Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 55077-h.htm or 55077-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55077/pg55077-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55077/55077-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/yellowdove00gibbiala
Transcriber’s note:
Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
THE YELLOW DOVE
[Illustration: “His blond hair disheveled, his shoulders coatless,
Cyril emerged.”]
THE YELLOW DOVE
by
GEORGE GIBBS
Illustrated by the Author
[Illustration]
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright, 1915,
By D. Appleton and Company
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PRELUDE 1
I. SHELTERED PEOPLE 5
II. THE UNDERCURRENT 17
III. RICE-PAPERS 31
IV. DANGEROUS SECRETS 45
V. THE PURSUIT CONTINUES 55
VI. RIZZIO TAKES CHARGE 68
VII. AN INTRUDER 83
VIII. EVIDENCE 96
IX. THE VIKING’S TOWER 108
X. THE YELLOW DOVE 121
XI. VON STROMBERG 131
XII. HAMMERSLEY EXPLAINS 145
XIII. THE UNWILLING GUEST 157
XIV. VON STROMBERG CATECHISES 172
XV. THE INQUISITION 188
XVI. THE GENERAL PLAYS TO WIN 206
XVII. LINDBERG 221
XVIII. SUCCESS 243
XIX. THE CAVE ON THE THORWALD 260
XX. THE FIGHT IN THE CAVERN 275
XXI. HARE AND HOUNDS 289
XXII. FROM THE HEIGHTS 306
XXIII. HEADQUARTERS 320
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“His blond hair disheveled, his shoulders coatless,
Cyril emerged.” _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“‘Not that,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘for God’s
sake--not that.’” 80
“Her lips ... were whispering words that she
hoped could follow him into the distance.” 128
“The truth, and he becomes an honorable prisoner of
war. Silence, and he is shot tomorrow. Speak.” 218
THE YELLOW DOVE
PRELUDE
Rifts of sullen gray in the dirty veil of vapor beyond the reaches of
dunes, where the sea in long lines of white, like the ghostly hosts of
lost regiments, clamored along the sand....
A soughing wind, a shrieking of sea-birds, audible in pauses between
the faraway crackle of rifle-fire and the deep reverberations of
artillery--familiar music to ears trained by long listening. A shrill
scream of flying shrapnel, a distant crash and then a tense hush....
Silence--nearly, but not quite. A sound so small as to be almost lost
in the echoes of the clamor, an impact upon the air like the tapping of
the wings of an insect against one’s ear-drum, a persistent staccato
note which no other noise could still, borne with curious distinctness
upon some aërial current of the fog bank.
And yet this tiny sound had a strange effect upon the desolate scene,
for in a moment, as if they had been sown with dragon’s teeth, the sand
dunes suddenly vomited forth armed men who ran hither and thither,
their hands to their ears, peering aloft as though trying to pierce the
mystery of the skies.
“The blighter! It’s ’_im_ agayn.”
“_’Im! ’Oo’s ’im_, I’d like to arsk?”
“Stow yer jaw, cawn’t yer _’ear_? Ole Yaller-belly, agayn.”
The sounds were now clearly audible and to the south a series of rapid
detonations shivered the air.
“There goes ‘Johnny look in the air.’ Cawn’t get ’im, though. ’Strewth!
’E’s a cool one--_’e_ is!”
A hoarse order rang out from the trenches behind them--and the men ran
for cover. The fog lifted a little and a shaft of light touched the
leaden gray of the sea like the sheen on a dirty gun-barrel. The nearer
high-angle guns were speaking now--fruitlessly, for the sounds seemed
to come from directly overhead. The fog lifted again and a shaft of
pale sunlight shot across the line of entrenchments.
“There ’e is, not wastin’ no time--_’e_ ayn’t.”
“Yus. But they’re arfter ’im. There comes hyviashun. O _’ell_!”
The expletive in a final tone of disgust for the fog had fallen again,
completely obliterating the air-craft and its pursuers.
“_’Oo’s_ Yaller-belly?” asked a smooth-faced youth who still wore the
sallow of London under his coat of windburn.
