Fabulous Flight Page 7

  All around the shores could be seen raw trenches, gun emplacements, tanks, trucks, jeeps and all the evidences of the guarding Zargonian army. Overhead was the constant hum and crisscrossing of planes. Because of these Gus flew low over the trenches. They could see the unsuspecting troops gathered about their campfires and smell the odors of the evening meal.

  Gus swept out over the lake and circled the castle a few times. Finally he lighted on the parapet of the north tower. There were many gulls roosting on the roofs so their arrival went unnoticed. The sun was just setting over the mountains to the west. The castle seemed completely quiet, almost deserted. Down in a tiny garden they could see a bent old man puttering among the vegetables. From one or two chimneys rose lazy drifts of smoke laden with the pleasant odors of cooking.

  “Well here we are,” Gus announced quietly, “all safe and sound, as they say. Now Pete, what I figger is this. That window right below us is the one they told you was this here Professor’s study. Lucky it’s open. Landing on the window sill might be risky, so we’d better land here. You can climb down this ivy easy as not and have time for a good look around before you go in. What do you think?”

  “I think it sounds very sensible,” Peter answered. “Let’s go eat our supper.”

  They flew off a few miles to a quiet little pond where Gus had himself a good meal of fish. Peter also ate a stout dinner, for there was no knowing when he would have his next, if any. Then they napped until it was thoroughly dark.

  As darkness fell the sky became crisscrossed with the blue-white beams of searchlights. As Gus winged in over the lake they were almost blinded by the glare, but no one paid any attention to this lone gull flapping his way toward the castle. A dim light in the Professor’s study revealed no sign of occupants.

  “Still eatin’ his dinner,” Gus guessed as he landed gently on the parapet. “Looks like a good chance right now.”

  Peter hopped out of the car, strapped on his tiny sword, and stuffed a flashlight and a few chocolate bars into his pockets. His heart was thumping rather loudly, but he managed to bid Gus a cheery good-by as he grasped the ivy and lowered himself over the edge. The ivy was thick and strong. It made a perfect ladder down to the window sill.

  Peering in the open window Peter saw a fair-sized, lamplit room. There were a large desk, several comfortable chairs and a fireplace. One wall was lined with bookshelves. The only strange thing was a large and gaudy American pinball machine standing against the farthest wall. Peter looked up at Gus, who was leaning intently over the parapet.

  “I’m going in now, Gus,” he called softly.

  “O.K., Pete,” Gus answered. “Watch your step. I’ll stick around. All’s you have to do is flash your flashlight or wave your handkerchief and I’ll be right there. Good luck.”

  Peter swung himself down by the curtain. The bookshelves seemed the best hiding place so he climbed up there. The books were old and dusty and unevenly arranged. Behind them was considerable space, while the disorderly gaps afforded excellent peep views of the whole room. Exploring around on the fourth shelf Peter discovered a small safe set in the wall. The books in front of it were not dusty, nor was the safe itself. It seemed to have been recently used.

  At this moment the door opened and a man entered the study. Obviously it was Dr. Professor Polopodsky. There were the same bushy hair, the black bristly beard and thick eyeglasses of the photograph which the Ambassador in London had produced.

  The Professor was picking his teeth and humming contentedly. He walked over to the bookshelves, reached up to the fourth shelf and removed the books from in front of the safe. Peter shrank back and remained quietly within six inches of the groping hand that now twiddled the knob of the safe. The door opened, the hand reached in and carefully took out two tiny cardboard boxes. These the Professor placed gently on the desk, then seated himself.

  Squeezing between two books Peter could look directly down on the desk. He saw the Professor open the two boxes. Each contained a small capsule resting in a nest of cotton. One capsule was quite filled with a coarse granular substance, the other seemed to contain only one grain.

  Peter’s heart beat loudly as he realized that here, only a few feet away, was the dread secret which had half the nations of the world in a dither.

  Professor Polopodsky took the full capsule from its box and tossed it carelessly on the desk. It rolled closer and closer to the edge, while Peter grew cold and held his breath. It rolled off the desk and bounced harmlessly on the floor!

