They were seated in the living room of President Epworth’s palatial residence in Hollywood. While the conversation was in a low tone and seemingly calm there was an air of tenseness that got on the nerves of the speakers.

“So you suggest——”

President Epworth paused, and looked interrogatingly at his nephew, Julian Epworth.

“That we send out a dummy on an alleged trip to Japan, start it secretly but with sufficient tips to permit the knowledge of its departure to circulate. With it send a small shipment of money. Let Billy Sand pilot the dummy, and I will follow in a swift scout plane equipped to cross the Pacific. If the sky bandits attack, Billy is to be instructed to offer no resistance, and I will lag behind and follow the robbers to their lair. When I return we will fall on that bunch with the entire United States army. Believe me I do not speak loosely when I say that the army will be necessary. Those bandits have the best fighting air vessel invented. They are far ahead of anything I have ever heard of in the way of air pirates.”

“And that dummy should carry——”

“Enough gold to relieve it of the suspicion that it is a plant.”

The president tapped the table with his fingers.

“Our company cannot afford to lose any money.”

“My idea is to make the cargo large enough to pay a profit if it goes across but not large enough to create a great loss. If the bandits come I have a hunch that they will be connected with the men who robbed Swift & Co., Ford, Dupont, and others. If I can trace them to their lair we stand a chance to get all that back.”

“Notwithstanding the fact that you are my nephew, Julian, I placed you at the head of our secret service because I knew that you had ability in spite of your youthfulness. I am now putting a grave responsibility on you. We cannot do business while a bunch of hijackers are running the air lanes, and stealing everything valuable we send out. We must stop business or catch the thieves. The first thing we know they will be dropping bombs on our airports. I am going to put this matter up to you.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“I mean that you have the responsibility of catching these men. I am turning the matter entirely over to you for action.”

“Very well, I accept the charge.”

As a result of this conversation Epworth concluded to send out the Greyhound, a large 12-passenger Douglas—old but a good flyer. Billy Sand was named as the pilot and entire crew. After studying weather conditions closely it was decided to make the start the following Thursday night.

So secret was Epworth in his method that he planted his small H.B. in an open space near Hines Field, six miles from the airport of the Atlantic-Pacific Company, and the only person he took completely into his confidence was Billy Sand, his aviation buddy and chum. Billy did not even let Bert Orme know that Epworth was to follow them. To Orme it looked as if an honest-to-goodness flight was being made across the Pacific Ocean.

Billy was instructed to show constantly by night three red lights, one on each wing, and one on the tail of the Greyhound. These lights were to be turned on every night at sundown during the entire trip. In addition to this Epworth decided to fly the pursuit by himself.

At eleven forty-five the young man moved his plane from its hiding place, and mounted into the air. He chuckled as he took the air. His sister, Joan, was the only living person who knew where this plane had been hidden and he felt certain that it could not have been “doctored,” although he had been late in getting to it.

Unfortunately for his purpose the night was dark and a heavy fog had come up from the ocean about ten o’clock, and for ten minutes he feared that the fog banking against the windows of his cockpits would prevent observation. With a snort of dismay he threw open the window, and leaned out. The great City of Los Angeles, with its myriads of beautiful lights spread beneath, and he lost three minutes locating the five-pointed lights that marked the Atlantic-Pacific airport. He was flying low, circling like an eagle, and he lost several seconds more getting to the airport.

Had he arrived too late?

He anathematized himself, and snarled at the darkness that had caused him to be late in getting to his plane. Billy, by this time, was probably on his way.

He searched the sky with his binoculars. The three red lights the Greyhound was to display were not visible. Was it possible that his secret plans had already come to naught? Would Billy fly out over the ocean and rush into the hands of the pirates without accomplishing any good?

For a moment he had a spell of very bad humor; then he whirled the nose of his plane out toward the Pacific Ocean. He knew the course the Greyhound would travel. He had been careful with his instructions to Billy about getting into the air and these instructions conveyed to Billy the idea that he was to give no heed to the little plane that followed him. This meant that Billy would take a direct bee line out over the ocean, and expect him to follow as if there was to be an ordinary oceanic flight.

Rising two thousand feet, he shot forward with all the speed his wonderfully fast little bird could travel—three hundred miles an hour. In a brief slip of time he was over San Pedro, and could hear the roar of the ocean sweeping against the rocks north of Point Firmin. Bearing N by W he flashed over the extreme end of Catalina Island on the north. Still the dense fog rolled against his windows and into the cabin; and the three red Greyhound lights were not visible.

He groaned in an agony of spirit. What would his Uncle William say to this terrible waste of money and inefficiency?

“And what will Joan say?” he asked himself aloud in a strained hurt way. “She also will think that I’m a slip-up.”

“She will say that you have a very fast little airplane, that you can fly circles around the Greyhound, and that now is the time to fly them.” A soft, mellow voice answered his query from the rear end of the cabin. “Fly low, say one thousand feet above the water, and keep your eyes glued to your field glasses. Joan will watch for you while you manipulate the controls.”

A handsome, well-formed and athletic young girl, about eighteen years old, crawled out of the tail of the fuselage, and dropped into the aviator’s seat by his side.

