As the drum of the motor passed and I knew that I was safe for the
moment, I raised my head to see if the devil should be planning to come
back. With joy I saw he had risen to the height of fifteen or twenty
feet. Suddenly the plane swooped up as though Woods were trying to
loop. For a second it tipped sidewise like a cat boat reeling over in
the wind, and then there was the sound of splintering wood and tearing
silk, and the plane crashed miserably to the ground.

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, bu