A Century of Progress (24 page)

“Yes, certainly.” Holly hesitated, a new idea coming to mind. “Actually I’m going to take Dad to Chicago in a few days. There’s a similar mooring mast there, as you must know if you’re concerned with this one. You could come along with us.”

“Right,” said Jeff, visibly relieved at his daughter’s change in attitude.

“That would be great,” said Brandi, smiling. “If you’re sure there’s room.”

“In my Vega? Plenty. Of course there’s some extra equipment in the cabin . . .” Holly turned to her father doubtfully.

“I want to have Mr. Brandi look at that equipment too,” said Jeff somewhat grimly. “Before we fly.”

Holly hesitated momentarily, then brightened. “I’m going out tomorrow morning and have a look at the kite. Mr. Brandi can come along then if he wants to. And you too, Dad, of course.”

“Sounds like a fine idea,” Brandi agreed at once.

“Right.” Jeff was pleased that things were now going so smoothly, though he shot Holly one almost-suspicious glance. “Shall we get together around nine?”

In a mood of general agreement, chatting about weather and the difference it made in flying, the small group of them moved along the passage, down one short interior stair, and thence to an elevator.

In the lobby Brandi excused himself to make what he said was a rather important phone call in one of a row of midnight-empty booths. Jeff accepted this without apparent surprise, and took the opportunity to turn Holly aside and speak to her with some urgency.

“Holly, you remember Alan Norlund, of course.”

“Of course.”

“You haven’t heard anything from him lately, have you? Or heard of him?”

“No, why?” She had always, she thought, been an accomplished liar.

“Or of—anyone who might be connected with him?”

“Jeff, for Pete’s sake! How should I know who might be connected with him? I don’t even have any idea whether or not he’s still alive.” Among the other concerns running furiously and simultaneously through Holly’s mind was the thought that sooner or later Rupert was bound to say something about Mr. Norlund having called tonight and spoken to her. In fact, Rupert had almost certainly mentioned it already to some of the other servants. There was no use Holly’s wishing now that she had pledged the butler to silence before she left home.

Jeff was again relieved, this time enough to smile. And suddenly his daughter could perceive him as vulnerable. “You’ll tell me, won’t you dear, if you should hear from Norlund? Or anything about him?”

“Of course, if you like. But what’s the big deal? Is this Brandi tied up in the same business?”

That turned Jeff sad again. He gave Holly an odd look, and shook his head. “Holly, I wish I’d never got you into this at all . . . but that was forced on us, and it can’t be helped now. Brandi has promised that we’ll get all the support we need, even if those others should be able to withdraw theirs.” He glanced toward the row of phone booths, where one door was still closed. “One more thing, quick. That phone number you once talked me into giving you—something else I shouldn’t have done. Tell me, have you ever used it?”

Jeff’s warnings on that point had been so convincing that she hadn’t quite been able to make herself give it a try. “No, you warned me not to, unless some tremendous emergency came up. Why? Anyway, I’m not sure I even remember it any more.”

“Thank God.” He patted her arm. “Don’t remember it. And don’t
ever
use it now, as you value your own welfare and mine. Just put it out of your mind. Will you do that for me?”

Put it out of your pretty little head
, thought Holly. Her very exasperation with her father—how could he be such a fool about some things?—seemed to provoke a corresponding surge of love. She wished that she could help him now, but she saw no way. “Sure,” she said soothingly. “Dad, are you sure of what you’re doing?” There was the sound of a phone-booth door opening, and she raised her voice slightly. “Ready to come home with me?”

“Not yet,” said Jeff. “You run along.” He glanced toward Brandi, footsteps hollowly approaching on the marble, and she could see in Jeff’s face his shining certainty of the future. “Mr. Brandi and I have more work to do tonight.”

Jeff had taken a couple of steps away from her, then spun back to show her something that he held in his clenched fist—one of the small ceramic things he had once told her were special recording devices. He had one of them, she remembered, in use as a paperweight in his office. He called back now: “I was taken in, Holly. Badly taken in. I’m trying now to make amends.”