“H-how did you get here?” Epworth blustered. “What do you mean by butting in on a dangerous mission like this? How did you find out that I was going to make this trip? Now I will have to turn around and take you back. If you were not my sister I’d slam you overboard.”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t throw me overboard. If you did that you wouldn’t have a little sister to fuss about. As to all those other questions—come at me easy. Put them one at a time. But before you begin to propound them get into some kind of action. Go down a thousand feet. You are too high in the air.”

This was good sense, and Epworth nose-dived immediately. When he straightened out on the thousand foot line he leveled his nose northward into a vast encircling movement.

“You needn’t go any further north,” Joan remarked casually. “I see your three little old red lights out toward the west.”

Epworth heaved a sigh of relief; and then turned angrily on his sister.

“Now talk up. You have balled things up terribly. When daylight comes I will have to signal Billy to go back so that I can take you back home. You are set for college, young lady, and it is nearing the opening of the year.”

“I am not going back. My brother is out here on a life and death mission, my uncle stands to go broke if this mission fails, and I’m going to help. Get that, Mister Bossy.”

“But you can’t go, Joan. This task may take me to the North Pole, or to some island in the South Pacific, or to Siam.”

“I am going with you or I am going to jump over the side of this plane into the ocean.”

There was a finality about her words that carried conviction. That was Joan all over. She was very quiet, very self-possessed, very polite, but she was like the Rock of Gibraltar when she made up her mind.

Epworth did not reply. Now that he was actually following the Greyhound he did not want to desert his task. He pushed nearer to the three red lights. Billy was purposely running with his cut-outs open, and he could hear the roar of the Greyhound’s engines. This was another evidence that he was trailing the right airplane. At this time all other planes that sailed the air were as silent as birds.

“Now let me hear how you got on to this job?”

“You talk too much,” Joan rebuked severely. “I heard you talking to Billy last night when he came up to the house.”

“Then if you know about it I guess the bandits know something about it also,” he chuckled.

Joan did not answer, and for an hour Epworth ran to the starboard of the Greyhound, and several hundred feet higher.

“There is a shadow hanging over the Greyhound,” Joan observed presently. “Is it a cloud?”

“So soon!” Epworth exclaimed in astonishment. “Those robbers are certainly wise ones, and the leak out of the Atlantic-Pacific Airlines must be as big as a river.”

“I do not seem to get you,” Joan replied slangily. She had been associating so much with aviators and air men that she had become one. “Spring a little larger leak in your gas line.”

“You are now going to view the methods of the sky bandits,” he said slowly, handing her his binoculars. “Keep your eyes fixed on that shadow, and I will manipulate the plane nearer so that you will be certain.”

Within three minutes they were close enough to see a sky hold-up. A long cylinder, tremendously long it seemed to her as she viewed it through the fog, swung gracefully and easily into position over the Greyhound, and for several moments ran along smoothly as if it were a part of the lower airship. Then a trap door opened in the bottom of the cylinder, a rope fell into the aviator’s seat of the Greyhound, and ten men descended quickly. For several seconds the ladder swung to and fro over the Greyhound but when a signal whistle, sharp and clear, rang out from the aviator’s seat of the Greyhound, the great cylinder whirled with lightning speed and darted away directly north. It was swallowed up so quickly in the fog that Joan could only stare at it with open-mouthed surprise.

When she thought to look back at the Greyhound the captured vessel had swung into the course of the cylinder.

“It is impossible to follow that thing,” she whispered in awe. “Why it flies—it flies—like—like——”

“A ball out of a cannon,” Epworth finished. “But fortunately I did not contemplate following it. We will follow the Greyhound. I knew before we started out on this trip that those cylinders could gain a speed of six hundred miles an hour, and my plot was to get them to capture the Greyhound, and follow it. They have fallen into the plot, and now a sky bandit, and not Billy, is piloting the plane.”

With a careful movement he dropped in behind the Greyhound, and climbed up over it. But presently he discovered that he would have to go higher. The Greyhound was gradually seeking altitude in a long upward nose sweep. This movement was continued until an altitude of five thousand feet had been attained. At this altitude the Greyhound leveled out, put on more speed, and darted courageously toward the frozen North. Epworth followed, easily keeping the three red lights in view although the cut-out of the Greyhound was now closed.

“Six hundred miles an hour!” Joan’s voice contained an element of doubt. “How could they attain such a speed? There is no known force that will pull them that fast.”

“Goddard’s liquid rockets,” Epworth answered briefly. “I was studying their explosion when the hold-up was taking place. They have a soft, low, whirling explosion but these men have gone the scientist one better. They have found a method of silencing the explosions and still retaining all the force.”

“My, I wonder where they are taking the Greyhound?”

“We are following them to find out.”

“I am still wondering how the cylinders can give such speed.”

“The rockets are propelled by the steady combustion of carbon in liquid oxygen.”

“I have an idea that they must be taking the Greyhound a long distance from home.”

They were.

Four days later Epworth and his sister, Joan, were still following the stolen airship—and were flying over an unknown portion of the Arctic Ocean. Below them there was a vast sea of ice.