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Show V By ARTHUR STRINGER w.n.u.se,v,ce h-v; TOE STORY SO FAR: Just when It looks as though Norland Airways Is through, Cruger finds a "scientist" named Frayne, who offers to pay well to be flown to the Anawotto, a river In Canada's barren North Country, where be hopes to And the breeding ground of the trumpeter swan. This good news bclps to suften the blow when Cruger has to tell his partner and ace flyer, Alan Blade, that bis application lor overseas service with the army air corps has been turned down. Slade explains that he signed up because be thought they would lose the business. Cruger says he has bought a new Lockheed that will keep them going for a while. He and AJan are discussing their new client, who Is apparcnUy not Inexperienced, having re-eenUy re-eenUy returned from an expedition to the Himalayas. Now continue wltb the story. 111 Irawjf 2 "Buyin' diamonds for your girl friend down the Basin?" CHAPTER II "What was this man Frayne after In the Himalayas?" Slade asked. "The Great Tibetan Sheep. Kar-nell, Kar-nell, he explained, was his shikari on both occasions. But Karnell doesn't count. All he does, apparently, appar-ently, Is supply the brawn. It's our man of science who supplies the brain In that outfit." "Wasn't your nature-lover shooting shoot-ing wide of the mark when he went looking for sheep In winter? It's In Bpring and summer sheep come down, anywhere. Every hunter knows that." Cruger's chair-shift was one of Impatience. "Don't worry about your passengers. passen-gers. Your business, Lindy, is flying. fly-ing. And if you feel that dreamy-eyed dreamy-eyed ornithologist Is after gold, like all the rest of them, you'll think along another line when you've seen him. He's different. And before summer's over, you may be sure, he'll be calling for supplies." "Should he go In there to starve?" questioned Slade. "He won't starve," retorted the other. "He's well heeled, his papers pa-pers are in order, and the Royal Mounted have okayed his excursion. He's carrying a lot of equipment." Cruger's glance went to the window. win-dow. "They'll be bringing over their stuff from the terminal any time now." covered old jallopy, probably the most northerly taxicab, omitting Alaska, on the continent For Cas-sie, Cas-sie, who had driven an Arctic dog team in her time, was both stalwart stal-wart of body and resolute of spirit. "Where'll I be droppin' you?" asked Cassie, as they rolled into the town's wooden-fronted main street. "At Dillon, the jeweler's," Slade told her. "Buyin' diamonds for your girl friend down the Basin?" Slade laughed. "There's no such animal," he said, as he waved her good-by. But he was wondering, at the moment, if Lynn Morlock would be paying her customary visit to St. Gabriel's. She'd be wanting supplies, before heading north. For the North was empty of much that was needed there. His present mission was evidence evi-dence enough of that. It involved, he remembered, a wedding ring for a love-lorn mine-worker at El Dorado, Do-rado, a mine-worker impatient to travel in double-harness with a full- about that. It tied up, he recalled, with the hazy story of the Flying Padre's abrupt migration from a once-opulent city practice to the outposts out-posts of the Mackenzie Basin. Lawrence Law-rence Morlock, he remembered, had his reasons for hating drunkenness. For as Slade was able to piece the story together, Lynn's father had been one of New York's most successful suc-cessful surgeons. He had flown high and flown fast, until the tragic death of his wife brought him up short. The enemy he was fighting on a well-fortified front line dropped like a parachutist in his own home. Bewildered Be-wildered and stunned, but refusing to give ground, he had sought relief in over-work and alcohol. But one night when called from a night club for an emergency operation his hand had failed him and his patient, a pillar of Wall Street, had died on the table. That death, the surgeon always felt, was due tp his own drunkenness. It rang the curtain down on all his earlier feverish scramble for wealth. He -cabled his daughter Lynn, then in Switzer- land, that he was giving up his practice prac-tice and selling his city home. He quietly dropped out of his old life and, a year later, reappeared as a relief-worker when a flu epidemic was decimating the northern camps of Canada. His field broadened as he learned the need for medical service along the outer fringes of the New Frontier, and he equipped himself with a plane which was used in many a mercy Might. His daughter Lynn was proving herself a chip of the old block. For when she realized her father was somberly happy in that work and definitely committed to what she accepted as a life of expiation, she quietly went in training as a nurse, equipped herself as a co-worker with the Padre, and joined him in his silent yet stoic campaign of redemption. re-demption. She had stuck to him with a tender loyalty. "If this is going to be a murder case," he contended, "why not notify noti-fy the police?" "It mustn't be murder," cried Lynn. To the man following her she looked reassuringly fearless in the slanting northern sunlight.. They must have been waiting for her in the Blue Goose. The door opened, expectantly, even before she reached it. bosomed Swede waitress who answered an-swered to the name of Atlin Olga. For five years now, Slade also remembered, he had been an unattached un-attached shopping agent for the exiles ex-iles along the new frontier. He had taken in Christmas turkeys and radio ra-dio sets, dancing slippers and tobacco, to-bacco, compasses and clock-keys. He had swapped their beaver and muskrat pelts for layettes and cotton-flannel, and exchanged white foxskins for baby food and safety pins. He had matched yarn and learned how to spot service-weight silk stockings and select slips of the right tea-rose tint. He had sleuthed out needed machine parts and bought cough medicine and kidney pills. So the purchase of a wedding ring, and even a wedding ring of the mas-siveness mas-siveness and diameter designated by the impatient groom, seemed merely an incident in the day's work. He laughed a little as he inspected in-spected the big ring in its velvet box. His smile faded as he looked at his watch. His plane, he remembered, remem-bered, was awaiting his