“Taken in by who, Jeff?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s all going to be all right.” Those were his parting words. Brandi waved to her, and the two men still in their engineers’ coveralls went out through the lobby doors to the street.

Holly followed, in time to see them pull away in a car that had to be Brandi’s. She walked quickly to her own car.

Griffith stood beside it, waiting. “Home, Miss?”

“Yes, but find me a telephone on the way. There’s an urgent call I have to make.”

Encased in the booth in the all-night drug store, she dialed the number her father had just warned her not to use, and listened to the peculiar ringing produced somewhere at the other end of the line. Someone picked up the phone there before she could decide just what was so peculiar about the ring.

“Hello?” It was a man’s voice, sounding as if he might be right with her in the booth.

“Hello,” she said firmly. “My name is Holly Holborn, and it’s very important that I talk with someone there.”

There was only the slightest pause. “My name is Harbin,” the man’s voice responded eagerly. “And you can talk with me.”

Less than an hour later, at approximately one o’clock in the morning. Holly was speeding through the warm night on her way out to the Newark airport. Griffith was still at the wheel in the big car. He was not overly big himself, but quite tough, Holly thought, and certainly loyal. So she had made a point of bringing him along, and had also made sure he understood that there might be some kind of trouble.

“Sure, Miss. What kind?”

“Physical trouble. Where I might need a friend who’s bigger and stronger than I am. I’m not certain. But be ready, would you?”

“Sure.” Griffith had sounded pleased.

Then they had made a flying trip to the home apartment, where Holly had gathered from closet and bureau drawers and hidden safe some money and other things that she expected she might need. Then, to the airport.

In the back of the car, hunkered down, she changed into flying clothing as they drove.

When they reached the airfield, there was a light on inside the operations shack. Holly had no idea whether or not that was usual at this time of night. The light went out as they drove up, as if someone inside had wanted to look out through darkened windows at the arriving car. Then the light came on again, and a couple of outside lights as well. As Holly and Griffith disembarked from the auto, two men stepped out of the small building to meet them.

One of the men she knew, a regular employee at the field. The other she had not seen before, but he impressed her at once as looking somehow like Hajo Brandi’s cousin, only larger and more muscular.

The regular worker was plainly surprised to see her there at such an hour. “What can we do for you, Miss Holborn?”

She moved forward cooly, swinging her pilot’s gloves in one hand. “Is my plane ready?”

“Why . . .” The regular man was really puzzled.

“Get it ready,” she ordered. From the corner of her eye she saw Griffith easing forward a little, near her side.

The stranger spoke now: “Field’s closed right now, Miss.” The words were courteous enough, the voice inflexible.

She turned to Griffith and gave him a slight nod.

“We’re opening it up,” the chauffeur said, and strolled a step ahead of Holly. He was casually tapping some metallic automobile tool into the gloved palm of his left hand, like a policeman with a billy club.

The regular employee blanched.

The stranger smiled. Smoothly he pulled something out of his pocket and shot Griffith with it. It was some kind of small and silent gun that made very little noise as it sent the chauffeur staggering back and dropped him to one knee.

From Holly’s hand, where she’d concealed it with her pair of gloves, her own little revolver barked right back, and barked again. Not silent, but effective. Brandi’s cousin crumpled, looking immensely surprised, before he could do anything else. She’d bought the weapon a couple of years ago, to take along on a flight over Yucatan jungles, and had never fired it till now except on the practice range.

She turned to the petrified attendant. “This is life and death, Alfred. Get my plane ready right now, and I’ll look after these people. And don’t even think about trying to use that phone.”

Griffith was flat on his back now, not hurt as far as Holly could see, breathing steadily, but quite unconscious. She tried to shake him awake but failed. It couldn’t be helped, she’d have to leave him here. Brandi’s cousin looked dead, if her experience with accident victims was any guide. She picked up his exotic weapon, hesitated, then threw it far away into the night. Then she ran into the shack and tore the telephone loose from its wires before she followed the stumbling Alfred out toward the hangars.

