We waited, and we watched. And what we were able to discover was
certainly astounding.
During my convalescence many of my flying friends called at my rooms in
Shaftesbury Avenue to congratulate me upon my narrow escape.
I had been shaken very considerably, but actually I was not much the
worse for it. I felt quite fit and eager, but the doctor would not hear
of me going out, except for a run in a closed car.
The real cause of my accident was kept a profound secret from every one.
The governor thought it was due to clumsiness or recklessness, and I
was, of course, compelled to allow him to think so. Sir Herbert and
Lady Lethmere, who called one afternoon, appeared to hold the same
opinion, for the red-faced old steel manufacturer said:
"You must really be more careful, in future, my dear boy--far more
careful. Accidents so quickly happen in aeroplanes."
"Yes, accidents do," I admitted. It was on the tip of my tongue to
explain to him how some devilish plotter had attempted to take my life.
I was constantly haunted by the remembrance of a face--the face of that
man in the crowd with the eyes askew. As I sat alone at my fireside,
often reading the papers through, even to the advertisements, and out of
patience with everything and everybody, those narrow beady eyes would
rise before me. I would recognise that face with the curious exultant
expression anywhere.
After long debate within myself I had come to the conclusion, however,
that the man with the eyes askew was not actually the person who had
substituted in my machine a wooden bolt for a steel one.
I recollect the expression upon that hard, furrowed countenance even
now--a wildly exultant expression as though he were gloating over the
death-trap so cunningly prepared for me. Yet, when I reflected during
my convalescence, I knew that no lunatic's hand was responsible for such
crafty contrivance, and further, the person who had withdrawn the steel
bolt would certainly not come forth so boldly to peer into my face as
that podgy little stranger had done.
No. The man with the eyes askew might, perhaps, have gained secret
knowledge of the dastardly plot, and come there to watch me rise to my
death. But I was confident that his was not the Invisible Hand that had
been raised against me.
From everybody--even from Lionel Eastwell and the insurance people--we
concealed the truth. Lionel, who lived in Albemarle Street, not far
away often came in to cheer me up, sitting with me, consuming
cigarettes, expressing wonder at the reason of my accident, and
gossiping technicalities, as airmen will always gossip. Indeed, at the
Royal Automobile Club the air "boys" are the biggest gossips in that
institution--which, not so long ago, Prince Henry of Prussia so
completely "nobbled."
Reminiscences of the "Prince Henry Motor Tour" through England have not
been exactly popular since August 1914--and any member mentioning His
Imperial Highness's name had become at once taboo. The remembrance of
that tour through the heat and dust of the Moselle valley, and
afterwards from south to north of England, is still with me. My pilot
in Germany was a certain Uhlan captain, who afterwards distinguished
himself as responsible for the atrocities committed upon the poor
inoffensive Belgians in Dinant, on the Meuse. The lives of seven
hundred of those poor victims, men, women and children butchered in cold
blood in the Grand Place outside the church with the bulgy spire cries
out for vengeance upon that fair-haired spick-and-span Prussian who sat
beside me for many days chatting so amiably in English, and assuring me
that Germany would ever be Great Britain's firmest friend and ally.
Ah! How cleverly were we all bamboozled! Whenever I entered the
portals of the club I remembered, as many of my fellow-members did, how
completely we were gulled and blinded by that horde of German secret
agents who came to us as friends and fellow-motorists, and partook of
our hospitality while actively plotting for our undoing.
Lionel Eastwell sat discussing this with me one dark rainy afternoon.
"There's no doubt that the Germans held out the hand of friendship and
laughed up their sleeves," he said, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke
upwards from his lips. "Now that one remembers, one grows furious at it
all. I confess that I liked Germany and the Germans. My people went to
Germany each summer, for the mater was a bit of a musician, and we
usually drifted to Dresden. I suppose I inherited from her my love of
music, and that's why I was sent to Dresden for a couple of years'
tuition."
"And did you never suspect?" I asked. "Remember what Lord Roberts and
many others told us. Recollect how we were warned by men who had
travelled, and who knew."
"Of course I read all those speeches and writings, but I confess,
Claude, that I laughed at them. I never dreamed that war would come--
not for another twenty years or more. I was lulled into a sense of
false security, just as our Government and people were lulled."
"True, Germany told us fables--pretty land, sea and air fables--and we
were childish enough to believe them. If peace had been the Kaiser's
object, why did Krupp's and Ehrhardt's work night and day and Count
Zeppelin carry on his frantic work of building giant airships?" I
queried. "The greatest block head in a village school, with the true
facts before him, could have done nothing else than suspect. But we are
such a smug and unsuspicious people. We never like to hear an
unpleasant truth."
"True, we're aroused now. This Zeppelin raid on London has inflamed the
public mind. The people are clamouring loudly for something to be done.
What can be done?" he asked. "How can we possibly fight those enemy
airships--eh?" And he looked me straight in the face with those calm
blue-grey eyes of his.