Colonel Garcia--upon a hunting-party with friends in the Amazon
basin--should be attached to the service of The Master. His father had
been so attached, and it was believed had smuggled a letter into the
foreign mail warning his son. If possible, that letter should be
intercepted. And from Paraguay the deputy requested that the family of
Senor Gomez, visiting relatives in Rio, should be induced to regard
the service of The Master as desirable....

The orders ceased abruptly. Ribiera acknowledged them. The whining
whistle cut off. And Bell turned to Paula very grimly indeed.

"Pretty, isn't it?" he asked in a vast calmness. "Apparently every
nation on the continent has some devil like Ribiera in charge of the
administration of this fiendish poison. Every republic has some fiend
at work in it. And they're organized. My God! They're organized! The
Master seems to supply them with the mixture of poison and its
antidote, and they report to him...."

* * * * *

Paula nodded.

"That was what my father had written down for you," she said quietly.
"Any man who can be lured to eat or drink anything these men have
prepared is lost. He gains no pleasure, as a drug might give. He is
entrapped into a lifetime of awful fear, knowing that a moment's
disobedience, a moment's reluctance to obey whatever command they
give, will cause his madness."

"I'm trying to think what we can work out of this," said Bell shortly.
"Some things are clear. There's a radio receiving set nearby, which
listened to those short-wave reports. Within five or six miles, at
most. We're going to find that to-morrow. And there's a central point,
a _fazenda_, where one may talk direct with The Master, whoever and
wherever he may be. And--judging by Ribiera--my guess is that The
Master has the same hold upon them that they have on their underlings.
Ribiera is too arrogant a scoundrel to make obsequious reports if he
were not afraid to omit them." He was silent for a moment, thinking.
Then he said abruptly, "Try to get some sleep, if you can. That pistol
of Ribiera's--you have it handy? Keep it where you can reach it in the
dark. I'm going to watch, though."

Paula settled herself comfortably, and looked queerly across the dimly
lit little cabin at him.

"My friend," she said with the faintest of quavering smiles, "Please
do not reassure me. I have the courage of endurance, at least. And--I
do not fear you."

* * * * *

It seemed to Bell, listening in the darkness that fell when he turned
off the switch, that she stayed awake for a long time. But when she
did sleep, she slept heavily.

Bell had a raft of canes afloat beside the amphibian when she waked.
He was sweat-streaked and bitten by many insects. He was tired, and
his clothes were rags. But the raft was nearly twenty feet long, it
would easily float two persons and what small supplies the plane
carried, and it could be handled by a long pole.

"Hullo," he said cheerfully when she climbed on top of the waterlogged
hull of the plane. "We're nearly ready to start off. I'm sorry I can't
advise you to try to refresh yourself in the river. There are some
fish in it that are fiends. One of them took a slice out of the side
of my hand."

"_Piranhas!_" she exclaimed, and was pale. "You should have known!"

_Piranhas_ are small fresh-water fish of the Brazilian rivers, never
more than a foot and a half long, which prove the existence of a
devil. Where they swarm in schools they will tear every morsel of
flesh from a swimmer's body as he struggles to reach shore, and leave
a clean-stripped skeleton of a mule or horse if an animal should essay
to swim a stream.

"I'll ask, next time," said Bell ruefully. "I'd planned a swim. But if
you'll fix some coffee while I finish up this raft, we'll get going. I
don't think we're far from some place or other. I heard what sounded
suspiciously like a motor boat, about dawn."

* * * * *

She looked at him anxiously.

"Of course," said Bell, smiling, "if the boat belonged to whoever
listened in on the Rio broadcast _and_ the short-wave news, he won't
be especially friendly, though he should be glad to see us. But I've
been studying the map, and I have a rather hopeful idea. Let's have
coffee."

He grinned as long as she was in sight, and when he went into the
cabin of the plane he seemed more cheerful still. But the idea of
floating down this nameless little jungle stream upon a raft of canes
was not one that he would have chosen. It was forced upon him. To
travel through the jungle itself was next to impossible with a girl,
especially as they were dressed for city streets and not at all for
battling with dense and thorn-studded undergrowth. And to stay with
the plane was obviously absurd. Sooner or later they had to abandon
it, though the moment they did desert it they would be encountering
not only the impersonal menace of the jungle, but the actual enmity of
all the human race. The raft was the only possibility.

* * * * *

It floated smoothly enough when they started off, with Bell working
inexpertly with his long pole to keep it in mid-stream. He was, of
course, acutely apprehensive. In country like this a rapid could be
expected anywhere. The jungle life loomed high above their heads on
either side, and the life of the jungle went on undisturbed by their
passage. Monkeys gaped at them and exchanged undoubtedly witty
comments upon their appearance. Birds flew overhead with raucous and
unpleasant cries. Toucans, in particular, made a most discordant din.
Once they disturbed a tiny herd of peccaries, drinking, which regarded
them pugnaciously and trotted sturdily out of sight as they came
abreast.

But for one mile, for two, the stream flowed smoothly. A third.... And
Paula pointed ahead in silence. A dug-out projected partly from the
shoreline. Bell wielded his long pole cautiously now, and drew closer
and ever closer to the stream bank. Paula pointed again. There was
even a small dock--luxury unthinkable in these wilds.

The raft touched bottom. And suddenly from somewhere out of sight
there came a horrible and a bestial sound. It was a scream of
blood-lust, of madness, of overpowering and unspeakable rage.
Following it came cackling laughter.

Paula went white.

"The _fazenda_," said Bell softly, "of the sub-deputy who was
listening in on Ribiera last night. And it sounds as if someone were
very much amused. Some poor devil...."

Paula shuddered.

"I'm going ashore," said Bell, smiling frostily. "There's nothing else
to do."


CHAPTER VIII

Crouched at the edge of the jungle, where the clearing began, Paula
heard four shots. Two in quick succession, and a wait of minutes. Then
a third, and another long wait, and then the last. Then silence. Paula
began to shiver. Bell had helped her ashore from the raft and insisted
on her waiting at the edge of the jungle.

"Not that you'll be any safer," he had told her grimly, "but that I
may be. One person can move more quickly than two. And if I'm chased
I'll plunge for the place you're hidden, and you can open fire. Then
the two of us might hold them off."

"Why?" Paula said slowly.

And Bell caught at her wrist.

"Don't let me hear you talk like that!" he said sharply. "We're going
to beat this thing! We've got to! And being desperate helps, but being
in despair doesn't help a bit. Buck up!"

He frowned at her until she smiled.

"I will not despair again without your permission," she told him.
"Really. I will not."

He found her a hiding-place and went cautiously out into the clearing,
still frowning.

* * * * *

He had been gone five minutes before the first shot sounded, and quite
ten before the last rang out dully, and was echoed and re-echoed
hollowly by the jungle trees. And Paula lay waiting by the edge of the
clearing, Ribiera's pearl-handled automatic in her hand--Bell had
carried the rifle from the plane. Small insects moved all about her,
and she heard soft rustlings as the life of the jungle went on over
her head and under her feet, and terror welled up in her throat.

