Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

AIR ADVENTURER Field when he had awakened to find some one searching his desk. He was possessed with the same awareness now. A minute or two went by and he could feel the cold perspira- tion creeping out on his body. He shifted his position ever so little and slipped his hand under his pillow to get his automatic. Silence. Stark, terrible silence. He wanted to shout, to leap up and close in with whatever was in the room. The thought of cold steel sent icicles run- ning up and down his back. A board creaked in a corner of the room, and he trained his gun waiting for another sound. Then a sharp explosion came from the room next to him, Bill’s room. It was followed by another, and another. He could hear the soft pat-pat of feet and voices speaking in Malagasy in the hall- way. He jumped from his bed, bending low and started toward the door. He heard Bill’s voice in the hall and heard him pounding furiously on the door. Hands and arms suddenly closed in on him from all sides. Bands of steel encircled his wrists and pushed his gun downward. His finger contracted on the trigger once before it was torn from his grasp. A hand covered with a rag was clapped over his mouth and nose as his arms were twisted behind his back. He kicked a man in front of him in the stomach with his bare foot. One arm slipped free and he swung his fist wildly. It cracked on something soft. A voice groaned and cursed in a lan- guage he could not understand. Then his unseen enemies were all over him, beating him down, smothering him. Half a dozen hands closed on his throat and neck. His senses began to reel from the sweet, nauseating drug that was pressed against his face. Bill’s shouts and plunges at the door became fainter and fainter as his des- perate struggles diminished. Every- BB—S5 65 thing seemed to explode in his head. He could feel himself being lifted into the air to float away into space When Bill burst through the door with an automatic in his hand and a-hali dozen native hotel attendants behind him, the room looked as though it had been visited by a Kansas tornado. Clothes, shoes, chairs and tables were scrambled together. In two places Bill found little pools of blood, and he swore softly between clenched teeth. As Sandy and Red and Cy joined him he found a rope ladder that hung out of the window from hooks caught under the sill. The ladder dangled to a sloping roof ten feet below, from which there was a clear drop of another ten feet to the courtyard. By the time Bill got down the ladder no sound was audible in the courtyard. It had only been a matter of a few min- utes since he had heard some one open- ing the door of his room. He waited until he thought the door was half open then he had reached for his automatic and poured three shots at it in the dark. He had heard a stifled scream and the door had banged shut before he could get to his feet. When he rushed into the hallway it was to find it dark and empty except for a few hotel employees who had been aroused by the shots and were tearing up the stairs toward him. They had heard the terrific scuffling in Shorty’s room and had tried to burst in the door. But they had been too late. Bill crouched in the little courtyard of the hotel trying to pick out the dim obstacles before him in the darkness. The attack had taken so little time and had been so perfectly executed he was still half dazed. One circuit of the courtyard con- vinced him that Shorty had been taken through the gate. He sped through it as Red and Sandy joined him. He ran down an alleyway with the cobblestones oO Coll clo@olx< CO