Dorothy Dixon and the Mystery Plane

Again her hand sought the throttle and as Will-o’-the-Wisp snorted, then roared, Dorothy breathed a thankful sigh. Fifteen minutes later she had housed her plane in its hangar, and was limping up the porch steps of her home.

Lizzie, the Dixons’ servant, met her in the hall.

“Whatever is the matter, Miss Dorothy? You’ve had an accident – you’re half-killed – I know you are! There’s blood all over your face – ”

Her young mistress interrupted, smiling:

“You’re wrong again, Lizzie. No accident, though I know I look pretty awful. I feel that way, too, if you ask me – ”

“But the blood, Miss Dorothy?”

“It’s from a nosebleed, Lizzie. I assure you I’m not badly hurt. If you’ll help me out of these rags and start a warm bath running, I’ll be ever so much obliged. A good soaking in hot water will fix me up. Then,” she added, “I think I’ll be real luxurious and have my dinner in bed.”

When the solicitous Lizzie brought up the dinner tray three-quarters of an hour later, a tired but decidedly sprucer Dorothy, in pink silk pyjamas, was leaning back against her pillows.

“My word, I’m hungry!” She seized a hot roll and began to butter it. “I’m off bucking thunderheads for life, Lizzie. But you can take it from me, that kind of thing gives you a marvelous appetite!”

“Yes, miss, I’m glad,” returned Lizzie, who had no idea what Dorothy was talking about. “You certainly look better.”

“By the way, what’s become of Daddy? Hasn’t he got home yet?”

“Oh, Miss Dorothy, I’m so sorry. Sure and I forgot to tell ye – Mr. Dixon won’t be home for dinner.”

“Did he telephone?”

“No, miss. He came home about quarter to five and packed his suitcase. He said to tell you he’d been called to Washington on business and he’d be gone a couple of days. Arthur drove him to Stamford to catch the New York express – he didn’t have much time.”

Dorothy helped herself to a spoonful of jellied bouillon. “Any other message?”

“Yes, miss. He said that Mister Terry hadn’t been found yet. I asked him b’cause I thought you’d like to know. That was all he said. I’m sure sorry I forgot it when you came in, but I – ”

“That’s all right, Lizzie, I understand. You come back for the tray in half an hour, will you? And if you find me asleep, don’t wake me up. I’m tired to death. I need a long rest and I’m going to take it.”

When Lizzie came back she found Dorothy deep in the sleep of exhaustion. She lowered the window blinds against the early morning light and picking up the tray from the end of the bed, tiptoed from the room.

Morning broke bright and clear with no sign of yesterday’s mist and rain. Dorothy remained in bed for breakfast and it took but little persuasion on the part of Lizzie to keep her there till lunch time. She still felt stiff and bruised and was only too content to rest and doze.

Toward noon she rose and dressed in her flying clothes. Immediately after lunch she went out to the hangar. She slipped into a serviceable and grubby pair of overalls, and spent the afternoon in giving Will-o’-the-Wisp a thorough grooming. At quarter to five she was in the air and headed for Long Island Sound.

Half an hour later, with an altitude of ten thousand feet, she was cruising over yesterday’s course above the Long Island shore, when she spied a biplane coming across the Sound. In an instant she had her field glasses out and focussed on the newcomer.

“That’s him!” she murmured ungrammatically, though with evident relief. “Now for a pleasant little game of hide-and-seek!”

The Mystery Plane was flying far below, so continuing on her course at right angles, she watched it with hurried glances over her shoulder. When she reached the Long Island Shore line, it was a mile or so behind and below Dorothy’s tailplane. So waiting only long enough to be sure that her quarry was headed across the Island, she banked her plane and sent it on a wide half circle to the right. Long Island, at this point, she knew was about twenty miles wide.

Dorothy’s plan for trailing the Mystery Plane and doing so without being seen, was as simple as it was direct. The farther end of her circular course would bring her over Great South Bay and the South shore of Long Island at approximately the same point for which the other plane seemed to be bound. She would arrive, of course, a minute or two behind the other aviator. And as she planned, so it happened.

From her high point of vantage, Dorothy, swinging on her arc a mile or so to the east, was able to keep the other amphibian continually in sight. She watched him pursue his southerly course until he came over the town of Babylon on Great South Bay. Here her glasses told her that the bearded aviator turned his plane to the left, heading east and up the bay in her direction.

