THE TORTURES OF THE DAMNED
On Sunday, April 3, the day after Russell showed Lancaster the letters hinting at Jessie and Clarke’s affair, Lancaster paid a visit to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Airport in Van Nuys. A friend who worked there agreed to loan him the necessary fuel to fly back to Nogales. Russell had yet to deliver on his pledge to raise funds in the city; Lancaster was sorely tempted to abandon him and fly to Nogales alone.
That night his suffering reached new lows. From the Padre Hotel he phoned Jessie repeatedly but received no reply. “Why!!” Lancaster wrote in his diary. The torment was too intense for him to sleep. At 4 a.m. he jotted, “Ill with nervous worry.” Desperate, he called Shelton for advice, but Shelton—who knew the truth about Jessie and Clarke—urged him not to do anything.
On Monday Russell and an acquaintance, who Lancaster thought resembled a “tramp,” joined Lancaster at the airport in Van Nuys. He flew them up in the Robin for a tour of the city. “Russell says this man is putting $200 into Latin-American Airways,” Lancaster wrote in his diary. “Poor fish!!!” Russell continued insinuating that Jessie was having an affair, but Lancaster, despite his hellish night, upheld her honor. “Russell finishes himself as far as I am concerned,” he noted huffily, “because he talks about Chub in a nasty manner.”
On their flight from Nogales to Los Angeles, Lancaster and Russell had been accompanied by a passenger named Mrs. Stewart, the wife of a mining engineer. Now Mrs. Stewart wanted to fly home. Lancaster, fed up with Russell’s false promises in Los Angeles, pledged to leave the following day. Despite his dislike of Russell, Lancaster agreed to pick him up at Burbank Airport for the flight to Nogales.
The next morning, Lancaster and Mrs. Stewart drove to Metropolitan Airport to retrieve the Robin. But upon reaching the plane they were met by a federal agent who announced he was searching for Russell and Tancrel. The agent peppered Lancaster with queries about his recent travels before finally letting him go. Wary of becoming caught up in Russell’s impending arrest, Lancaster told Mrs. Stewart they should avoid Burbank Airport and instead depart for Nogales immediately. Having abhorred Russell from the start, Mrs. Stewart was more than happy to leave him behind.
The pair flew six hours to Tucson, landing just before dark. They were picked up by Mrs. Stewart’s husband, Charles, who drove the remaining sixty miles to Nogales while chatting amiably with Lancaster about gold mining. After checking in at the Casa Ana Maria, Lancaster set out into the night to find Shelton, whom he located, blind drunk, at a Mexican bar. Once Shelton heard the story of the federal agent in Los Angeles, he enthusiastically supported Lancaster’s decision to cut all ties with Latin-American Airways.
The night before, Jessie had finally answered one of Lancaster’s phone calls, right in the middle of a party. Caught off guard, she’d given the phone to Clarke. Surrounded by eavesdropping partygoers, Clarke had little choice but to reassure Lancaster that things were fine and the rumors were false. His soothing words failed to restore Lancaster’s confidence. Now, back at his hotel, Lancaster opened two fresh letters from Jessie, which she had mailed the previous Tuesday. He found them difficult to analyze. “Much disturbed,” he wrote in his diary, before repeating that he was “[i]ll with worry.” The entry ended on a plaintive note: “Chubbie, darling, what is it all about?”
Lancaster and Shelton approached Tancrel the next morning and declared that they were through with Latin-American Airways. At first Tancrel wheedled and cajoled them, pleading for patience. When the two held firm, Tancrel furiously erupted, shouting insults and hinting ominously at violence. Following this “harrowing” (Lancaster’s term) confrontation, Tancrel tried to take ownership of Jessie’s propeller, but he had no money, and his efforts failed. After securing the propeller for themselves via a loan from Shelton’s father, Lancaster and Shelton drove to Tucson, lifting each other’s spirits by plotting their trip home to Miami. On the way they would visit Shelton’s father in St. Louis to discuss purchasing an amphibian for their planned West Indies–based passenger transport company. Freed from the burden of Latin-American Airways, the pair reconnected as friends, and their drive to Tucson was a merry one, despite the morning’s events.
In Tucson they picked up the Robin at the airport, but a bolt sheared as they steered it out of the hangar, and the right side of the landing gear collapsed. The propeller cracked in pieces; fortunately, they had Jessie’s to replace it. But a great deal of additional damage remained, rendering Lancaster anxious about the delay and the steep cost of repairs. Shelton’s father again proved their only hope for assistance.
