Alias-the-Blackbird-Chapter-06

STABLING his white mule on the shore of Bitter Lake, Cedar heard a plane droning over the hills. He sought cover on the shore and watched it narrowly, being by no means sure that it was not the Blackbird.

A gray seaplane, smaller by half than the Beetle, was sailing down from the east into the valley that cupped the lake. It came, turning into the wind, and settled its tail in the water. Its bow swung round; it churned toward the farther shore and beached in the shallows below Cedar’s cabin. When its engine was silenced, across the still, clear waters of the lake, Cedar heard a voice calling him.

“Oh, Sergeant Rudd! Oh, Sergeant!” It was the voice of Captain Hammer.

Cedar climbed into a flat-bottomed boat and pulled himself across the half-mile expanse. Hammer’s round head, completely turbaned with hospital gauze except for one little topknot of yellow hair, leaned out of the control cockpit. His wide mouth was twitching humorously.

“Hello,” Cedar greeted him, pulling up alongside and resting on his oars. “I thought you was in hospital.”

“I had to promise to take my nurse, poor wild lady, to Bermuda, before I could get away,” Hammer grinned. “Wonder if she’s still waiting for me on the dock. Here, I’ve brought you up some more liquid dynamite.”

“Thanks,” said Cedar feelingly. “That last you sent nearly wrecked me.”

He took the bottle. He felt glad to see Hammer’s confident face. A premonition had been with him all day that the Blackbird was nearer than he knew. Yet he had searched the woods thoroughly for both man and ship, two days steadily.

“You haven’t any business around here,” he chided Hammer. “That there left leg of yours looks like a roll of canvas tenting.”

“It’s in plaster,” Hammer admitted. “But I’ve got a good right one to kick the rudder bar. What traces have you found of the Blackbird?”

Cedar dabbled his oars in the water. He shook his head, scowling.

“Tracks was all so mixed up around the wreck,” he apologized. “All I can say is I’ve combed Iron Mine high and low, from Boggy Swamp to Bear Hollow, and there ain’t a clear, level field where the black ship could have landed.”

“There must be,” said Hammer shortly. “You missed it, that’s all.”

Cedar flushed.

“I don’t miss much,” he said.

“The Blackbird came to ground,” said Hammer grimly.

“I was talking it over with the Iron Mine officer,” suggested Cedar. “He thought maybe Blackbird never landed at all, but only parked the blackbird airplane up above the trees, and climbed down a rope ladder.”

Captain Hammer burst into shouts of laughter.

“You make my head ache,” he choked. “That officer must be a prize ninny. I’m afraid he doesn’t know much about the air.”

“Well, we’re not supposed to,” Cedar pointed out.

“I’m going up to find the Blackbird’s nest,” said Hammer. “Come along. I’ll show you a new view of your hills, Sergeant.”

“No, thanks!” Cedar declined.

“There’s no danger,” Hammer explained with a grim smile. “I can always find a lake to drop on, if the engine fails.”

“No, thank you kindly, and much obliged!” Cedar declined again with feeling. “I don’t aim to do any dropping, on land or water. I know too much about them things.”

“The Blackbird’s lying low somewhere in the hills,” said Hammer, with a speculative tightening of his wide gray eyes. “That’s his game. If he once came out in the open at any known air field, that funny little monoplane of his would be spotted immediately. But in the hills he seems to be safe. Somehow, he’s managed to make himself invisible to you—I don’t know how. But he can’t hide away from me in the air.”

“Aiming to give him a fight?” demanded Cedar.

“Not today,” said Hammer dryly. “This is no stunter. The Blackbird has one of these new German ships, quick as a shadow, with a quiet little engine packed with power. The Germans have learned new tricks out of their glider experience. That black ship could cut rings around the HS, and butcher me. All I want to do this time is to uncover his nest. Then you’ll see me come scooting back, like a scared loon with a hawk on its tail.”