Below her now lay the Bay, hemmed in from the Atlantic by long narrow stretches of white sand dunes. For a second or so Dorothy thought they would pass in the air, her plane far above the other. But before she reached that point, she saw the other make a crosswind landing and taxi toward a dock which jutted into the Bay from the dunes. Just beyond the dock an isolated cottage stood in a hollow on the bay side of the dunes. There was no other habitation in sight for over a mile in either direction.

“Aha! Run to earth at last!” muttered Dorothy contentedly. Maintaining her altitude, with Babylon across the bay to her right, she continued her westward course above the dunes.

A few miles past the cottage she flew over Fire Island Inlet. When she was opposite Amityville, she came about. Shutting off her engine, she tilted the stick forward and sent Will-o’-the-Wisp into a long glide which eventually landed her on the waters of Babylon harbor.

Dorothy stripped off her goggles and scanned the waterfront. Slightly to her left she spied a small shipyard, whose long dock bore a large sign which carried the legend: “Yancy’s Motor Boat Garage.”

“Good. Couldn’t be better!” exclaimed Miss Dixon in great satisfaction. “Atta girl, Wispy! We’re going over to have a talk with Mr. Yancy.”

She gave her plane the gun and taxiing slowly over the smooth water, through the harbor shipping, presently brought up at the Yancy wharf and made fast.

“Hello, there! Want gas?” sang out a voice above her, and Dorothy looked up. A smiling young man, dressed in extremely dirty dungarees was walking down the wharf toward her.

“Hello, yourself!” she returned as he came up. “No, I’m not out of gas, thank you. I want to hire a boat.”

“Better come ashore, then.” The man wiped his palms on a piece of clean cotton waste and gave her a hand up. “We’ve got plenty of boats – all kinds, lady. Got ’em fast and slow, big and little. Just what kind of a craft do you need?”

“Something with plenty of beam and seaworthy, that I can run without help. I’m not looking for speed. I may want to take her outside – I don’t know.”

The young man pointed down the wharf to where a rather bulky motor boat, broad of beam and about thirty feet waterline was moored head out to a staging.

“Mary Jane– that’s your boat,” announced Mr. Yancy. “She’s old and she ain’t got no looks, but she’s seaworthy and she’ll take you anywhere. You could run over to Paris or London in that old craft if you could pile enough gas aboard her.”

“She looks pretty big,” Dorothy’s tone was dubious. “Think I can handle her by myself?”

“She is big,” he admitted readily, “but she runs like a sewing machine and she’s all set to be taken out this minute if you want her.”

“I’ll look her over anyway,” she declared and led the way to the landing stage.

Stepping aboard the Mary Jane, she peeped into the small trunk cabin which was scarcely bigger than a locker, but would give shelter in case of rain. She observed that there were sailing lights, compass, horn and a large dinner bell in a rack, and two life preservers as well. In one of the lockers she came upon a chart. Stowed up in the forepeak were an anchor with a coil of line and three five-gallon tins of gasoline. A quick examination showed the fuel tank to have been filled.

The motor was a simple and powerful two-cylinder affair, with make-and-break ignition, noisy, but dependable; the sort of engine on which the fishermen and lobstermen along the coast hang their lives in offshore work. It seemed to Dorothy that it ought to kick the shallow old tub along at a good ten-knot gait. The boat itself though battered and dingy, appeared to be sound and staunch so far as one could see.

“I’ll take her,” decided Dorothy. “That is, if she’s not too expensive?”

“I guess we ain’t goin’ to fight about the price, mam,” asserted Yancy. “How long will you be wantin’ her and when do you expect to take her out?”

“Not before nine tonight – and I’ll hire her for twenty-four hours.”

“O. K. mam. You can have her for a year if you want her. How about your air bus?”

“She’ll be left here. I want you to look after her. I don’t think there’ll be any wind to speak of. She’ll be all right where she is.”

“We’re going to get rain in a couple of hours, so if you’ll make her secure, I’ll have her towed out to that buoy yonder. I’ll rest easier with her moored clear of this dock.”

“I’ll pull the waterproof covers over the cockpits and she’ll be all right,” returned Dorothy. “Then we can go up to your office and fix up the finances.”

