“There’s the third package,” he told himself. “Mr. Wiseman said this one contained a mystery. ‘A strange, wild-eyed man in shabby attire brought it to the office. He placed a twenty dollar gold piece on the counter, paid the highest possible insurance fee upon the package, which is heavily sealed with wax, and then without a word he walked away.’ Those were Mr. Wiseman’s very words.”
But now the time for reflection was past. The time for action had come. The voice was once more in his ear. Gruffer than before, it set aside all pretense.
“You’ll come down, or we’ll bring you down like a crippled wild goose!”
Curlie shuddered. What was this, a plain robbery, or did that mysterious package contain some terrible secret?
He was alone in the dark. The hour neared midnight. He was high in the air. What could he do?
“The mail bag is within my reach. I could swing out with it and jump. Parachute would save the treasure and me,” he thought.
But would it? The parachute was large and white. Even in the night it might be seen.
“Then they’d land and catch me. I’d crash my plane for nothing, and all that mail would probably be burned.”
Crash the plane! No. He couldn’t do that. That old plane meant much to him. In it he had outridden many a wild storm.
Then, too, there was the Air Mail pilots’ slogan: “The mail must go through.”