Kitabı oku: «The Zeppelin Destroyer: Being Some Chapters of Secret History», sayfa 5
Chapter Nine
Contains More Curious Facts
One afternoon a week later, when out at Hendon, I heard accidentally from a man I knew – one of the instructors at the Grahame-White Aviation School – that Eastwell was very queer, and in bed.
The weather proved bad for flying, therefore I sent Theed off and returned to town. Teddy had gone down to the naval air-station at Yarmouth to see the test of a new seaplane, so I went along to look up Lionel at his rooms in Albemarle Street.
His man, a thin-faced, dark-haired fellow named Edwards, who admitted me, said that his master had had a bad attack of something, the true import of which the doctor had failed to diagnose.
I found him lying in bed in his narrow but artistic bachelor bedroom, looking very wan and pale.
“Hulloa, Claude!” he cried with sudden joy, as I entered. “Awfully good of you to come in, old chap! I’ve been horribly queer these last three days, but I’ll be fit again in a day or two, the doctor says. Well – what’s the news? How are the boys out at Hendon?”
“All right. I was there this morning. Harrington had rather a bad smash yesterday afternoon, I hear. Came down outside Ruislip, and made an unholy mess.”
“Not hurt, I hope?”
“Tore his face and hands a bit – that’s all. But his biplane is in scraps, they say.”
He pointed to the box of cigarettes, and I took one. Then, when I had seated myself at his bedside, I saw that he had newspapers scattered everywhere, including the Paris Matin, the Journal, and the Rome Tribuna. That was the first time I had known that our friend was a linguist.
“Well,” he asked. “What about the Zeppelin raids? Any more news?”
He had returned to the subject by which he seemed obsessed. Yet, after all, this was not surprising, for many people talked air-raids incessantly. One section of the public, as usual, blamed the authorities, while the other supported them.
“Well,” I said cheerily, “there’s a new invention they are all talking of at Hendon to-day. Somebody has claimed to be able to construct a biplane which will rise from the ground without running, and can attain any speed from ten to two hundred miles an hour.”
“Phew! That’s interesting,” exclaimed Lionel, raising himself upon his elbow, and taking a sip of a glass of barley-water at his side. “And who is this wonderful man who has such a wonderful scheme?”
“Oh, I forget his name,” I said. “But the theory, as far as I can gather, is rather a good one. He can rise so quickly.”
“How?”
“Well,” I replied. “From what I can hear, there is a kind of rotary wing – not a propeller and not a thing which can be classed as a helicoptic.”
Lionel Eastwell grew intensely interested in the new invention which everybody at the aerodrome was discussing.
“Yes,” he said. “I follow. Go on, Claude. Tell me all you’ve heard about it. The whole thing sounds most weird and wonderful.”
“Well,” I said, “from what I can find out, the machine is not designed to screw itself through the air in the direction of its axis, or, by pushing the air downwards, to impart upward motion to the structure, as a screw propeller in water imparts a forward motion to the vessel by pushing the water backwards. The biplane is designed to obtain by a rotary motion the same upward thrust in opposition to the downward pull of gravity as the flapping wings, and the passive outspread wings of birds, and to obtain it by the blades being projected through the air in such a manner as to extract and utilise the practically constant energy of the expansive force of the air.”
“By Jove!” my friend exclaimed, stirring himself in his bed. “That theory is very sound indeed – the soundest I’ve ever heard. Who’s invented it?”
“As I’ve told you, I’ve forgotten,” I replied. “But what does it matter? There are hosts of new inventions every month, and the poor misguided public who put their money into them generally lose it. But I quite agree that the general idea of this is splendid. The war-inventions authorities ought at once to take it up hot and strong. The inventor is, no doubt, an ingenious man of thought and knowledge – whoever he may be. But alas! nobody ever meets with very much encouragement in aeronautics.”
“No,” he said, pillowing his head comfortably. “It is all so mysterious. We take on a wild-cat idea one day and manufacture machines that are declared to work miracles. Then, next week, we abandon the type altogether, and woo some other smooth-tongued inventor.”
“That’s just it,” I laughed. “If the authorities could only adopt some really reliable type to fight Zeppelins. But alas! it seems that they can’t,” I added.
For a few seconds he remained silent. I saw that he was reflecting deeply.
“Well,” he said. “We’ve established listening-posts all round London for its protection.”
“A real benefit they are!” I laughed. “We have officers and men listening all night, it is true. Of course as a picturesque fiction in order to allay public curiosity they publish photographs of men listening to things like gramophone-trumpets.”
“Exactly. The theory of that new invention is extremely sound. That’s my opinion.”