“Speaking of hawks, I spotted a boy over the Ridge that I aim to go gunning for,” commented Cedar. “Ain’t you afraid the Blackbird’ll catch you?”

“His ship is hidden away on the ground,” said Hammer. “By the time he could break it out, start his engine and climb into the air, I’d be far on my way to New York. He doesn’t know I’m coming, you see. That’s the only thing that saves me.”

“His not expecting you?”

Hammer nodded.

“I’d better tell the Iron Mine officer to be on the lookout,” said Cedar Rudd.

“That might be a good idea,” said Hammer.

CEDAR looked up across the ridge. The autumnal sun was falling over that black hump. Already shadows had begun to creep into the valley of Bitter Lake.

“Who is the Blackbird?” he asked.

Hammer closed his lips grimly.

“It’s something we don’t like to talk about,” he said shortly.

“I don’t want to know anything personal,” said Cedar.

“There was a combat squadron over across nine years ago,” said Hammer, leaning over the side of the boat and lowering his voice, “that had a thief in it. Officers’ rooms would be broken into, mail stolen—all that sort of thing. It got to be a frightful scandal. A man wasn’t able to keep a fountain pen or a pair of new shoes. Why, the adjutant had his watch lifted from him right in officers’ mess, when he was dining with the C. O.— What’s the matter, Sergeant?”

“Doggone! Must have lost my own watch,” exclaimed Cedar, digging anxiously through his pockets. “I had it today, I remember. Probably dropped it out in the old mine hole.”

“Have you lost your police badge?” asked Hammer ironically.

“No, I still got it.”

“Then you probably haven’t met the Blackbird,” said Hammer. “He wouldn’t leave you the toenails on your feet.”

“One of your own brother officers?” asked Cedar. “To think of your own brother officer doing that to you!”

Hammer nodded.

“A brother officer, recommended for the Service by three eminent Congressmen, sworn in and trained with the rest of us, sharing mess and flying with us,” he said bitterly. “We don’t like to have it talked about, even now. Yet it wasn’t thieving only, Sergeant, that the Blackbird was up to. He was up to murder.”

“We were losing men and ships right and left those days, and in a damned queer way. The C. O. came down one day and reported he’d been flying with two others in the cloud, and suddenly both of them had just vanished before his eyes. Gone away like smoke. Other outfits got to calling us the Infant Mortality Squadron. There were youngsters with not twenty hours’ flying time credited in their books, who were shot down when no enemy ships were reported in the air. When I get to thinking of the fine young boys who went west—drilled in the back, absolutely slaughtered! We got to wondering if the Germans had invented some new soundproof motor, that our detectors didn’t catch, and a camouflage to turn their ships invisible. It was like fighting a squadron of pale ghosts. We’d go up and stab at emptiness, or we wouldn’t come back at all. The C. O. reported he’d seen a ship like mist—”

“One of your own flyers was a traitor?” demanded Cedar, shaking his head. “He was shooting you in the back?”

“Easy enough to see now,” said Hammer quietly, “but it wasn’t so simple then. You have faith in the men wearing your uniform, the men who are fighting beside you, sharing chow and spilling blood with you. They’re above suspicion. You’d trust them to the last ditch.”

Cedar Rudd nodded thoughtfully.

“It’s the same in any service, I suppose,” he said. “It’s got to be.”

“The C. O. was the only man in the outfit who hadn’t got the willies over the whole mess,” continued Hammer, pounding his fists on the cockpit rim. “He was a good flyer, one of our best. He always managed to come back untouched, though many a time the young fellows with him never turned up again. He was a little, black-eyed fellow; I remember him, with a sharp yellowish nose, dark hair tumbling down into his eyes—looked like a blackbird, even. He wasn’t particularly well liked. Had the reputation of being nasty and sullen. But he was one of us. He wore the uniform, you see.”

“The Blackbird!” snarled Cedar. “Your own commanding officer!”

Hammer shrugged.

“It wasn’t nice,” he admitted.

