Eagles of the Sky With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes

Excerpt

CHAPTER I
READY FOR BUSINESS

When the “Big Boss” at Secret Service Headquarters in Washington sent Jack Ralston and his pal, Gabe Perkiser, to Florida with orders to comb the entire Gulf Coast from the Ten Thousand Islands as far north as Pensacola and break up the defiant league of smugglers, great and small, that had for so long been playing a game of hide-and-seek with the Coast Guard revenue officers, the task thus assigned was particularly to the liking of those two bold and dependable sky detectives.

They loved nothing better than action–never felt entirely happy unless matching their wits against those of skulking law breakers–while to sup with danger, and run across all manner of thrilling adventures–that was a daily yearning with them.

Since so much of their work must of necessity take them over that vast stretch of salt water lying between the Florida coast and the far distant Mexican shore line, the wise men in Washington had supplied Jack with a speedy plane of the amphibian type, capable of making landings either on shore or in any of the numerous inlets dotting the coast, it being equipped with both aluminum pontoons and adjustable wheels.

Jack had spent several days at the Capital, conferring with various high officials, being thus put in possession of every available scrap of reliable information at the disposal of the Department.

He had also been given documents of authority, calling upon each and every Government agent in all Florida to afford him any possible assistance, should he require such backing while learning the identity of the “higher-up” capitalists guilty of financing the secret clique that had been giving the revenue men such trouble recently.

The fact was well known that besides the valuable caches of unset diamonds, and other precious stones, coming surreptitiously into the country without yielding the customary heavy duty imposed on them, there was also being smuggled into the innumerable lonely bayous and inlets of the lengthy coast line vast quantities of contraband in violation of the eighteenth amendment, also batches of undesirable aliens like Chinese, anarchists and Bolsheviks, such riffraff as Uncle Sam had been holding off under a strict ban.

So, too, it was understood that besides the fleet of swift, small power-boats employed night after night in this profitable game of mocking the Treasury Department, latterly the smugglers had been freighting their cargoes by means of airplanes that would be able to land the contraband stuff in lonely places far back of the low coast sections.

It was therefore a monumental task, covering a wide field of operation and with constant peril hovering over the heads of the two adventurous aviators who had undertaken so joyously to spread the net and draw its meshes about the offenders.

Their preparations having been completed, they were waiting in an isolated little bayou surrounded by inaccessible swamps and mangrove islands ready to take off with the coming of the friendly shades of night.

To those who enjoyed reading the preceding volume of this series of aviation adventures, where Jack and “Perk,” in order to get their man–one of the boldest and most successful counterfeiters known in the annals of crime–found it necessary to fly across the Mexican boundary line and snatch their victim out of an extinct volcano crater that had once been the fort of the fierce Yaqui Indian tribe, will think it a rather far cry for the Sky Detectives to be detailed to active duty some thousands of miles distant, and in the extreme southeastern corner of the republic.

So it always must be with the famous Secret Service men–their motto, like that of our present day Boy Scouts, is “Be Prepared”; for day and night they must hold themselves in readiness to start to the other side of the world if necessary–China, Japan, India, the Philippines perhaps–detailed to fetch back some notorious malefactor wanted by Uncle Sam, and information of whose presence in distant lands has reached Headquarters....