Chapter 2: The Girl an Inch Tall

We soared over the divided channel of the St. Lawrence, between Orleans and the mainland. Montmorency Falls in a moment showed dimly white through the murk to our left, a great hanging veil of ice higher than Niagara. Further ahead, the lights of the little village of St. Anne de Beaupré were visible with the gray-black, towering hills behind them. Historic region! But Alan and I had no thoughts for it.

“Swing left, George. Over the mainland. That’s St. Anne; we pass this side of it. Put the mufflers on. This damn thing roars like a tower siren.”

I cut in the mufflers, and switched off our wing-lights. It was illegal, but we were past all thought of that. We were both desperate; the slow prudent process of acting within the law had nothing to do with this affair. We both knew it.

Our little plane was dark, and amid the sounds of this night blizzard our muffled engine could not be heard.

Alan touched me. “There are his lights; see them?”

We had passed St. Anne. The hills lay ahead--wild mountainous country stretching northward to the foot of Hudson Bay. The blizzard was roaring out of the north and we were heading into it. I saw, on what seemed a dome-like hill perhaps a thousand feet above the river level, a small cluster of lights which marked Polter’s property.

“Fly over it once, George. Low--we can chance it. And find a place to land outside the walls.”

We presently had it under us. I held us at five hundred feet, and cut our speed to the minimum of twenty miles an hour facing the gale, though it was sixty or seventy when we turned. There were a score or two of hooded ground lights. But there was little reflection aloft, and in the murk of the snowfall I felt we would escape notice.

We crossed, turned and went back in an arc following Polter’s outer curved wall. We had a good view of it. A weird enough looking place, here on its lonely hilltop. No wonder the wealthy “Frank Rascor” had attained local prominence!

The whole property was irregularly circular, perhaps a mile in diameter covering the almost flat dome of the hilltop. Around it, completely enclosing it, Polter had built a stone and brick wall. A miniature wall of China! We could see that it was fully thirty feet high with what evidently were naked high-voltage wires protecting its top. There were half a dozen little gates, securely barred, with doubtless a guard at each of them.

Within the wall there were several buildings: a few small stone houses suggesting workmen’s dwellings; an oblong stone structure with smoke funnels which seemed perhaps a smelter; a huge, dome-like spread of translucent glass over what might have been the top of a mine-shaft. It looked more like the dome of an observatory--an inverted bowl fully a hundred feet wide and equally as high, set upon the ground. What did it cover?

And, there was Polter’s residence--a castle-like brick and stone building with a central tower not unlike a miniature of the Chateau Frontenac. We saw a stone corridor on the ground connecting the lower floor of the castle with the dome, which lay about a hundred feet to one side.

Could we chance landing inside the wall? There was a dark, level expanse of snow where we could have done it, but our descending plane would doubtless have been discovered. But the mile-wide inner area was dark in many places. Spots of light were at the little wall-gates. There was a glow all along the top of the wall. Lights were in Polter’s house; they slanted out in yellow shafts to the nearby white ground. But for the rest, the whole place was dark, save a dim glow from under the dome.

I shook my head at Alan’s suggestion. “We couldn’t land inside.” We had circled back and were a mile or so off toward the river. “You saw guards down there. But that low stretch outside the gate on this side--”

A plan was coming to me. Heaven knows it was desperate enough, but we had no alternative. We would land and accost one of the gate guards. Force our way in. Once inside the wall, on foot in the darkness of this blizzard, we could hide; creep up to that dome. Beyond that my imagination could not go.

We landed in the snow a quarter of a mile from one of the gates. We left the plane and plunged into the darkness. It was a steady upward slope. A packed snowfield was under foot, firm enough to hold our shoes, with a foot or so of loose soft snow on its top. The falling flakes whirled around us. The darkness was solid, Our helmeted leather-furred flying suits were soon shapeless with a gathering white shroud. We carried our Essens in our gloved hands. The night was cold, around zero I imagine, though with that biting wind it felt far colder.

From the gloom a tiny spot of light loomed up.

“There it is, Alan. Easy now! Let me go first.” The wind tore away my words. We could see the narrow rectangle of bars at the gate, with a glow of light behind them.

“Hide your gun, Alan.” I gripped him. “Hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Let me go first. I’ll do the talking. When he opens the gate, let me handle him. You--if there are two of them--you take the other.”

We emerged from the darkness, into the glow of light by the gate. I had the horrible feeling that a shot would greet us. A challenge came, at first in French, then in English.

“Stop! What do you want?”

“To see Mr. Rascor.”

We were up to the bars now, shapeless hooded bundles of snow and frost. A man stood in the doorway of a lighted little cubby behind the bars. A black muzzle in his hand was leveled at us.

“He sees no one. Who are you?”

Alan was pressing at me from behind. I shoved back, and took a step forward. I touched the bars.

“My name is Fred Davis. Newspaper man from Montreal. I must see Mr. Rascor.”

“You cannot. You may send in your call. The mouthpiece is there--out there to the left. Bare your face; he talks to no one without the face image.”

The guard had drawn back into his cubby; there was only this extended hand and the muzzle of his weapon left visible.

I took a step forward. “I don’t want to talk by phone. Won’t you open the gate? It’s cold out here. We have important business. We’ll wait with you.”