Ace Drummond Chapter Twelve, ``The Sign In The Sky'', opens with the discovery that Ace Drummond and Comic Relief Mechanic Jerry are not dead.
I should mention the comic-strip-style summaries of where the plots are have turned generic: it's just about how The Dragon wants International Airways out; Doctor Trainor has found a mountain of jade; and Ace Drummond, G-Man of the Air, is following the clews (such an endearing spelling!) to The Dragon's lair. It's not wrong, it just could be dropped in for most any installment so far.
In any case, Jerry had taken his gun out on facing the roused rabble, but Drummond warned if he shot the Mongolians would kill every westerner in the country. So he tossed the gun away, where it landed on the sacrificial fire in the altar of Buddha Or Whatever there. The bullets explode in the fire and luckily, spooked, ``superstitious'' locals immediately bow. The High Lama is peeved about this and is really upset that Kai Shek raised the people against Drummond.
Jerry proclaims that Kai Shek is the dragon, but Drummond says no: Kai Shek disappeared, whereas The Dragon would not so as to not attract suspicion, so now they just have to find him. Dr Trainor says The Dragon was wearing a dragon mask, though, so who knows who he was? Since The Dragon has remembered that he can blow up planes over the radio again, Drummond drops a message to International Airways, irritating the surviving directors with news that the Trainors are at the monastery and Wyckoff is dead. In almost the same scene as last time one of the directors makes googly eyes at the camera while pointing out, Bauer, Kee, now Wyckoff --- The Dragon is sooner or later going to get them all, although only Kee had any connection to International Airways and he was killed as a Mongolian Secret Service agent. The shocked director says he's getting out, though, as soon as he can.
Since they know The Dragon is spooked and know The Dragon's hideout, Drummond and Jerry ... don't go to The Dragon's hideout as their parachuted note said they would. Instead they go to the village and dress as the locals to find Kai Shek. Some woman hands Jerry her baby for some reason as she goes into a shop, and he amuses the kid for nearly ten seconds before wandering off to follow a more attractive, younger woman. The woman comes back out, finds her kid missing, and calls up a local riot squad, none of whom ask what she expected to have happen. Jerry hands the kid off to some innocent schlub, but even this doesn't get the angry mob off his back.
Since it's a foreign-y place of course there's a parade going through the streets, and Kai Shek follows the guy in a dragon mask into the monastery. The Dragon, in mask, had summoned underlings to this meeting because the prayer wheel was too dangerous --- apparently, after eight installments this nigh-omniscient Dragon finally noticed Drummond's had a prayer wheel and overheard all his commands --- and underling Borris resists The Dragon's Command to finish off Drummond.
Jerry saw Kai Shek following the dragon, and calls for Drummond, who'd snuck back to the monastery to see the Trainors even though he just left the Trainors. The guy in the Dragon mask runs out in the street and gets shot, but what do you know except it's Borris in The Dragon's mask? The Dragon speaks over some kind of fan that's somewhere to warn that so perish all who oppose The Dragon. Kai Shek runs off, and Drummond follows, while Jerry is held by the local mob for thrashing or something. Some running, some chasing, some wall-climbing while Kai Shek waits for Drummond to catch up with him.
Back at, where else, the monastery, Drummond finds the Lama, and Chang Ho, but not Kai Shek. Then they overhear the sliding wall from The Room Of Death. Drummond breaks in and pulls the captured, bound Kai Shek out. This bravery impresses Kai Shek, and Drummond takes the moment of gratitude to tell him how International Airways is so a good thing for his people so he should stop opposing it. The incongruous talk of airplanes reminds Kai Shek that The Dragon commanded a squadron of his planes to commence aerial bombardment of Bai-Tal Airfield.
Back at the airfield, indeed, the bombs are dropping and the other characters are running away from explosions that are often on similar film stock to themselves. Drummond flies back, but The Dragon's squadron is shooting and he crash lands, plane pivoting over on its engine as that bursts into flame, in some shots, and there's our cliffhanger this installment.
I'm beginning to think the episode titles are arbitrarily assigned to just sound ominous.
Trivia: G-ALVG, or ``Victor George'', was the first Comet jet plane to be test flown, on 27 July 1949; ``Yoke Peter'' would be the first to carry passengers in scheduled service, three years later. Source: Jet Age: The Comet, The 707, And The Race To Shrink The World, Sam Howe Verhovek.
Currently Reading: Great Science Fiction Stories, Editor Cordelia Titcomb Smith.