De Boer would carry out his part, Hanley could only trust. He had
said so this afternoon bluntly. And De Boer had laughed and interposed
his voice in our circuit.

"Government money against these two lives, Hanley! Of course you have
to trust me!"

* * * * *

It was a flight, for us, of something less than four hours to the
meeting place. Hans was piloting, seated alone in the little cubby
upon the forward wing-base, directly over the control room. De Boer,
with Jetta at his side, worked over his course and watched his
instrument banks. I was, at the start of the flight, lashed in a chair
of the control room, my ankles and wrists tied and Gutierrez guarding
me.

Jetta did not seem to notice me. She did not look at me, nor I at her.
She pretended interest only in the success of the transfer; in her
father's treasure on board, the coming ransom money, and then a flight
to Cape Town, dividing the treasure only with Hans and Gutierrez; and
in her marriage with De Boer. She said she wanted me returned to
Hanley alive; craven coward that I was, still I did not deserve death.
De Boer had agreed. But I knew that at last, as they tumbled me into
the basket, someone would slip a knife into me!

I had, as we came on board, just the chance for a few whispered
sentences with Jetta. But they were enough! We both knew what we had
to do. Desperate expedient, indeed! It seemed more desperate now as
the time approached than it had when I planned it.

The weather at 7 P.M. was heavily overcast. Sultry, breathless, with
solid, wide-flung cloud areas spread low over the zero-height. Night
settled black in the Lowlands. The mists gathered.

We flew well down--under the minus two thousand-foot level--so that
out of the mists the highest dome peaks often passed close beneath us.

* * * * *

At 8 P.M. De Boer flung on the mechanism of invisibility. The interior
of the ship faded to its gruesome green darkness. My senses reeled as
the current surged through me. Lashed in my chair, I sat straining my
adjusting eyes, straining my hearing to cope with this gruesome
unreality. And my heart was pounding. Would Jetta and I succeed? Or
was our love--unspoken love, born of a glance and the pressure of our
hands in that moonlit Nareda garden--was our love star-crossed,
foredoomed to tragedy? A few hours, now, would tell us.

De Boer was taking no chances. He was using his greatest