SKY-HIGH TERROR

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21051, 1 March 1940, Page 3

SKY-HIGH TERROR

New Serial Story

By RALPH TREVOR

(Author of “The Ghost Counts Ten, “Murder for Two Pins.”

CHAPTER 111. (continued)

“In small towns everyone knows far too much,” he opined. “You’re forgetting, too, that Joe was at least in doubt about the time.”

Curtis Burke looked thoughtful. There had been a good many thoughtful expressions on his face since his arrival at Rendelshaw. He had been sent down at the behest of the Assistant Commissioner ostensibly because trade had been lost of a number of aliens from London, and j since it is undesirable in the interests j of public safety that aliens on shortterm permits should be allowed to lose themselves, Scotland Yard was ' not unreasonably worried. Then the j A.C. had suggested that since he was | going to Rendelshaw he might as well j make sure that none of these misI sing aliens turned up to interfere with the test flight of the new secret machine, which had been produced at the firm controlled by his old friend, Sir Arthur Chiltern. Burke hadn’t been over enamoured of the job right from the start. For one thing, aliens weren’t altogether his particular pigeon. That was Lessington’s department, and since Lessington had gone down with a bad attack of ’flu, he’d been asked to carry on until the Superintendent’s return. However, he had been successful in persuading the A.C. to allow Mather to accompany him. Life, especially in Rendelshaw, without his drily humorous companion was unthinkable, and in these days Burke had something approaching a feeling of horror of working solely with the local police. This didn’t mean that Curtis Burke had anything against local men. He’d met lots of jolly smart fellows at one time or another. Perhaps it was the fact that he had been sent on what appeared to be such an aimless job that he felt he wanted company he could talk to in his own language. “Well?” smiled Macher, “I don’t suppose we ought to be sitting here all day. If the taxpayers knew that we were spending their hard-earned money lounging around comfortable pubs, there’d be another of those unholy flare-ups like when a Scotland Yard Inspector moved from Peckharn to Richmond.” Every Possible Precaution Curtis Burke laughed goodhumouredly. He’d had his leg pulled before about his removal, and oddly enough it always sounded new, but that was because Sergeant Mather invariably provided a new dress on it. “What we’ve got to consider,” Burke said, seriously, ‘is whether Sir Arthur Chiltern has, in fact, taken every possible precaution against any unauthorised person approaching and making contact with the machine between yesterday, when she was finally completed, and to-morrow night when young Peter Chiltern is due to take her into the air. So far as we can gather,” he continued, “he has. He has assured us that the only people who can possibly approach the ’plane are people for whom he is willing, if necessary, to vouch. We’ve examined the hangar where they’ve taken The Mendip, and I’ll wager that it’s as strong as a vault of the Bank of England. There is an armed guard at every corner, and three of them on each door. Under such circumstances the machine is impregnable. I wonder why we were really sent down here, Mather?” Burke added, with a twisted smile “We’re supposed to be hunting aliens. We haven’t 6een any. W6've been in every department of the works, and we haven’t seen any. We’ve worn out a lot of shoe-leather walking the streets of Rendelshaw, and we haven’t seen any. You know, Mather, if we don’t watch out we’ll be going ‘nuts,’ and that’s a fact.”

Sergeant Mather, tall, slim as ever, with his well brushed black hair, had been working with Burke for a long time. He prided himself that he knew the Inspector’s moods almost as well—if not perhaps better—than the Inspector himself. There had been occasions when Mather, in the course -of his earlier apprenticeship, haa been curiously deceived by those moods. At one time when he discovered his Inspector despondent he had become infected by the moody virus, until he chanced to discover that Burke's moods were not so easily interpreted. Burke told him of the famous and now classic instance of the Scotland Yard Superintendent who was never known to announce that he had completed a case, but who invariably reached for his regulation bowler from the peg and went out for food humming the first bars of the Marche Funebre.

Mather had to admit that Burke wasn’t quite so bad as that. Take his present mood, for instance. It sounded gloomy in all conscience and yet. analyse it, and what did you find: nothing more than a plain statement of fact. It was as though they had ben sent down to Rendelshaw for no purpose at all. They were here cooling their heels when, strictly speaking, they ought to be working. No policed I man’s holiday for them. Oh, dear no' i “Now about Miss j name’s story?” queried Mather as I the thought occurred to him. “You [ remember, that bit about hearing two men talking in a cafe? I gather it was because of that that Sir Arthur made Yard inquiries.” Burke consulted his notebook. “You mean, Miss Pentland? I’m worried about that girl, Mather. She’s what I call innocently honest. That’s to say, she’s honest just because she can t help it, and not merely because she believe’s honesty is the best policy. I had a few words with her last night. Nice girl—highly emotional. and yet—O'you know, Mather, that that girl’s got a first-class pilot’s certificate, and that at one time or another she’s flown practically across Europe about seventeen times? Any sort of machine, too, from the big ■ bomber-type to the single-seater Bat i that looks like making flying more ' popular than ever all over the j world.”

"Perhaps when that happens,” mentioned Mather, “those of us who complain or road congestion will be able to motor in peace. Maybe we shall return to the country lanes of England. All the same, Mr Burke, what do you make of the men in the cafe?”

“I'd make a damn sight more of them if Miss Pentland could give me a description of them. All she can say concerning them is that one waj

a ‘biggish fellow’ and the other, well, apparently so nondescript that although sne glanced hard at them on leaving, not the slightest impression appears to have been recorded on that young woman’s mind.” “She’s in love with Chiltern, of course,” mentioned Mather. “Father or son?” inquired the Inspector. always glad to get in a dig at his normally bright-witted sergeant.

(To be Continued)