"William Morrison - Death Takes Wings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

“Cancel the call for the doctor,” said Morley. “Call the morgue.”




By WILLIAM MORRISON

Army Aviator Don Morley Was Up Against a Blank Wall in Ferreting Out Treachery—Until a Nazi
Agent Made Some Sabotage to Order for Him!

AR below him, the plane was twisting and from the wreckage more than two miles away. turning end
over end. As he drifted slowly He made his way slowly through the fields that down, Lieutenant Don
Morley heard the lay between him and what had been a new fighter crash, then the roar of an explosion.
Seconds later, plane. By the time he reached it, the wreckage was his feet hit the ground. He
disentangled himself charred and blackened, and the flames had almost from his parachute, and stared at
the flames rising died away. A group of farmers stood at a respectful distance, curious, but afraid to
venture too close.
“Your plane, Mister?” one of them asked.
“It was.” Morley spoke coldly to conceal the rage he felt. “Any of you men see what happened?”
“My boy was watchin’ you. Personally, I ain’t got time to keep lookin’ up in the air. But he said a
wing came off.”
“Good boy. A wing did come off. Did he see where it fell?”
The boy himself, a ten-year-old, darted forward.
“I’ll show you where it is, Captain!”
A few moments later Morley was staring at what was left of the wing. It told him nothing.
This was the fourth plane of the new Wyatt type that had crashed. Eight men dead so far—and he
would have been the ninth if he hadn’t been unusually alert and jumped just before the wing succeeded in
tearing loose. It was lucky, too, that he had been flying alone. There wouldn’t have been time for two
men to get out of the plunging wreck.
“What happened, Captain?” the boy asked. “Was there sabotage?”
Morley nodded slowly. It was so evidently sabotage that not even a kid could mistake it. Four Wyatt
fighters downed in two weeks—eight men murdered—his eyes were smoldering when he turned abruptly
on his heel and tramped away.

ORLEY sat around the conference table with three men who turned their heads whenever his eyes
met theirs.
“That’s the kind of plane you’ve been supplying to the army, gentlemen,” he said bitterly. “They’re
supposed to be in first class condition when we get them.”
“They are.” It was Carter Wyatt himself, principal owner of the plant, who spoke. “It’s easy enough
to talk of sabotage, Lieutenant, but proof is another matter. Those planes were inspected thoroughly
before we let them out of the factory. Are you sure that something didn’t happen to them after they were
delivered?”
Morley laughed without amusement.
“I’ll stake my life that nothing happened to them. I know the mechanics who went over every bolt.
They’re personal friends of mine, and they’re careful about their work. And I’ll tell you something else,
gentlemen. The F.B.I.’s pretty busy these days, and they didn’t have too many men to assign to this job
of investigation. That’s one of the reasons it was handed over to me.”
“We don’t doubt your competence to investigate, Lieutenant.” It was Bracken, plant engineer, who
spoke. “But we’ve had about a dozen private detectives assigned to the job, and they’ve found nothing.”
“I’m not a detective myself, and I don’t promise to find anything. But the second reason the job was