Coming at an angle was another plane, heading directly for the fleeing ship!
Fleming, up ahead, had seen the menace. A skilled pilot, he recognized the danger. He thought, at first, that there would be a crash of planes. Then, as the other ship approached, bullets from a machine gun whirred through the fuselage of Sherwood Mayo's plane. It was The Shadow who had opened the attack!
Fleming saw one method of escape. The Shadow was approaching from the right.
Fleming went into a steep left bank to avoid the attacking plane.
Above the roar of his ship's motor, Mayo, horrified, heard a peculiar snap. Then came a sound like the rending of cloth.
The left wing fell from the millionaire's plane. The right wing swung straight upward in the air. Whirling like a broken toy, the escaping plane hurtled downward!
It crashed amid the trees. The passengers and the pilot were buried in the wreckage. Not one survived the crash. Sherwood Mayo and his evil crew had met their doom!
Harry Vincent, propped in bed with a bandaged shoulder, read the newspaper accounts the next day. There were three front-page stories in the New York journals.
One told of the murder of Sidney Delmuth, whose killer, Denby Chadwick, had committed suicide. No motive for the tragedy had been discovered.
Another account told of a strange attack of gunmen who had invaded a cottage in Massachusetts, only to lose their lives at the hands of an unknown protector who had disappeared from the scene. The third described the crash of Sherwood Mayo's plane. It had been heard by farmers, who had investigated.