“And mine also,” I said. “I hear that the inventor has told the authorities that if they will assist him to complete his machine – which I expect is a costly affair – he will be able to carry out daily raids on Cuxhaven, Essen, Düsseldorf, and even as far as Berlin; carrying several tons of explosives.”
“How many?” asked my friend.
“Oh! four or five it is said.”
“Phew!” remarked Lionel, again stirring in his bed. “That sounds really healthy – doesn’t it?”
“Yes – the realisation of the dream of every flying-man to-day,” I said.
Then our conversation drifted into another channel, and, half an hour later, I left him.
During the past few days Teddy and I had been very busy with our own invention, and had made a number of further experiments down at Gunnersbury.
We could easily direct the electric current upon those insulated steel guys around our distant wireless-pole, but our difficulty was how to increase our power without increasing the bulk of the apparatus which we should be compelled to take up in the monoplane for purposes of attacking a Zeppelin.
There was a limit to the weight which my Breguet with its 200 horse-power engines would carry, and though, of course, we believed it would be unnecessary to use bombs, yet some should be carried for purposes of defence, as well as a Lewis gun.
Therefore we were faced by a very difficult problem, that of weight.
The next day was Sunday, and Teddy having returned from Yarmouth, we spent the whole afternoon and evening down at the workshop, making further experiments. I had not seen Roseye since Friday evening, which I had spent at Lady Lethmere’s, Sir Herbert being absent in Liverpool. Therefore, as we had carried out an alteration of the apparatus and intended to try sparking upon the pole again after dark, I rang Roseye up on the telephone shortly after five o’clock.
Mulliner, Lady Lethmere’s maid, replied, and a few minutes later Lady Lethmere herself spoke to me.
“Oh, I’ve rung you up at your rooms half a dozen times to-day, Mr Munro – but could get no answer!” she said.
“Being Sunday, my man is out,” I exclaimed. “I’m down here at Gunnersbury.”
“Can you take a taxi at once, and come over and see me?” she urged. “I want to speak to you immediately.”
“What about?” I asked anxiously.
“I can’t say anything over the telephone,” she answered in a distressed voice. “Do come at once, Mr Munro. I am in such trouble.”
I promised. And after briefly relating the curious conversation to Teddy, I found a taxi, and at once drove to Cadogan Gardens.
“Mr Munro!” exclaimed Lady Lethmere, looking at me with a pale, anxious expression as I entered the morning-room. “Something has happened!”
“Happened – what?” I gasped.
“Roseye! She went out yesterday morning to go over to Hendon to meet you – she told me —and she’s not come back!”
“Not back!” I cried, staring at her. “Where can she be?”
“Ah! That’s exactly what I want to know,” replied the mother of my well-beloved. “I thought perhaps she might have flown somewhere and had a breakdown, and was therefore unable to return, or to let me know last night. That happened, you recollect, when she came to grief while flying over the Norfolk Broads.”
“But she never arrived at Hendon yesterday,” I exclaimed. “I was there all the morning.”
“So I understand from Mr Carrington of the Grahame-White School, to whom I telephoned this morning. It was after learning this curious fact that I began to try and get into communication with you.”
“Well – where can she possibly be?” I asked in blank dismay.
“The only thing I can think of is that she altered her mind at the last moment, and went to see some friends. She may have given a servant a telegram to send to me, and the servant forgot to dispatch it. Such things have happened, you know.”
I shook my head dubiously. Knowing Roseye as I did, I knew that she always sent important messages herself.
“One thing is certain, that she has not met with an accident while flying, for her machine is still locked up in the hangar.”
“Yes. It is a consolation to know that she has not gone up and disappeared.”
“No,” I said. “She seems to have intended to meet me. But we had no appointment to meet. My intention yesterday morning was to go over to Gunnersbury, and I only changed my mind five minutes before I left my rooms. I spent part of the afternoon with Eastwell, who is queer in bed.”
“I heard that he was not well. Roseye told me so yesterday morning before she went out.”
“I wonder how she knew?” I exclaimed.
“I believe he spoke to her on the telephone on Friday night.”
“You overheard some of their conversation, I suppose?”
“None. She was shut up in the telephone-box, and when she came out I asked her who had rung up. She replied, ‘Oh! only Lionel!’ Next morning, while we were at breakfast, she remarked that Mr Eastwell was ill and in bed. He must have told her so on the previous night.”
I remained silent. This disappearance of Roseye, following so closely upon the dastardly attempt upon my life, caused me to pause. It was more than curious. It was distinctly suspicious.
