little tricks are worth knowing. You might be bound with ropes to a
post, or tree, or waggon by the enemy, and if he happened to have left
your matches on you--and you could get one hand free--there is no knot
man could tie that I could not wriggle myself out of!--you might burn
the rope and get away! I did that once when I was a gunner-boy of
seventeen in South Africa----"
Von Herrnung stopped short. Bawne asked simply, and with the same
straight look between the eyes:
"Did you fight with the Boers against us in the War?"
Von Herrnung did not seem to have heard. He had caught the drift of a
sentence spoken by Sherbrand, who was answering to a question of the
Chief Scout.
"Oh yes! I live here--have quarters over Mrs. Dunlett's restaurant--you
could communicate with me practically at any time. We've the 'phone and
a private telegraph-office, and the wireless--under the usual licence
from the Postmaster-General."
He pointed towards the well-known tall posts with the short
cross-pieces, china insulators and lines of thick wire, standing beside
the telegraph-cabin, over the roof of which straddled the wireless
installation's tall, latticed steel mast.
"We find it useful for business as well as instructional purposes," he
went on. "Macrombie--the man in charge--is a one-time Royal Navy Petty
Officer Telegraphist and a first-class operator." Sherbrand's mouth
twisted a little at the corners as he added: "About twenty-four days out
of thirty, let us say!"
The quick rejoinder came:
"Then he's D.O.D. two working days in the month, not counting Sundays.
I've met plenty of Macrombies in my time. This doesn't happen to be the
monthly pay-day, by any chance, or one of the other close days in its
neighbourhood?"
"No, no! He's as right as rain and as sober as a seal," said Sherbrand.
"And--this tall fellow with red hair must be the man who has written to
me upon business. I shall have to go to him."
They exchanged a left-handed grip, mutually smiling.
"Good old habits stick," said the Chief, and Sherbrand answered:
"Fortunately, they do. Let me say again how much and how gratefully I
have to thank you for the teaching that has helped me to find myself!"
His clear light glance reverted to Saxham. "The Doctor too, for giving
me this chance of meeting you. Please tell him the story if you think
it would interest him. I hope with all my heart, sir, that you will
soon come here again!"
"I had already taken the permission for granted," the Chief said, as
Sherbrand saluted and went forward to meet "the fellow with red hair."
"There is big business in that gyroscopic stabiliser of his," he added
to Saxham, "and our friends at the French War Ministry have tumbled to
it as one might naturally expect. So much the worse for our bungling
bigwigs at Whitehall, who've let a good thing slip, for the millionth
time, out of their claws. But taking for granted the value of the
patent, and recognising the likelihood of the French bid stimulating
Teutonic competition----"
The gentle, modulated voice broke off. Von Herrnung had stepped out
upon the green and was striding towards the lightly-moving, less
stiffly-carried figure of Sherbrand, the approximation of the two
somehow suggesting a salute of gladiators previous to the fight. Now
the big, grey-clad German was arrested in the middle of his stride by
the sudden kling-a-ling of a motor-gong, a sharp crystal vibration that
stiffened him to attention, and pricked his ears for a repetition of the
sound.
It did not immediately come. He raised the left hand that held the
leather satchel, and swung it from front to rear, so that it was for a
moment clear of the outline of his body, as who should signal: "_I have
it safe!_" Quick, watchful eyes noted this. Took in also the ornate
bulk of the dark blue F.I.A.T. touring-car, as with the characteristic,
noiseless smoothness of its make, it glided between the ranks of parked
and waiting automobiles, and stopped in the open, perhaps some forty
yards away.
A fat yellow hand, with a twinkling solitaire upon it, waved. A brown
hand, with a massive gold curb-chain watch-bracelet on the wrist of it,
beckoned imperiously. Something had been forgotten, something was still
to say. Von Herrnung wheeled, and went back in his traces as obediently
as the pointer that has been called to heel. He did not uncover,
perhaps he had been told not to. He saluted, and stood stiffly,
listening to a harsh German voice that yapped at him. All his arrogance
and swagger seemed to have been juggled out of him by the gestures of
the brown hand with the flashing wrist-bracelet, emerging from the white
cuff with jewelled sleeve-links and the snowy sleeve with its broad
bands of glittering golden braid.