Chapter VI

THE HOUSE ON THE DUNES

Having come to agreeable terms with Mr. Yancy and having secured the name and location of Babylon’s best restaurant, Dorothy left the waterfront and walked uptown. A glance at her wrist-watch told her it was not yet seven o’clock. She was in no hurry, for she had more than two hours to wait before it would be dark enough to start. So she strolled along the bustling streets of the little city, feeling very much pleased with the way things were progressing.

Arrived at the restaurant, she ordered a substantial meal and while waiting for it to be served, sought a telephone booth. She asked for the toll operator and put in a call for New Canaan. A little while later she was summoned to the phone.

“Is that you, Lizzie? Yes. I – no, no, I’m perfectly all right – ” she spoke soothingly into the transmitter. “Don’t worry about me, please. I’ve had to go out of town, and I wanted to let you know that I won’t be back till morning. Never mind, now. I’ll see you tomorrow. Good-by!” She replaced the receiver and went back to her table, a little smile on her lips at the memory of Lizzie’s distracted voice over the wire.

“Poor Lizzie! She’s all worked up again at what she calls my ‘wild doin’s’,” she thought. And with a determined glint in her eyes, she proceeded to eat heartily.

When she had finished, she asked at the desk for a sheet of paper and an envelope. She took these over to her table, ordered a second cup of coffee, and began to compose a letter. This took her some time, for in it she explained her maneuvers during the afternoon, and gave the exact location of the cottage on the dunes, where she believed the Mystery Plane’s pilot had been bound. She ended with a sketch of her plans for the evening and addressed the envelope to Terry Walters’ father. With her mind now easy in case of misadventure, she paid her bill and walked back to the water front.

“Good evening, Miss Dixon,” greeted Yancy as she stepped into his office. “I’ve done what you asked me to. You’ll find a pair of clean blankets, some fresh water and eatables for two days stowed in the Mary Jane’s cabin. I know you don’t intend to be out that long, but it’s always wise to be on the safe side with the grub.”

“Thanks. You’re a great help. Now, just one thing more before I shove off. Although I’ve rented your boat for twenty-four hours, I really expect to be back here tomorrow morning at the latest. If I don’t turn up by noon, will you please send this letter by special delivery to Mr. Walters in New Canaan?”

“I sure will, Miss Dixon. But you’re not lookin’ for trouble, are you?”

Dorothy shook her head and smiled. “Nothing like that, Mr. Yancy. I just want Mr. Walters to know where I am and what I’m doing.”

“Good enough, Mam. Anything else I can do?”

“Not a thing, thank you. Don’t bother to come down to the wharf with me. I’ve got several things I want to do aboard before I set out.”

“Just as you say. Good luck and a pleasant trip.” Yancy’s honest face wore a beaming grin as he doffed his tattered cap to Dorothy.

“Thank you again. Good night.”

Dorothy went outside and found that Yancy’s prediction of rain earlier in the evening had been justified.

“Lucky this is drizzle instead of fog,” she thought as she hurried down to the landing stage. “I’d be out of luck navigating blind on Great South Bay!”

She dove into the Mary Jane’s cabin and after lighting the old fashioned oil lamp in its swinging bracket, put on her slicker and sou’wester. Then she fished the chart of the bay out of the locker and spent the next quarter of an hour in an intensive study of local waters.

Having gained an intimate picture of this part of the bay, she plotted her course, and checked up on the blankets and food. That done, she blew out the lamp, picked up the anchor and left the cabin, closing the door behind her.

Outside in the drizzle, she deposited her burden in the bow, making the anchor rope fast to a ring bolt in the decking. Then she put a match to the side lights and coming aft, cast off from the staging. Next, she started the motor, a difficult undertaking. At the third or fourth heave of the heavy flywheel it got away with a series of barking coughs. She slid in behind the steering wheel and they headed out across the bay.

Night had fallen, but notwithstanding the light rain, visibility on the water was good. The tide, as Dorothy knew, was at the flood, so she cut straight across for the dull, intermittent glow of the Fire Island Light. The boat ran strongly and well and Dorothy gave the engine full gas. She knew from experience that one of its primitive type was not apt to suffer from being driven, but on the contrary was inclined to run more evenly.

