THE YELLOW DOVE
In a daze Doris saw Cyril bend over the prostrate figure and then come
toward her.
“Dead?” she whispered in horror.
But he didn’t seem to hear her. He caught her by the arm and forcibly
led her inland.
“Dead!” she whispered again. “It might have been you.”
“Or you,” she heard him say sharply.
“Me?”
“Yes. But it’s my fault. I should have guessed.”
“John Rizzio would kill _me_. Oh, it’s unbelievable!”
“You know too much.” He gave a short laugh. “Far too much for your
own good--or mine.” He caught her suddenly by both arms and made her
look straight into his eyes. “Doris, you’ve seen nothing, you’ve heard
nothing tonight. Do you understand?”
His grasp on her arms hurt her but she bore it without a murmur.
“Yes,” she said.
“You swear it?”
“Yes,” faintly, “I do.”
“I’ve got to go away from Ben-a-Chielt tonight. I can’t tell you why.
You’ve got to go straight to Kilmorack House now. You rode over. Take
the short cut by Horsham Hill. It’s not so well known. I would go with
you but I haven’t a moment to spare. Don’t trust anyone--not even the
maids at the house. Go back to London tomorrow with Jack Sandys and
don’t let him leave you until you’re safe at Ashwater Park. Where’s
your horse?”
She told him and followed blindly.
“Where are you going, Cyril?” she pleaded.
“It doesn’t matter.”
He found the horse and untied the bridle.
“Tell me, Cyril. I’ve earned the right to know.”
“Something has happened,” he said quietly, “which has put all my plans
in danger----”
“And you?”
“Yes. The thing I’ve been trying to do may fail. It hangs or falls by
this issue.”
“But what--what?”
“You can’t know that,” he said quickly. “Don’t ask me anything more. I
can’t answer. But trust in me if you can. Trust in me, Doris, and if
you love me--_silence_!”
He gave her a lift into the saddle and kissed her hand. Then he looked
around him and gave a parting injunction.
“Now cut sharp off to the right in the darkness until you strike the
old sheep trail. You can see it quite plainly in the heather. Follow it
to the head of the ridge, then take the road to Horsham Hill. Good-by
and God bless you.”
A sob rose in her throat and she could only wave a hand in reply. And
so she left him standing there alone gazing after her with bared head
in the darkness. The strain on her nerves had told on her and she sat
her side-saddle listlessly holding on by the pommel, and peering into
the darkness before her, with eyes that saw nothing but pictures of
death. She could not forget the wounded man grasping at space as he
tottered on the rim of the rocks. Cyril had killed a man. War! She had
thought war a more glorious thing. This seemed very like murder. She
blessed God for Stryker who had come so opportunely. Rizzio had tried
to kill Cyril. In horror she had seen him raise his pistol and aim,
but at her cry he had missed his shot and with the disabling of his
confederates he had fled.
Rizzio was a German spy. Then since they were enemies of course Cyril
was loyal--playing a part to deceive the enemy--learning its secrets
that England might profit by them. The message! What was the message
that the German naval officer had brought which had so disturbed Cyril?
What was this mysterious duty of Cyril’s which meant so much to his
cause, the success or failure of which hung by a thread? She tried to
think what Cyril could do in England and after a time the thing began
to come to her. Cyril was acting for England. He had succeeded, in
the guise of a German secret agent, in finding the traitor in the War
Office, and it was Cyril who had caused the arrest of Captain Byfield.
Rizzio, too, was a German spy who for some reason or other had been
sent--O God--that was it. The Germans suspected Cyril and had used John
Rizzio to put him to the test--had set a thief to catch a thief. Cyril
had found that the message was a dangerous one--and had refused to give
it up to Rizzio. That seemed to explain everything--Cyril’s willingness
to have her burn the papers, Rizzio’s anxiety to save them, that he
might send them to his employers. The second packet of papers? A false
message, prepared for a purpose which Cyril was to fulfill. The German
naval officer! His message--what was it? Imagination refused to aid
her. She could not understand. He brought a command--a test of Cyril’s
loyalty to Germany perhaps? Was that it? And if so, what? A test which
meant victory or defeat--that was what Cyril’s last words had meant.
Victory or defeat--life or death. It was a desperate game that he was
playing. And what was he going to do tonight that made it necessary for
him to leave her to ride to Kilmorack House alone?