"_S'th!_"
The slight sound pulled Saxham's head round. He had not been looking at
the occupants of the blue F.I.A.T. His eyes were intent on the tall
white figure of the woman standing beside his boy. Her black lace
sunshade was closed. She held the tall-sticked thing at arm's-length,
leaning upon it, and the westering light smote a myriad of
multi-coloured sparkles out of the tinsel spangles of the hat with the
single black cock's plume. The queer headgear crowning her barbaric
hair, and her full white oval face with its wide, low, arched black
brows and long eyes, made her seem strange, alluring, as some
tall-stemmed, exotic flower, sprung at the incantation of an Oriental
conjuror, from a green stretch of English turf.
In the same instant von Herrnung touched his hat, stepped back from the
blue car, wheeled and walked away toward the waiting figure of
Sherbrand, the sallow man in the Homburg hat gave an order, the
chauffeur touched the electric starter, and the F.I.A.T. turned and
smoothly bowled away. But in the instant of its turning, the bearded
man in the white naval uniform rose in his place, and obtruding half his
short, bulky body across the lean person of his sallow neighbour,
scrutinised the face and figure of Patrine Saxham with a cool,
appraising deliberateness that tortured the wincing flesh it enveloped
like the cut of a carriage-whip.
They were full, bright, and rather handsome grey-blue eyes shadowed by
the white cap-peak, and they had the indefinable expression of authority
and power. Their glance said--and the face with the perfectly-trimmed
beard and the upturned moustache wore a curious smile that bore out the
glance's meaning:
"So! That's the woman!" And a surge of scalding shame and bitter
resentment rose in the heart of Patrine Saxham and filled it to the
brim.
She could not have explained why she felt certain that her shameful
secret was known to the man with the powerful eyes, the cast of whose
face with its pointed beard faintly reminded one of the King and the
Tsar.
Patrine had always abominated cheap sentiment. She had once laughed
until she cried at a revival of an old four-decker drama, whose hero,
waking to the knowledge of a committed, irrevocable deed cried in
throaty, stagy tones of anguish upon God to put back the dreadful clock
of Time and give him yesterday.
Now she perceived the deep, vital interest of the common-place human
story. If asking Him on whom that other sinner cried would wipe from
Time's register a span of hours between twelve P.M. and three o'clock in
the morning--blot one deed from the Roll of things that done, are beyond
Humanity's undoing--Patrine told herself that it would be worth while to
wear sackcloth, live on boiled field-peas, drink brook-water, and
pray--until her knees were worn to the bone.
She caught Saxham's piercing glance across the intervening strip of
greensward. He turned away his eyes, and a shudder went through her
frame. Had he suspected--could anyone have found out and told him? The
Doctor's head was bent now as the General talked to him. It seemed to
her that a muscle in his lean cheek twitched, a characteristic sign with
him of excitement, or emotion. She wondered what the General had said
to Uncle Owen to make him look like that.
As a fact, the quiet voice was saying in Saxham's ear: "And prepare
against a surprise, Doctor--for though your nerves are tough as
aluminium bronze, a few million gallons of water have rolled under the
Thames bridges since you and I held Council of War.... As I mentioned
before, the interest taken by the French Government in Sherbrand's
gyroscopic hoverer may well have stimulated the interest of our Teuton
neighbours. But it doesn't explain the presence on Fanshaw's Flying
Ground of Lieutenant-General Count Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the
German Great General Staff, and--Grand Admiral Prince Henry of Prussia,
brother of the Kaiser--in a F.I.A.T. touring-car!"
*CHAPTER XXIX*
*A SECRET MISSION*
"Can it be possible----" Saxham checked himself. "You see how rusty I
am getting, General. You refer to that machine that turned out from
where cars are parked just now. The German fellow went up to it.... It
had a groom beside the chauffeur and three other men inside it.... While
I was looking--elsewhere--it must have moved away!"
"It has only turned the corner of the cafe-restaurant," the Chief said
in his quiet tones. He glanced in the direction of the squat block of
gaily painted wooden buildings devoted to the inner needs of Fanshaw's
clients. "The awning hides it, but I can see a bit of it still. Until
it moves, I can go on talking. Frankly, I am in the position of the
High Church curate who went out wild-pig shooting in the territories of
the Limpopo with a single-bore hammer-gun of grandpapa's pattern--and
got his choice of pot-shots between a lion and a rhino. Prinz Heinrich
is my royal lion and von Herrnung,--who counted for little more than a
bush-pig--has suddenly swelled into a rhinoceros."