The runway was very dark for a takeoff, but Holly thought she knew both its direction and its length by heart. Once airborne she turned into the northeast, as the patient, pedantic voice of Harbin had advised. Following his advice on another matter also, she had turned on certain switches controlling the equipment in the cabin. Now she would fly northeast to meet the early dawn, and land somewhere in daylight. That was the first step.

Six days, Norlund was thinking, to get to Texas, and now he’d lost track of how many more days he’d spent in getting up to Iowa. On one freight train after another he’d zigzagged up from the South to the Midwest, through the midst of one of the worst heat waves on record in this or any other decade. The old newspapers he had managed to look at here and there were full of stories about people dying in this unprecedented heat that blanketed the middle of the nation. And of Dillinger and his exploits: robbing banks, shooting lawmen, kidnapping doctors to tend his wounds. And of the
Graf
, that had encountered certain technical delays, but would any day now slip its Frankfurt moorings and head west . . . Norlund hadn’t yet seen a paper or heard a radio broadcast that told him he was too late. It was possible for him to hear the radio sometimes, when changing trains or begging food.

Nighttime, Norlund was thinking now, was perhaps after all the best time for hopping off a freight if they were likely to be waiting to club you when you landed. He had belatedly discovered that the small town in Iowa that his leaders had code-named Jupiter was known in different circles as having some of the toughest, meanest railroad bulls in the entire country. And now in the darkness, as the cars beneath him groaned and clashed and shuddered their way toward a total stop, Norlund could see flashlights up ahead at trackside, their beams of light bobbing with the running motions of the men who carried them. The hunt was on. And now there was a shrill, carrying outcry of pain, as of someone being beaten.

With a final grinding of its steel wheels the train lurched to a stop. Now the train was silent, save for the puffing of the distant engine, and Norlund could hear the pairs of running feet along the roadbed, and more voices shouting—some in fear and some in triumph. And now a shot was fired.

Norlund pulled from his coat pocket what looked like an old cigar case, made of cheap metal, scratched and dented. It had ridden with him all the way from base. Appearing to be not worth a robber’s stealing or a lawman’s confiscation, it held not cigars but pseudo-memorabilia: fate family photos and worn, faked letters. Under finger pressure at the proper points, the case changed. Metal silently and swiftly unfolded and reshaped itself. The photos and letters vanished back into it, inside a clip. And now the device was dark and hard as ebony, fitting the hand like a well-made target pistol.

Ready as he could be, Norlund dropped from the stopped train. At once flashlights shone in his direction, and heavily-built shapes came toward him in a lumbering run. As soon as the first flashlight caught him in its beam, he sent his own beam invisibly back. One of the railroad bulls cried out. His brain ecstatic with the contrary currents of creaser energy, he turned to swing a club at his companion.

And Norlund turned the other way and ran.

It was midmorning when he hiked over the last hill of the dusty gravel road outside of town and came in sight of the primitive airfield. There was no sign of Holly’s Vega; Norlund couldn’t tell from here whether or not it might be in one of the small hangars. And he could discover no other clue that anyone, friend or otherwise, might be waiting for him here.

Limping past the buildings on tired feet, peering into the open hangar doorways, he drew the attention of a man in coveralls, who looked back suspiciously at Norlund from a distance. Norlund kept on going, as if he had never had any intention of doing otherwise. He kept going to the edge of an enormous cornfield that bordered the airfield on the east, and moved in a short distance among the rows and sat down with a sigh.

From here he ought to be able to keep watch on anyone coming or going by road or by air.

The heat had remained fierce during the last few days, and was now mounting again as the sun approached its zenith. Knowing what the weather was going to be was one of the things that a time traveler into the past could feel most certain of, but knowing it gave little help in enduring it. Presently Norlund got to his feet again, and walked farther east, through corn tall enough to hide him if he crouched, following a descending slope of land toward a line of trees where experience told him there was a chance of finding water. There was a small creek there, surviving the summer though running slow and shallow. Norlund drank, of water that tasted less muddy than it looked. Then, sheltered by corn and hedgerow, he stripped for a quick bath in a tiny pool. Afterward he felt fresher if not actually much more clean.