5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 78: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

An Airline Pilot Makes in thin air until a patrol of Mexican troops had found it down with a damaged landing gear two hundred miles over in Sonora. It had been sitting there in the sun for three months, fabric cracked and windshield discolored from the ter- rific heat. An eight-hundred-dollar re- pair job, if a nickel. Tobie Ralson, his instructor, had taken the other trainer and flown down with a kid student who had won his private wings. They had expected to make a quick, makeshift repair on the damaged gear and then let Tobie fly it out while the kid brought back the new trainer. A one-day job, and they’d been gone three. Not that Mead was worried about Tobie. The job probably had taken longer than they’d figured. He was sore at him- self for not having kept the trainer here and let Tobie use the four-place job. Student training had completely stopped for three days, and at nine dol- lars an hour for dual, that was a lot of money which Sam needed badly. And all the time that big ship, good only for charter work, stood idly out there on the tie-down line, actually seeming to grin back at him. Mead picked up the newspaper he’d bought in town at noon when he’d driven in the six miles for lunch, but soon flung it down. He was restless, disgusted, scowling. He’d just bid in on a lot of Army surplus stuff, hoping to build a hangar with it, and if the bid was ac- cepted by the end of the week, he’d have to get money somewhere. Cash on the line. The Army did business that way. Out on the highway, a quarter of a mile beyond the east end of the runway, ‘a car swung off lazily and came slowly along the dirt road leading to the office. More students who’d expected Tobie to be back by this afternoon. Mead had been promising for two days that Tobie would be back “that afternoon.” He sat there, almost glowering as the car approached. The scowl] didn’t help his face any in the matter of looks. At thirty-five, it was tanned, wind beaten, and ruggedly ugly. The dour eyes behind the sun glasses had looked out over a Three-Point Landing stick and control wheel for more than three thousand hours. A lot of hours, he thought moodily, and what the devil had it got him? A busted-down airport and a flat bank account. H* DIDN’T get up when the car rolled to a stop. He sat there, smoking, as the heavy-shouldered man with the dark features and Homburg hat got out from under the wheel. The man beside him slid over, and Mead guessed that he was going to take the car back whence it had come. This, maybe—just maybe—might be a charter job. Then he saw the lovely girl in the rear seat, sitting with a slim, dapper, hand- some man, and he knew it. Something clicked. Headlines and pictures in the paper he’d just been reading. So this was Helen Horton, runaway heiress to the Eastern Trucking Freight Line millions! Somehow Mead couldn’t picture the man beside her as the chauf- feur she’d fallen for so hard. He must have been hot stuff in his uniform. “Pardon me,” said the man in the Homburg. “Pardon me,” Sam Mead said. “Would you have a plane for charter? ” the man asked, shifting his raincoat to the other arm. That told Sam that they’d come from the East since yesterday, when the headlines first broke. You did- n’t use a raincoat in the desert very often. Mead wondered idly who the fel- low was and what his connection with the runaway heiress and her former chauffeur. Maybe the butler, he thought sardonically. Anyhow, perhaps it was the Homburg, but Sam Mead just didn’t like the man. “TI might,” Sam said noncommittally. “For three people?” “For three people. And why don’t you put the raincoat in the car, Mac? You won’t need it out here.” A look of irritation flashed across the other’s smooth-shaven face. He shifted the coat again. His lips cut a hard line across his mouth. ‘ a “Don’t call me Mac, mister,” grunted out. 78 LAOO = A (C(O) (C(O)