“You’re one of the new lot, ayn’t yer? You’ll know b----y soon ’oo
Yaller-belly is, won’t ’e, Bill? Pow! That’s ’im--them sharp ones.”
“Garn!” said the one called Bill. “’E never ’its anythink but the dirt
an’ ’e cawn’t ’elp that.”
“’Tayn’t ’cos ’e don’t try. ’Ear ’em? Nice droppin’s fer a dove, ayn’t
they?”
“Dove?” said the newcomer.
“Yus. Tubs the swine calls ’em----”
“Tawb, yer blighter.”
“Tub, I says. Whenever troops is moving’, ’e’s always abaht--jus’ drops
dahn hinformal-like, out o’ nowhere----”
“And cawn’t they catch ’im?”
“Catch ’im--? Bly me--not they! A thousand ’orse-power, they say
’e ’as--flies circles round hour hair squad like they was a lot o’
bloomink captivatin’ balloons.”
“But the ’igh-hangles----?”
“Moves too fast--’ere an’ gone agayn, afore you can fill yer cutty.
They do say ’as ’ow when Yaller-belly comes, there’s sure to be big
doin’s along the front.”
“Aye,” said Bill. “When we was dahn at Copenhagen----”
“Compayn, gran’pop----”
“Aw! Wot’s the hodds? Dahn at Copenhagen, ’e flew abaht same as ’e’s
doin’ now.”
Bill paused.
“And what happened?”
“You’ll ’ave to arsk Sir John abaht that, me son,” finished the other
dryly.
“We was drillin’ rear-guard actions, wasn’t we, Bill?”
“Aye. We was drilled, right, left, an’ a bit in the middle.” Bill rose
and spat down the wind. “Tyke it from me,” he finished, with a glance
aloft through the mist, “there’ll be somethin’ happen between ’ere an’
Wipers afore the week is hout----”
“Aye--the ’earse, Bill.”
“Wot ’earse?” asked the newcomer again.
“The larst time ’e kyme--down Wipers-way. There was a lull in the
firin’ an’ ’tween the lines o’ trenches where the dead Dutchies was,
comes a ’earse--a real ’earse with black ’orses, plumes an’ all. We
thought ’twas some general they’d come to fetch and hup we stands hout
o’ the trenches, comp’ny after comp’ny, caps off, all respec’ful-like.
This ’ere ’earse comes along slow an’ mournful, black curt’ins an’ all
flappin’ in the wind an’ six of the blighters a-marchin’ heads down
behind it. They wheels up abreast of our comp’ny near a mound o’ earth
and stops, an’ while we was lookin’--the front side of that there
b----y vee-Hicle drops out an’ a machine-gun begins slippin’ it into us
pretty as you please. ’Earse--that’s wot it was--a ’earse! an’ it jolly
well made a funeral out o’ B Company.”
“Gawd!” said the newcomer. “And Yaller-belly----?”
“I ayn’t sayin’ nothin’ abaht _’im_. You wait, that’s all.”
The sounds of firing rose and fell again. The fog thickened and the
last crashes of the high-angle guns echoed out to sea, but the rush of
the flying planes continued. Three machines there were by the sound of
them, but one grew ever more distinct until the sounds of the three
were merged into one. Closer it came, until like the blast of a storm
down a mountainside, a huge shadow fell across the dunes and was gone
amid a scattering of futile shots into the fog which might as well have
been aimed at the moon.
Bill, the prescient, straightened and peered through the fog toward the
flying plane.
“A ’earse,” he muttered. “That’s wot it was--a ’earse.”
CHAPTER I
SHELTERED PEOPLE
Lady Betty Heathcote had a reputation in which she took pride for
giving successful dinners in a neighborhood where successful dinners
were a rule rather than an exception. Her prescription was simple
and consisted solely in compounding her social elements by strenuous
mixing. She had a faculty for discovering cubs with incipient manes
and saw them safely grown without mishap. At her house in Park Lane,
politics, art, literature, and science rubbed elbows. Here pictures
had been born, plays had had their real _premières_, novels had been
devised, and poems without number, not a few of which were indited to
My Lady Betty’s eyebrow, here first saw the light of day.