She was trembling almost uncontrollably when Bell came back. He walked
openly toward her hiding-place.

"Paula."

She came out, trying to steady her quivering lips.

"We're all right," said Bell grimly. "This is the _fazenda_ of a
sub-deputy. I suspect, also, it's an emergency landing field for
Ribiera on the way to that place he talked to last night. There's a
two-place plane here with both wheels and floats, in a filthy little
shed. It seems to be all right. We're going to take off in it and try
to make Moradores, where your people are. What's the matter?"

Her face was deathly pale.

"I thought," she said with some difficulty, "when I heard the shots--I
thought you were killed."

Bell shook his head.

"I wasn't," he said grimly. "It was four other men who were killed."

* * * * *

He led her carefully past the house. It was a fairly typical _fazenda_
dwelling, if more substantial than most. It was wholly unpretentious,
with whitewashed walls, and the effect of grandeur it would give to
natives of this region would come solely from the number of buildings.
There were half a dozen or more.

"I killed four men," repeated Bell coldly. "And I'm damned glad of it.
That scream we heard.... I know pretty well what happened here last
night. Remember, Ribiera spoke of using a beam-wireless to make his
report. He must have had a short-wave beam set somewhere on the
outskirts of Rio, aimed at whatever headquarters he reports to. He's
going up to that headquarters some time to-day, by plane, of course.
He needed emergency landing fields along the route, and here he picked
out a native and made him a sub-deputy. Charming...."

Moving past the buildings, Paula caught sight of massive wooden bars
set in the side of a building. Something crumpled up and limp lay
before them.

"Don't look over there," said Bell harshly. "There was a woman in this
house and she told me what happened, though I'd guessed it before. The
sub-deputy was here last night with a party of friends. Newly
enslaved, some of them. He entertained them.... Up at Ribiera's place
a girl told me she and her husband had been shown a Secret Service
man. He went mad before their eyes. It was an object-lesson for them,
a clear illustration of what would happen to them if they ever
disobeyed. I imagine that something of the sort is used by all The
Master's deputies to convince their slaves of the fate that awaits
them for disobedience. The local man had brought a party up to watch
two men go mad. After that sight they'll be obedient."

* * * * *

He reached a shed, huge, but in disrepair. Monster doors were ajar.
Bell heaved at them and swung them wide. A small, trim, two-seated
plane showed in the shadowy interior.

"This is for emergency use," said Bell grimly, "and we face an
emergency. I'll get it out and load it up. There's a dump of gas and
so on here. You might look around outside the door, in case the one
man who got away can find someone to help stop me."

He set to work checking on fuel and oil. He loaded extra gas in the
front cockpit, a huge tin of it. Another would crowd him badly in the
pilot's cockpit in the rear, but he stowed it as carefully as he
could.

"The local sub-deputy," he added evenly, "has added to the thrill by
having the two men put in one cage. He let his guests observe the
progress of the madness the damned poison produces. And presently, as
the madness grew, the two men fought. They were murder mad. The local
sub-deputy gave his guests the thrill of watching maniacs battling to
the death. He left early this morning with his party, and I imagine
that everyone was suitably submissive to his demands for the future.
There were four men and a woman left as caretakers here. I found the
four men before the cage, baiting the poor devil who'd killed the
other last night. That's why we heard the scream. When I came up with
my rifle they stared at me, and ran.

* * * * *

"I got one then, and as a matter of mercy I put a bullet through the
man who'd gone murder mad. The"--Bell sounded as if he were acutely
nauseated--"the man he'd killed was still in the cage. My God!... Then
I went looking for the other three men. Wasting time, no doubt, but I
found them. I was angry. I got one, and the others ran away again. A
little later the third man jumped me with a knife. He slit my sleeve.
I killed him. Didn't find the fourth man." Bell moved to the front of
the plane. "I'll see if she catches."

He swung on the stick. It went over stiffly. Again, and again. With a
bellow, the motor caught. Bell shouted in Paula's ear.

"We'll get in. Use the warming-up period to taxi out. We want to get
away as soon as we can."

He helped her up into the seat, then remembered. He rummaged about and
flung a tumbled flying suit up in the cockpit with her.

"If you get a chance, put it on!" he shouted. He stepped into a
similar outfit, reached up and throttled down the motor, and kicked
away the blocks under the wheels. He vaulted up into place. And slowly
and clumsily the trim little ship came lurching and rolling out of the
shed.

* * * * *

The landing field was not large, but Bell took the plane to its edge.
He faced it about, and bent below the cockpit combing to avoid the
slip stream and look at his maps again, brought from the big
amphibian. Something caught his eye. Another radio receiving set.

"Amphibian planes," he muttered, "for landing on earth or water. And
radios. I wonder if he has directional for a guide? It would seem
sensible, and if a plane went down the rest of them would know about
where to look."

Paula reached about and touched his shoulder. She pointed. There was a
movement at the edge of the jungle and a puff of smoke. A bullet went
through the fusilage of the plane, inches behind Bell. He frowned,
grasped the stick, and gave the motor the gun.

It lifted heavily, like all amphibians, but it soared over the group
of buildings some twenty or thirty feet above the top of the wireless
mast and went on, rising steadily, to clear even the topmost trees on
the farther side of the stream by a hundred feet or more.

It went on and on, roaring upward, and the jungle receded ever farther
below it. The horizon drew back and back. At two thousand feet the
earth began to have the appearance of a shallow platter. At three
thousand it was a steep sided bowl, and Bell could look down and trace
the meandering of the stream on which he had landed the night before.
Not too far downstream--some fifteen miles, perhaps--were the squalid,
toy sized structures of a town of the far interior of Brazil. He never
learned its name, but even in his preoccupation with the management
of the plane and a search for landmarks, he wondered very grimly
indeed what would be the state of things in that town. If in Rio,
where civilization held sway, Ribiera exercised such despotic though
secret power, in a squalid and forgotten little village like this the
rule of a sub-deputy of The Master could be bestial and horrible
beyond belief.

* * * * *

Eastward. Bell had overshot the mark the night before. Before he had
located himself he was quite fifty miles beyond the spot Paula had
suggested as a hiding place. Now he retraced his way. A peak jutting
up from far beyond the horizon was a guiding mark. He set the plane's
nose for it, and relaxed.

The motor thundered on valorously. Far below was a vast expanse of
thick jungle, intercepted but nowhere broken by occasional small
streams and now and then the tiny, angular things which might be
houses. But houses were very infrequent. In the first ten miles--with
a view of twenty miles in every direction--Bell picked out no more
than four small groups of buildings which might be the unspeakably
isolated _fazendas_ of the folk of this region.

"Ribiera was coming this way," he muttered.

He fumbled the headphone of the radio set into place. The set seemed
to be already arbitrarily tuned. He turned it on. There was a
monotonous series of flashes, with the singing note of a buzzer in
them. A radio direction signal.

"Ribiera's on the way."