It had been at least two years since she had sailed on Great South Bay, but she remembered it to be a big, shallow puddle, where in most places a person capsized might stand on bottom and right the boat.

“No danger of capsizing with the Mary Jane,” she reflected, “she’s built on the lines of a flounder – I’ll bet she’d float in a heavy dew!”

The two and a half feet of tide made it possible for her to hold a straight course and presently she could see the dim outline of sand dunes. The faint easterly draft of air brought the roar of the Atlantic swell as it boomed upon the beach outside. It was time to change her course.

A quarter turn of the wheel swung the Mary Jane to port and straightening out, she headed across the inlet. Five minutes later she had picked up the dunes on the farther side. With the dunes off her starboard quarter, Dorothy made the wheel fast with a bight of cord she had cut for the purpose, and going forward, extinguished her side lights.

Back at the wheel again, she steered just as close to the shore as safety permitted. For the next couple of miles she ran along the shallows.

“Thank goodness!” she muttered at last. Swinging the Mary Jane inshore, she cut her motor and headed into a small cove, to ground a moment later on a pebbly beach.

Springing ashore, Dorothy dragged the anchor up the beach and buried it at its full length of rope in the sand. Then with a sigh of satisfaction, she straightened her back and took a survey of her surroundings.

The little beach ran up to a cup-shaped hollow, encompassed by high sand dunes. She had noticed the inlet on the large-scale chart, and chose it because she figured that it lay about a mile on the near side of the cottage she sought. And since she had decided to use the motor boat instead of the plane because she wanted to cover her approach, this spot seemed made to order for her purpose.

Her eyes scanned the skyline, and for a moment her heart almost stopped. Surely she had seen the head of a man move in that clump of long, coarse grasses at the top of the incline! Standing perfectly still, although her body tingled with excitement, she continued to stare at the suspicious clump.

Then with characteristic decision, she drew a revolver from her pocket and raced up the side of the dune. But although she exerted herself to the utmost, her progress was much too slow. Her feet sank deep in the shifting sand until she was literally wading, clawing with her free hand for holds on the waving sandgrass.

Panting and floundering, she pulled herself to the top, only to find no one there. Nor so far as she could see was there any living thing in sight. The deep boom of the surf was louder here, and peering through the rain, she made out the long stretch of beach pounded by combers, not more than a couple of hundred yards away. Some distance to the right, facing the ocean twinkled the lights of a row of summer cottages. To her left nothing could be seen but tier after tier of grass-topped dunes, a narrow barrier of sand between Great South Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, bleak and desolate, extending farther than the eye could reach.

Despite this evidence to the contrary, Dorothy still retained the impression that she was not alone. She had an uneasy conviction that she was being watched. She shivered.

“My nerves must be going fuzzy,” she thought disgustedly. “I can’t risk using a flash, and if there were any tracks this stiff breeze from the sea would have filled them in while I was climbing up here. Well, get going, Dorothy, my girl – this place is giving you the creeps – good and plenty.”

The Colt was slipped back into her slicker, and she trudged through the loose sand to the black stretch of ocean beach. Here, walking was better, and turning her back on the lighted cottages, she set out along the hard shingle by the surf.

Several times during that walk, Dorothy stopped short and scanned the long line of dunes above her. Try as she might, it seemed impossible to rid herself of the idea that someone was following. When she judged the remaining distance to the cottage to be about a quarter of a mile, she left the beach and continued her way over the dunes.

Although Dorothy had no tangible fact to connect the Mystery Plane with her holdup in New Canaan and Terry’s disappearance, she approached the lonely cottage with the stealth of a red Indian. And even if this night reconnoiter should prove only that the bearded aviator had a sweetie living on the shore of Great South Bay, or that he was making daily trips to visit friends, she had no intention of being caught snooping. No matter what she should learn of the cottage’s inmates, if anything, she proposed to return with the Mary Jane to Yancy’s wharf and spend the rest of the night aboard. She had no desire to tramp about Babylon after midnight, looking for a hotel that would take her in.

As she slowly neared the cottage, taking particular pains now not to appear on the skyline, she wished that this adventure was well over. She still felt the effects of her adventure with the thunderhead. The tiny cabin of the motor boat seemed more and more inviting to the weary girl. Trudging through the rain over sand dunes was especially trying when one was walking away from bed rather than toward it.