For all her dynamic energy in a variety of causes, most of them wise,
all of them altruistic, Lady Betty had the rare faculty of knowing
when to be restful. Tired Cabinet ministers, overworked lords of the
Admiralty, leaders in all parties, knew that in Park Lane there would
be no questions asked which it would not be possible to answer, that
there was always an excellent dinner to be had without frills, a lounge
in a quiet room, or, indeed, a pair of pyjamas and a bed if necessary.
But since the desperate character of the war with Germany had been
driven home into the hearts of the people of London, a change had
taken place in the complexion of many private entertainments and the
same serious air which was to be noted in the mien of well-informed
people of all classes upon the street was reflected in the faces of
her guests. Her scientists were engrossed with utilitarian problems.
Her literary men were sending vivid word-pictures of ruined Rheims
and Louvain to their brothers across the Atlantic, and her Cabinet
ministers conversed less than usual, addressing themselves with a
greater particularity to her roasts or her spare bedrooms. Torn between
many duties, as patroness to bazaars, as head of a variety of sewing
guilds, as president of the new association for the training and
equipment of nurses, Lady Heathcote herself showed signs of the wear
and tear of an extraordinary situation, but she managed to meet it
squarely by using every ounce of her abundant energy and every faculty
of her resourceful mind.
Many secrets were hers, both political and departmental, but she
kept them nobly, aware that she lived in parlous times, when an
unconsidered word might do a damage irreparable. Agents of the enemy,
she knew, had been discovered in every walk of life, and while she
lived in London’s innermost circle, she knew that even her own house
might not have been immune from visitors whose secret motives were
open to question. It was, therefore, with the desire to reassure
herself as to the unadulterated loyalty of her intimates that she had
carefully scrutinized her dinner lists, eliminating all uncertain
quantities through whom or by whom the unreserved character of the
conversation across her board might in any way be jeopardized. So it
was that tonight’s dinner-table had something of the complexion of a
family party, in which John Rizzio, the bright particular star in
London’s firmament of Art, was to lend his effulgence. John Rizzio,
dean of collectors, whose wonderful house in Berkeley Square rivaled
the British Museum and the Wallace Collection combined, an Italian
by birth, an Englishman by adoption, who because of his public
benefactions had been offered a knighthood and had refused it; John
Rizzio, who had been an intimate of King Edward, a friend of Cabinet
ministers, who knew as much about the inner workings of the Government
as majesty itself. Long a member of Lady Heathcote’s circle, it had
been her custom to give him a dinner on the anniversary of the day of
the acquisition of the most famous picture in his collection, “The
Conningsby Venus,” which had, before the death of the old Earl, been
the aim of collectors throughout the world.
As usual the selection of her guests had been left to Rizzio, whose
variety of taste in friendships could have been no better shown than
in the company which now graced Lady Heathcote’s table. The Earl and
Countess of Kipshaven, the one artistic, the other literary; their
daughter the Honorable Jacqueline Morley; Captain Byfield, a retired
cavalry officer now on special duty at the War Office; Lady Joyliffe,
who had lost her Earl at Mons, an interesting widow, the bud of whose
new affections was already emerging from her weeds; John Sandys,
under-secretary for foreign affairs, the object of those affections;
Miss Doris Mather, daughter of the American cotton king, who was known
for doing unusual things, not the least of which was her recent refusal
of the hand of John Rizzio, one of London’s catches, and the acceptance
of that of the Honorable Cyril Hammersley, the last to be mentioned
member of this distinguished company, gentleman sportsman and man
about town, who as everybody knew would never set the world afire.
No one knew how this miracle had happened, for Doris Mather’s brains
were above the ordinary; she had a discriminating taste in books and a
knowledge of pictures, and just before dinner, upstairs in a burst of
confidence she had given her surprised hostess an idea of what a man
should be.
“He should be clever, Betty,” she sighed, “a worker, a dreamer of great
dreams, a firebrand in every good cause, a patriot willing to fight to
the last drop of his blood----”
Lady Betty’s laughter disconcerted her and she paused.