Bell stared far ahead, without reason. And it seemed to him that just
then, against that far distant guiding peak, he saw a black speck
floating in mid-air.

* * * * *

He pulled back the joy stick. Detached, feathery clouds spread across
the sky, and he was climbing for them. Paula looked behind at him, and
he pointed. He saw her seem to stiffen upon sight of the other
aircraft.

In minutes Bell's plane was tearing madly through sunlit fleecy
monsters which looked soft and warm and alluring, and were cold and
damp and blinding in their depths. Bell kept on his course. The two
planes were approaching each other at a rate of nearly two hundred
miles an hour.

And then, while the harsh, discordant notes of the radio signal
sounded monotonously in his ears, Bell stared down and, through a rift
between two clouds, saw the other plane for an instant, a thousand
feet below.

The sun shone upon it fiercely. Its propeller was a shimmering,
cobwebby disk before it. It seemed to hang motionless--so short was
Bell's view of it--between earth and sky: a fat glistening body as of
a monstrous insect. Bell could even see figures in its cockpits.

Then it was gone, but Bell felt a curious hatred of the thing. Ribiera
was almost certainly in it, headed for the place to which he had
spoken the night before. And Bell was no longer able to think of
Ribiera with any calmness. He felt a personal, gusty hatred for the
man and all he stood for.

* * * * *

His face was grim and savage as his own plane sped through the clouds.
But just as the two aircraft had approached each other with the
combined speed of both, so they separated. It seemed only a moment
later that Bell dipped down below the clouds and the other plane was
visible only as a swiftly receding mote in the sunlight.

"I wonder," said Bell coldly to himself, with the thunder of the motor
coming through the singing of the air route signal, "I wonder if he'll
see the ship I cracked up last night?"

Paula was pointing. The shoulder of a hill upthrust beneath the
jungle. The tall trees were cleared away at its crest. Small,
whitewashed buildings appeared below.

"Good landing field," said Bell, his eyes narrowing suddenly. "On the
direct route. Fifty miles back there's another landing field. I
wonder...."

He was already suspicious before he flattened out above the house,
while dogs fled madly. He noticed, too, that horses in a corral near
the buildings showed no signs of fright. And horses are always afraid
of landing aircraft, unless they have had much opportunity to grow
accustomed to them.

The little plane rolled and bumped, and gradually came to a stop. Bell
inconspicuously shifted a revolver to the outer pocket of his flying
suit. Figures came toward them, with a certain hesitating reluctance
that changed Bell's suspicions even while it confirmed them.

* * * * *

"Paula," he said grimly, "this is another landing field for Ribiera's
emergency use. It sticks out all over the place. Relatives or no
relatives, you want to make sure of them. You understand?"

Her eyes widened in a sudden startled fear. She caught her breath
sharply. Then she said quietly, though her voice trembled:

"I understand. Of course."

She slipped out of the plane and advanced to meet the approaching
figures. There were surprised, astounded exclamations: A bearded man
embraced her and shouted. Women appeared and, after staring, embraced.
Paula turned to wave her hand reassuringly to Bell, and vanished
inside the house.

Bell looked over his instruments, examined the gas in the tank, and
began to work over his maps in the blaring sunlight. He cut out the
switch and the motor stopped with minor hissings of compression. The
maps held his attention, though he listened keenly as he worked for
any signs of trouble that Paula might encounter.

He was beginning to have a definite idea in his mind. Ribiera had
talked to a headquarters somewhere, by beam radio from Rio. Beam
wireless, of course, is nothing more or less than a concentration of
a radio signal in a nearly straight line, instead of allowing it to
spread about equally on all sides of the transmitting station. It
makes both for secrecy and economy, since nearly all the power used at
the sending apparatus is confined to an arc of about three degrees of
a circle. Directed to a given receiving station, receiving outfits to
one side or the other of that path are unable to listen in, and the
signal is markedly stronger in the chosen path. Exactly the same
process, of course, is used for radio directional signals, one of
which still buzzed monotonously in Bell's ears until he impatiently
turned it off. A plane in the path hears the signal. If it does not
hear the signal, it is demonstrably off the straight route.

* * * * *

Bell, then, was in a direct line from Rio to the source of a radio
direction signal. Fifty miles back, where the big amphibian had
crashed, he was in the same air line. To extend that line on into the
interior would give the destination of Ribiera, and the location of
the headquarters where direct communication with The Master was
maintained.

He worked busily. His maps were in separate sheets, and it took time
to check the line from Rio. When he had finished, he computed grimly.

"At a hundred miles in hour...." He was figuring the maximum distance
which could plausibly be accepted as a day's journeying by air. He
surveyed the maps again. "The plateau of Cuyaba, at a guess. Hm....
Fleets of aircraft could practise there and never be seen. An army
could be maneuvered without being reported. Certainly the headquarters
for the whole continent could be there. Striking distance of Rio,
Montevideo, Buenos Aires, La Paz, and Asuncion. Five republics."

* * * * *

Certainly, from his figures, it seemed plausible that somewhere up on
the Plateau of Cuyaba--where no rails run, no boats ply, and no
telegraph line penetrates; which juts out ultimately into that
unknown region where the Rio Zingu and the Tapajoz have their
origins--certainly it seemed plausible that there must lie the
headquarters of the whole ghastly conspiracy. There, it might be, the
deadly plants from which The Master's poison was brewed were grown.
There the deadly stuff was measured out and mixed with its temporary
antidote....

Paula came back, a young man with her. Her eyes were wide and staring,
as if she had looked upon something vastly worse than death.

"He--Ribiera," she gasped. "My uncle, he owned this place. They--have
him here--alive--and mad! And all the rest...."

Bell fumbled in the pocket of his flying suit. The young man with
Paula was looking carefully at the plane. And there was a revolver in
a holster at his side. An air of grim and desperate doggedness was
upon him.

"This is--my cousin," gasped Paula. "He--and his wife--and--and--"

* * * * *

The young man took out his weapon. He fired. There was a clanging of
metal, the screech of tortured steel. Bell's own revolver went off the
fraction of a second too late.

"You may kill me, Senhor," said the young man through stiff lips. His
revolver had dropped from limp fingers. He pressed the fingers of his
left hand upon the place where blood welled out, just above his right
elbow. "You may kill me. But if you and my cousin Paula escaped.... I
have a wife, Senhor, and my mother, and my children. Kill me if you
please. It is your right. But I have seen my father go mad." Sweat,
the sweat of agony and of shame, came out upon his face. "I fought
him, Senhor, to save the lives of all the rest. And I have spoiled
your engine, and I have already sent word that you and Paula are here.
Not for my own life, but...."

He waited, haggard and ashamed and desperate and hopeless. But Bell
was staring at the motor of the airplane.

"Crankcase punctured," he said dully. "Aluminum. The bullet went right
through. We can't fly five miles. And Ribiera knows we're here--or
will."


CHAPTER IX

There was the sound of weeping in the house, the gusty and hopeless
weeping of women. Bell had been walking around and around the plane,
staring at it with his hands clenched. Paula watched him.

