The message, from the managing editor of the News, was brief and to the point.

“Ralph kidnapped this afternoon. Come home.”

The shocking news paralyzed Tim’s brain and he leaned helplessly against the clerk’s desk, his face drained of all color.

“Are you ill?” asked the clerk.

“No, I’ll be all right in a minute,” Tim managed to say. “Just some surprising news from my managing editor.”

The flying reporter went to a nearby lounge and sat down.

Ralph kidnapped.

It must be impossible; it was impossible, he told himself. Yet there was the telegram from Carson—so simple and yet so startling.

“Ralph kidnapped this afternoon. Come home.”

They needed him in Atkinson and Tim pulled himself together and went to the desk to inquire about the air passenger service west.

“You can get a plane at seven in the morning,” said the clerk. “By changing at Dearborn you’ll land at Atkinson at five in the afternoon.”

“Telephone my reservation,” said Tim and he turned to hasten to his room.

He partially undressed and threw himself on the bed, still dazed from the shock of the telegram.

What could Ralph have been doing; what had he run into that had resulted in his kidnapping? Who would want to kidnap him and how had they done it? These and a dozen other questions raced through Tim’s tired mind. Finally, in complete physical and mental exhaustion, he dropped into a sound sleep.

Afternoon of the following day found Tim disembarking from the mail and passenger plane at his home airport. Carson and the field manager were waiting to greet him.

“What’s this about Ralph being kidnapped?” demanded Tim, to whom the hundred and ten mile an hour schedule of the passenger plane had seemed slow as they winged their way westward from New York.

“There isn’t a whole lot to tell,” said the managing editor. “The day after you left Ralph took one of the cars and headed for Cedar river valley. Said he had a hunch that the bandits had a hideout there and that he might improve his time while you were away by making a sort of a lone search for them. He was still boiling mad over their stealing the Good News and cracking it up.”

“I feel that way myself,” said Tim. “Go on.”

“Ralph never got to the valley,” said Carson. “In fact, he didn’t get more than fifty miles from Atkinson. The first we knew he was in trouble was a report late in the afternoon of one of our cars being found abandoned on a road east of here and on the way to the valley I knew it was the machine Ralph had taken and personally headed the investigation.”

“What did you find?” asked Tim breathlessly.

“Signs of a hard scrap,” said the managing editor. “Ralph must have stumbled on Sam and Pierre or they might have been trailing him. It was along a lonely road with lots of underbrush nearby.”

“Anything to show that Ralph was hurt?”

“There were several bullet marks in the body of the car but there was no sign of blood,” said the managing editor.

“Find anything else?”

“Some peculiar marks in a clearing nearby. They were similar to those you reported at railroad fire and bank robbery.”

“I was sure those marks would be there,” mused Tim. “Well, one thing sure,” he added, “Sam and Pierre are about at the end of their string. I know what they’ve been using to make their escapes and have the means of detecting them the next time they come into the open.”

Tim told Carson and Hunter of his visit to the aircraft company in New York and how the chief designer and Mac Giddings had helped him, of the discovery of the secret airplane factory in the Jersey woods and of the marvelous plane that they had developed. Then he explained the radio detector which Mac Giddings had perfected and his plan for catching Shanghai Sam and his companion.

“It sounds O. K.,” said the managing editor enthusiastically.

“I’ve got a plane here at the field you can equip,” volunteered the field manager. “I’ll have the mechanics start getting it in shape.”

Throughout the night Tim remained at the airport, supervising the installation of the radio detector in the fast biplane which Hunter provided for his use.

By dawn the plane was ready to go.

“What are you going to do now?” asked the managing editor.

“Start a steady patrol of the Cedar river valley,” said Tim. “When I get tired Hunter has agreed to relieve me. We’ll both ride the plane and only come down when we need gas and oil.”

“Won’t they get suspicious of what you’re up to?” asked the managing editor.

“I doubt it,” said Tim. “We’ll be up ten to twelve thousand feet all the time and with the muffler Carson has fitted on the exhaust they won’t be able to see or hear us on the ground.”

“And will the radio detector work at that height?”

“Giddings said it was good up to twenty thousand feet,” replied Tim. “At least it is the best we have and if it does work we’ll soon put an end to these marauders.”

An hour later the silver-gray biplane which they had equipped was cruising over the Cedar river valley. The altimeter showed 10,000 feet and Tim throttled down the engine as he started the patrol of the valley. Hunter, in the forward cockpit, had a headset on and was listening for some sound in the radio detector.