Was the Invisible Hand – the claw-grip of which had laid such a heavy grasp upon Great Britain ever since August 1914 – again at work? Was the clutch of that hand, which had so cunningly protected the enemy alien and fed the Germans, again upon myself and the woman I loved?
“Lady Lethmere, this is all too amazing. I had no idea that Roseye was missing,” I said. “Sir Herbert has not returned, I suppose?”
“No. I expect him to-morrow. I have not yet sent him word. But I must say I am now getting most anxious.”
“Of course,” I said. “We have to remember that to-day is Sunday, and that few telegraph offices are open.”
“Yet there is always the telephone,” Lady Lethmere said.
I argued that, in many country places, the telephone service was not available on Sundays and, though I felt intensely anxious, I endeavoured to regard the matter with cheerful optimism. I saw, however, that Lady Lethmere, a good, kindly and most charming woman, who had ever been genuinely friendly towards me, was greatly perturbed regarding her daughter’s whereabouts.
And surely not without cause. Roseye had left that house at eleven o’clock on the previous morning – dressed as usual in a navy-blue gaberdine coat and skirt, with her skunk boa and muff, intending to change later on into her Burberry flying-suit which she kept at Hendon. From the moment when she had closed the front door behind her, she had vanished into space.
Such was the enigma with which I – her lover – was at that moment faced.
I ask you, my reader, to place yourself for a moment in my position, and to put to yourself the problem.
How would you have acted?
Would you have suspected, as I suspected, the sinister and deadly touch of the Invisible Hand?
Chapter Ten
The Tunnel Mystery
I went back to my rooms in Shaftesbury Avenue and, in consequence of my telephone message, Teddy came and threw himself in the chair opposite me half an hour later, to discuss the curious disappearance of my well-beloved.
Teddy suggested that we should report the occurrence to the police, and give them Roseye’s photograph, but I was averse to this course. I pointed out that, in all probability, she was with friends somewhere, and that Monday morning would bring me a letter from her.
Well – Monday morning came. Eagerly I went through my correspondence, but there was no word from her, either to her mother or to myself. It was only then that I began to be really anxious, and at noon I went down to Scotland Yard and there, in the cold waiting-room, stated exactly what had occurred.
The inspector, when he looked at the photograph I produced, exclaimed:
“Ah, sir. I’ve often seen Miss Lethmere’s picture in the papers. Why, she’s the famous flying-lady – isn’t she?”
I replied in the affirmative, and explained how she had left her home in Cadogan Gardens to go to Hendon to meet me.
“I see. She was lost sight of between Cadogan Gardens and Hendon,” he exclaimed, adding a memorandum to what he had already written down. “Well, sir,” he said. “We’ll do our best, of course. But – you don’t think Miss Lethmere has disappeared intentionally – eh?”
And he looked at me inquiringly with his dark, serious eyes.
“Intentionally! No – why?”
“Well, because we get many young ladies reported missing in the course of a year, and many of them we find, on inquiry, have hidden themselves purposely, for their own private reasons, quarrels, run-away matches, hiding from angry parents, and such-like causes. I tell you,” he added, “some of the cases give us quite a lot of trouble and annoyance.”
“I’m quite sure that Miss Lethmere is not hiding herself purposely,” I declared quickly. “There can be no object in her doing so.”
“No. Not as far as you are aware, sir,” the inspector replied very politely. “But neither you nor I can always follow the trend of the feminine mind,” he added with a faint smile. “You, of course, do not suspect the existence of any motive which would lead her to disappear intentionally. Nobody in such circumstances as yours, ever does. Do you happen to know whether she took any money with her when she left home?”
“Mulliner, Lady Lethmere’s maid, says that just before going out Miss Lethmere glanced in her purse, found that she only had a few shillings, and took four Treasury-notes from her jewel-box.”
“Was that all the money in the jewel-box?” he asked.
“No. About eighteen pounds remains there now.”
“H’m. She evidently did not make any preparation for a journey – or any long absence.”
“Well,” replied the inspector after a brief pause, “we will certainly circulate her description, and see what we can gather. The young lady may have met with a street accident, and be in one of the hospitals. Though I hope she hasn’t, of course!”
So with that rather poor assurance I had to be content, and took my leave.
That afternoon I again went out to Hendon, making inquiry everywhere of the men who were Roseye’s friends, but she certainly never went there on the Saturday, and I found her machine still in the hangar. Her mechanic knew nothing, for he had received no orders from her since Friday.
Three days – three breathless anxious days passed. Ah! shall I ever forget the awful tension of those terrible hours!