"I am thinking," she said in an attempt at courage, "that you said I
must not despair without your permission. But--"

"Hush!" said Bell impatiently. He stared at the engine. "I'd give a
lot for a car. Bolts.... How many hours have we?"

"Four," said Paula drearily. "Perhaps five. You have smashed the radio
in the house?"

Bell nodded impatiently. He had smashed the radio, a marvelously
compact and foolproof outfit, arbitrarily tuned to a fixed short
wave-length. It was almost as simple to operate as a telephone. There
had been no opposition to the destruction. Paula's cousin had disabled
their plane and reported their presence. He was inside the house now,
sick with shame--and yet he would do the same again. In one of the
rooms of the house, behind strong bars, a man was kept who had been an
object-lesson....

"Is there any machinery?" asked Bell desperately. "Any at all about
the place?"

Paula shook her head.

"It may be that there is a pump."

Bell went off savagely, hunting it. He came back and dived into the
cockpit of the plane. He came out with a wrench, and his jaws set
grimly. He worked desperately at the pump. He came back with two
short, thick bolts.

He crawled into the plane again, tearing out the fire wall
impatiently, getting up under the motor.

"We have one chance in five thousand," he said grimly from there, "of
getting away from here to crash in the jungle. Personally, I prefer
that to falling into Ribiera's hands. If your cousin or anybody else
comes near us, out here, call me, and I'll be much obliged."

* * * * *

There was the sound of scraping, patient, desperate, wholly
unpromising scraping. It seemed to go on for hours.

"The wrench, please, Paula."

She passed it to him. The bullet had entered the aluminum crankcase of
the motor and pierced it through. By special providence it had not
struck the crankshaft, and had partly penetrated the crankcase on the
other side. Bell had cut it out, first of all. He had two holes in the
crankcase, then, through which the cylinder oil had drained away. And
of all pieces of machinery upon earth, an aircraft motor requires oil.

Bell's scraping had been to change the punctured holes of the bullet
into cone shaped bores. The aluminum alloy was harder than pure
aluminum, of course, but he had managed it with a knife. Now he fitted
the short bolts in the bores, forced the threads on them to cut their
own grooves, and by main strength screwed them in to a fit. He
tightened them.

He came out with his eyes glowing oddly.

"The vibration will work them loose, sooner or later," he observed
grimly, "and they may not be oil tight. Also, the crankshaft may clear
them, and it may not. If we go up in the ship in this state we may get
five miles away, or five hundred. At any minute it may fail us, and
sooner or later it will fail us. Are you game to go up, Paula?"

* * * * *

She smiled at him.

"With you, of course."

He began to brush off his hands.

"There ought to be oil and gas here," he said briefly. "Another thing,
there'll probably be some metal chips in the crankcase, which may
stop an oil line at any minute. It's a form of committing suicide, I
imagine."

He went off, hunting savagely for the supplies of fuel and lubricant
which would be stored at any emergency field. He found them. He was
pouring gasoline into the tanks before what he was doing was noticed.
Then there was stunned amazement in the house. When he had the
crankcase full of oil the young man came out. Bell tapped his revolver
suggestively.

"With no man about this house," he said grimly, "Ribiera will put in
one of his own choice. And you have a wife and children and they'll be
at that man's mercy. Don't make me kill you. Ribiera may not blame you
for my escape if you tell him everything--and you're hurt, anyway.
Either we get away, and you do that, or you're killed and we get away
anyhow."

He toppled two last five gallon tins of gasoline into the
cockpits--crowding them abominably--and swung on the prop. The engine
caught. Bell throttled it down, kicked away the stones with which he
had blocked its wheels, and climbed up into the pilot's cockpit. With
his revolver ready in his lap he taxied slowly over to a favorable
starting point.

* * * * *

The ship rose slowly, and headed west again. At three thousand feet he
cut out the motor to shout to Paula.

"One place is as good as another to us, now. The whole continent is
closed to us by now. I'm going to try to find that headquarters and do
some damage. Afterwards, we'll see."

He cut in the motor again and flew steadily westward. He rose
gradually to four thousand feet, to five.... He watched his
instruments grimly, the motor temperature especially. There were
flakes of metal in the oil lines. Twice he saw the motor temperature
rise to a point that brought the sweat out on his face. And twice he
saw it drop again. Bits of shattered metal were in the oiling system,
and they had partly blocked the stream of lubricant until the engine
heated badly. And each time the vibration had shifted them, or
loosened them....

They had left the big amphibian no earlier than nine o'clock. It was
noon when they took off for the _fazenda_ of Paula's kin. But it was
five o'clock and after when they rose from there with an engine which
might run indefinitely and might stop at any second.

Bell did not really expect it to run for a long time. He had worked as
much to cheat Ribiera of the satisfaction of a victory as in hopes of
a real escape. But an hour, and the motor still ran. It was
consistently hotter than an aero engine should run. Twice it had gone
up to a dangerous temperature. One other time it had gone up for a
minute or more as if the oiling system had failed altogether. But it
still ran, and the sun was sinking toward the horizon and shadows were
lengthening, and Bell began to look almost hopefully for a clearing in
which to land before the dark hours came.

Then it was that he saw the planes that had been sent for him and for
Paula.

* * * * *

There were three of them, fast two-seaters very much like the one he
drove. They were droning eastward, with all cockpits filled, from that
enigmatic point in the west. And Bell had descended to investigate a
barely possible stream when they saw him.

The leader banked steeply and climbed upward toward him. The others
gazed, swung sharply, and came after him, spreading out as they came.
And Bell, after one instant's grim debate, went into a maple leaf dive
for the jungle below him. The others dived madly in his wake. He heard
a sharp, tearing rattle. A machine-gun. He saw the streaks of tracers
going very wide. Gunfire in the air is far from accurate. A
machine-gun burst from a hundred yards, when the gun has to be aimed
by turning the whole madly vibrating ship, is less accurate than a
rifle at six hundred, or even eight. Most aircraft duels are settled
at distances of less than a hundred yards.

It was that fact that Bell counted on. With a motor that might go dead
at any instant and a load of passengers and gas at least equaling that
of any of the other ships, mere flight promised little. The other
ships, too, were armed, at any rate the leader was, and Bell had only
small arms at his disposal. But a plane pilot, stunting madly to dodge
tracer bullets, has little time to spare for revolver work.

* * * * *

Bell had but one advantage. He expected to be killed. He looked upon
both Paula and himself as very probably dead already. And he
infinitely preferred the clean death of a crash to either the life or
death that Ribiera would offer them. He flattened out barely twenty
yards above the waving branches that are the roof of the jungle. He
went scudding over the tree tops, rising where the jungle rose,
dipping where it dropped, and behind him the foliage waved wildly as
if in a cyclone.

