CONTENTS
[I. On Secret Duty]
[II. The Air Monster]
[III. Mystery Plane]
[IV. Danger in the Air]
[V. No Clues]
[VI. The Night Alarm]
[VII. Suspicions]
[VIII. Mysterious Moves]
[IX. On the East Side]
[X. The Neptune Sails]
[XI. In the Hangar]
[XII. Trial Flight]
[XIII. Wings of the Storm]
[XIV. Flood Relief]
[XV. In Northern Seas]
[XVI. Rescue in the Arctic]
AIR MONSTER
CHAPTER I
On Secret Duty
Lights glowed brightly in the large, bare tower room which was the headquarters of the Gerka, secret police organization of Rubania. It was midnight and a meeting of the supreme council of the Gerka at that hour could mean only the most urgent business.
Residents of Kratz, the capital of Rubania, who happened to be in the streets that night and who saw the lights in the tower of the government palace shook their heads and hurried on their way with fear in their hearts for the Gerka was the most dangerous organization in all Rubania and for that matter one of the most powerful groups of secret police in the whole world.
The creation of the new Europe which had followed the World War had resulted in the formation of Rubania, a rich, fertile land east of Prussia. It had been made a free state but Alex Reikoff, an unscrupulous dictator with a lust for world power, had risen to supreme command of the government, crushing out all opposition. He had built up the armed forces of his country until Rubania was recognized as a world power, feared for the might of its armada of submarines and the power of its fleets of airplanes, for Reikoff believed in the power of aircraft as an instrument of war.
That the midnight meeting of the Gerka was of unusual importance was borne out when Reikoff himself strode into the room and took his place at the head of the table around which a half dozen men were seated. They looked expectantly at him. Reikoff, short and dark with closely cropped hair, stroked his bristly mustache. He looked intently at the men before him. One after another met his gaze until his eyes looked into those of Serge Larko, in the uniform of a lieutenant of the air force.
“Ah, Serge,” said Reikoff, “I’m glad that you could leave your beloved flying machines long enough to answer my call.”
“Yes, Excellency,” smiled Serge. “I came at once but there is much that remains to be done on the new XO5 before it will be ready for the long flights for which it has been designed.”