“And that is why you chose the Honorable Cyril?”
Miss Mather compressed her lips and frowned at her image in the mirror.
“Don’t be nasty, Betty. I couldn’t marry a man as old as John Rizzio.”
Lady Betty only laughed again.
“Forgive me, dear, but it really is most curious. I wouldn’t laugh
if you hadn’t been so careful to describe to me all the virtues that
Cyril--hasn’t.”
Doris powdered the end of her nose thoughtfully.
“I suppose they’re all a myth--men like that. They simply don’t
exist--that’s all.”
Lady Betty pinned a final jewel on her bodice.
“I’m sure John Rizzio is flattered at your choice. Cyril is an old
dear. But to marry! I’d as soon take the automatic chess player. Why
are you going to marry Cyril, Doris?” she asked.
A long pause and more powder.
“I’m not sure that I am. I don’t even know why I thought him possible.
I think it’s the feeling of the potter for his clay. Something _might_
be made of him. He seems so helpless somehow. Men of his sort always
are. I’d like to mother him. Besides”--and she flashed around on her
hostess brightly--“he does sit a horse like a centaur.”
“He’s also an excellent shot, a good chauffeur, a tolerable dancer
and the best bat in England, all agreeable talents in a gentleman of
fashion but--er--hardly----” Lady Betty burst into laughter. “Good
Lord, Doris! Cyril a firebrand!”
Doris Mather eyed her hostess reproachfully and moved toward the door
into the hallway.
“Come, Betty,” she said with some dignity, “are you ready to go down?”
All of which goes to show that matches are not made in Heaven and
that the motives of young women in making important decisions are
actuated by the most unimportant details. Hammersley’s good fortune
was still a secret except to Miss Mather’s most intimate friends,
but the conviction was slowly growing in the mind of the girl that
unless Cyril stopped sitting around in tweeds when everybody else was
getting into khaki, the engagement would never be announced. As the
foreign situation had grown more serious she had seen other men who
weighed less than Cyril throw off the boredom of their London habits
and go soldiering into France. But the desperate need of his country
for able-bodied men had apparently made no impression upon the placid
mind of the Honorable Cyril. It was as unruffled as a highland lake in
mid-August. He had contributed liberally from his large means to Lady
Heathcote’s Ambulance Fund, but his manner had become, if anything,
more bored than ever.
Miss Mather entered the drawing-room thoughtfully with the helpless
feeling of one who, having made a mistake, pauses between the
alternatives of tenacity and recantation. And yet as soon as she saw
him a little tremor of pleasure passed over her. In spite of his
drooping pose, his vacant stare, his obvious inadequacy she was sure
there was something about Cyril Hammersley that made him beyond doubt
the most distinguished-looking person in the room--not even excepting
Rizzio.
He came over to her at once, the monocle dropping from his eye.
“Aw’fly glad. Jolly good to see you, m’dear. Handsome no end.”
He took her hand and bent over her fingers. Such a broad back he had,
such a finely shaped head, such shoulders, such strong hands that were
capable of so much but had achieved so little. And were these all that
she could have seen in him? Reason told her that it was her mind that
demanded a mate. Could it be that she was in love with a beautiful body?
There was something pathetic in the way he looked at her. She felt very
sorry for him, but Betty Heathcote’s laughter was still ringing in her
ears.
“Thanks, Cyril,” she said coolly. “I’ve wanted to see you--tonight--to
tell you that at last I’ve volunteered with the Red Cross.”
Hammersley peered at her blankly and then with a contortion set his
eyeglass.
“Red Cross--you! Oh, I say now, Doris, that’s goin’ it rather thick on
a chap----”
“It’s true. Father’s fitting out an ambulance corps and has promised to
let me go.”
John Rizzio, tall, urbane, dark and cynical, who had joined them,
heard her last words and broke into a shrug.
“It’s the khaki, Hammersley. The women will follow it to the ends of
the earth. Broadcloth and tweeds are not the fashion.” He ran his arm
through Hammersley’s. “There’s nothing for you and me but to volunteer.”
