Trouble on His Wings Read online

  He hurtled down through a blue void, only occasionally catching sight of the rescue ship below.

  Johnny put his hands on his harness buckles so he could dive out before the chute collapsed over him. The sea, which had looked so smooth, was now a series of mountain ridges and green valleys.

  “Hope it isn’t cold,” shuddered Johnny.

  It was. He went into the depths, to be jerked back to the surface like a torpedo. His chute was towing him, and he fought for the release of his buckles. Before he had them, the silk was soggy and collapsing. As soon as he was free he worked to keep on the surface, wondering urgently if the SS Birmingham Alabama still had a few sea traditions kicking about in an old locker after one big rescue the night before. Would they put out a boat?

  Tossed to the crest and let down like a roller coaster into the trough, he could not see what was happening, save for the growing bulk of the steamer. Was it going to run him down? For the matchstick thing it had appeared from the air, it certainly was increased in size. Johnny hadn’t ever seen anything so big.

  He was growing tired, and the chill was eating through him like knives. Wouldn’t the fools ever get busy? Were they going to let a guy drown?

  Suddenly a boat hook fixed on his collar, choking him. He was towed to the gunwale of the lifeboat and sailors snatched him over the edge, to drop him in the bottom, like a floundering cod.

  “Okay,” said the mate, standing at the tiller. “Prepare to give way. Give way all together! Stroke!”

  Johnny sighed with relief and watched the brawny sailors heave-ho on their oars, sending the lifeboat on its crazy, tipsy journey back to the side of the drifting steamer. Johnny grinned a little to himself. It wasn’t everybody that could stop a ship like that.

  Tackles were hooked into the boat fore and aft, and blocks creaked as they were lifted up the palisade of rusty steel toward the boat deck. The davits swung, first one, then the other, and the lifeboat was over the side and back into its cradle.

  A thunderously scowling man wearing tarnished braid, fastened upon Johnny. “What’s the idea? I thought your ship was coming down, but it’s flown off by itself! Is this some new kind of a ———, ———, ———, ——— stunt?”

  “Johnny Brice, of World News. Get your picture in all the theaters, Captain—”

  “News! Why, you young—”

  “Ah, ah!” warned Johnny. “Ladies present, Captain.” And he slid out of the irate mariner’s grasp and through the crowd.

  As he went, a young lady suddenly backed out of the crowd and appeared to be on her way into a passage. The movement attracted Johnny’s eye and the girl looked as though she was unhappy to be noticed. Johnny decided that it might be shock from the wreck. She was too beautiful to be swimming around in the ocean and scorched by flame.

  “World News,” said Johnny. “We bought some pictures by radio. Whoever’s got ’em, trot ’em out.” He spoke to the crowd but he noted that the girl was more uneasy than before, though reluctant to retreat. Her wide blue eyes were almost frightened, strange in their intensity upon him.

  Several passengers ran to get their salvaged films. There were plenty of rolls, thanks to the penchant of tourists for movie cameras.

  “Sight unseen,” said Johnny. “Five hundred dollars a roll.”

  A little fat man wearing nothing much more than a blanket, but gripping his precious film, stared at Johnny with disbelief. “You won’t even have to see if it shows in the pictures?”

  “Somebody was bound to get some,” said Johnny. “Come on, the rest of you. Shell out.” He took his checkbook in hand and started to write.

  Ten minutes later he had spent three thousand dollars of company money and had a questionable batch of film rolled up in his rubber bag.

  “You’re a fool,” snapped the captain, still peeved. “You could have bought all this when we docked. You won’t get it there any sooner.”

  “Oh, won’t I?” grinned Johnny. “Collect from the company for the delay. World News pays for its exclusives.”

  The amphib was hovering in the sky and Johnny turned to the passengers. Again he noticed that the girl shrank back, though her appearance and not her conduct made the bigger impression upon him. In this mob of out-of-shape men and variously misbuilt tourist women, all in blankets or borrowed sailor clothes, the girl was the only one whose poise was not shattered by exterior appearance.

  Johnny moved over to the rail, taking the captain with him. “Have you got a Mrs. Felznick aboard? A sort of lumpy old dame, I think. She’d have her hands full of jewels if she drowned, unless she let go.”

