Page:Weird Tales volume 33 number 04.djvu/112

 time, please let me take you to the railroad station."

"And for the last time," I said firmly, "I've got to budget my hours. I want to spend the week with my brother, not on trains."

It was true. I could spare only a week from my job, and my brother Bill was getting married, a thousand miles away in Chicago. A plane was the only answer, and Swithin at last bowed his brown head in token of defeat. We got out together, went through a gate, and across the wide, flat field.

The long hangar was dimly illuminated at one end, with only three or four men in sight—mechanics, I supposed. Floodlights illumined a cemented patch, with strange shadows clustered around. No other passengers; I would be alone on the spur hop to Wichita, where we met the TWA.

Swithin put his arm around me.

"Wire me at once when you land," he whispered, and kissed me. It soothed, that kiss, if it did not galvanize. "And now I'll go. I hate to see a loved one sail away from me."

We parted, and I turned to meet an attendant who took from me my two suitcases. The plane was already buzzing, like a huge dragon-fly ready to skim off above oceanic ponds and immense reeds and lily pads. And now I thought, as I tried not to think, of Enic Graf, who had done things to my heart I had never thought possible, who had hurt and dazzled me, whom I was to have married when, a year ago, he fell out of the sky, aflame in a flaming ship.

Dead now, his body ashes where other bodies were dust, he could still make my heart stop, my feet falter, my lips grow dry. Even now I had not wholly escaped his compelling, crude grasp; not even though Swithin and I had found each other, had settled into a tender and peaceable relationship of understanding happiness.

pilot was before me, saluting as though I were a superior officer.

"You're the passenger for Wichita, lady?" he asked in a high, cheerful voice. "We're ready if you are."

"Thank you," I said. Who had said that all pilots resembled each other, with piercing, narrow eyes and square jaws? This was a thin-faced young man, stooped in. the shoulders and as anxious to please as a waiter. Not much about him of Rickenbacker, Lindbergh, Corrigan, nothing at all of Enic Graf. "What sort of a journey will we have?"

He shook his head dubiously. "Lots of clouds off there," he said, and for the first time I realized that the moon should be shining.

He helped me into the cabin of the plane. It was all of brown paneling and wide glass panes, like the inside of a station wagon, and had room for only three passengers. I took the seat behind his, and he drew a safety belt of strong webbing across in front.

"Maybe we'll have bumpy weather," he explained.

And then we were off, off and up. A glance sidewise showed me the lights and the hangar dropping and dwindling. Dew seemed forming on the pane beside me, and the upward slope of the ship made me slide down into the angle of the seat.

I had never flown before — strange, since I had known and loved Enic. I would not be flying now, if Swithin had had his way. I sought for novel impressions, but it all seemed as if I had done it before. Perhaps too many friends had talked to me of the joys and thrills of flying.

The light in the cabin was too dim to