The Honorable Cyril only stared at him blankly.
“Haw!” he said, which, as Lady Betty once expressed it, was half the
note of a jackass.
Here the Kipshavens arrived and their hostess signaled the advance upon
the dinner-table.
One of the secrets of the success of Lady Heathcote’s dinners was the
size and shape of her table, which seated no more than ten and was
round. Her centerpieces were flat and her candelabra low so that any
person at the table could see and converse with anyone else. It was
thus possible delicately to remind those who insisted on completely
appropriating their dinner partners that private matters could be much
more safely discussed in the many corners of the house designed for the
purpose. Doris sat between Rizzio and Byfield, Hammersley with Lady
Joyliffe just opposite, and when Rizzio announced the American girl’s
decision to go to France as soon as her training was completed she
became the immediate center of interest.
“That’s neutrality of the right sort,” said Kipshaven heartily. “I wish
all of your countrymen felt as you do.”
“I think most of them do,” replied Doris, smiling slowly, “but you
know, you haven’t always been nice to us. There have been many times
when we felt that as an older brother you treated us rather shabbily.
I’m heaping coals of fire, you see.”
“_Touché!_” said Rizzio, with a laugh.
“I bare my head,” said the Earl.
“Ashes to ashes,” from Lady Joyliffe.
Kipshaven smiled. “Once in England gray hairs were venerated, even
among the frivolous. Now,” he sighed, “they are only a reproach.
_Peccavi._ Forgive me. I wish I could set the clock back.”
“You’d go?” asked Doris.
“Tomorrow,” said the old Earl with enthusiasm.
Miss Mather glanced at Hammersley who was enjoying his soup, a purée he
liked particularly.
“But isn’t there something you could do?”
“Yes. Write, for America--for Italy--for Sweden and Holland--for Spain.
It’s something, but it isn’t enough. My fingers are itching for a
sword.”
The Honorable Cyril looked up.
“Pen mightier than sword,” he quoted vacuously, and went on with his
soup.
“You don’t really mean that, Hammersley,” said Kipshaven amid smiles.
“Well rather,” drawled the other. “All silly rot--fightin’. What’s
the use. Spoiled my boar-shootin’ in Hesse-Nassau--no season at
Carlsbad--no season anywhere--everything the same--winter--summer----”
“You wouldn’t think so if you were in the trenches, my boy,” laughed
Byfield.
“Beastly happy I’m not,” said Hammersley. “Don’t mind shootin’
pheasant or boar. Bad form--shootin’ men--not the sportin’ thing, you
know--pottin’ a bird on the ground--’specially Germans.”
“_Boches!_” said Lady Betty contemptuously. She was inclined to be
intolerant. For her Algy had already been mentioned in dispatches. “I
don’t understand you, Cyril.”
Hammersley regarded her gravely while Constance Joyliffe took up his
cudgels.
“You forget Cyril’s four years at Heidelberg.”
“No I don’t,” said their hostess warmly, “and I could almost believe
Cyril had German sympathies.”
“I have, you know,” said Hammersley calmly, sniffing at the rim of his
wineglass.
“This is hardly the time to confess it,” said Kipshaven dryly.
Doris sat silent, aware of a deep humiliation which seemed to envelop
them both.
Rizzio laughed and produced a clipping from _Punch_. “Hammersley is
merely stoically peaceful. Listen.” And he read:
“I was playing golf one day when the Germans landed
All our troops had run away and all our ships were stranded
And the thought of England’s shame nearly put me off my game.”
Amid the laughter the Honorable Cyril straightened.
“Silly stuff, that,” he said quite seriously, “to put a fellow off his
game.” And turning to Lady Joyliffe: “_Punch_ a bit brackish lately.
What?”
“Cyril, you’re insular,” from Lady Heathcote.
“No, insulated,” said Doris with a flash of the eyes.