He pulled the grizzled moustache thoughtfully, keeping his eyes glued on
the back of the big blue car.
"If I could get hold of Sherbrand!--but the chance is dead for the rhino
and lion winding me. Old von Moltke with the big wart on his
ginger-coloured face, and the charming manner that makes you forget that
you don't like him!--would certainly recognise me--and the nautical
Hohenzollern and I have met once or twice before. I must lay low like
Brer Rabbit, and take a single-handed chance. No, no, Doctor, you have
your patients to look after! I am not going to drag you into this. But
if I'd got a couple of my Boy Scouts handy----" He broke off,
encountering Bawne's bright eyes. "By George, Doctor! I'm going to
chance it! I'm going to give your youngster an opportunity to prove his
Saxham blood!"
The Master-hand gave the Scout's Sign, and Bawne shot across like a
brownish streak of swiftness. He drew himself up, gave the Full Salute,
and stood waiting, his rigid attitude in sharp contrast with his
dancing, expectant eyes. The Doctor looked at his watch and moved away
silently. The Chief said in a clear undertone:
"You see that tall, red-haired man in grey clothes over there with Mr.
Sherbrand? Don't look at him openly, or he will know we are talking
about him, but take a sidelong gliff, and say."
"I see him, sir."
"Do you know anything of him? Stand easy and answer carefully."
The hand came down from the hat-brim. The boy said:
"I've heard him talk, sir, and I think he is German. I'm learning that
and French at Charterhouse."
"He is a German. Do you speak enough of the language to understand him,
suppose he were talking to one of his countrymen?"
"_Ich--kann--lesen, aber Ich kann es--nicht sprechen._" The answer came
slowly. "And if they weren't using crack-jaw words, sir, or talking
very quick, I might manage--I could make out a lot of what they said."
"Very well, keep your man under close observation and--you see that
brown satchel he has in his hand?"
"I've seen it close, sir. A flat brown leather despatch case
thing--with a criss-cross pattern on the leather, and two locks, and
another lock on the strap that goes round. He hadn't it with him when
first I saw him talking to--a lady. Then a man--a servant--came and
called him away to speak to some gentlemen in a big blue motor-car. One
of them--fat and old and bald--with a wart on his cheek, who wore a
white topper, and yellowy clothes, and a red necktie, and looked rather
like a--like an Inspector of Sunday Schools in shooting-clothes--passed
him the leather case. That's how I know he didn't bring it, sir. Oh!
and the yellow car he drives isn't British. She's got an oval
International plate with the German 'D' in black on a white ground."
"I am glad my Scout knows how to use his eyes!"
The Chief's own eyes were crinkled with merriment. That Moltke, the
Chief of the German Great General staff, bosom friend of the All
Highest, should resemble a stout Inspector of Sunday Schools in the
estimation of a small British boy, was lovely in the extreme.
"Well, I want to know what the big German officer--he is an
officer!--does with that leather satchel he's carrying so carefully.
Where he goes with it, whom he talks to, and what he says to them. Find
out whether it is light or heavy, if it is what I believe it to be, you
might be rendering good service to your country in destroying it. But
you'll be doing all I want or expect, if you stick to the man who
carries it!"
"I'll do that, sir, on my Honour!"
"Good! Make your little German serve you. I may have to leave here
upon this business, but I'll be back within, at least--half an hour. If
he goes before I get back, find out where he is going. If you can't
find out, follow him. On foot if he walks, in a taxi if he doesn't.
Here are six separate shillings--in that case you'll want money for
fares. Remember, if things take a puzzling turn and you find yourself
in a tight place, whisper a quiet word to Sherbrand, though I'd prefer
you to carry through on your own! Report to me, in case he goes before
I get back here--at Headquarters, Victoria Street. Have you got all
this tucked away safe in your head?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then quit yourself like a man. My signal to you that I have left will
be a dog's yelping. Ah!" The keen bright eyes, glued on the distant
back of the blue car, had seen the rear wheels moving. Before the
F.I.A.T. glided smoothly out of eyeshot the Chief had hurried away.
In the opposite direction to the archway of exit, the slight, active
figure in the perfectly-cut blue serge morning clothes and pot hat of
Bond Street block, was rapidly walking. Bawne doubted his eyes for a
moment before he remembered that the Collingwood Avenue ran along that
side of the Flying Ground fence. There was a smaller gate in charge of
a commissionaire, in the fence, about a hundred yards along it.