  The captain had melted ever so little under the persuasive smile of the young man. It was said in the business, that Johnny could talk and grin his way through the place to which all newsreel cameramen probably go. Calling an officer of the ill-fated Kalolo, the captain put the question.

  The man, singed and chagrined at the loss of his ship, shook his head impatiently. “Just finished compiling the list. We haven’t any such name aboard this ship—and we haven’t our passenger list, though there’s a duplicate in the company office. I seem to remember the name, but—” he swallowed hard. The loss of passengers was too heavy upon him, “But I guess she must have been among the dead.”

  “The old man is going to take this hard,” muttered Johnny. “Thanks, Skipper, for the lift.”

  “Huh?” said the captain.

  Johnny had acted before anyone else realized what he was doing. He went over the rail in a long, clean dive, far out from the ship, so as to miss the propellers—if he could. He came up and saw the side terrifyingly close to him. He struck out as fast as he could, rubber container clutched against his side. The steamer swirled on past to leave Johnny floundering and half-drowned in the boiling wake. He fought to keep afloat, spluttering and coughing. The world was a tangle of green mountains, snowcapped with froth, and all the peaks were falling in upon him. He turned about wildly to locate Irish and found that he faced the stern of the slowing steamer. And as he looked he saw a white figure perch on the rail and soar seaward, straight into the propeller boil. He had no time to speculate on the identity of the mad diver, he was too occupied with the possibility that he would be keeping company, in a moment, with a chewed-up corpse.

  “And me without a camera!” he swore.

  The steamer had stopped its way for a moment, but now, with a sizzling sea curse the captain rang for headway and the SS Birmingham Alabama departed from Johnny’s life, just as abruptly as all things parted from a man in such an unstable career.

  He heard an engine barking and bellowing as a cunning hand worked the throttle to keep the nose into the waves. A wing was a few feet from Johnny and he thankfully struggled toward it. As it dipped, he grasped it to be pulled bodily out of the sea with the ship’s next lurch. Ducked twice, he finally made the catwalk to find Irish wildly pointing to starboard.

  “What’s the matter?” shouted Johnny. And then he needed no answer. Somebody was swimming strongly toward them and Johnny understood that the propellers had been cheated of a meal.

  He edged out on the wing and extended a hand, and then, from wonderment, almost withdrew it.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” snapped Johnny.

  The girl he had so favorably noticed was too exhausted to speak as he hauled her up on the wing. Irish was wailing from the pit, madly jockeying stick and throttle to keep the overweighted wing up, crying to them to come inboard, before they all drowned. The ship was going like a bucking bronco, and each smash of the waves seemed hard enough to be the last.

  Johnny gripped the leading edge and worked himself along, pulling the girl by the arm. Presently she was helping him as much as she could, and they came to the cockpit, dizzy with so much erratic motion, blind with spray and half strangled by the blast of the slipstream. Johnny boosted her into his cockpit and climbed in with her, slamming the hood down before they shipped any more sea.

  “Take off!” he bawled to
Irish.

  The amphib floundered, plowing water as it strove to get up speed. Gradually Irish, by a process of hauling back and easing off on the stick, got the plane to traveling crest to crest. At last, with a smoothness which was pure pleasure by contrast, the amphib was in the air, picking up speed.

  The SS Birmingham Alabama went under their wings, the captain shaking his fist from the bridge. But neither Johnny nor Irish even bothered to look.

  The girl was shivering and Johnny gulped with embarrassment. In all the commotion he had not realized the scantiness of her costume. She had had but a few ounces of clothing left when she had cast aside her blanket. The shipwreck had found her in bed and only her silk lounging pajamas had been salvaged. But sea water does not tend to improve the modesty possibilities of silk. Johnny pulled a leather jacket out of the locker behind his head and draped it around her. Then he pulled a thermos of coffee and a cheese sandwich from the seat locker under him. She gave him a grateful glance with those blue eyes of hers which warmed Johnny far more than the coffee he poured for her.