The other planes dared not follow. To dive upon him meant too much
chance of a dash into the entrapping branches. One plane, indeed, did
try it, and Bell scudded lower and lower until the wheels of the small
plane were spinning from occasional, breath taking contacts with the
feathery topmost branches of jungle giants. That other plane flattened
out not less than a hundred feet farther up and three hundred yards
behind. To fire on him with a fixed gun meant a dive to bring the gun
muzzle down. And a dive meant a crash.

* * * * *

A stream flashed past below. There was the glitter of water,
reflecting the graying sky. A downward current here dragged at the
wings of the plane. Bell jerked at the stick and her nose came up.
There was a clashing, despite her climbing angle, of branches upon the
running gear, but she broke through and shot upward, trying to stall.
Bell flung her down again into his mad careering.

It was not exactly safe, of course. It was practically a form of
suicide. But Bell had not death, but life to fear. He could afford to
be far more reckless than any man who desired to live. The plane went
scuttling madly across the jungle tops, now rising to skim the top of
a monster _ceiba_, now dipping deliberately.

The three pursuing planes hung on above him helplessly while the
short, short twilight of the tropics fell, and Bell went racing across
the jungle, never twenty feet above the tree top and with the boughs
behind him showing all the agitation of a miniature hurricane. As
darkness deepened, the race became more suicidal still, and there were
no lighted fields nearby to mark a landing place. But as darkness grew
more intense, Bell could dare to rise to fifty, then a hundred feet
above the tops, and the dangers of diving to his level remained
undiminished. And then it was dark.

* * * * *

Bell climbed to two hundred feet. To two hundred and fifty. With more
freedom, now, he could take one hand from the controls. He could feel
the menace of the tumultuously roaring motors in his wake, but he was
smiling very strangely in the blackness. He reached inside his flying
suit and tore away the front of his shirt. He reached down and
battered in the top of one of the five gallon gasoline tins in the
cockpit with the barrel of his revolver. He stuffed the scrap of cloth
into the rent. It was wetted instantly by the splashing. Another
savage blow, unheard in the thunder of the motor. In the peculiarly
calm air of the cockpit the reek of gasoline was strong, but cleared
away. And Bell, with the frosty grim smile of a man who gambles with
his life, struck a light. The cloth flared wildly, and he reached his
hands into the flame and heaved the tin of fuel overside.

The cloth was burning fiercely, and spilled gasoline caught in
mid-air. A fierce and savage flame dropped earthward. Spark on the
cloth, and the cloud of inflammable vapor that formed where the
leaking tin fell plummetlike, carried the flame down when the wind of
its fall would have blown it out.

The following planes saw a flash of light. They saw a swiftly
descending conflagration tracing a steep arch toward the tree tops.
They saw that flaming vanish among the trees. And then they saw a vast
upflaring of fire below. Flames licked upward almost to the tree
tops....

Bell looked back from two thousand feet. Wing-tip lights were on,
below, and disks of illumination played upon the roof of the jungle
above the fire. The three planes were hovering over the spot. But a
thick dense column of smoke was rising, now. Green things shriveling
in the heat, and dried and rotted underbrush. Altogether, the volume
of smoke and flame was very convincing evidence that an airplane had
burst into flame in mid-air and crashed through the jungle top to burn
to ashes beneath.

* * * * *

But Bell climbed steadily to five thousand feet. He cut out the motor,
there, and in the shrieking and whistling of wind as the plane went
into a shallow glide, he spoke sharply.

"Paula?"

"I am all right," she assured him unsteadily. "What now?"

"There's a seat pack under you," said Bell. "It's a parachute. You'd
better put it on. God only knows where we'll land, but if the motor
stops we'll jump together. And I think we'll have to jump before dawn.
This plane won't fly indefinitely. There's just one chance in a
million that I know of. There'll be a moon before long. When it comes
up, look for the glitter of moonlight on water. With the wing-tip
lights we may--we may--manage to get down. But I doubt it."

He moved his hand to cut in the motor again. She stopped him.

"If we head south," she said unsteadily, "we may reach the Paraguay.
It is perhaps two hundred miles, but it is broad. We should see it.
Perhaps even the stars...."

"Good work!" said Bell approvingly. "_Nils desperandum!_ That's our
motto, Paula."

He swung off his course and headed south. He was flying high, now, and
an illogical and incomprehensible hope came to him. There was no hope,
of course. He had had, more than once, a despairing conviction that
the utmost result of all his efforts would be but the delaying of
their final enslavement to The Master, whose apparent impersonality
made him the more terrible as he remained mysterious. So far they
seemed like struggling flies in some colossal web, freeing themselves
from one snaring spot to blunder helplessly into another.

But the moon came up presently, rounded and nearly full. The sky took
on a new radiance, and the jungle below them was made darker and more
horrible by the contrast.

And when there were broad stretches of moonlit foliage visible on the
rising slopes beneath, Bell felt the engine faltering. He switched on
the instrument board light. One glance, and he was cold all over. The
motor was hot. Hotter than it had ever been. The oil lines, perhaps
the pump itself....

* * * * *

Paula's hand reached back into the glow of the instrument board. He
leaned over and saw her pointing. Moonlight on rolling water, far
below. He dived for it, steeply. The wing-lights went on. Faint disks
of light appeared far below, sweeping to and fro with the swaying of
the plane, bobbing back and forth.

It seemed to Bell that there had been nothing quite as horrible as
the next minute or two. He felt the over-heated, maltreated motor
laboring. It was being ruined, of course--and a ruined motor meant
that they were marooned in the jungle. But if it kept going only until
they landed. And if it did not....

White water showed below in the disks of the landing lights' glow. It
tumbled down a swift and deadly _raudal_--a rapid. And then--black,
deep water, moving swiftly between tall cliffs of trees.

Bell risked everything to bank about and land toward the white water.
The little plane seemed to be sinking into a canyon as the trees rose
overhead on either side. But the moonlit rapid gave him his height,
approximately, and the lights helped more than a little.

* * * * *

He landed with a terrific crash. The plane teetered on the very verge
of a dive beneath the surface. Bell jerked back the stick and killed
the engine, and it settled back.

A vast, a colossal silence succeeded the deafening noise of twelve
cylinders exploding continuously. There were little hissing sounds as
the motor cooled. There was the smell of burnt oil.

"All right, Paula?" asked Bell quietly.

"I--I'm all right."

The plane was drifting backward, now. It spun around in a stately
fashion, its tail caught in underbrush, and it swung back. It drifted
past cliffs of darkness for a long time, and grounded, presently, with
a surprising gentleness.

"Do you know," said Bell dryly, "this sort of thing is getting
monotonous. I think our motor's ruined. I never knew before that
misfortunes could grow literally tedious. I've been expecting to be
killed any minute since we started off, but the idea of being stuck in
the jungle with a perfectly good plane and a bad motor...."

He fished inside his flying suit and extracted a cigarette. Then he
lit it.

"Let's see.... We haven't a thing to eat, have we?"

* * * * *

There was a little slapping noise. Bell became suddenly aware of a
horde of insects swarming around him. Smoke served partially to drive
them off.

"Look here," he said suddenly, "we could unfold a parachute and cover
the cockpits for some protection against these infernal things that
are biting me."