Bewildered and weary with excitement and much thinking, she gave it up,
and as in a daze set her mind to the task of finding the way to Horsham
Hill. She rode on inland searching for the old sheep trail as Cyril had
described it to her, but as the minutes went by and she did not find it
she began to think that she must have passed it in the darkness. She
had ridden at a walk for hours it seemed, keeping as she thought in a
direction which would surely lead her to a road toward the Hill, but
she realized now that she was lost on the moor and that it might be
morning before she would find her way to Betty Heathcote’s. She stopped
her horse and peered in every direction. Nothing but the undulations of
the moor, hill and dale, a dead tree outlined against the sky, masses
of rock uncouth in form, bushes which whispered in the wind, the babble
of a tarn somewhere behind her, though she had not remembered passing
it. There were no lights in any direction, none even from the heavens,
for the stars had gone out. After a long while she wondered vaguely
what time it was. She had no watch, but it seemed that a paleness like
that which precedes the dawn had spread along the sky--though it hardly
seemed possible it could be so late as that. Three--four o’clock she
thought it might be--perhaps later. The one thing that now seemed to
persist in her mind was the hope that Wilson had obeyed orders and
kept Lady Heathcote in ignorance of her absence.
She was startled by her horse which, without moving, had stretched his
neck and whinnied loudly. He, too, had realized the aimlessness of
their wanderings and wanted the warm stalls at the Kilmorack stables.
Doris tried to think what was best to do. All sense of direction was
gone and she was beyond even the sound of the sea. At last she decided
to try a slight eminence and see if she could make out the bulk of
Ben-a-Chielt, but a mist had fallen, and when she reached the height
she was no wiser than before. Fortunately, it was not cold, and if she
did not fall from the saddle in utter weariness, daylight would show
her a way. She got down from her horse and, fastening him to a bush,
walked to and fro to keep awake, waiting for the day, for at sunrise
she could make her way toward the east until she reached the coast,
after which by following the cliffs to the right she would reach the
Lodge, and from there the way to Kilmorack House.
She had grown accustomed to the silences and now and then paused in
her pacing to stop and listen. She thought she heard a sound different
from the others--behind her it seemed, a subdued murmur, which, as she
listened, grew in intensity until she clearly made it out to be the
quick reverberations of a motor, running with its cut-out open. It was
coming fast, and in a moment a long fan of light shot across the sky
from below the brow of a distant hill and then fell suddenly to earth,
where it picked out the shapes of trees and bushes along what appeared
to be its road. The motor was not traveling toward her, but at an angle
which would make it pass near her, but quickly as she mounted and
rode toward it she was unable even to come within earshot before the
machine had passed and was lost to sight in the distance. It had not
gone by so rapidly that Doris had not been able to make out on a rise
of ground against the sky the profile of a roadster and the shapes of
two men. Cyril and Stryker! There could be no doubt of it, for the
body of Cyril’s car was familiar to her and the chances of any other
machine being abroad in this locality at this hour were remote indeed.
Where were they going? In which direction? Toward Saltham Rocks or
northward? She did not know, but decided to take the chance and follow.
She reached the road without difficulty--a trail it appeared to be with
well-defined wheel tracks and the marks of hoofs. She pressed her horse
onward in the wake of the speeding machine, not to overtake it, but to
reach a destination of some sort which would be better than the utter
loneliness of the desolate moor, the silence and inaction of which made
her a prey to unhappy thoughts. Her horse was willing, and as the going
was good broke into a brisk trot which for a while kept the glow of the
swinging searchlight of the machine in sight. But presently that, too,
disappeared and all was as before. And glancing above she understood.
To her right a pale streak of light was showing along the horizon, and
above her between patches of dark clouds she caught a faint reflection
of violet light. It was the beginning of the dawn.
Dawn on her right--that meant the east. She was riding north, then.
North--and to what destination? She had ridden this road with Cyril,
but never to its end, which as she knew was among the unhospitable
crags of Rudha Mor, a wild spot unfrequented by any except Cyril’s
gamekeepers. What was Cyril’s errand in the night to such a place when
everything that had happened would seem to indicate the necessity for
his immediate return to London? The same kind of curiosity that had
made her open the package of cigarette papers against Cyril’s wishes,
stimulated her to follow this quest to its end. She forgot that she
had had no sleep all night, and little the night before. Of physical
weariness now she seemed to have none, and in the growing light she
urged her tired horse forward into a hard gallop which covered the
miles swiftly. She came to the cliffs and saw the sea, passed inland
again. The going was rougher here, less turf and more rocks and whins,
while to her left the hills were split by crags which protruded in
fantastic shapes, like heads of prisoned monsters of the underworld
which had forced their way up through the crust of the earth to the
light of day. It was curious. The trail was well worn here as it had
been before, and there were signs of much hauling. What was going on
at Rudha Mor? The place could not be far distant, for she saw that the
road wound up the rocks and fell away rapidly into a deep gorge, the
further side of which she could see, dimly colored with the opalescent
tint of the East. This she thought must be nearly the end of her ride.