  “Damn,” said the Professor. He picked up the capsule and put it on the desk again. “Lucky it wasn’t the real stuff,” he chuckled.

  Peter was astonished to note that he spoke in perfectly good English, or rather American, and rather tough American at that!

  The Professor carefully closed the box containing the almost empty capsule and gently replaced it in the safe.

  There was a knock at the door and an ancient butler ushered in an officer, resplendent in the gaudy uniform of the Zargonian army. The officer seemed terrified, his face was pasty white and little beads of perspiration shone on his forehead. His eyes remained fixed on the capsule which the Professor now held in his hand. The Professor barked a question in Zargonian to which the officer hastily answered “Jah! Jah! Jah!” He clapped his hands and a soldier entered, carrying a heavy bag which he placed on the desk.

  From this Professor Polopodsky lifted roll after roll of shining gold coins. He stacked them up and counted them carefully.

  “Good,” he finally muttered under his breath, in English. “Fifty t’ousand bucks.” The soldier removed the bag and withdrew.

  The Professor swept the gold into a drawer of the desk and asked another question, upon which the officer again clapped his hands. At once a man in civilian clothes entered. He was a tough-looking individual with a broken nose and a cigarette dangling from his lip.

  Polopodsky stared at him fixedly for a moment and then spoke, this time in very broken English. “You are the mechanic Americaine, who perhaps can the machine to fix, yes? She is – how you call it? – bust. It make me very sad, for she is my only amuse.”

  The American grinned and went over to the machine. “If I can’t fix it,” he announced, “nobody can. Fixin’ these was my racket back in the States – fixin’ them so they always lost.” He drew a screwdriver and a pair of pliers from his pocket and went to work.

  The officer, mopping his damp forehead, backed out and closed the door, his eyes all the while fixed on the capsule with which the Professor absently toyed. There was a long silence, while the American worked busily at the machine. Outside there was the never-ending buzz of the patrolling planes and the occasional sleepy “quark” of a roosting gull.

  Suddenly Professor Polopodsky called, “Well, Lumps, how’re you coming?”

  The other man spun around as though shot. His jaw dropped and the pliers fell from his hand. “Whaddaya mean Lumps – who are – how’d you –?" he gasped.

  Professor Polopodsky roared with laughter. “Lumps Gallagher,” he chortled, between spasms. “My old pal from Chicago. What’re you doing in this Gawd forsaken dump?”

  To Peter’s amazement, and the still greater astonishment of Lumps, Dr. Professor Polopodsky reached up and swept off the black wig, the thick glasses and the bristly beard. He was revealed as a swarthy, hard-faced young man of about thirty!

  “Fisheye Jones!” gasped Lumps. “Fisheye Jones! Well whaddaya know!”

  The two men shook hands and pounded each other on the back, all the while shouting questions and exclaiming, “Whaddaya know about that?”

  Fisheye jerked a bell pull. The old butler brought two enormous pitchers of beer. Lumps finally managed to ask, “But what’s about this Professor Pollpolly, or whatever’s his name?”

  “Dr. Professor Polopodsky?” Fisheye laughed. “I’m him.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The Tale of Fisheye

  After the two men had quieted down a bit and absorbed s
ome of the beer Lumps Gallagher said, “Come on now, Fisheye; tell. What’s the racket and how come you’re here instead of the Loop, Chicago, Ill?”

  Fisheye put his feet on the desk, lit another cigarette and said, “Well it’s the best racket ever, Lumps, and a long story, but I’ll make it short. Here goes.

  “You remember maybe, my folks out in Chicago? They come from this Zargonia. The name was Jonowkowski, but I took Jones – it was easier. The old folks always talked Zargonian at home so of course I talk it as good as a native. Well, when the war come I got drafted.”

  “So did I,” Lumps said wryly, “but I thought you was too smart.”

  “I could of been,” Fisheye continued, “but I’d got in a little misunderstanding with the police in Chicago, so I thought maybe some foreign travel on Uncle Sam might be good for my health. I won’t bother you with the story of what a war hero I was, but along toward the end of it my outfit ends up here, right in Zargonia. Knowing the language like I did I had myself a soft job as a interpreter.”