Through the hours of the morning they maintained their vigil and at noon flew halfway back to Atkinson to land at an air mail emergency field and refill their gasoline tanks.

“I’ll take the controls this afternoon,” said Hunter, and Tim agreed to the suggestion.

When they were near the valley again Tim set the radio detector going. There was a low, steady hum in the earphones for the noise of their own motor was cut out of the set’s pickup.

At two o’clock a sound came through the earphones that electrified Tim. Hunter, in the rear cockpit, could see Tim’s body tense as the flying reporter bent over the detector and adjusted the dials for more delicate tuning.

Somewhere below them the motor of a powerful plane was being warmed up!

The roaring in the earphones was strong; then weak, as their own biplane swung away from the source of the sound. By following the path of the strongest sound they would be able to find their quarry and Hunter watched Tim’s hand carefully for directions on how to pilot the plane.

When they reached the center of a dense forest along the right bank of the Cedar the roaring was loud and steady. They were still up eight thousand feet and too high to see what was going on below. Tim took a pair of field glasses out of a case and leaned over the side of the ship while Hunter banked the biplane in easy circles.

The powerful lenses made the ground leap toward them and Tim could see every object clearly. He gasped as his glasses focused on a clearing in one of the densest parts of the forest.

He was looking down on an exact replica of the plane he had seen in the makeshift hangar in the Jersey woods only two days before. The upper wings, as he had expected, were carefully painted so that detection from the sky was almost impossible.

Under normal conditions Tim and Hunter could have flown low over the clearing without seeing the plane but thanks to the radio detector they had been able to spot it with little trouble.

Hunter shut off the motor and leaned toward Tim.

“What are they doing?” he cried.

“Getting ready to take off,” shouted Tim. “They’re climbing into the plane. Here they come!”

“See anything of Ralph?”

“No, but there’s a small shack on one side of the clearing and he is probably in there. We’ll take care of these chaps first and then drop down and see where they’ve hidden Ralph.”

Hunter snapped on the switch and the motor roared into action again.

Tim kept his glasses trained on the plane below. The wing motors had been started and the ship, after a run of thirty or forty feet, was rising almost vertically. It was a beautiful take-off and Tim knew that the master hand of Pierre Petard was at the controls.

“We’ll let them get out of the forest country,” Tim shouted at Hunter. “If we swoop down on them now we’ll have them sneaking into some small clearing where we can’t follow.”

“Right,” cried Hunter as he swung his biplane westward and took up the pursuit.

For half an hour the strange game of hunted and hunter continued with Tim and Hunter keeping five to six thousand feet above the other ship.

When they were finally over open country Tim motioned for Hunter to give his plane the gun and the field manager, anxious for action, opened the throttle and sent his ship thundering downward.

Tim opened a black leather case in the forward cockpit and swung a sub-machine gun over the side of the plane. They had come prepared for any emergency for both of them realized that the men they sought would stop at nothing to make their escape.

The biplane shrieked down on its unsuspecting quarry, flashing out of the heavens like an avenging eagle.

Intuition must have caused Pierre Petard to glance over his shoulder just in time to see Hunter preparing for the final swoop. They saw Pierre reach quickly and tap Sam on the shoulder.

Instantly the man in the forward cockpit turned and in another second a light machine gun, similar to the one Tim held, belched a stream of bullets at them.

Sam’s aim was good and the bullets traced a wicked line along one wing, coming ever closer to the fuselage. But it was for only a second.

Hunter was a master of the air and he sent his plane into a screaming dive that ended only when he was under the other plane and in a position for Tim to pour a hail of bullets into the fuselage of the ship above them.

The bandit plane veered sharply and for a second Tim had a clear shot at the propeller. The bullets from the machine gun shattered the whirling blade and the air was full of bits of wood.

Hunter pulled his own ship into the clear and they watched anxiously while Pierre attempted to bring his damaged plane to a safe landing. It fluttered down like a crippled bird, turning this way and that, now limping along for a few feet and then abruptly dropping away until it seemed inevitable that it should end in a deadly tailspin.

“They’ll make it all right,” cried Tim. “They’re heading for that big pasture,” and he pointed to a large field.

Hunter gave the biplane full throttle and sped earthward at a daredevil pace. They must beat the bandit ship down. The field manager sideslipped into the pasture and set his plane down hard. Tim leaped from the cockpit, his machine gun freshly loaded and ready for action. Hunter, a repeating rifle in hand, joined him.