She did not know what was in store for her and was doubtful as to her
wisdom, but she was eaten with curiosity, and dismounted, led her horse
slowly to the lip of the gorge and peered over. What she saw made her
gasp. She drew quickly back, tethered her horse to a bush and came
forward again. Near by, under a shed built on the brink of the cliff,
was Cyril’s roadster, but of Cyril and Stryker she saw no sign. Beneath
her feet the cliffs fell away rapidly by easy steps, down which she
marked a well-worn footpath. The bottom of the gorge was of rock and
sand shelving gradually toward the sea and fairly in its middle, built
strongly of rough lumber, she saw a shed with wide doors which even
now were open--a large hangar from which as she looked several figures
wheeled forth a huge aëroplane--to a platform of planks which extended
for a long way toward the sea. From a distance it was difficult to
judge its measurements, but by comparison with the heights of the men
Doris knew that she had never seen a machine so large. As the east
grew lighter she could see Cyril plainly. He came out of the hangar
dressed in leather, gave some orders which made the other figures hurry
and a series of deafening explosions from the engine as they “tuned
it up,” gave Doris a sense of immediate departure. For a while she
watched, fascinated, her interest in the size of this huge toy and
its possibilities making a separate mind-picture which superseded all
those that had gone before. But as the light grew stronger and she
made out the color of the wide yellow planes, she started up with a
cry which would have been heard by the men below her had it not been
for the racket that the engine was making. “A huge machine with yellow
wings,” she remembered Jack Sandys’ description, “a thousand horsepower
at least.” The Yellow Dove--this was the Yellow Dove and the man of
mystery, its driver, was--Cyril.
Spellbound and trembling with excitement, she watched Cyril climb up
into one of the seats. Cyril was going to fly to the Germans, she knew
it now, to obey the commands which had been brought last night by the
German officer, commands to come to Germany and explain his failure
to deliver his secret message to Rizzio. They suspected him and
yet he was going to face them. It was desperate, foolhardy, insane.
He would never come back. Not victory, but death--that was what it
meant. She ran out to the very edge of the rocks, shrieking his name,
but the sounds were lost in the fearful din of the motor below. The
explosions echoed and reëchoed in the gorge which seemed to quiver
with the volume of sound. Not a head from below was turned up to look
at her and she had a sense of her own unimportance in the immensity of
Cyril’s viewpoint. She saw the yellow machine start slowly down the
incline, gathering momentum as it ran until it left the runway and rose
magnificently, its engine roaring steadily, clearing the surf and rocks
and heading straight into the growing day.
O God! That she should have suspected him of anything base and
dishonorable--a man who could face death as he was doing, as he had
been doing for months. Cyril--the Yellow Dove. There could be no doubt
of it, for she had seen with her own eyes. She understood now many
things that had been a mystery before; why he could not speak to her;
the reasons for his occasional absences, for his air of indifference,
for his coolness in the face of adverse criticism. She understood
about John Rizzio and the reasons why Cyril had wanted her to take
such precautions in getting safely back to Ashwater Park, precautions
which she had disregarded. But what mattered about her when Cyril every
day, every hour for months had taken chances against death, the most
ignominious death of all!
Her heart was big with pride in him and she followed the Yellow Dove
with her gaze, now rising high and diminishing rapidly in the mist, her
soul in her moist eyes and on her lips which were whispering words
that she hoped could follow him into the distance. Her Cyril, still
hers, and England’s--the Honorable Cyril whom the world had come to
know as the Yellow Dove.
[Illustration: “Her lips ... were whispering words that she hoped could
follow him into the distance.”]
She stood in the shelter of the rocks, for she knew now in which way
her duty to Cyril lay, and waited until the aëroplane was but a speck
against the sky, when she turned with a sigh which was almost a gasp of
weariness and walked slowly toward her horse. The ride before her was
long, but by good riding she might still reach Kilmorack House before
Lady Betty’s guests were up. Otherwise her reputation was gone. She
knew that, for she could make no explanation of any kind. On that she
was----
Quick footsteps behind her--her arms caught from behind--a glimpse of
a strange face and then something white over her head--a pungent odor
and--unconsciousness.