CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. RED CAPITULATES
We hurried over to the smashed plane, the coroner leading. Woods, in his effort to run me down, had forgotten the telegraph wires at the end of the field. Too late, he had seen them and vainly tried to lift his machine clear of them. The wires had caught a wing and sent him crashing to the earth.
We found him underneath the engine, quite dead, the fall having killed him instantly. We made an improvised litter out of one of the wings and carried him to the nearest hangar. As we placed an overcoat over the shapeless form, I heard a sniffle behind me and found the red-haired mechanician at my side.
"You didn't get him, you dirty cops. He got away from you, after all." "Yes, he's safe now," I murmured. "Sure! An' he would 'a' been always if he hadn't been daff' over women. He never had no luck when he played the women. His takin' that skirt out this afternoon was what give him the hoodoo." The coroner came over to him.
"Now that we can't get him, will you tell us about the night Mr. Woods killed Mr. Felderson?" The mechanic showed himself distinctly hostile to the coroner.
"Oh, no you don't, you fly cop! Think I'll spill the beans and get meself in Dutch? You can go to hell!" "I'll promise you won't be prosecuted if you will tell us what happened that night." He looked us over suspiciously, but apparently reassured, he said: "Well, that's fair enough, especially since I didn't have nothin' to do with the croakin', although I know pretty much how it happened. "The boss there come over to the plant—the International plant, you know—about two weeks ago and had me bring that plane out there over here. We always got along together, the boss and me. Wasn't pals or anything like that, but we understood each other. I'd seen, for a couple of months, that the boss had somethin' on his mind. I knew it wasn't any jane, because they never worried him none. He worried them a lot, but somehow he just took 'em as they come. He talked with me some—he claimed I was the best mechanician he had over there,—and I figured it out at last that what he was worryin' about was money. He spent a lot, an' was free an' easy, an' it worried him to figure that he was goin' to go bu'st pretty soon. The first day I was here, he brought a woman out, a swell looker—I didn't find out till afterwards that it was Felderson's wife—an' he kinda kidded her along about helpin' him over the rough spots by lendin' him a little of her dough. I sort of figured out he was goin' to run off with the woman, 'cause the next morning he come out and said we could take a month's lay-off if we wanted to, as he was goin' on his honeymoon. I thought he was goin' to take me along, but when he said that, I made up my mind to beat it back to the plant to keep from goin' bugs watchin' them other guys callin' theirselves mechanics, tinkerin' around them other busses when they didn't know their job. It's a darn wonder more of these fool dudes out here ain't been killed. "Somethin' must 'a' slipped up, because he come out late that afternoon cussin' like the devil. He had one whale of a temper when he got started, the boss did. He took me with him in the buss and we cruised around the country for a while. Every time he spotted a straight stretch of road without too many trees, he'd come down and look it over. Finally we found that straight stretch of road out by the golf links at the country-club, an' that must 'a' suited him 'cause that was the only place we come to after that. He mounted that machine gun in there on the plane, an' it was then I decided he was a-goin' to slip somepin over on somebody. He didn't take me with him after that, but two or three times when he come into the field he'd swoop down on that there square target he made and put over in the corner and I'd hear the ratti-tat-tat of that machine gun a-goin'. I ast him what was he goin' to do with it an' he said: 'We're a-goin' out one of these nights and kill a skunk.' "The afternoon of the night we went out to the country-club he come out here, kind of excited, but cool, if you know what I mean. You could see they was somethin' on his mind, but just the same he had his head with him every minute. Get me? He told me, as soon as it begin to get dusk, to take the plane out to the country-club and land on the links, about a half a mile from the club house, an' when I got there to flash my pocket lamp, until I see him light a cigarette on the club-house porch. I done as he told me, an' he come out. He wasn't dressed in a jumper, but just had a cap an' a rain-coat over his clothes. He told me to stay there, and after I started the engine, he streaked away. He left about eight o'clock and was back in fifteen minutes. He slipped me a fifty and told me to take the plane back an' to forgit 'at I'd brought it out. I ast him had he killed his skunk an' he laughed an' said, 'I made him pretty sick anyway.' I'd told the boys to have the flares out at the park as I was a-goin' to test the machine, so I didn't have no trouble in landin'." He stopped and rolled a cigarette.
"That's all you know, is it?" the coroner asked.
"That's all I know, so help me Henry—but ain't it enough?" He looked around at the three of us who had been listening intently to his story.
"I should say it is," said Simpson.