attention. He turned and looked about for Cas-sie's Cas-sie's taxi. He was still diffidently searching the dusty street ends when he heard his name called. "Alan!" "Themselves?" Cruger nodded. "It's too precious, apparently, for our port boys to handle. Before sundown sun-down they'll be stowing it aboard your ship, and when they do you'd better stand by and check up on their kit." "Why?" Cruger shrugged. "Well, let's say it's to make sure he doesn't give you an over-load'." Slade rebuttoned his flyer's coat "I'll be back from McMurray in two hours," he proclaimed. "And I'll check and double-check on that wan-stalker." Cruger glanced up at the route map on the wall. "An early start tomorrow should give you light for landing. It won't be easy flying, remember." "I'll fly baby elephants to the Pole," Slade announced, "if it's going go-ing to keep this outfit on its feet." Cruger's quiet smile was that of a man with a trump card still in his hand. "But the important point," he pursued, pur-sued, "is that you're not the only one who didn't get to the Front this throw." He paused for a moment as though to give timing to a message mes-sage too important to be lightly uttered. ut-tered. "I thought you'd like to know that Doctor Morlock's daughter didn't swing in with that Red Cross unit. "Where is he?" the girl asked of the pock-marked man in his shirt sleeves. He closed and locked the door before answering. "In here," he said with a side glance of hostility as Slade pushed in after the girl. The sound of a phonograph blaring out dance music in some outer room suddenly came to a stop. A bold-eyed woman, heavily heav-ily rouged, backed away at the peremptory per-emptory hand wave of the proprietor, proprie-tor, who opened a second door and pointed inside, without advancing. His first impression of the room, as he entered, was one of blood. There was blood on the cover of an overturned table, on the floor and on the summer parka worn by a figure half-lying and half-crouching along a stained wicker couch splashed with red. Slade couldn't tell whether the man in the parka was being held up or held down by an aproned and yellow-faced bartender who sat with one arm about the wounded man and looked up at them with the round 1 eyes of a bewildered rabbit It quickened his pulse. For he knew that calling voice belonged to Lynn Morlock, even before he caught sight of her between the loungers fringing the shop fronts. She was, he saw, almost running along the none too even sidewalk. Her hair, close-clipped and boy-like, shone mahogany-brown in the sunlight sun-light and she carried her familiar first-aid bag. There was neither alarm nor excitement on her face. But Nthere was resolution in her stride. "Alan, come with me, quick," she called over her shoulder, without slackening her pace. "What's happened?" Alan asked as he swung in beside her. "There's been a fight," she said, between breaths. "There's a man bleeding to death. At least that's the word they sent" "Where is he?" asked Slade. They turned up a side street, where the idlers, both Indian and white, could no longer gape after them. "At the Blue Goose." was Lvnn's Slade turned away and looked at the wall map. It was taking time, apparently, for information so unexpected un-expected to be absorbed. "How do you know that?" Slade demanded with just a trace of a tremor in his voice. The older man's half-smile was quickly smothered. "It came from Morlock himself. He'd the offer of a chair in medicine medi-cine at the University of Manitoba and that girl of his was set on him getting out of frontier-life flying. I guess she felt he'd weaken if she stepped out and went over-seas. But the old boy stuck to his guns. He said he was needed in the North and would die with his boots on. And that meant only one thing for a girl like that. It meant she had to stick to her dad." Even Cruger could smile a little at the newer light that crept into the Viking eyes. "So she's not going to England," Slade repeated. as the girl with the bag ran to his side. It wasn't until she pushed the aproned man away that Slade recognized the face above the parka. It was the parka that he recognized recog-nized first. He promptly identified it as the garment that had been given to Slim Tumstead by Air-Commander Rollins-Benson on the occasion of a bush-fire flight in which Slim had proved both his flying ability and his fearlessness. It was Slim Tumstead looking up at him with a one-sided and slightly sardonic smile. "I'm all right," he stubbornly protested. But his voice was thin with weakness. "Let's see," challenged Lynn, with her bag already open. Each movement was quick and decisive as she examined her patient. "Get me water," she commanded, without with-out turning her head, "water that' been boiled." (TO BE CONTINUED) answer. "It sounds like a severed artery." Slade knew enough of frontier-town frontier-town gambling joints and gin mills disguised as dance halls to realize what they might have to face. "That's no place for a girl," he contended. "I've been In worse," was Lynn's quick reply. "And you may have to help me." "Why isn't the Padre attending to this?" he asked as he hurried on beside her. A shadow crossed the girl's face. "You know how Father feels about drinking." "But even a drunken man can die," protested Slade. "I'm afraid Father would let him," was the girl's answer to that "He's no longer a doctor, where alcoholics al-coholics are concerned. He's washed his hands of them. And nothing will ever change him." Slade remembered something "iNo, sne s nying to coronation with her father tomorrow," Cruger said, as he picked up the envelope. Slade's glance remained preoccupied. preoccu-pied. He had the look of a tired swimmer who had unexpectedly found solid ground under his feet Even the sunlight outside, when he swung open the door, seemed a little lit-tle brighter. For there wasn't, after all, to be a wide Atlantic between him and Eynn Morlock. He drew a deep breath and turned back to Cruger. "You're right about this outfit," he said. "We're going to keep her going." He swung the door shut on Cruger's Cru-ger's smile. Alan Slade, jolting over the three-mile three-mile trail between McMurray and Waterways, sat back in Cassie Olin's taxi and let the road and Cassie Cas-sie do their worst. But Cassie, he saw, knew how to handle her dust- |