"We may need the parachute," said Paula unsteadily. "Does--does that
smoke of yours drive them away?"

"A little." Bell hesitated. "I say, it would be crowded, but if I came
up there, or you here...."

"I--I'll come back there," she said queerly. "The extra cans of
gasoline here...."

She slipped over the partition, in the odd flying suit which looks so
much more odd when a girl wears it. She settled down beside him, and
he tried painstakingly to envelope her in a cloud of tobacco smoke.
The plague of insects lessened.

There was nothing to do but wait for dawn. She was very quiet, but as
the moon rose higher he saw that her eyes were open. The night noises
of the jungle all about them came to their ears. Furtive little
slitherings, and the sound of things drinking greedily at the water's
edge, and once or twice peculiar little despairing small animal cries
off in the darkness.

* * * * *

The jungle was dark and sinister, and all the more so when the moon
rose high and lightened its face and left them looking into weird,
abysmal blackness between moonlit branches. Bell thought busily,
trying not to become too conscious of the small warm body beside him.

He moved, suddenly, and found her fingers closed tightly on the sleeve
of his flying suit.

"Frightened, Paula?" he asked quietly. "Don't be. We'll make out."

She shook her head and looked up at him, drawing away as if to scan
his face more closely.

"I am thinking," she said almost harshly, "of biology. I wonder--"

Bell waited. He felt an intolerable strain in her tensed figure. He
put his hand comfortingly over hers. And, astoundingly, he found it
trembling.

"Are all women fools?" she demanded in a desperate cynicism. "Are we
all imbeciles? Are--"

Bell's pulse pounded suddenly. He smiled.

"Not unless men are imbeciles too," he said dryly. "We've been through
a lot in the past two days. It's natural that we should like each
other. We've worked together rather well. I--well"--his smile was
distinctly a wry and uncomfortable one--"I've been the more anxious to
get to some civilized place where The Master hasn't a deputy
because--well--it wouldn't be fair to talk about loving you while--"
he shrugged, and said curtly, "while you had no choice but to listen."

* * * * *

She stared at him, there in the moonlight with the jungle moving about
its business of life and death about them. And very, very slowly the
tenseness left her figure. And very, very slowly she smiled.

"Perhaps," she said quietly, "you are lying to me, Charles. Perhaps.
But it is a very honorable thing for you to say. I am not ashamed,
now, of feeling that I wish to be always near you."

"Hush!" said Bell. He put his arm about her shoulder and drew her
closer to him. He tilted her face upward. It was oval and quite
irresistibly pretty. "I love you," said Bell steadily. "I've been
fighting it since God knows when, and I'm going to keep on fighting
it--and it's no use. I'm going to keep on loving you until I die."

Her fingers closed tightly upon his. Bell kissed her.

"Now," he said gruffly, "go to sleep."

He pressed her head upon his shoulder and kept it there. After a long
time she slept. He stirred, much later, and she opened her eyes again.

"What is it?"

"Damn these mosquitos," growled Bell. "I can't keep them off your
face!"


CHAPTER X

For four hours after sunrise Bell worked desperately. With the few and
inadequate tools in the plane he took apart the oiling system of the
motor. It was in duplicate, of course, like all modern air engines,
and there were three magnetos, and double spark plugs. Bell drained
the crankcase beneath a sun that grew more and more hot and
blistering, catching the oil in a gasoline can that he was able to
empty into the main tanks. He washed out innumerable small oil pipes
with gasoline, and flushed out the crankcase itself, and had at the
end of his working as many small scraps of metal as would half fill a
thimble. He showed then to Paula.

"And the stars in their courses fought against Sisera," he quoted
dryly. "Any one of these, caught in just the right place, would have
let us down into the jungle last night."

She smiled up at him.

"But they didn't."

"No.... God loves the Irish," said Bell. "What's that thing?"

Paula was fishing, sitting on a fallen tree in the cloud of smoke from
a smudge fire Bell had built for her. She was wearing the oily flying
suit he had found in the shed with the plane, and had torn strips from
her discarded dress to make a fishing line. The hook was made out of
the stiff wire handle of one of the extra gasoline tins. "Hook and
leader in one," Bell had observed when he made it.

* * * * *

He was pointing to a flat bodied fish with incredible jaws that lay on
the grass, emitting strange sounds even in the air. It flapped about
madly. Its jaws closed upon a stick nearly half an inch thick, and cut
it through.

"It is a _piranha_," said Paula. "The same fish that bit your hand. It
can bite through a copper wire fastened to a hook, but this hook is so
long...."

"Pleasant," said Bell. Something large and red passed before his eyes.
He struck at it instinctively.

"Don't!" said Paula sharply.

"Why?"

"It's a _maribundi_ wasp," she told him "And its sting.... Children
have died of it. A strong man will be ill for days from one single
sting."

"Still more pleasant," said Bell. "The jungle is a charming place,
isn't it?" He wiped the sweat off his face. "Any more little pets
about?"

She looked about seriously.

"There." She pointed to a sapling not far distant. "The _palo santo_
yonder has a hollow trunk, and in it there are usually ants, which are
called fire-ants. They bite horribly. It feels like a drop of molten
metal on your flesh. And it festers afterwards. And there is a fly,
the _berni_ fly, which lays its eggs in living flesh. The maggot eats
its way within. I do not know much about the jungle, but my father
has--had a _fazenda_ in Matto Grosso and I was there as a child. The
_camaradas_ told me much about the jungle, then."

Bell winced, and sat down beside her. She had Ribiera's pearl handled
automatic within easy reach. She saw him looking at it.

"I do not think there is any danger," she said with a not very
convincing smile, "but there are _cururus_--water snakes. They grow
very large."

"And I asked you to fish!" said Bell. "Stop it!"

* * * * *

She hauled the line ashore, with a flapping thing on the end of it.
Bell took the fish off and regarded her catch moodily.

"I'd been thinking," he said moodily, "that Ribiera suspects we're
dead. I'd been envisioning ourselves as marooned, yes, but relatively
safe as long as we were thought to be dead. And I'd thought that if we
lived a sort of castaway existence for a few weeks we'd be forgotten,
and would have a faint chance of getting out to civilization without
being noticed. But this...."

"I will stay," she said steadily. "I will stay anywhere or go
anywhere, with you."

Bell's hand closed on her shoulder.

"I believe it," he said heavily. "And--if you noticed--I had been
thinking of letting down the Trade. I'd been thinking of not trying to
fight The Master any longer, but only of getting you to safety. In a
sense, I was thinking of treason to my job and my government. I
suspect"--he smiled rather queerly--"I suspect we love each other
rather much, Paula. I'd never have dreamed for anyone else. Go over to
the plane and don't fish any more. I'll rustle the food for both of
us."

She stood up obediently, smiling at him.

"But kill that _piranha_ before you try to handle it," she advised
seriously.