“And you mean to say this fiend is still alive?” growled Cedar.

“One peculiarity I remember best about the Blackbird,” Hammer said coolly, “and that is, he always flew with his left wing down. Only flyer in the world, I suppose, who’d do it. Four men out of five will drag the right wing, to counteract torque and save the push on the rudder—the fifth man will fly level. But the Blackbird had that streak of crookedness by which you could spot him a mile off in the air—left wing down. The black ship that downed the Beetle was dragging its left wing,” concluded Hammer. “It gave me the creeps when I saw it.”

“Couldn’t be another fellow with the same trick?”

“It couldn’t be another.”

“Who was the Blackbird?” asked Cedar.

“The name he carried in the Service makes no difference,” said Hammer. “It was the name of his American mother. He was really von Bernau, the cleverest spy in the German Intelligence, and one of their crack flyers. They’d court-martialed him and broken him as a combat officer, because of his sticky fingers; but they found use for him as a spy. He came over here, where his mother’s people live, enlisted and went through our flying mill. No wonder he had a great training record—a German ace, with more air experience than most of the men who instructed him! He got his oak leaves—a major. And he was the fellow who drilled his own messmates and junior officers through the back.”

“What happened to him?” demanded Cedar.

Hammer pinched his nose. A grin was fixed on his friendly mouth, but his eyes had the look of steel. He didn’t reply.

“Did he get away with it?” insisted Cedar.

“He went up flying one day and didn’t come back,” said Hammer carefully. “When his trunks were opened, we found the evidence that he was the thief who’d been playing the devil with us. But the whole story was quieted down, for the honor of the outfit and his own good name.”

“His own good name!” jeered Cedar.

“You’re the first man who knows the Blackbird was anything more than a thief,” explained Hammer quietly. “Others may have suspected, but they never knew. He was reported killed in the line of duty. His name is on a bronze memorial tablet in Cleveland or Buffalo, I believe, and many lovely ladies have wept their eyes out for him.”

Hammer smiled more widely and lighted a cigaret.

“Well, let’s go!” he said.

Cedar was not to be put off.

“What’s the rest of the story?” he demanded keenly.

“Why, the rest of the story is that we lost no more ships,” said Hammer. “Come on!”

“Listen, Sergeant,” said Hammer. “Suppose one of the Blackbird’s outfit was flying alone one day. And he climbs out of a cloud in time to see this Blackbird, his own commanding officer, sitting on the tail of another ship of the squadron and shooting hell out of it. Then the Blackbird comes diving down on him, and they have a regular dog fight, up there where no one can see them. You know, they whistle and streak around each other. Give each other all they’ve got. Fight it out to a finish. Well, the Blackbird tumbles over into a fast spin, streaks down into the cloud, out of control, fire shooting from between his wings. You think it is the end of him, you know.”

“I don’t know,” said Cedar, “but I can imagine.”

“You think it is the end,” said Hammer, “till you wake up out of a nap years later, four thousand miles away, and spot this deathless fiend blazing away at you in the air, with your pilot dead, and nothing you can do. Thank God he doesn’t know you’re in that big helpless tub, or you’d never crawl out of it alive. He’d nail you on the ground and crucify you, that damned Blackbird!”

“So you’re the man who got him?” said Cedar, nodding.

“I haven’t said so,” protested Hammer quickly. “Maybe you’ve seen him shoot down one of the youngsters of the outfit, but you can’t prove it. You can’t prove he’s von Bernau, either, and a filthy spy. He’s your superior, and wearing your uniform. A court martial would call it murder. You’d hang if the word leaked out. Best keep your mouth shut. Say nothing about it.”

Cedar Rudd nodded his head repeatedly. His lips were pressed together. He reached out and took the hand of Hammer.

“Don’t you be afraid the Blackbird’ll get you, boy,” he said.

“He won’t, if I see him first,” grinned Hammer, “but he’s a killer, Sergeant. I say, watch out!”

“Good luck to you, boy,” said Cedar.