“If you are following me I shall give you a good run for your money,” the woman snapped furiously.
She lifted Nike’s nose, climbed gradually to seven thousand feet, leveled off, then proceeded at an even keel, racing at the machine’s top speed; then she started to descend, going more and more slowly, until the altimeter registered two thousand feet. At that level she shut off her engine a moment to listen, glanced at the chart, and then convinced that the larger plane was determined to keep tabs on her, she shut off the lights, and risked a smash-up by gliding to a thousand feet. She could see the larger plane high and in back of her, the roar of its engine sufficient to drown that of Nike; then she opened the throttle, keeping the head and tail lights out, throwing a cover over the dim light in the cock-pit, and began to climb slowly.
Nike rushed swiftly forward at its highest speed, lifting gradually and Mrs. Pollzoff kept her eyes on the covered control-board, shielding it so that the glow could not be seen by anyone in the air. Twice she glanced over her shoulder and through the blackness of the starless heavens could see the other plane moving more swiftly now toward the spot where its pilot must have calculated that she had made her landing. It was descending gradually and with a chuckle of satisfaction over the scheme she had planned to shake off possible pursuers, she lifted Nike’s nose again and climbed more steeply. At ten thousand feet she came around in a wide sweep then reset her course for the northwest which they had been following since the take-off.
Occasionally she looked at the unconscious girl beside her, and once, when she saw by the clock how long it had been since Roberta passed beyond the realm of consciousness, she pressed her finger over the girl’s wrist. In a moment she ascertained that the pulse was beating, although very slowly, then she drew up the gauntlet and unhooked the throat band of the coat.
“If you die, I don’t give a care, but I’d rather you wouldn’t, for I’m going to take a lot of the conceit out of you and your friends before I get through with you. But die if you want to, for I’ll drop you overboard into one of the lakes. This part of the world is full of them and you’ll go down so far they will never be able to tell that you didn’t do it naturally. I’ll see to that.” She spoke as if she expected to be heard and understood, but Nike had hit a mighty rough place in the air and for the next five minutes demanded every bit of her attention.
Making a careful survey of the heavens and the world beneath her, she bared her teeth and grinned maliciously, because there wasn’t a sign of another plane. She calculated that by the time the second pilot had shut off his engine to descend, if he did, Nike was too far on its way for them to hear its engine, so would be lost to them for good.
“And they won’t pick me up again,” she declared with satisfaction, but although she felt confident that she was safe from pursuit, she made it her business to be alert every moment.
The fact that the night was dark and there were no stars, helped her, for the instant a plane’s light flashed into the sky she would be able to see it easily. By that time a stiff wind was blowing. It shrieked dismally through the struts and braces, and Nike plugged on and on with a wail of protest. One thing she watched with the greatest care was the engine, for she did not know how it would stand up on an endurance flight. But it was hitting steadily, behaving quite as if it had not traveled for hours and seemed perfectly capable of going on indefinitely.
They had crossed the border and were well into Canada when a slight movement on the part of her prisoner warned her that the girl was regaining consciousness. She glanced at the white face, saw the head move slightly, the lips part, but the movement ceased after a minute, and Roberta sank back into a state of unconsciousness. With so many things to observe, Mrs. Pollzoff grew less cautious and folded the cover she had spread over the cock-pit lights, but she dimmed everything except those she actually needed to read the dials in front of her. The wind was shrieking now, so she tried to set a course which would keep her out of the storm which she knew as surely rising, and continued the flight without showing a light.
According to the chart they were rushing over a mountainous section and here she zoomed high, lest they meet an obstruction. Her experience with altimeters had not included the latest model on Nike so she was fearful lest the instrument fail to warn her in time to avoid collision with the immovable face of a rocky cliff. Then examining the chart, she swerved sharply out of her course and suddenly, from far ahead she saw another plane circling in wide sweeps. It carried four lights, two blue, one red and the other green.