That night Lancaster wrote to Jessie, “On our way back east, thank goodness. . . . Have been through hell, sweetie, but see daylight at last.” He also included a warning: “Russell and Tancrel may try to be vindictive. Take no notice of anything until I get back.” He was longing to see her and kiss her, he wrote, to take her on his knee and tell her everything. “Sweetheart, remember Port Darwin?” he pleaded. “We made it. Remember Andros? You made it. Well, I am going to make it this time. For us both, always.”
That same night Shelton wired Jessie a blunter message: “Taking Bill to St. Louis. . . . Tell Haden keep both feet on ground. Bill trusts him, but Russell upset half the Lancaster-Miller organization by repeating scandal. Everything will be all right soon but remember Bill doing best possible for both.”
Thanks to the skill of the Tucson mechanics, the Robin was fully repaired by Friday morning. But Lancaster and Shelton, to their great frustration, were stuck on the ground. Shelton’s father had yet to wire money for the eighty-nine-dollar repair fee and the hotel bill. Forced to wait, they whiled away their days mooning about the city and seeing movies with their remaining pocket change. Shelton remained “sober and a peach,” Lancaster noted in his diary. As Lancaster fretted and obsessed over Jessie, Shelton provided a genuinely sympathetic ear, proving himself to be “a true friend,” Lancaster wrote. Yet Shelton also tried to steel Lancaster against the possibility that Russell’s wife was correct.
On Saturday, Lancaster wired Jessie, but her noncommittal reply filled him with worry. “If only she would say something nice, such as: Don’t worry, I still love you,” he complained in his diary. Shelton’s friendship continued to bolster him, leading to moments of decisiveness: “I have made a firm resolution to end all this mental strain—have it out! Then work for our common good. I adore her and want to see her happy.” But then the doubts would creep back in: “If only she did not drink while I was away, I would feel okay. . . . Is Haden Clarke trustworthy, is my problem.”
The next day, still trapped at the El Presidio hotel in Tucson, Lancaster’s misery deepened. “Awakened with misgivings,” he wrote. “Suffer the tortures of the damned.” He had to get back to Miami. East, he bluntly wrote, “is where my life lies, everything I hold dear is there.” For the first time, he mentioned suicide: “If [Chubbie is] gone from me I will end this life. I can’t stand the strain much longer.” But as he described them, Lancaster’s emotions appeared more schizophrenic than suicidal; in the very same entry, he wrote, “I still have the courage to carry on. The uncertainty is hurting deep, though.”
At Shelton’s urging, Lancaster again called Jessie, but he found her answers to be evasive and unemotional. Jessie, for her part, felt the matter needed to be discussed in person, not on the phone, hence her ambiguous responses. She told Lancaster she had mailed a letter to St. Louis, in care of Shelton’s father, explaining everything. “What is this letter in St. Louis?” Lancaster agonized in writing, regretting the phone call. “I don’t know whether I can stand any more shocks.” The year 1932, he wearily confessed, had been a disaster. “I love you, Chubbie—have done my best but failed.”
The next day he wrote Jessie another letter in which he struck a more balanced tone. He admitted that the phone call had left him unhappy, and he protested that the “predicament in which I find myself now is not my fault. . . . You will remember Haden and you even urged me to commence that fatal Sunday when I left.” Things were difficult in Tucson: without money, he and Shelton had been “going hungry.” They hadn’t eaten for forty-eight hours, and the already skinny Lancaster had lost another ten pounds. But Lancaster also said the journey might have a positive outcome if Shelton’s father agreed to purchase an amphibian. In a moment of wishful thinking, he told Jessie that he knew she would never betray him. “Tell Haden I am not taking any notice of any scandal,” he added. “I know in my heart he is a sahib.” And, as always, there was the now-misplaced declaration of love: “You know, my sweet, the only thing in life that keeps me going is thoughts of you. I love you so sincerely that I will do anything I can to make you happy.”
The days of endless waiting and the lack of food caused Lancaster and Shelton to get on one another’s nerves, despite their close friendship. Shelton’s promised funds had not arrived; not wanting to alienate his father before they discussed the amphibian, he had reached out to someone else, but this person hadn’t come through. Frantic to return home, Lancaster wired his friend Dorothy Upton a request for $150, just enough money to cover the repair and hotel bills, and to buy enough fuel to fly the Robin to St. Louis, where Shelton’s father awaited them. Upton, in a show of genuine friendship, immediately sent the requested money. After long days of frustration and hardship, Lancaster and Shelton were now free to leave.
“As long as I have you I can fight and will win through eventually,” Lancaster wrote Jessie, in his final message from Tucson. “Courage will be required at this stage, more courage than I have ever been called upon to display—but am keeping the chin up. Hunger pangs are bad! . . . My sweet, when I see you I will tell you all that has happened.”