Rizzio laughed. “Highly potential but--er--not dangerous. Why should he
be? He’s your typical Briton--sport-loving, calm and nerveless in the
most exacting situations--I was at Lords, you know, when Hammersley
made that winning run for Marylebone--two minutes to play. Every bowler
they put up----”
“It’s hardly a time for bats,” put in Kipshaven dryly. “What we need is
fast bowlers--with rifles.”
The object of these remarks sat serenely, smiling blandly around the
table, but made no reply. In the pause that followed Sandys was heard
in a half whisper to Byfield.
“What’s this I hear of a leak at the War Office?”
Captain Byfield glanced down the table. “Have you heard that?”
“Yes. At the club.”
Captain Byfield touched the rim of his glass to his lips.
“I’ve heard nothing of it.”
“What?” from a chorus.
“Information is getting out somewhere. I violate no confidences in
telling you. The War Office is perturbed.”
“How terrible!” said Lady Joyliffe. “And don’t they suspect?”
“That’s the worst of it. The Germans got wind of some of Lord
Kitchener’s plans and some of the Admiralty’s--which nobody knew but
those very near the men at the top.”
“A spy in that circle--unbelievable,” said Kipshaven.
“My authority is a man of importance. Fortunately no damage has been
done. The story goes that we’re issuing false statements in certain
channels to mislead the enemy and find the culprit.”
“But how does the news reach the Germans?” asked Rizzio.
“No one knows. By courier to the coast and then by fast motor-boat
perhaps; or by aëroplane. It’s very mysterious. A huge _Taube_, yellow
in color, flying over the North Sea between England and the continent
has been sighted and reported by English vessels again and again and
each flight has coincided with some unexpected move on the part of the
enemy. Once it was seen just before the raid at Falmouth, again before
the Zeppelin visit to Sandringham.”
“A yellow dove!” said Lady Kipshaven. “A bird of ill omen, surely.”
“But how could such an aëroplane leave the shores of England without
being remarked?” asked Kipshaven.
“Oh,” laughed Sandys, “answer me that and we have the solution of the
problem. A strict watch is being kept on the coasts, and the government
employees--the postmen, police, secret-service men of every town and
village from here to the Shetlands are on the lookout--but not a
glimpse have they had of him, not a sign of his arrival or departure,
but only last week he was reported by a destroyer flying toward the
English coast.”
“Most extraordinary!” from Lady Kipshaven.
“It’s a large machine?” asked Rizzio.
“Larger than any aëroplane ever built in Europe. They say Curtis,
the American, was building a thousand horsepower machine at
Hammondsport--in the States. This one must be at least as large as
that.”
“But surely such a machine could not be hidden in England for any
length of time without discovery.”
“It would seem so--but there you are. The main point is that he hasn’t
been discovered and that its pilot is here in England--ready to fly
across the sea with our military secrets when he gets them.”
“D--n him!” growled Kipshaven quite audibly, a sentiment which echoed
so truly in the hearts of those present that it passed without comment.
“The captain of a merchant steamer who saw it quite plainly reported
that the power of the machine was simply amazing--that it flew at about
six thousand feet and was lost to sight in an incredibly brief time.
In short, my friends, the Yellow Dove is one of the miracles of the
day--and its pilot one of its mysteries.”
“But our aviation men--can they do nothing?”
“What? Chase rainbows? Where shall their voyage begin and where end?
He’s over the North Sea one minute and in Belgium the next. Our troops
in the trenches think he’s a phantom. They say even the bombs he drops
are phantoms. They are heard to explode but nobody has ever been hit by
them.”
“What will the War Office do?”
Sandys shrugged expressively. “What would _you_ do?”
“Shoot the beggar,” said the Honorable Cyril impassively.
“Shoot the moon, sir,” roared the Earl angrily. “It’s no time for
idiotic remarks. If this story is true, a danger hangs over England. No
wholesome Briton,” here he glanced again at Hammersley, “ought to go to
sleep until this menace is discovered and destroyed.”
“The Yellow Dove is occult,” said Sandys, “like a witch on a
broomstick.”
“A Flying Dutchman,” returned Lady Joyliffe.
“There seems to be no joke about that,” said the Earl.