Taxi-cabs were standing outside the gate. Any person on foot or awheel,
leaving the Flying Ground, must pass the gate and the taxi-stand. You
could see through the chinks in the fence when they passed, nip out when
they were well by, and follow in a green-flagged chuffer. Bawne had
settled this to his satisfaction before a wrench at the rein of duty
pulled his head round to the business on hand.
"I'm not spying on Mr. Sherbrand," the boy told himself, gritting his
small square teeth doggedly. "I've _got_ to listen, so as to understand
the German's game. And I'm going to. This is how I'm going to!"
He began to turn hand-springs after the fashion of the London street
Arab, thus lessening the distance between himself and the talking men.
They glanced at him, and Sherbrand grinned, but they looked back again
directly at each other. Then Bawne threw himself down and panted,
rolled over and lay, still panting. Now he was near enough to hear what
passed between the two.
Sherbrand said:
"No, I was not particularly solid in my conviction that the aerial
stabiliser would take the fancy of the Chiefs of the Service
Aeronautique. An accident prevented me from witnessing the final test,
and I got what the Americans call cold feet and judged it no use staying
in France longer. So I flew back here, starting early by daylight the
next morning, with Davis, my mechanic, and found a cable waiting at my
office to say the working of the invention had been observed with
interest by the Chiefs of the S. Ae. F., and that if I could carry out a
satisfactory time-trial at my headquarters in the presence of the French
Consul, the authorities at the Ministry of War would be willing to buy
my patents for France. As it happened, I was suffering from a slight
obstruction in the nasal passages, that spoiled my climbing. It was
absolutely necessary to go into Hospital. That is why I could not give
M. Jourdain an earlier date for the hovering-test you have just seen
carried out."
Von Herrnung demanded:
"But did you not receive a letter containing a business proposal? A
communication from Rathenau, Wolff and Brothers, Aeromotor Engineers of
Paris, 200, Rue Gagnette? I happen to know that it was posted, and the
date being that of the Paris trial, Herren Rathenau and Wolff certainly
possess the prior claim!"
"Their communication reached me in Hospital, three days later than the
French War Office cable," Sherbrand answered. "It had been forwarded
from the makeshift hangar I rented at Drancy--a mistake in the address
being the reason of the delay!"
"That fellow Lindemann is a _Dummer Teufel_," said von Herrnung,
shrugging.
"My German landlord.... Why--do you know him?" asked Sherbrand with a
look of surprise.
"No, certainly. But you--you said the fellow's name was Lindemann. Not
so? No?--then I am mistaken," said von Herrnung with another shrug. He
hurried on as though to cover a mistake with a spate of sentences:
"Of course, with Rathenau and Wolff I have nothing to do. Save as an
old customer, of whom they have asked a favour--you understand? Indeed
I--you will pardon me!--do not your hoverer regard as an original
invention. In 1912 our German Ministry of Marine completed a gun-boat
fitted with a gyroscopic stabiliser to prevent rolling--you
understand--in stormy weather. The device was hellishly effective."
"So effective," rejoined Sherbrand, without the quiver of a facial
muscle, though there was laughter in his eyes, "that it broke up the
ship."
"_Es mag wohl sein!_" returned von Herrnung, covering discomfiture, if
he felt it, with his imperturbable shrug and hard blue stare.
Sherbrand went on, straightening his wide shoulders and clasping his
hands loosely at his back as he talked:
"I don't claim that my patent is an absolutely new invention. Far from
it. But it is a new arrangement of some old ideas, and limited though
its use may be--it works. You have seen it working. You agree that it
justifies its name?" He waited for the assent, and went on: "Possibly
if I had described it as an aerial drag-anchor, I should have explained
its uses more clearly. It is no good at all when your machine isn't
flying level--of course you understand that? If you were ass enough to
try to dive without cutting out the power that drives the horizontal
screws you would drop to the ground like a plummet and break into a
million of little bits--or dig a hole in the earth big enough for a Tube
Station. But--keeping an even line of flight--when you switch it on it
pulls against the tractor just sufficiently to give you--not
immovability--but poise. Sufficient to take a photograph or drop an
explosive with a good deal of accuracy."