  They were too tired to raise their voices to the volume necessary for speech behind that yowling engine, but speech didn’t seem very necessary at the moment. They sat munching the cheese sandwich, each with half, and sipping the coffee, gingerly held so that the air bumps would not slop it, and were grateful. There is a welding quality to great danger mutually experienced.

  Irish, popeyed from the inner pressure of the questions he ached to ask, razzed the engine unmercifully on the homeward journey. Johnny glanced at the watch and noted without surprise that they had been gone two hours and five minutes from Long Island and there was the East River, swarming with traffic, under them. Irish was volplaning down to a landing, picking his way through the puffy tugs and importantly waddling ferry boats. Skirting the stern of a disdainful steamer, he let the amphib settle. She had no more than touched when he gunned her toward a ramp.

  A moment later the wheels were down and bumping against underwater concrete and Johnny threw back the hood, standing up. “Here’s where we stop,” said Johnny.

  She clutched his hand in terror. “No! NO! Don’t make me get out! Please don’t make me! You didn’t save my life just to make me lose it!”

  Johnny looked at her in wonder.

  “Why did you think I took such an awful chance?” she wept.

  “Publicity,” said Johnny. “It’s all right. We’ll fake—”

  “NO! Please! No! No publicity. Don’t mention that you saw me. I don’t think anybody saw me dive from the stern of the steamer. That’s why I risked the propellers and swam underwater most of the way to your plane. Don’t let them get me, please, please, please!”

  Perhaps it was the tone of her voice. Perhaps it was because she was beautiful even to beauty-surfeited Johnny. Perhaps his thirst for mystery, news and trouble caused him to act as he did.

  “If that’s the way of it,” said Johnny, “it’s okay by me. Hell, I mean . . . shucks, I wouldn’t turn you over to anybody.”

  “Don’t say you’ve even seen me,” she begged, her small mouth quivering as though she was about to cry.

  Seeing that what she had been through had brought her close to hysteria, Johnny was swift to acquiesce. Holding his rubber container, he stepped down to the wing.

  “Irish, you’ve got to take off right now for Long Island. Make sure nobody sees this girl. I’ll be back as soon as I deliver these.”

  “Who is she?” cried Irish eagerly. “What’s her name? What’d she almost bump herself off for? How come she don’t want nobody to see her—”

  “Take an order without questions, for a change,” said Johnny.

  “Okay,” said Irish, after making the effort and winning.

  The girl had dropped out of sight in the cockpit, but now she called to him again. “If you value your life, you won’t mention my presence with you to anyone. They . . . they’d get you too, for helping me.”

  “Not to a soul,” said Johnny, hurrying away.

  “Gee,” said Irish as he turned and started for his takeoff.

  Johnny, water still running from him, got behind the wheel of a car parked in a garage near the ramp. Careening it out into the street he started full-speed uptown. A traffic cop saw him at the next corner, started to stop him, recognized him and abruptly headed his machine in the same direction, opening his siren wide to clear Johnny’s way for him.

  A few minutes later, Johnny skidded his car to a stop before the World News building and leaped out.

  “Thanks!” he yelled to the cop.

  “Don’t mention it, Johnny!”

  Johnny scorned the elevator and thundered up to the third floor, bursting into the office of Frank Felznick. He presented the container with a swoop that flirted water over the desk.

  Felznick, a tall bundle of nerves with deep, electric eyes, pushed all his buttons at once and grabbed the container, opening it to pour out the eight- and sixteen-millimeter rolls. All his doors opened at once and he threw the precious film into outstretched hands. The doors slammed and a newsreel was on its way to the making.

  “You got any word of Louise?” said Felznick quickly.

  Johnny hesitated, and then shook his head. “You sure she was on the Kalolo?”

  “I don’t know. I told her to take it. God, Johnny, you understand that? If she’s dead, I’m the one that’s responsible. I chose the boat.” He rummaged in a cluttery desk drawer and finally hauled out a crumpled and unframed photograph, staring hopelessly at it.

  “Maybe she didn’t take it,” said Johnny helpfully.

  “It would be the first request of mine she ever obeyed,” said Felznick. “She was over there spending all her money on phony titles and I said Paris was no good for her. I talked to her on the phone. Half an hour I argued with her. I told her to take the Kalolo.”

