The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1932-10-26
SYNOPSIS

While the newsboys shouted, "All
about the big gang killing" Fanchon
Meredith and man named Tony
planned their getaway. Tony gives
Fanchon $4,000 and reserves passage
for her under the name of Miss
Smith" on an airplane chartered by
the wealthy Mr.. Games enroute to
New York. A fellow passenger,
whom she had previously met on the
boat coming from Hawaii, recog-
nizes Fanchon. She is Evelyn How
ard. Evelyn is going to live with
the wealthy Mrs. Allison Carstairs,
an aunt whom she had never seen.
Fanchon envies Evelyn flying to
happiness, while she is trying to
escape because she was Tony's girl
Tony, who lied his way through life
and whom she had innocently ac-
cepted on face value. Fanchon con-
fdes in Evelyn about her love for
Tony. The police are searching for
Fanchon, "The Mystery Woman"
Fanchon asks Evelyn to enlist her
aunt's aid in securing position for
her, but Evelyn becomes aloof. The
plane crashes.
CHAPTER V
Afterwards, even at time when
she was harassed and harried by
questions and urgencies, she was
forced to confess she remembered
very little of the period between the
return to consciousness and her
rescue. She remembered coming up
out of bitter seas, smothering, chok-
ing. She opened her eyes aware OF
terror, aware of singing pain. She
was pressed in, she was hemmed
down. A weight lay across her
lower body. Hurtingly, she dragged
herself free. The weight was-Eve-
lyn Howard. lying prone, lying
bloody across Fanchon's thighs.
Fanchon remembered dimly pulling,
hauling, dragging herself, and the
inert weight of the other girl-frce.
There were trees. Rough ground.
No signs of a house. The storm
was abating but the heavy rain still
fell. The plane, twisted mass OF
flung wreckagc. Bodies. Carnage.
Horror.
Fanchon got to her feet. She
looked down at herself. In one hand
she clutched tightly, ironic incident,
the pocket book with which Evelyn
had entrusted her. Fanchon took a
step forward. She was, save for a
deep cut on her arm from the shat
tered window glass, save for wrench
ings and bruises and aches. perfectly
and miraculously unhurt.
Evelyn?
The girls body remained where
Fanchon, half unaware of what she
did, had dragged it-lying at some
distance from the plane. Fanchon
tried to run to her, stumbled, fell
from weakness and terror, rose and
crawled painfully over on her knees.
Evelyn's face was almost un-
recognizable. Fanchon felt for one
blood-stain wrist. Her own hand
was scarlet. There was, she thought,
no pulse.
Somehow she got back to the
others what was left of them.
One searching sick glance told her
there was nothing she could do. and
very little that she could even recog-
nize.
The gas, she thought dimly, might
explode, the plane go up in flames.
II was raining. perhaps that pro-
vided factor of safety. She didn't
know. She only knew that somehow
she must get away. must escape.
She returned to Evelyn and half
lifted, half dragged her body to a
safer distance. She knew nothing,
of course. of that treacherous
stealthy leakage in the gas tank
which had crashed them, looking
for safe landing.
Trees. Hills. rolling. A leaden
sky and the pouring rain. She was
soaked to.the skin.
She sat down beside Evelyn
Evelyn, she thought, duly, was
dead. There would be for Evelyn
no happy reunion in the East with
the aunt she had never seen. No
luxury, no breakfast in bed, nc
pretty clothes, no happy times.
Weakly. pitcously, fanchon began
TO cry. She felt something, some
thing that was pity. that was re.
- of human III