Page:Ghost Stories v02n02 (1927-02).djvu/22

"'For the first time in my life, I think, my nerves gave way. Something seemed to snap in my brain. For, as certain as we are here, the pilot who faced me was Chester Reynolds . . . I saw him plainly, but his body was different from yours or mine. He was vapor. Almost immediately after . . .'"

begged others to keep them from chester. But we knew he knew. For, though he carried his shoulders with the grit of a warrior, his eyes could not lie.

THEN, one day, he disappeared. We learned he had obtained leave and had gone to Paris. The fact numbed us with dread. But the news which came back within the week sent us white hot with rage. Chester had found Sonya, in a dance hall in Paris—in the arms of a British officer.

The Englishman was all but dead when they dragged our friend from his throat. Sonya had fled. He came back to us, broken. Then came the last great rush of the Boche before the check at the Marne. Our planes, by dozens and by hundreds, were sent aloft to turn back the invaders.

Chester managed to slip into one of them and take of. Hewitt shrieked the news to me as I was making for my plane and pointed. Paralyzed for the moment, I stood and gazed. Only in the chaos of such a mad hour could he have dodged the officers. Up, up he went! I followed him with my glasses. Then suddenly his machine seemed to die, to lose its momentum and hang suspended in the air. In agony I cried and motioned helplessly.

The next instant it turned and plunged, nose downward, like a plummet.

It was following the sortie, after I had come back from the air, that I learned what had happened. Chester had been picked up—dead. But the wreck of his machine had not been caused by an enemy shot. Something must have happened to the motor, they said.

THAT night, beyond the reaches of stranger ears, we talked of our friend's end—Hewitt and Ritchie and I. And we wondered if it had been Sonya, not the Boche or an accident, that had been the cause of Chester's death. We wondered if he had purposely killed his engine and deliberately sent his plane down in a nose-dive—to bring an end to a misery against which he could no longer struggle.

As that thought flashed through my brain, I straightened up with a gasp. For another came crowding in upon it. Was it because of Sonya, rather than some danger which hovered over Hewitt, that had caused Chester to return in the spirit? Was she in some manner concemed in something in which Tom or Ritchie or I should take an immediate interest? Was he trying to warn us?

For she had passed through the war unscathed. And to her had been forwarded the money realized from the sale of the estate of our friend. Despite what we knew, and suspected, we had not tried to prevent this. Without knowledge of Chester's last thoughts, we could not interfere.

It had been my distasteful duty to complete the legal steps. She had attempted to explain away the past to me.And almost with the same breath she had put forth the appeal of her sensuous personality to sweep me from my feet. But I was not of Chester's type. I had seen too much of the world—and woman.

I had left her when the last document was signed and sealed, in France. I never had seen her since. Others of my acquaintance, however, had seen her many times. And they had told me she still was wondrously beautiful, still madly enticing—that, with the fortune which had come her way through Chester, she always could be found among the maddest of Europe's pleasure seekers.

A few words from Courtney, which I did not catch, snapped me from my reverie. But a quick glance at the landmarks we were passing explained their significance. We were speeding along our last mile. In next to no time we would reach The Maples.

I was glad for the break. My mental reminiscing had become morbid. I had been conjuring phantoms of my own making—such as Sonya. When I learned what Tom actually had seen, a hundred to one the matter would take on an entirely new complexion.

The car began to slow down, then swung through a high arched gate-way and over a gravel road between lanes of great trees. I noted but a scattered light or two in the shadowy pile before which we moved and came to an almost noiseless halt.

The next moment Hewitt came from the shadows. His hand, hot and moist, grasped mine in a crushing grip as I dropped from the car and pulled my grip after me.

"Put up the machine, Courtney, and go to bed." Tom's tone was even, without a note of tremble. But, as the car disappeared, he threw an arm over my shoulder and again gripped me with a tense pressure which betrayed the strain which he was holding in check, trying to master.

However, no further words were spoken until we had entered the library, his favorite retreat, in a far corner of the mansion, and the door had been locked. Not until he had me comfortably seated in a great chair beside him, with only a shaded light upon a table at our elbows to break the shadows which appeared to fog the great room, did he speak.

"Mighty good of you to come so promptly, Aden. But I knew I could depend on you. There's something almost devilish behind this, old man—something which has had me half crazy trying to figure out. However, you understand such things better than I. Maybe Chester will let you know what he wants."

"How many besides yourself have seen this phantom?"

"None, as far as I know. Had the servants seen anything, they would have blurted it. As for my guests—not a word."

"Oh, you have guests?"

"Yes, three. I'll explain about them later. The vital point now is to tell you what I have seen."

"You're right. And I'll interrupt as little as possible."

HEWITT bent closer, and his words came almost in a whisper:

"I returned from Europe a month ago, bringing two guests. This being the finest time of the year up here, I brought them directly to The Maples. My third guest arrived ten days later. There was the customary entertainment—bridge, drives, motor boating—and now and then I took one or another of them up in my plane. It's a new one, by the way. I shipped it over from the other side. It was kept in a hangar built while I was away, out beyond the stables. Incidentally, the place is always locked. Now get this: I am the only one who (Continued on page 85)