Bell battered the savage thing until it ceased to move. He picked it
up, then, and sniffed the air. Paula had been in a cloud of acrid
smoke. She could not have detected the taint in the air he discovered.
He went curiously, saw a broken branch overhead, and then saw
something on the ground.

* * * * *

He came back to the plane presently, looking rather sick.

"Give me one of the machetes, Paula," he said quietly. "We brought
them, I think."

"What is the matter?"

He took the wide-bladed woods knife.

"A man," he said, nauseated. "He either fell or was thrown from
somewhere high above. From a plane. He was United States Secret
Service. There's a badge in his clothes. Don't come."

He went heavily over to the spot beyond the smudge fire. He worked
there for half an hour. When he came back there were earth stains on
his hands and clothing, and he carried a very small brown package in
his hand.

"He had a report ready to send off," said Bell grimly. "I read it.
It's in code, of course, but in the Trade...."

He set to work savagely on the engine, reassembling it. As he worked,
he talked in savage, jerky sentences.

"The Service man at Asuncion. One of the seven who vanished. He'd
learned more than we have. He was caught--poisoned, of course--and
pretended to surrender. Told a great deal that he shouldn't, in order
to convince The Master's deputy. The key men in nearly every republic
in South America are in The Master's power. Paraguay belongs to him,
body and soul. Bolivia is absolutely his. Every man of the official
class from the President down knows that he has two weeks or less of
sanity if The Master's deputy shuts down on him--and he knows that at
the crook of the deputy's finger he'll be assassinated before then. If
they run away, they go murder mad. If they stay, they have to obey
him. It's hellish!"

* * * * *

He stopped talking to make a fine adjustment. He went on, somberly.

"Chile's not so bad off, but the deputy has slaves nearly everywhere.
Ecuador--well, the President and half of Congress have been poisoned.
The man I found was trying to get a sample of the poison for analysis.
He'd learned it was unstable. Wouldn't keep. The Master has to send
fresh supplies constantly all over the continent. That accounts for
the deputies remaining loyal. If The Master had reason to suspect
them, he had only to stop their supply.... They couldn't stock up on
the deadly stuff for their own use. So they're as abjectly subject to
The Master as their slaves are to them. No new slaves are to be made
in Paraguay or Bolivia, except when necessary. It's believed that in
six months the other republics will have every influential man
subjected. Every army officer, every judge, every politician, every
outstanding rich man.... And then, overnight, South America will
become an empire, with that devil of a Master as its overlord."

He lifted one of the oil pumps in place and painstakingly tightened
the bolts that held it.

"Picture it," he said grimly. "Beasts as viceroys, already taking
their pleasure. Caligulas, Neros, on viceregal thrones all over the
continent.... And every man who shows promise, or shows signs of honor
or courage or decency, either killed or sent mad or...."

* * * * *

Paula was watching his face closely.

"I think," she said soberly, "that there is something worse."

Bell was silent for an instant.

"For me," he said bitterly, "it is. Before The Master dares to make
his coup public, he must be sure that there will be no foreign
interference. So, he must establish a deputy in Washington. A
relatively few chosen men, completely enslaved, could hold back our
Government from any action. Leaders in Congress, and members of the
Cabinet, working, in defense of The Master because his defeat would
mean their madness.... He would demand no treason of them at first. He
would require simply that he should not be interfered with. But his
plans include the appointment of deputies in the United States later
on. I don't think he can subdue America. I don't think so. But he
could--and I think he would--send whole cities mad. And if you think
of that...."

* * * * *

He was silent, working. A long, long time later he swung on the
propeller. The motor caught. He throttled it down and watched it
grimly. The motor warmed up to normal, and stayed there.

"It will run," he said coldly. "Those two plugs in the crankcase may
come out at any time. I've tightened them a little. They'd worked
loose from the vibration. But--well.... That Service man was heading
for Asuncion. He'd been found out. They probably shot him down in
mid-air after he'd gotten away. His plane may be crashed anywhere in
the jungle within a mile or so. And I've two bearings on the _fazenda_
where Ribiera went, now. One from Asuncion through here and one from
Rio. I want to go back there to-night and dump burning gasoline on the
buildings, to do enough damage to disorganize things a little. Then
I'm going to try to make it to a seaport. We can stow away, perhaps."

He shut off the motor.

"We'll start at dusk. There'll be lights there. This report says it's
nearly a city--of slaves. We want the darkness for our getaway."

Paula looked at the sky.

"We have three hours," she said quietly. "Let us cook and eat. You
must keep up your strength, Charles."

She said it in all seriousness, with the air of one who has entire
confidence and is merely solicitous. And Bell, who knew of at least
three excellent reasons why neither of them should survive until
dawn--Bell looked at her queerly, and then grinned, and then took her
in his arms and kissed her. She seemed to like it.

And they lunched quite happily on _piranha_ and _pacu_--which is
smaller--and drank water, and for dessert had more _piranha_.

* * * * *

The long afternoon wore away slowly. It was hot, and grew blistering.
Insects came in swarms and tormented them until Bell built a second
and larger smudge fire. But they fastened upon his flesh when he went
out of its smoke for more wood.

They talked, as well as they could for smoke, and looked at each other
as well as they could for smarting eyes. It was not at all the
conventional idea of romantic conversation, but it was probably a good
deal more honest than most, because they both knew quite well that
their chance of life was small. A plane whose motor was precariously
patched, flying over a jungle without hope of a safe landing if that
patched-up motor died, was bad enough. But with the three nearest
nations subservient to The Master, whose deputy Ribiera was, and all
those nations hunting them as soon as they were known to be yet
alive....

"Would it not be wise, Charles," asked Paula wistfully, "just for us
to try to escape, ourselves, and not try--"

"Wise, perhaps," admitted Bell, "but I've got to strike a blow while I
can." He was staring somberly at the little plane, fast upon a mud
bank, with the tall green jungle all about. "The deputies and all
their slaves have their lives hanging by a thread--the thread of a
constant supply of the antidote to the poison that's administered with
the antidote. The deputies--Ribiera, for instance--don't realize that.
Else they wouldn't dare do the things they do. But let them realize
that the thread can be broken, and what their slaves would do to them
before they all went mad.... You see? Let them learn that a blow has
been struck at the center of all the ghastly thing, and they'll be
frightened. They'll be close to mutiny through sheer panic. And there
may be slip-ups."

* * * * *

It was vague, perhaps, but it was true. The subjection of the poisoned
men and women was due not only to terror of what would happen if they
disobeyed the deputies, but to a belief that that thing would not
happen if they did obey. If Bell could do enough damage to the
_fazenda_ of The Master to shake the second belief, he would have
shaken the whole conspiracy. And a conspiracy that is not a complete
success is an utter failure.

It was close to sunset when they heard a droning noise in the
distance. Bell went swiftly to the cockpit of the plane and searched
the sky.

"Don't see it," he said grimly, "and it probably doesn't see us. We're
all right, I suppose."

But he was uneasy. The droning noise grew to a maximum and slowly died
away again. It diminished to a distant muttering.