The small boy lying outstretched on the warm turf near them, thought
dolefully:
"_Dummer Teufel_ meant 'stupid devil' in German. But this talk is
dreadfully business, I can't stow away much. Man alive! I wish Roddy
Wrynche or some other fellow with a top-hole memory had got this job to
tackle. And yet the Chief trusted it to _me_!"
All this, while Sherbrand was explaining.
"M. Jourdain declared himself completely satisfied. His observer said
that I maintained poise and stability for five minutes longer than the
stipulated twenty-five. He looked at the altimeter and said I should
receive a definite answer within a couple of days.... Unlucky brute!
Someone must have run over him!"
The shrill yelp of a hurt dog had evoked Sherbrand's exclamation. The
sufferer's plaint came from the Collingwood Avenue, on the other side of
the fence. Thrice the excruciating sound ripped the ears, then died out
in a sobbing whimper.... _That was for me!_ Bawne told himself, as von
Herrnung went on:
"Still, you are not pledged. There is no definite understanding. In
the interests of the wealthy firm I am asked to represent--solely as a
matter of courtesy, because they have been immensely civil to me in
business,--you would not refuse me a test?"
Sherbrand said, drawing off his left glove and showing blood oozing from
under bluish-looking finger-nails:
"I found it uncommonly parky to-day at 10,000 feet. There was a
nor'-east breeze, a regular piercer. Found myself spitting blood rather
badly, and to be candid, I was uncommonly grateful that the French
Consul declined my offer, in case he was not satisfied, to do the thing
again. The fact is, the operation, slight as it was, has weakened me a
little. I wouldn't care to repeat the performance without a good
night's rest to buck me up."
Von Herrnung shrugged and agreed:
"That it is cold at 10,000 I can credit easily. I have had the oil in
my own gauges frozen at 7,000 in midsummer. _Da ist nicht zit strassen_.
Haemorrhage and dizziness are the chief enemies of the aviator. One's
stomach betrays one also, the cursed beast!--after a good hearty meal!"
"I don't give mine the chance!" Sherbrand returned, "but stave off the
pangs of appetite with milk-tablets and meat-lozenges. Do all my flying
on these and chocolate. Keep a little store of the things and a Thermos
of hot coffee, in a _cache_ I've made for them, under the map-desk on
the left of the instrument-frame, facing the pilot's seat. If you will
come over to the Bird I'll show you, and explain the working of the
gyroscopic hoverer." He added, looking squarely at von Herrnung: "Of
course the cutting of the double screw is the chief thing about the
invention. I've registered every way I know and got a trade-mark. They
tell me at the Patent Office that my international rights are secure!"
"They should be, if you have those precautions taken. It does not do to
trust," said von Herrnung, "too much! The monkey proverb is law for most
men." He shrugged. "It comes, by the way, from Namaland in German
South-West Africa. '_Nuts in your pouch are nuts in mine!_'"
The freemasonry of their calling had established a degree of
friendliness between them. They were laughing over the monkey's
philosophy as they went over together to the Bird. The small boy who had
been idly sprawling on the hot turf near them, with his tilted hat
shielding his face from the westering sun-rays, got up and trotted after
them like a collie pup.
"Coming too, young man?" Sherbrand said, glancing back and smiling. The
boy nodded in answer, and thence-forward kept close at the heels of the
men, his ears industriously drinking in their conversation, while his
eyes were glued on the brown leather satchel depending from the German's
gloved left hand. Both men, now leaning over the side of the pilot's
cockpit, examined the gearing of the hoverer, protected by a transparent
casing set in the tough ash, copper-riveted planking of the fuselage.
Then with the aid of sulky Davis they tilted the Bird, and inspected the
pair of thin circular plates of toughened steel with flanged edges that,
revolving at high velocity in different. directions, constituted the
horizontal screw.
"Driven from the engine, as you see, by an endless chain-drive
arrangement. By manipulation of levers, you can throw the tractor out
of gear, and hover, under favourable circumstances and in still weather,
by means of the horizontal screw alone. But as a rule you keep the
tractor working, and the screw acts in one as a lifter and
floating-anchor. That's about all it amounts to!--I've said I don't
pretend to hang immovable in the air like the albatross and the condor,
not to mention the gull and sparrow-hawk and dragon-fly! While I hover
I am making way--but way to an inappreciable amount. One of these days
we shall find out the big Secret of Stability. Until then we must rub
along as best we can!"
Von Herrnung returned: