Puzzle of the Pepper Tree Read Free

sentence as the plane suddenly bucked her tail high in the air and regained in one fell swoop all the altitude that she had lost.
    From that moment the nine passengers on board the Dragonfly lost all traces of dignity, even of individuality. They were peas, shaken in the same pod. Most of them were too busy affixing around themselves the straps that they had scorned, to notice the white steamer Avalon, bound to the city of the same name, when she tooted in salute beneath them as they rocketed past.
    “Bumpier every damn trip,” complained French.
    Chick showed a mouthful of strong white teeth. Five years with the air mail had burned the seriousness from his hot brown eyes. “It’ll all be nice and smooth when we get Technocracy,” he promised. “They say—”
    Whatever it was that they said was forgotten as he braced both feet against the kicking rudder in an effort to keep the Dragonfly from going completely crazy. The floor beneath their feet fell away and then rose shudderingly, fitfully swaying from side to side.
    The nine passengers in the cabin likewise swayed from side to side, much to their discomfort. Ships plying the sky are capable of inducing in their passengers a mal de ciel as much more intense than ordinary seasickness as their speed is greater than that of vessels briny-bound. The Dragonfly was making nearly two hundred miles an hour.
    Queasiness gripped Phyllis immediately beneath the silver buckle of her plaid jacket, even as it gripped each of the nine. But none of them was hit harder than the man in the brown sport outfit. He began to moan softly, in abject wretchedness.
    Jarred out of their shells, the others began to forget their own lesser misery in the sight of his. Phyllis, with the resiliency of her sex, recovered first. From the cellophane bag which had accompanied her ticket she proffered a last remaining pellet of sugarcoated mint.
    “Hold everything,” she called, above the din of the motors. “Chew this and see if it helps.”
    The man in brown shook his head. He was already chewing gum, his jaws moving mechanically. Drops of sweat were beginning to break out on his forehead.
    Phyllis replaced the gum in her handbag and surveyed the sufferer with a sympathetic but critical eye. She was a good judge of types, and she noted instantly the circles beneath his slightly bloodshot eyes, the liver-like tone of his overmassaged skin.
    But she hadn’t given up playing Good Samaritan yet. “Always hits you worst when you’ve got a hangover, doesn’t it?” she observed conversationally to the bored man behind her. He had swung his round, baldish head above the rolled wool of his high-necked sweater to stare with her at the man across the aisle.
    The man with the freckled ears likewise had turned, and showed a face mildly apprehensive. He could have been any age from forty to seventy, Phyllis thought, and she noted again the childish blue of his eyes.
    He spoke over his shoulder, which he had swung as far forward out of range as was possible, and admonished the man in brown.
    “If yu going to be sick, yust use the container.” His deep Scandinavian bass was kind, yet it held an accustomed note of command.
    The man in brown uttered another moan. Phyllis turned suddenly and addressed the man behind her.
    “How about it, Mr. Tate? What he needs is a hair of the dog …” The plane made another series of breathtaking dips, and when it was on an even keel again, the man she had addressed nodded.
    He felt no surprise that this personable young lady with the bright hair happened to know who he was. There was not a blonde in Hollywood who did not know Ralph O. Tate, Paradox Pictures director, by name and by sight—and if there had been a brunette in Hollywood, she too would have known him.
    Tate pulled from the hip pocket of his white riding breeches a gleaming silver flask and fumbled for a moment with its complicated cap and mouthpiece. Then he leaned back across the aisle, proffering it to the