Boy's Cinema (1939-40)

« Every Tuesday Vivid drama and high adventure surge through the pages of this pulsating serial story of the men who keep watch and ward on the American seaboard READ THIS FIRST Boroff, outlawed scientist, international menace and creator of a deadly vapoxir tohich he calls disintegrating gas, agrees to supply the compound to a foreign Power known as Morovania. Arnatite, a substance found only in the United States, is the basic chemical of the terrible gas Boroff has invented. He has obtained a large quantity of that sub- stance, and as its export is rigorously controlled by the America?i Goveriiment. he attempts to smuggle it to Europe aboard the Carfax, a tramp steamer. But the Carfax strikes a reef off the Maine seaboard, and Boroff is recognised lohen he and the creio are rescued by U.S. coastguardsmen from a station near the city of Portland. He only succeeds in making his escape after killiiig a young ensign named Jim Kent, whose elder brother Terry, a lieu- tenant in the Coast Guard, vows to track Boroff down. Through Snapper McGee, Terry obtains a clue that takes him to a small railroad station known as Pier-Port. Here he comes across three men who are in charge of a consignment of electric light bulbs which are to be sent to Canada by train and thence shipped to Europe. The conduct of those men arouses Terry's suspiciojis, and he divines that the electric light globes are in reality cun- ningly devised bo7nbs laden with the dis- integrating gas Boroff has invented. Convinced of this, he seizes one of the men—a rogue by the name of Black, whose comrades have meanwhile taken fright and made themselves scarce. Now Read On ESCAPE WHILE Terry held the man known as Black in a vice-like grip. Snapper McGee and the stationmaster of the little railroad depot of Pier-Port looked on in a bewUdered fashion, and they were still gaping at the revenue officer and his prisoner when suddenly two shots rang out. They were shots fired by Black's cronies. These had sprinted northward in a panic along a highway that ran parallel with the railroad tracks, but, glancing back when they had covered a distance of seventy or eighty yards, the pair of them had halted on perceiving that their accom- plice was in custody, and each had drawn a six-gun from his hip-pocket. The bullets discharged by them were aimed at Terry, and, though neither slug hit him, they were nevertheless far from ineffective. For, whistling past the Coast Guard lieutenant viciously, they ripped into one of the stacked cardboard cartons that contained the supposed electric light bulbs. Terry heard the splintering of glass as the shots tore into the receptacle, and with an exclamation he spun round to set eyes on two neat holes that had been drilled through the box. Almost in the same instant he beheld twin streams of vapour issuing from those holes, and in- voluntarily he relaxed his grasp on Black. Quick to profit by that circumstance the rogue broke away from his captor and took to his heels, careering down the road along which his comrades had fled. As for Terry, he did not attempt to pursue Black, but. perceiving that the vapour which was escaping from the punctured carton was drifting towards Snapper McGee and the stationmaster, he yelled a warnina- to the cameraman and the rail- road official. "Get to windward of those crates!" he shouted. "Stand clear! Stand clear! BOY'S CINEMA 19 Snapper, these bulbs are loaded with the poison gas Boroff invented, and you and the stationmaster are in the path of it!" An expression of mingled alarm and comprehension flashed across the Press photographer's countenance, and, seizing the still-perplexed railroad official, he blundered aside with him. Meanwhile the gas that was issuing from the dam.aged carton was rapidly disintegi'ating the box, and it melted to expose its contents and reveal the havoc wrought by the shots that had struck it. Fully a dozen of the globes had been shattered by the two bullets. True, many of the bogus lamps were still intact, but these now began to tumble to the ground as the material in which they were packed dwindled away, each bulb bursting into fragments as it fell, and adding its quota of deadly vapour to the gas clouds that had already been released. A light breeze was blowing the sinister haze south-westward, and Snapper had skipped well out of the danger zone, thrusting the stationmaster before him. Terry, on his part, was in no immediate peril, but he was prompt to realise that the gas was threatening the railway depot and the tracks, and it dawned on him that. if the lines were destroyed, the passenger train and the freight train that were due to arrive respectively from north and south would assuredly meet with disaster. Even as that thought entered his mind, he happened to glance at the aeroplane which he had flown to Pier-Port and which was standing on the west side of the permanent way, and, an inspiration occurring to him, he joined Snapper and the stationmaster and bundled them across the metals of the railroad. "I'm going to use the plane to hold off that gas. Snapper!" he panted, as he urged cameraman and stationmaster over the iron trail. " If we don't drive the stuff back it's going to disintegrate tracks and depot, judging by our previous experience of it!" EPISODE 6 :— Undersea Terror RALPH BYRD AS TERRY KENT A few seconds later he was scrambling into the plane, and, starting up the motor of the machine, he swung the craft into such a position that the powerful wind created by its propeller swept the deadly gas due eastward—over the nearby high- way and over an expanse of_ waste ground that lay beyond it. By that time the lethal vapour had melted other cartons and brought fresh quantities of bulbs tumbling down to smash themselves on the ground and in- crease the density of the baneful haze. But the wind caused by the plane's pro- peller continued to force that haze away from the railway station and the tracks, and was still rolling it eastward with the velocity of a gale when a car hove into sight on the road. It was a car that was approaching from the south, and it was a car equipped with a siren which was sounding loudly, its piercing cadence becoming audible to Terry under the roar of the aeroplane's engine. Immediately he recalled his request that a police detail should be sent to Pier-Port to meet him. in case their presence was necessary and, divining that the on- coming automobile was occupied by a detachment of constabulary from the nearest big town, he throttled down momentarily and called to Snapper and the stationmaster, who were now standing alongside the aeroplane. "Stop that car!" he sang out urgently'. "Don't let those cops near the gas that's swirling across the road, or it will mean the finish for all of them!" Followed by the stationmaster, whose face was now the picture of awe. Snapper raced down the tracks and then cut across to the highway, coming to it a few paces to the south of the railroad depot and signalling to the inmates of the police car to stop. Seated in the forward cockpit of the plane Terry saw the auto pull up, and heaved a sigh of relief. Then once more he focused his attention on the gas- clouds, which were being borne steadily across the road. He had whinped oppn the throttle of the aircraft's engine again, and he kept it open to its full extent for ten minutes or so. By that time the gas had October 28th, 1939.