_On the Trail_
Three hours later, about the time when the war council rose after
completing its plans, a sudden shift of the wind blew the poison gas
out to sea, just when it appeared certain that it would reach the
capital of the nation.
The southern half of Virginia had been swept over. Operators,
telegraph and telephone, staying at their posts had sent in constant
messages that had terminated with an abruptness which told of the
tragic sequel. Yet, at that distance from its source, the intensity of
the gas had been to some extent dissipated.
Poisonous beyond any gas known, so deadly as to make hydrocyanic gas
innocuous in comparison, still as it was swept northward on the wings
of the wind, there had been an increasing number of non-fatal
casualties. The most northernly point reached by the gas was Richmond,
and here some fifty per cent of those stricken had suffered paralysis
instead of death.
But a new element had been injected into the situation. Even the
heroic courage shown by the populace in the beginning had had its
limits. The morning after the news of the Invisible Death's advent was
made public mobs had gathered in all the large cities of the East,
demanding surrender.
The submerged elements of crime and disorder had come to the surface
at last. Committees were formed, with the avowed object of yielding to
the Invisible Emperor, and averting further disaster. In Washington, a
city of the dead, half the members of Congress and the Senators had
gathered in the ruined Capitol, to debate the situation.
There were rumors of an impending march on the White House, of a coup
d'ètat.
* * * * *
The action of the Government was prompt. Five hundred loyalists were
enrolled, armed, and posted round the White House: every avenue of
approach was commanded by machine-guns. Meanwhile the news was spread
by radio that the headquarters of the Invisible Emperor had been
located, and that a strong bombing squadron was being dispatched to
destroy it.
The entire fleet was to follow, and it was confidently anticipated
that within a little while the Terror would be at an end.
Those at the white House were less sanguine. There was none but
realized the diabolical strength of their antagonists.
"Everything depends upon the outcome of the next forty-eight hours,
and everything depends on you, Rennell," said Secretary Norris to
Dick, as he stood beside his plane. Behind him his flight of a dozen
airships was drawn up.
"Find them," added the Secretary; "cover Abaco Island with the black
gas, and the navy and the marines will wipe up the mess that you leave
behind you. God help you--and all of us, Rennell!"
He gripped Dick's hand and turned away. Dick was very sober-minded as
he climbed into his cockpit. He knew to the full how much depended
upon himself and Luke Evans. Already the shouts of the insurgents were
to be heard at the ends of the barriers, commanded by the
machine-guns, and patrolled by the enlisted volunteers.
Negro mobs were building counter-barricades of their own with rubble
from the fallen edifices. Civil war might be postponed for
eight-and-forty hours, but after that unless there was news of
victory, the whole structure of civilization would be smashed
irreparably.
It was up to Dick and Luke Evans, and they had assumed such a
responsibility as rarely falls to the lot of man in war.
* * * * *
Dick was to lead the flight in a two-seater Barwell plane. This was
one of the latest types, and had been hurriedly adapted to the purpose
for which it was to be used. Dick himself occupied the rear seat, with
its dual controls, and the gun in its armored casing. In front sat old
Luke Evans, in charge of the black gas projector.
His famous camera box, containing a minute quantity of gas in slow
combustion, and projecting the black searchlight, had been built into
the plane. In the rack beside him were a number of the black gas
bombs, each of which, dropped to earth, would release enough gas to
cover a considerable area with darkness. Both Luke and Dick wore
respirators filled with charcoal and sodium thio-sulphate, and beside
Dick a cage containing three guinea-pigs rested.
These little rodents were so sensitive to atmospheric changes that a
quantity of hydrocyanic acid too minute to affect a man would produce
instantaneous death on them.
From its hiding-place off the Virginia coast the American fleet was
steaming hotly southward toward Abaco Island, cruisers, destroyers,
submarines. That Abaco was British territory had simply not been
considered in this crisis of history.
The twelve airships that followed Dick's contained enough bombs to put
the headquarters of the Invisible Empire out of business for good. The
naval guns would complete the same business.
All day Dick and Luke Evans flew southwestward. At first glance,
everything appeared normal. The catastrophe that had fallen upon the
land was visible only in the shape of the lines of tiny figures,
extending for miles, that choked all the roads radiating out of the
principal cities. It was only when they were over the southern portion
of Virginia that the ravages of deadly gas became apparent.
Flying low, Dick could see the fields strewn with the bodies of dead
cattle. Here and there, at the doors of farmhouses, the inmates could
be seen, lying together in gruesome heaps, caught and killed
instantaneously as they attempted flight. Here, too, were figures on
the roads. But they were figures of dead men and women.
* * * * *
They strewed the roads for miles, lying as they had been trapped--men,
women, children, horses, mules, and dogs. The spectacle was an
appalling one. Dick set his jaws grimly. He was thinking that the
Council had let Von Kettler escape. He was thinking of Fredegonde. But
he would not let himself think of her. She deserved no more pity than
the rest of the murderous crew.