"What say," said Bell suddenly, "we get aloft now? We'll follow that
damned thing home. It's going from Asuncion to that place we want to
find. This is on that route. Whoever's in it won't be looking behind,
and it's close to darkness."

* * * * *

Paula stood up.

"I am ready, Charles."

Bell swung out on the floats and tugged at the prop. The motor caught
and roared steadily. While it was warming up, he stripped off the rest
of his shirt and tore it into wide strips, and tied the rags in the
handles of the gasoline tins in the two cockpits.

"For our bombs," he explained, smiling faintly. "You'll want to wear
your chute pack, Paula. You know how to work it? And we'll divide the
guns and what shells we have, and stick them in the flying suit
pockets."

He made her show him a dozen times that she knew how to pull out the
ring that would cause the parachute to open. She climbed into the
front cockpit and smiled down at him. He throttled down the motor to
its lowest speed and shoved off from the mud bank. Clambering up,
while the plane moved slowly over the water under the gentle pull of
the slow-moving propeller, he bent over and kissed her.

"For luck," he said in her ear.

The next instant he settled down at the controls, glanced a last time
at the instruments, and gave the motor the gun.

* * * * *

The plane lifted soggily but steadily and swept up-stream toward the
rolling water of the _raudal_, which tumbled furiously about an
obstacle half of stones and shallows, and half of caught and rotting
tree trunks. It rose steadily until the trees dropped away on either
side and the jungle spread out on every hand. It rose to a thousand
feet and went roaring through the air to northward, while Bell
strained his eyes for the plane on ahead.

It was ten minutes or more before he sighted it, winging its way
steadily into the misty distance above the jungle. Bell settled down
to follow. The engine roared valorously. For half an hour Bell watched
it anxiously, but it remained cool and had always ample power. Paula's
head showed above the cockpit combing. Mostly she looked confidently
ahead, but once or twice she turned about to smile at him.

The sun seemed high when they rose from the water, but as it neared
the horizon its rate of descent seemed to increase. They had been in
the air for no more than three-quarters of an hour when it was twice
its own disk above the far distant hills. Almost immediately, it
seemed, it had halved that distance. And then the lower limb of the
blaring circle was sharply cut off by the hill crests and the sun sank
wearily to rest behind the edge of the world.

It seemed as if a swift chill breeze blew over the jungle, in warning
of the night. The trees became dark. A shadowy dusk filled the air
even up to where the plane flew thunderously on. And then, quite
abruptly, stars were shining and it was night.

* * * * *

Bell remembered, suddenly, and switched on the radio as an experiment.
The harsh, discordant dashes sounded in his ears through the roaring
of the motor. A beam of short waves was being sent out from his
destination. While he was on the direct path the monotonous signals
could be heard. When they weakened or died he would have left the way.

But they continued, discordant and harsh and monotonous, while the
last faint trace of the afterglow died away and night was complete,
and a roof of many stars glittered overhead, and the jungle lay dark
and deadly below him.

For nearly half an hour more he kept on. Twice he switched on the
instrument board light to glance at the motor temperature. The first
time it appeared a little high. The second time it was normal again.
But there was little use in watching instruments. If the motor failed
there was no landing field to make for.

A sudden faint glow sprang into being, many miles ahead. The pinkish
glare of many, many lights turned on suddenly. As the plane thundered
on the glow grew brighter. An illuminated field, for the convenience
of messengers who carried the poison for The Master to all the nations
which were to be subjected.

The glow went out as Bell was just able to distinguish long rows of
twinkling bulbs, and he saw the harsher, fiercer glow of floodlights.
He reached forward and touched Paula's shoulder. Conversation was
impossible over the motor's roar. Her hand reached up and pressed his.

Then he saw other lights. Bright lights, as from houses. Arc lights as
from storage warehouses, or something of the sort. A long, long row of
lighted windows, which might be dormitories or perhaps sheds in which
The Master's enslaved secretaries kept the record of his victims.

* * * * *

The earth flung back the roaring of the little plane's motor. Bell had
but little time to act before other planes would dart upward to seek
him out. He dived, and the wing tip landing lights went on, sending
fierce glares downward. Twin disks of light appeared upon the earth.
Sheds, houses, a long row of shacks as if for laborers. A drying
field, on which were spread out plants with their leaves turning
brown. A wall about it....

"The damned stuff," said Bell grimly.

He swept on. Jungle, only jungle. He banked steeply as lights flicked
on and off below and as--once--the wing tip lights showed men running
frantically two hundred feet below.

Then a stream of fire shot earthward, and Bell held up his hand and
arm into the blast of the slip stream. It blew out the blaze that had
licked at his flesh. He stared down. The gas can had left a trailing
stream of fluid behind it as it went spinning down to earth. All that
stream of inflammable stuff was aflame. The can itself struck earth
and seemed to explode, and the trailing mass of fire was borne onward
by the wind and lay across a row of thatch-roofed buildings. An
incredible sheet of fire spread out. The stuff in the drying yard was
burning.

Bell laughed shortly, and flung over another of his flaming bombs, and
another, and the fourth....

* * * * *

He climbed for the skies, then, as rectangles of light showed below
and planes were thrust out of their lighted hangars. Four huge
conflagrations were begun. One was close by a monster rounded tank,
and Bell watched with glistening eyes as it crept closer. Suddenly--it
seemed suddenly, but it must have been minutes later--flame rushed up
the sides of that tank, there was a sudden hollow booming, and fire
was flung broadcast in a blazing, pouring flood.

"Their fuel tank!" said Bell, his eyes gleaming in the ruddy light
from below. He shut off his landing lights and went upward, steeply.
"I've played hell with them now!"

A thousand feet up. Two thousand. Two thousand five hundred.... And
suddenly Bell felt cold all over. The instrument board! The motor was
hot. Hot! Burning!

He shut it off before it could burst into flames, but he heard the
squealing of tortured, unlubricated metal grinding to a stop. He
leveled out. It was strangely, terribly silent in the high darkness,
despite the roaring of wind about the gliding plane. The absence of
the motor roar was the thing that made it horrible.

"Paula," said Bell harshly, "one of those plugs came out, I guess. The
motor's ruined. Dead. The ship's going to crash. Ready with your
parachute?"

* * * * *

It was dark, up there, save for the glare of fires upon the under
surface of the wings. But he saw her hand, encarmined by that glare,
upon the combing of the cockpit. A moment later her face. She turned,
light-dazzled, to smile back at him.

"All right, Charles." Her voice quavered a little, but it was very
brave. "I'm ready. You're coming, too?"

"I'm coming," said Bell grimly. Below them was the city of The Master,
set blazing by their doing. If their chutes were seen descending....
And if they were not.... "Count ten," said Bell hoarsely, "and pull
out the ring. I'll be right after you."

He saw the slim little black-clad figure drop, plummetlike, and prayed
in an agony of fear. Then a sudden blooming thing hid it from sight.
Thick clouds of smoke lay over the lights and fires below.

Bell stepped over the side and went hurtling down toward the earth in
his turn.

(_To be continued_)

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