
Chapter III. MURDER IN THE AIR
THE plane was a big, low-winged cabin job, and probably one of the fastest and most comfortable
commercial types of airliner in the world. It was one of hundreds of such planes flying regular schedules on
Uncle Sam’s air lines.
The plane was an hour out of Cleveland, Ohio, bound eastward, and flying high. Pilot and co-pilot were taking
it easy. The hostess, having noted that it appeared no one was going to be sick on this flight, had stopped to
talk to the fellow who wore pince-nez glasses.
The fellow was a wiry chap with a plain blue suit and a bright necktie. His face had a deep tan, and it was this
tan which had moved the hostess to stop and talk to him, to permit herself to be talked to was more like it.
The man looked like a city grifter, except for the deep tan. Tans like that did not come from sunlamps. The
pince-nez glasses made him look more gentlemanly, too.
The man had been trying outrageously to flirt with the hostess, and she had ignored him until this point.
As she halted beside his seat, the hostess noticed that the fellow wore plain black gloves of a very
rich-looking leather.
Privately, the hostess wondered why the fellow had not tried to flirt with the girl in the adjacent compartment.
This girl was as pretty as any young woman the hostess had ever seen on a plane. That was something,
because chorus girls and millionaire’s cuties are frequent travelers by plane. The girl in the next compartment
was preoccupied, as if she had something on her mind.
The hostess happened to know that this pretty girl was down on the passenger list as Vida Carlaw, of Tulsa,
Oklahoma.
The hostess immediately wished she hadn’t stopped to let the wiry fellow with the black gloves speak to her.
"Listen, baby," said the man. "How about you and me going places and doing things after this magic carpet
parks us in little old New York?"
The hostess didn’t like the dead look in the man’s eyes. Anyway, it was the crudest kind of approach.
"I beg pardon!" she said frigidly.
"Listen, sweetie pie," said the black-gloved man. "I’m the little airplane girl’s friend. I like your type. You’ve
got me all up in the air—"
"Then stay there!" suggested the hostess, and walked to her seat in the rear of the plane.
The hostess was angry as she plumped down on the cushions. Perhaps the anger dulled her wits. She did
not dream at the moment that she had been deliberately insulted. The wiry man had purposefully made her
so angry that she would flounce back to her compartment and not show herself for a while.
The hostess remembered that another queer customer had come aboard the plane at Cleveland, too. This
individual was big and wore a light gray-belted combination topcoat and a large gray hat, with the brim yanked
down.
He had, the hostess also recalled, worn gloves, but she couldn’t remember their color. This man had kept his
chin in his collar when he came aboard, and had been wearing large horn-rimmed glasses, such as the movie
stars affected when they wanted to disguise themselves.
The hostess was so wrapped in her thoughts that she failed to witness what was happening forward in the
cabin. It was just as well, for it probably saved her from having nightmares.