Free Chiffon Scarf by Mignon Good Eberhart Page A

car) for the big commercial airport where the chartered plane waited for them.
    They did not, however, leave at nine o’clock, for Jim was late. He did not arrive, indeed, until nearer ten and their embarking at the last was hurried. Dorothy Woolen had arrived early by taxi and was already waiting for them in the cabin. A boy steward stored their baggage. Eden had no chance for a word with Jim who went forward almost at once to the pilot’s compartment. Perhaps he intended to take the controls during a part of the flight.
    And all at once they were settled, choosing, as if instinctively, separate seats. The motors grew louder, roared and there was motion around them. They taxied across the lighted field and began to lift, a little sluggishly, as if the plane carried a heavy load.
    Then almost suddenly lights dropped away below them. The motors settled into a deep drone. Pace, just behind Eden, pulled out a traveling rug and hunched it around his shoulders. Dorothy Woolen, across the aisle, turned her face away and appeared to go to sleep as instantly and efficiently as she did everything else.
    Averill was in the seat just ahead of Eden; she rose to adjust her yellow cloak around her, gave Eden a long, wordless look, her small, slender face sallow and enigmatic in the half-light, turned and sat down again.
    Outside the night was black and dotted with stars.
    Inside there was nothing but the sound of the motors, confusing, drugging thought, eventually lulling one to sleep in spite of the things there were to think. The last thing Eden remembered was taking her gray chiffon scarf from her pocket and wrapping it lightly about her throat.
    The plane droned on through the limitless night sky.
    Far below and behind them now was the sleeping city, majestic and powerfully entrenched above the broad, winding river which was powerful, too, and older.
    Somewhere below and behind them was the wreck of what had been that morning a shining silver-colored thing of skill and loveliness. Around it still men with great lights worked; Jim had spent most of the day there, working with them. Until he found what he had found.
    The trouble was he didn’t know exactly what to do with it. Or rather, he knew what was to be done but not how. It made him horribly uneasy. Suppose things slipped up. Suppose the thing he counted on failed him.
    He was uneasy, too, somehow about the plane and the people inside it. What was going on in there? What were they thinking? And what would they say when they knew?
    The night went on; he watched the instrument panel. Once, carefully, he disconnected the radio; the pilot saw it and grinned, a brief lifting of his lip which was more like a snarl than a smile.
    Jim saw the smile; that, too, quite suddenly gave him a queer pang of uneasiness. Had he unleashed something it might be difficult to check?
    Nonsense! That was nerves. Presently he rechecked figures and gestured to the pilot who smiled briefly again. The plane swung a little further west. Due west now and traveling well over a hundred miles an hour. After a while Jim motioned again to the pilot and took the controls himself while the pilot hunched himself inside his leather coat and slept like a strong, young animal—wary and feral even in his sleep.
    When Eden awoke it was dawn; gray light struggled dimly into the cabin and the sky outside was a great, gray bowl streaked with lemon yellow.
    She sat up straighter; her muscles were tired and cramped. She put her hand automatically to her hair and yawned.
    No one else seemed to be stirring.
    It was cold in the plane and the air was like wine, stinging and clear.
    Eden glanced out the window again and, this time, downward. And instantly sat up to stare incredulously.
    For they were flying over the sea. No, it couldn’t be the sea. It was gray, dun-colored, formless—stretching out to meet the lighter gray of the sky. It wasn’t a sea; it was land. But it was like a desert, flat, rolling, with distant,