Tim glanced at the altimeter. They were still up 2,500 feet. There was plenty of time for McDowell to bail out and float down safely. The dope smuggler poised himself on the edge of the cockpit as the ship started to spin.
He waved at them in sheer bravado and then dived headlong from the plane. McDowell somersaulted once, then jerked the rip-cord. The chute pack unfolded and Tim and Prentiss saw the silken umbrella billow out. It caught the wind and unfolded. Then, before startled eyes, they saw the chute collapse and McDowell plummeted from their sight.
“Don’t look!” Tim shouted at Prentiss. He closed his own eyes, but even then the image danced in his mind. In the single second in which the chute had opened he had seen the long slit in the silk. In some unexplained manner McDowell had knifed his own chute instead of Tommy Larkin’s when he had plotted the death of Larkin at the Atkinson airport. It was a just vengeance but a merciless one.
Tim opened his eyes. Prentiss, white-faced and shaking, looked at him.
“Is there anything we can do?”
“Not a thing. We’ll find out where the county seat is and notify the sheriff. That’s about all that can be done.”
Tim checked their position. The county seat was about fifteen miles back on their return to Atkinson. The afternoon shadows were lengthening when they dropped down on the tiny airport on the outskirts of Walford. Inspector Prentiss climbed stiffly from the plane.
“I’ll find a phone,” he said. “You might as well wait here.”
Tim nodded and cut the motor. There were no attendants at the field and he was glad that there was plenty of fuel left in the Jupiter’s tanks to take them back to Atkinson.
Half an hour later the inspector returned.