Sir Herbert had returned, and, with his wife, was naturally distracted. He was making inquiries in every quarter of friends and acquaintances, and of anyone who might have been likely to see his missing daughter. In this, both Teddy and I actively assisted him.
On the third evening I returned to my rooms to wash, intending to go along to the Automobile Club to dine with the flying-boys who assembled there every night, when Theed told me that the police had, an hour before, rung me up from Scotland Yard, and requested me to go down there at once.
This I did without delay and, having been shown into that big, bare waiting-room, the same dark-haired inspector came to see me.
“Well, Mr Munro,” he exclaimed, “we’ve met with no very great result, though the description of the missing young lady has been circulated right through the country. But the affair is certainly a mystery.”
“Then you don’t suspect that she has purposely disappeared – eh?” I asked quickly.
“Well – after all – I don’t know,” was his hesitating reply. “Something belonging to her has been found which rather leads to that supposition.”
“What has been found?” I gasped eagerly.
“This,” he answered, and he placed upon the table a gold chatelaine which I at once recognised as belonging to Roseye – for. I had given it to her. It formed a jingling bunch. There was a chain-purse, a combined match-box and cigarette-case, a powder-box with its little mirror in the cover, and a card-case all strung upon thin gold chains which, in turn, were attached to a ring – so that it could be carried upon the finger.
“Wherever was that found?” I asked, turning pale at sight of it.
“It was discovered this morning by a platelayer engaged in examining the rails in the long tunnel just beyond Welwyn Station on the Great Northern Railway.”
“In a tunnel!”
“Yes. The two tunnels which are quite near to each other have, at our request, been thoroughly searched by the local police and the platelayers, but nothing else has been found. My first fear was,” added the inspector, “that there might have been a tragedy in the tunnel. Happily, however, there is no ground for any such suspicion.”
“But there may have been a struggle in the train!” I suggested.
“Possibly,” answered the inspector. “It’s fortunate that the cards were in the case, for when the chatelaine was handed to the sergeant of constabulary at Welwyn, he at once recognised Lethmere as the name of the lady whose description had been circulated by us. Therefore the constabulary sent it up here at once.”
I took it and found that in the purse were the four Treasury-notes, as the maid Mulliner had described, together with some silver. Three of my own particular brand of Russian cigarettes remained in the case, while among the cards which I opened upon the table was one of my own upon which I had, only a few days previously, written down the address of the makers of a new enamel which I had advised her to try upon her machine.
The tiny powder-puff and the small bevelled mirror were there, though the latter had been cracked across in its fall in the tunnel.
“Seven years bad luck!” I remarked to the inspector, whose name I had learned to be Barton.
I was turning over with curiosity that bunch of jingling feminine impedimenta which I knew so well, when the door suddenly opened, and a red-tabbed captain in khaki entered.
“This is Captain Pollock,” Barton said, introducing him. “He wished, I believe, to ask you a question, Mr Munro.”
I looked at the new-comer with some surprise, as he bowed and, in rather an authoritative manner, took a chair at the big leather-covered table at which I was seated with the inspector.
“The facts of your friend Miss Lethmere’s disappearance have been communicated to us, Mr Munro,” he commenced, “and we find that the lady’s disappearance is much complicated by certain rather curious facts.”
“Well?” I asked, rather resentful that another department of the State should enter upon what, after all, was a purely personal investigation. Besides, I could see no motive. The War Office had enough to do without making inquiries regarding missing persons.
“Well,” said the captain politely, “I of course know you, Mr Munro, to be a well-known aviator, and have often read of the long and sensational flights undertaken by Miss Lethmere and yourself. I hope you will not think that I am personally inquisitive regarding your lady friend. But,” he went on apologetically, “I am only performing my duty in inquiring in the interests of the State. You are, I know, an intensely patriotic man. I hope that I, as a British officer, am equally patriotic. Therefore we stand upon the same ground – don’t we?”
“Most certainly,” was my reply, though, much puzzled as to the drift of his argument, I looked straight into his face, a round, rather florid countenance, with a small sandy moustache.
“Good,” he said. “Now I want you to answer me, in confidence, the questions I will put to you. Your replies I shall treat as absolutely secret.”
“Captain Pollock is from the Intelligence Department,” remarked the inspector, interrupting in explanation.
“I will answer, of course, to the best of my ability,” I said. “But with one reservation – I will say nothing that might reflect upon a woman’s honour.”
He pursed his lips ever so slightly. But that very slight movement did not pass me unnoticed.
Was a woman’s honour concerned in this?
The two men exchanged glances, and in an instant a fierce resentment arose within me. Between us, upon the bare table, lay the gold chatelaine that I had bought at Bouet’s, in the Gallerie at Monte Carlo a year and a half ago.