  “You would,” Lumps laughed.

  “I would,” Fisheye agreed and went on, “but when the war was over I got fed up with all this brushing your teeth and saluting and stuff so I sort of resigned.”

  “You went over the hill?” asked Lumps. “Deserted?”

  “If you want to put it crude like that – yes. How did you get out?”

  “Same way,” Lumps admitted.

  “Well I had myself to look out for and I saw this pinball machine in a U.S.O. hut and I got an idea. So I sort of lend-leased it to myself. Then there was a jeep that nobody seemed to be using so I put the marble bouncer in the back seat and I made a little tour of Zargonia.

  “It was a good racket. Chicken-feed, of course, but not too bad. You see these Zargonians like to gamble and they’d never seen one of these machines and they went nuts over it. I toured around to the fair days and the feast days and the cafés and the night clubs and always had a line-up waiting to risk their dough. They didn’t have an awful lot, but what they had I got.”

  “You would,” grunted Lumps.

  “I would,” Fisheye agreed. He had another glass of beer and went on.

  “Well, the M.P.’s were sort of looking for me, so one evening when I happened to be passing this lake it looks like a good spot for a little quiet rest. I park the jeep in a patch of woods, get a guy to row me and the machine out here to the island and set up shop in the kitchen of the castle. Of course these servants was as nuts about the game as all the rest of them and in a little while I’d had a good dinner and took in their last six months’ wages. Then the boss, this old Prof. Polopodsky comes down to the kitchen for something and sees the machine. He’s as nutty about it as any of them – only more so.

  “He had it brought up here to his study and we play the thing all night, not for money of course, just for fun. We played it for a week. Well, it suited me fine. I wanted to be out of circulation for a while and this dump certainly is out of circulation. Good food and good beer and lots of service. All day the old guy would be working in his laboratory while I’d eat and sleep and fish off the dock. Then all night we’d play pinball.

  “He was a queer old geezer, sort of a reecluse like they call ’em. Didn’t have any friends or relations, never went anywhere and no one ever come here. He took a big shine to me, acted like I was his own son.

  “He got so friendly he finally told me all about this secret thing he was working on. Seems he’d invented something about a million times more powerful than the atom bomb. He’d been working at it most of his life and had only managed to make three grains, about like grains of sugar. Kept ’em in a capsule right here in this wall safe.

  “Well, I had a nice easy summer, not taking in any money, but not putting out any either. Then all of a sudden the old man died.”

  Lumps made a strange sound, half chuckle and half snort.

  “No, I hadn’t nothing to do with it,” Fisheye said indignantly, “I don’t go for that sort of thing. He died perfectly natural, old age or something. Having no friends or relatives or anything the servants just planted him down in the family chapel with all the honors.

  “Then all of a sudden I got an idea. The Real Big Idea. I get the servants all together and tell ’em, ’Look; from now on I’m Doctor Professor Polopodsky. You just obey orders and keep your traps shut and you’ll all get a wheelbarrow full of dough.’ Well times were tough around here and they had a soft job; all they could eat, easy work, free beer, big wages. So they decide to co-operate.

  “I fix myself this wig and beard, put on the old man’s specs and go to see the Zargonian Minister of Defense. They’d all heard how the Prof. was a great scientific genius and a little queer in the head, but none of ’em had ever seen him, so I got away with it easy. They agree to have a test of this new super-duper explosive. We tried it – two grains out of the three – out in the middle of the Gobi Desert. It was quite a bang.”

  “You mean that earthquake last October?” Lumps asked.

  “Earthquake my eye!” laughed Fisheye. “That was two grains of the Polopodsky extra special. The old boy certainly had the stuff. It convinced the Zargonian Government all right and every other Government in the world. They soon found out it wasn’t any earthquake and they’re all scared to death.

  “Well, I come right back here and do the queer old Professor act. I send for the President of Zargonia and the Defense Minister, and they come running. I tell them I can turn out this stuff by the bushel, but if they don’t play ball or if I’m bothered by anybody I’ll just slam a handful on the floor and Good-by Zargonia. To say nothin’ of Good-by Europe and most of Asia. They was sweating like porcupines and ready to kiss my foot.