  “Did she say she would?”

  “She . . . yes, she said she would. But to think, Johnny, if she’s dead, my last word to her was spoken in anger!” He moped over the picture.

  Knowing the suddenness of Felznick’s moods, Johnny waited patiently. He doubted that Louise Felznick had taken the Kalolo, knowing of her activities as slightly as he did, through the pages of society magazines. Felznick had hair-trigger emotions and would never pass up the slightest chance to be dramatic about his affairs—after he had taken care of business. Johnny got a glimpse of the picture. It showed a tall, languorously beautiful woman posed with a baby.

  “I didn’t know you had a kid,” said Johnny in astonishment.

  Felznick looked annoyed. “That’s Louise’s by her first husband. Name’s Jack. I—” and Johnny recognized by his tone of voice that here was another act, “I haven’t got an heir of my own, Johnny. I haven’t got anybody to leave this mammoth business to.”

  “What’s the matter with Jack?”

  “Too young to think about. Not mine. Johnny, when I think of how I’ve worked and slaved to build up this business, only to put it into the hands of strangers—”

  “Wait’ll you get old before you worry about that,” said Johnny.

  “I’m forty-eight,” said Felznick, looking sad. Another thought struck him and he brightened tremendously. He grabbed his phone and bellowed for the press relations department. “Boys, get a release out on Mrs. Felznick. I’m broken-hearted, get it? She’s supposed to be on the Kalolo and listed with the missing. Paint it up big. Dig out some swell pictures. ‘Movie Magnate’s Family Feared Dead!’ And lay heavy on that ‘Felznick, brilliant owner of World News.’ Okay.” He hung up and realized that he looked too pleased. “Don’t think bad about that, Johnny boy. It’s even possible that she was on the Kalolo so I ain’t lying too much.”

  Johnny was seasoned to press stunts, but he was slightly annoyed that he’d be caught in this one. “You mean there wasn’t any chance she was on it?”

  “Hardly any. I booked the passage so her name’s on the passenger list. I’ll let it ride two-three days unless the boys in F
rance find she’s still there and ballyhoo it. Boy, that’s publicity, Johnny. I need some good publicity. And say,” he cried, jumping up, “you’re soaking wet. Here, have a drink. . . . Have another drink. That’s right.” He yelled into his interoffice phone, “Call my car for Mr. Brice. Okay, Johnny, that was a swell job. By the way, how did you do it? You’ll get a bonus for this, have anything in the shop. Vacation, anything.”

  Johnny took the drinks. He needed them. Presently the car was announced and he started to the door, with Felznick pumping his hand and telling him what an asset he was to the company.

  “Anything in the shop, Johnny. Just ask for it. I—”

  “Mr. Felznick,” said a dried-up little gnome whose rubber apron smelled of bromine.

  “Wait a minute. And Johnny, I can’t tell you how much I owe you. This scoop is perfect. In the New York theatres tonight, before the news is twenty-four hours old. That’s the way to—”

  “Mr. Felznick,” said the gnome urgently.

  “What?” said Felznick, annoyed.

  “Them pictures you sent in. Every roll’s been spoiled by sea water.”

  “What?”

  “And the hand camera roll was a blank,” added the gnome apologetically.

  Felznick assumed a calm mien. He was never dramatic when he was really mad. “How much did those films cost?”

  “Three thousand dollars,” gulped Johnny, dismayed at the treachery of the passengers. Too late he recalled that the rescue ship had pulled almost all of them from the water. Why hadn’t he inspected the condition of the films? And what had Irish done with that hand camera? It was supposed to show the wreck itself. He was numb with the shock of the first bad play he had pulled in years. And now Bert Goddard of Mammoth Pictures would have a scoop for himself!

  “Oh, lord,” groaned Felznick. “Deliver me from fools. Grant! Davis! Thompson! Stephens! Kennedy! Meet the SS Birmingham Alabama at quarantine; you get a plane and get some shots of the floating wreck; you get some pictures of some families. Kids crying for daddy, and all that. Come on, let’s go!”

  “What about me?” said Johnny cautiously.