It had been found in that tunnel on the main line of the Great Northern. Something tragic had occurred. Was there any further room for doubt?
“The matter does not concern a woman’s honour – er – not exactly so,” the man in khaki said slowly.
“I want to know – ” And he paused, as though hesitating to explain his motive for coming along to see me.
“What do you want to know about?” I asked boldly. “Come, Captain Pollock, let us face each other. There is a mystery here in Miss Lethmere’s disappearance, and in the finding of this bunch of feminine fripperies in the tunnel. I intend to elucidate it.”
“And I will assist you, Mr Munro – if you will only be frank with me.”
“Frank!” I echoed. “Of course I’ll be frank!” Again he looked me straight in the face with those funny, half-closed little eyes of his. Then, after a few moments’ pause, he asked:
“Now – tell me. Is it a fact that you, with a friend of yours named Ashton, have made some very remarkable electrical discovery?”
I looked at him, stunned by surprise. He noticed my abject astonishment.
“I’ll go farther,” he went on. “Does this discovery of yours concern aircraft; is it designed to bring disaster upon Zeppelins; and are you engaged in perfecting a secret invention in which you have the most entire confidence? In other words, have you nearly perfected a method by which you will be able to successfully combat enemy airships in the air? Tell me the truth, Mr Munro – in strictest secrecy, remember.”
His words staggered me. How could he know the secret that we had so closely guarded?
I did not reply for several moments.
“Well?” he asked, repeating his question.
“I don’t see why I should reveal to anyone – even to you – what I have been doing in the interests of the defence of our country,” I protested.
“Except that by doing so we should both be able to carry our investigations farther – and, I hope, to a satisfactory issue.”
I had given my word to Teddy and to Roseye, and they had given their words to me, to disclose nothing. This I recollected and, therefore, I hesitated.
The captain, seeing my reluctance, said:
“In this inquiry we ought, surely, to assist each other, Mr Munro! Miss Lethmere is missing, and it is for us to unite in our efforts to elucidate the mystery.”
“But how can answers to the questions you have put to me serve, in any way whatever, to bring us nearer to the truth of what has happened to Miss Lethmere?” I queried.
“They do. I merely ask you, yes or no. Your reply will at once place us in a far better position to conduct this most important inquiry,” he said. “I may tell you that at present the gravest suspicion rests upon Miss Lethmere.”
“Suspicion!” I echoed angrily. “Of what, pray?”
The captain drew a long breath and, once more looking me straight in the face, replied:
“Well, of being a secret agent of the German Government – or to put it very bluntly, of being a spy!”
“Roseye a spy!” I shouted, starting up from my chair. “A most foul and abominable lie! How dare you cast any such imputation upon her?”
“It is, unfortunately, no imputation, Mr Munro,” replied the captain. “You naturally doubt the truth, but we have documentary evidence that the missing lady is not exactly the purely patriotic young person whom you have so long believed her to be. Since the war lots of men who have trusted pretty women have had many rude awakenings, I assure you.”
“I’ll believe nothing against Roseye!”
“Well,” answered Pollock, taking from his pocket an official envelope, “perhaps you will look at this!” and from the envelope he took a half sheet of dark-blue notepaper of a type and size used by ladies, and handed it across to me, saying:
“This was found in her card-case here. From Scotland Yard they sent it over to us this afternoon, and its real import we very quickly discovered.”
My eyes fell upon the paper, and I saw that it was covered with lines of puzzling figures in groups of seven, all written neatly in a distinctly feminine hand.
“Well,” I asked in surprise, “what does all this mean?”
“Only one thing,” was the hard reply. “This paper, folded small and secreted, was found in this card-case. Those figures you see convey a message in the secret code of the Intelligence Department of the German Naval War Staff – a seven-figure code. A couple of hours ago we succeeded in deciphering the message, which is to the effect that you and Ashton have made an astounding discovery and have succeeded in directing a powerful electric wave by which you can charge metals at a distance, and cause sparking across any intervening spaces of those metals. By this means you are hoping to defeat Zeppelins by exploding the gas inside their ballonets, and as you are both highly dangerous to the success of the enemy’s plans for the wholesale destruction of life and property by airships, it is here suggested that you should both meet sudden ends at the hands of certain paid hired assassins of the Berlin secret police.”
Then, after a pause, the captain again looked at me, and said very slowly:
“Mr Munro. This document found in Miss Lethmere’s purse is nothing else but your own death-warrant! Miss Lethmere is a spy and, though she may be your friend, she is plotting your death!”
