"Coming, David?"
Woolf started to get out of his chair.
"You," I said, covering the mouthpiece with my hand. "Stay."
David looked at Bernie, then shook his head slightly and sank back into his chair.
The old man shrugged his shoulders.
"Why should I expect any more from my own flesh and blood?" he said. The door closed behind him.
A woman's voice came on in my ear. There was something vaguely familiar about it.
"Jonas Cord?"
"Speaking. Who's this?"
"Ilene Gaillard.
I've been trying to locate you all afternoon.
Rina- Rina- " Her voice broke.
I felt an ominous chill tighten around my heart.
"Yes, Miss Gaillard," I asked, "what about Rina?"
"She's dying, Mr. Cord," she sobbed into the telephone. "And she wants to see you."
"Dying?" I repeated.
I couldn't believe it. Not Rina.
She was indestructible.
"Yes, Mr. Cord.
Encephalitis.
And you'd better hurry. The doctors don't know how long she can last.
She's at the Colton Sanitarium in Santa Monica.
Can I tell her you're coming?"
"Tell her I'm on my way!" I said, putting down the phone.
I turned to look at David Woolf.
He was watching me with a strange expression on his face.
"You knew," I said.
He nodded, getting to his feet.
"I knew."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"How could I?" he asked.
"My uncle was afraid if you found out, you wouldn't want his stock."
A strange silence came into the room as I picked up the telephone again.
I gave the operator Morrissey's number at Roosevelt Field.
"Do you want me to leave now?" Woolf asked.
I shook my head.
I had been neatly suckered into buying a worthless company, shorn like a baby lamb, but I had no right to complain. I'd known all the rules.
But now even that didn't matter. Nothing mattered. The only thing that did was Rina.
I swore impatiently, waiting for Morrissey to pick up the phone.
The only chance I had of getting to Rina in time was to fly out there in the CA - 4.
5.
The brightly lit hangar was a frenzy of activity.
The welders were up on the wings, their masks down, their torches burning with a hot blue flame as they fused the reserve fuel tanks to the wings.
The pile of junk beside the plane was growing as the mechanics stripped her of everything that added weight and yet was not absolutely essential to flight.
I checked my watch as Morrissey came toward me.
It was almost twelve o'clock. That made it near nine in California.
"How long now?" I asked.
"Not too long." He looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand. "With everything stripped off her, we're still fourteen hundred pounds over lift capacity."
The Midwest was completely locked in by storms, according to our weather checks.
If I wanted to get through, I'd have to fly south around them.