  "Then I tell them, and of course this was the whole point of the racket, that just to keep me happy-like and contented I’ll accept fifty thousand smackers in gold, coin of the realm, on the first of every month. They agree so quick I wished I’d made it a hundred. That General that brought you here tonight also brought the rent.”

  He pulled open the desk drawer and exhibited the gold coins. Lumps stared at them goggle-eyed.

  “You always had big ideas, Fisheye,” he said enviously, “but this is the biggest yet. How long’s this been going on?”

  “Ten months,” Fisheye answered contentedly, “and ten times fifty thousand is five hundred thousand, as my teacher told me. They give me an extra two months allowance for a Christmas bonus so the total is six hundred thousand, as of the close of business today. When it’s an even million I’m goin’ back to Chicago and buy the City Hall.”

  “I always knew you was a genius,” Lumps said, “but not this much of a one. How did I happen to come in on this?”

  “Just pure accident,” Fisheye replied. “Just an accident and a lucky one for the both of us. You see I been paying these servants a big lump of cash every month. Then they come right up and play the pinball machine and I get it all back, so the whole layout don’t cost me a cent. Last week the machine broke down, so I tell this Zargonian General to fetch me a good repair man – or else. He finds you, how or where I don’t know, but it was sure good luck.”

  “How or where,” Lumps said, “don’t matter. I been doin’ a lot of things since I went over the hill – I mean resigned. But it was lucky.”

  “The luckiest thing about it is this,” Fisheye said. “Gettin’ this load of gold back to the States is goin’ to be quite a big job, too much for me to handle alone. I can finagle the officials and all that end, but I got to have a partner. And here Fate or something brings me my old pal Lumps Gallagher to be it. What do you say, Lumps, is it partners?”

  Lumps merely rose and extended his hand. “What’s my end?” he asked.

  “I’ll cut you in for ten per cent,” was the answer. “That’ll net you a hundred grand – and no income tax.”

  They shook hands and had some more beer. Fisheye absently began bouncing the capsule on the desk. Each time he did so Lumps cringed. His partn
er laughed. “Nothin’ in this one but sugar,” he said, “right out of the old sugar bowl. I only use this one for impressing the military.”

  He went to the wall safe, gently extracted the other tiny box and opened it. “There’s the real McCoy,” he exclaimed.

  Lumps, fascinated, gazed at the capsule and its one tiny white grain. “Wot a meal ticket,” he breathed, “wot a meal ticket! Put it away, Fish, it makes me noivous.”

  Fisheye closed both boxes and put them gently in the safe. He closed the door, twirled the knob and replaced the books. Then the two had some more beer and went off to bed.

  Peter, worn out with excitement, ate a chocolate bar and curled up behind the books to go to sleep. It was maddening to know that here, within two feet, was the fateful capsule which they had come so far to secure. To know that Gus was undoubtedly waiting faithfully on the parapet, ready to carry him away – if he had it. Yet the capsule was as unobtainable as though they were still in London.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Rockets’ Red Glare

  It was so dark behind the books that Peter slept quite late. When he woke the study was flooded with sunshine and quite deserted. The whole castle seemed quiet, so he ventured forth, swung over to the window sill and stepped out. Far below he could see the bent old man puttering in the garden. He was also relieved to see Fisheye and Lumps seated on a tiny dock fishing. They seemed to be talking animatedly, no doubt planning ways and means of getting their gold hoard back to the States.

  Peter waved his handkerchief and almost at once Gus settled beside him. “Well, Pete, how’s it going?” he greeted. Breathlessly Peter poured out the whole tale of the bogus Professor, interrupted now and then by Gus’s “Well ain’t that somethin’.”

  When he had finished Gus said, “Well, we sure are close to it. Gettin’ warm, as they say. If it only wasn’t for that safe it’d be duck soup. Too bad your old man didn’t teach you safe crackin’.”

  “It is,” Peter agreed. “The only plan I can think of is for me to stay hidden behind the books and watch. Perhaps when Professor – I mean Fisheye – opens it again I can learn the combination.”