The bandit plane was staggering down toward the field. It barely cleared the fence and bounced toward them.

“Get back of this ridge,” Tim warned Hunter. “They may try to shoot it out and we’d make good targets out here in the open.”

Hunter agreed and they sought shelter behind a low ridge along the edge of the field.

The bandit plane rolled on and on. They could see Pierre working desperately at the controls.

“The wing motors,” cried Tim. “He’s trying to start them. If he does they’ll get away from us.”

“Keep down,” warned Hunter, “I think the burst of bullets you put into their ship disabled the controls to the wing motors or he’d have used them before he landed.”

The bandit plane finally rolled to a stop less than two hundred feet away.

“Come out with your hands up!” ordered Tim.

The answer was a flicker of flame from the forward cockpit, the staccato of a machine gun and the thud of bullets into the dirt which protected them.

Tim answered instantly, his machine gun tracing a steady, deadly line along the fuselage. Hunter pumped shell after shell into his repeating rifle.

The firing from the plane ceased abruptly.

“We’ll come out,” cried a weak voice and Pierre Petard stood up in his cockpit.

Tim and Hunter moved forward cautiously, fearing a ruse, but they found that Shanghai Sam had been wounded in the shoulder in the last exchange of shots and Pierre, knowing that the end of his career was near, was white and shaken.

“Where is the reporter you kidnapped?” demanded Tim.

“Back in the clearing where we made our headquarters,” replied Pierre. “We didn’t harm him,” he added as though fearing Tim might manhandle him.

“If he is,” promised the flying reporter, “I’ll give you something to remember me by.”

Shanghai Sam refused to talk and Hunter went to the nearest highway where he stopped a motorist. Within an hour Captain Raymond and a detail of state police were on the scene, ready to take charge of the prisoners.

Tim, relieved of the responsibility of capturing the sky pirates, hastened to a farmhouse where he telephoned the story to the News. Carson, the managing editor, was jubilant.

“But how about Ralph?” he asked.

“State police are on their way to get him now,” said Tim. “The whole case will be cleaned up in another hour or two.”

“Splendid,” exclaimed the managing editor. “We’re going on the street with an extra now with the News taking full credit for the capture of those fellows.”

Early that evening Tim and Ralph were reunited in the News office. They had much to tell and they had an interested audience in their managing editor, the field manager and the members of the News staff.

Ralph told how he had been on his way to the Cedar river valley when he had seen the bandits bring their plane down in a small clearing near the highway. Ralph had left his car to make a closer inspection but had been discovered by Pierre and Sam. He had fled to his car but had been captured before he could make his escape. He had been forced into the bandit plane and taken to their hiding place in the wilderness of timber and underbrush in the river valley.

“They took good care of me,” grinned Ralph, “but I realized that when they completed their series of daring robberies they would probably leave me tied up in the shack, which wasn’t such a pleasant prospect. The money they had obtained in their robberies was all in the shack and believe me I was sure happy when the state police arrived.”

From New York came a telegram from Mac Giddings congratulating Tim on the use of the radio detector and adding that federal agents had raided the hidden factory in the Jersey woods, seizing all men and equipment. Giddings added that his own company was making arrangements to take over the plans and manufacture the new plane on a commercial basis.

“At least some good will come from this whole affair” said Tim. “The plane was truly a marvel. It’s too bad that it had to have its first test in this fashion.”

Captain Raymond made his way into the room. A stranger was with him but Tim recognized the man as the chief executive of the state, Gov. Ned Turner.

Captain Raymond introduced Tim and Ralph to the governor.

“When Captain Raymond told me all of the fine things you two have done in capturing these sky pirates I wanted to tell you in person how much this means to the state. It is a real privilege to commission you as honorary life members of the state police.”

When Tim and Ralph were finally alone with their managing editor, they confessed their extreme fatigue.

“What you need is a good rest,” said Carson. “You’ll get the $5,000 reward the railroad offered, the banks should pay you handsomely and the paper is going to give each of you a bonus of a month’s pay. You’d better take a vacation and spend a little of that money.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Tim. “What do you say to accepting the invitation Hank Cummins extended to visit at the Circle Four ranch for a month?”

“Make it unanimous,” smiled Ralph.

“Then you can plan on leaving the first part of the week,” said the managing editor. “In the meantime we’ll see about buying a plane to replace the Good News for I know neither of you will be happy until then.”