Over the Carolinas the conditions were still more appalling. Here
deadly gas had struck with all its concentrated power. A city
materialized out of the blue distance, a factory town with all
chimneys spiring upward into the blue, a section of tall buildings
intersected by canyonlike streets, around it a rim of trim houses,
bungalows, indicative of prosperity and comfort. And it was a city of
the dead.
For everywhere around it, on all the roads, the dead lay piled on top
of one another. For miles--all the inhabitants, rich and poor,
business men, factory hands, negroes. There had been a mad rush as the
fatal gas drove onward upon its lethal way, and all the fugitives had
been overwhelmed simultaneously.
Here were golf links, with little groups strewn on the grass and
fairways; here, at one of the holes, four men, their putters still in
their hands, crouched in death. Here was the wreckage of a train that
had collided with a string of freight cars at an untended switch, and
from the shattered windows the heads and bodies of the dead protruded
in serried ranks.
Dick looked back. His flight was driving on behind him. He guessed
their feelings. They had sworn, as he had sworn, that none of them
would return without stamping out that abomination from the earth
forever.
* * * * *
He signaled to the flight to rise, and zoomed upward to twelve
thousand feet. He did not want to look upon any more of those horrors.
At that height, the peaceful landscape lay extended underneath, in a
checker-board of farms and woodlands. One could pretend that it was
all a vile dream.
He avoided Charleston, and winged out above the Atlantic, striking a
straight course along the coast toward the Bahamas. The shores of
Georgia vanished in the west. Dick began to breathe more freely. His
mind shook off its weight of horror. Only the blue sea and the blue
sky were visible The aftermath of the gale remained in the shape of a
strong head breeze and white crests below.
Dick glanced at the guinea-pigs. They were busily gnawing their
cabbage and carrots. The gas had evidently been entirely dissipated by
the wind.
Toward sunset the low jutting fore-land of Canaveral on the east coast
of Florida, came into view. Dick shifted course a little. Three hours
more should see them over Abaco.
His flight had explicit instructions. As soon as the black gas had
rendered visible the headquarters of the Invisible Emperor, they were
to circle above, dropping their bombs. When these were exhausted, the
machine guns would come into play. There was to be no attention paid
to signals of surrender. They were to wipe out the headquarters, to
kill every living thing that showed itself--and the navy and the
marines would mop up anything left over.
The sun went down in a blaze of gold and crimson. Night fell. The moon
began to climb the east. The black sea, stretching beneath, was as
empty as on the day when it was created. Nothing in the shape of
navigation appeared.
Two hours, three hours, and old Evans turned round in his cockpit and
pointed. On the horizon a black thread was beginning to stretch
against the sky. It was Abaco Island, in the Bahama group. They were
nearly at their destination. An hour more--perhaps two hours, and the
deadly menace that threatened America might be removed forever. Dick
breathed a silent prayer for success.
* * * * *
They were over Abaco. A long, flat island, seventy miles or so in
extreme length, and fairly wide, covered with a dense growth of
tropical brush and forest, with here and there open spaces, near the
seacoast an occasional farm-house. Dick dropped to five thousand, to
three, to one. The moon made the whole land underneath as bright as
day.
There were no evidence of destruction by the hurricane. The farmhouses
stood substantial and well roofed. If death had struck Abaco Island,
it had been the work of man, not Nature.
Dick zoomed almost to his ceiling, until, in the brilliant moonlight,
he could see Abaco Island from side to side. For the most part it was
heavily wooded with mahogany and lignum vitae: toward the central
portion there was open land, but there was not the least sign of any
construction work.
Again he swooped, indicating to his flight to follow him. At a
thousand feet he examined the open district intently. Here, if
anywhere upon the island, the Invisible Emperor had his headquarters.
Was it conceivable that a gas factory, hangars, ammunition depots
could exist here invisibly, when he could look straight down upon the
ground?
Dick's heart sank. The hideous fear came to him that Graves had been
mistaken, that he had come on a wild-goose chase. This could not be
the place. It was quite incredible.
Again and again he circled, studying the ground beneath. Now he could
see that the tough grass and undergrowth marked curious geometrical
patterns. Here, for example, was an oblong of bare earth around which
the vegetation grew, and it was obviously the work of man.
Here were four squares of bare ground set side by side, with thin
strips of vegetation growing between them.
Then of a sudden Dick knew! Those squares and parallelograms of bare
ground indicated the foundations of buildings. _He was looking down on
the very site of the Invisible Emperor's stronghold!_
He shouted, and pointed downward. Luke Evans looked round and nodded.
He understood. He patted the camera-box with a grim smile on his old
face.