Then she caught sight of the house roof over the top of the next dune and her flagging interest in her undertaking immediately revived.

Dorothy skirted the shoulder of the sandy hill, using the utmost precaution to make not the slightest sound. Then she squatted on her heels and held her breath. Directly ahead, not more than thirty or forty feet at most, gleamed the light from an open window, and from where she crouched, there was an unobstructed view of the room beyond.

There were three men sitting about an unpainted kitchen table which held three glasses and as many bottles. All were smoking, and deep in conversation. One man she knew immediately to be the bearded aviator with whom she had talked on the Beach Club shore. But although Dorothy strained her ears to the bursting point, the heavy pounding of the surf from the ocean side prevented her from catching more than a confused rumble of voices.

For a moment or two she waited and watched. The other two men wore golf clothes, were young, and though they were not particularly prepossessing in appearance, she decided that they were American business men on a holiday. They certainly did not look like foreigners.

Miss Dixon, crouching beside the sand dune, felt vaguely disappointed. She did not know exactly what she had expected to find in the cottage, but she had been counting on something rather more exciting than the tableau now framed in the open window. But since she had come this far, it would be senseless not to learn all that was possible. Taking care to keep beyond the path of the light, she crept forward on her hands and knees until she was below the window. Here it was impossible to see into the room, but the voices now came to her with startling distinctness.

“Why?” inquired a voice which Dorothy immediately recognized as belonging to the aviator, though oddly enough, it was now without accent. “You surely haven’t got cold feet, Donovan?”

“Cold feet nothing! The man don’t live that can give me chills below the knee,” that gentleman returned savagely. “But I won’t be made a goat of either, nor sit in a poker game with my eyes shut. Why should I? I’ve got as much to lose as you have.”

“Those are my sentiments exactly,” drawled a third voice, not unpleasantly. “Listen to that surf. There’s a rotten sea running out by the light. Raining too, and getting thicker out there by the minute. By three o’clock you’ll be able to cut the fog with a knife. What’s the sense in trying it – we’re sure to miss her, anyway.”

“Perhaps you chaps would prefer my job,” sneered the aviator. “You make me sick! But you’ll have to do what the old man expects of you, – so why argue?”

“How come the old man always picks days like this to run up his red flag?” Donovan was talking again. “There’s just as much chance of our picking up that stuff tonight as – as – ”

“As finding a golf ball on a Scotchman’s lawn,” the third man finished for him. “I know there’s no use grousing – but it’s a dirty deal – and well, we’ve got to talk about something in this God-forsaken dump!”

“I don’t blame you much,” the aviator admitted, “but look at the profits, man. Well, I must be shoving off, myself. We’ll have another bottle of beer apiece and – ”

But Dorothy did not hear the end of that sentence. Her vigil was suddenly and rudely interrupted. Someone behind her thrust a rough arm under her chin, jerking back her head and holding her in an unbreakable grip. The sickly-sweet odor of chloroform half suffocated her. For a moment more she struggled, then darkness closed in about her.

Chapter VII

SHANGHAIED

Dorothy came slowly back to consciousness. She was vaguely aware of the chug-chug of a small engine somewhere near by. Her head swam and there was a sickly sensation at the pit of her stomach.

She tried to move, and found it impossible. She heard the splash of waves but could see nothing except the boarded wall of her prison a foot or so away from her eyes.

After a while she became accustomed to the gloom and her sight was clearer. She decided that the rounded wall was the side of a boat. Turning her head slightly she saw that she lay on the flooring of an open motor sailor, beneath a thwart. It had stopped raining. Now the sound of the engine and the gurgle of water against the hull told her that the craft was moving.

She hadn’t the slightest idea where this cabinless craft was bound, or how she came to be aboard. Gradually there returned to her a confused memory of the cottage on the dunes, voices through the window. Someone’s arm about her neck, forcing her head back – she remembered, now, and groaned. Her body was one stiffness and ache.

Again she tried to heave herself into a sitting position, only to find that her ankles were bound with a turn or two of cord, and her wrists whipped together behind her back. She was trussed like a fowl, and by the feel of her bonds, the trusser was a seaman. She wriggled and writhed, consumed by rage at her own helplessness. The only result was to restore her circulation and clear her faculties, allowing her to realize just what had happened.