The Air Pirate Part 11

Trembling with eagerness I stared down at the mirror.

The periscope was perfectly focussed. The addition of the reading-gla.s.s made everything perfectly clear.

Two men in evening clothes were seated at a table. Their heads were close together, and they were talking earnestly. One was a tall, handsome boy of two-and-twenty, with a fair complexion and a reckless, dissipated cast of face. Young as he was, evil experience had marked him, and his smile was that of a much older man.

But I scarcely cast a glance on him as I stared at the coloured, moving miniature of "Hawk Helzephron." The man's face was deeply tanned; above the brows a magnificent dome of white forehead went up to a thatch of dark red hair--the forehead of a thinker if ever I saw one. The face below was seamed and lined everywhere. The thin nose curved out and down like that of a bird of prey. The mouth was large, well-shaped, but compressed, the chin a wedge of resolution. And, as he talked, I saw a pair of slightly protruding eyes, cold and fierce. The whole aspect of the man was ferocious and formidable to a degree.

"Watch!" whispered Danjuro.

I watched, and this is what I saw.

Into the picture came a thick-set, brutal-looking man, with a blazing diamond in his s.h.i.+rt-front. He was pa.s.sing Helzephron's table when his dinner jacket caught a wine-gla.s.s and swept it to the floor.

The hawk-faced man looked up with a scowl and said something just as the portly Nicholas and a waiter appeared in the background, as if pa.s.sing casually by.

The thick-set man bent down till his face was close to Helzephron's. He said something also, with an unpleasant smile.

Instantly Helzephron leapt up and drove his fist full into the other's face.

The fight that followed ended very speedily. The thick-set man took the blow calmly. Then, without heat, and in a fas.h.i.+on which instantly told me the truth of the matter, he set about Helzephron, hitting him where and when he chose, until a shouting crowd of guests and waiters separated the combatants and a policeman and commissionaire hurried them away from the gallery.

During all the tumult Mr. Danjuro sat quietly smoking a cigarette.

"That was Mr. Wag Ashton, the pugilist," he remarked. "Honourable Nicholas and the waiter saw that the honourable Helzephron struck him first. I think the Major will be resting for a day or two before Mr.

Ashton summonses him for a.s.sault."

I felt faint with surprise and amazement.

"So you, you arranged ..."

He interrupted me. "Now let us finish our dinner in peace," he said.

"Some river trout, _meunier_, are coming."

An hour afterwards, with myself at the wheel, a huge sixty horse-power Limousine, loaded with luggage and with Messrs. Danjuro and Thumbwood inside, was rolling down the Piccadilly slope.

To Penzance.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HUNTING INSTINCT IS STIMULATED BY A PROCESSION

The big car rolled down Piccadilly. She was a beauty to handle, as I discovered in the first two minutes. The very latest type of electric starter, a magnificent lighting installation--every convenience was ready to my hand. I was in an extraordinary state of mind as I steered the car through the late theatre and restaurant traffic, purely mechanically and without conscious thought about it.

The predominant sensation was one of immense overwhelming relief at the prospect of _action_. Mere office activities, the planning of guard and patrol s.h.i.+ps, conferences with pilots and officials, had been quite powerless to calm the terrible fever of unrest within me. It was commanding other people to do things, not doing them myself. I knew all the time that I should have been happier piloting one of the war-planes over the Atlantic. Now, at any rate, I was doing something real. I was actually setting out, in my own person, upon a definite quest. It might be all moons.h.i.+ne. I was well aware that many hard-headed people would have laughed at this expedition, considering the slender evidence I had.

They would have talked about "circ.u.mstantial evidence," the folly of pure a.s.sumption, and so forth. "Behold this dreamer cometh!" would have been their att.i.tude.

And although I was driving the big car up Park Lane for Oxford Street and the road to the West, I did feel as if I were in a dream. My whole life had been altered by the events of the past few days, ruined for ever it might be. To-night its stream was violently diverted from its course. Everything with which I was familiar had flashed away, and I was on the brink of the fantastic and unknown. There was not a man in London setting out upon so strange an errand, under circ.u.mstances so unprecedented, as I was this night. We slid by a huge white house, set back from the railings, and with all its windows looking out over the Park. It was the London palace that Mr. Van Adams had built for himself during the last five years, and the strangeness of my affair was intensified at the sight.

Only a few hours ago the great man had been sitting in my chambers, and introducing the enigmatic figure that sat behind me in the car. Here was a dream figure indeed! It was impossible to think of Danjuro as a human being. He was just a brain, a specialized force, devoted to one object, and probably, as Van Adams had hinted, the supreme force of its kind in existence. Already I had placed myself in his hands, and not only my personal interests, dear as those were to me, but my responsibilities to the State as well, and that was no small thing for him to have achieved in so short a s.p.a.ce of time. The unique detachment and concentration that was sitting behind me had an almost magical effect upon one's mind and will. With such help, surely, I could not fail?

I fell to thinking of what the j.a.panese had already achieved, the quiet and masterly skill of his a.n.a.lysis, the cold audacity of his plot to keep Helzephron in London, the neatness and finish of his operations as witnessed by the periscope upon the dinner-table at the "Mille Colonnes." Surely, Helzephron, or whoever was the master-criminal, was a doomed man with Danjuro on his track?

We were running out of Ealing now, and traffic was almost gone in the long, straight westward road among the acres of market gardens and gla.s.s-houses that fringe the western approach to the metropolis. I let out the powerful engines, and as the car leapt like a spurred horse, my heart leapt up into anger at the name Helzephron.

Connie--poor, lost Connie--had told me herself how the man had pestered her, and I had seen him at Paddington with my own eyes. The investigations at the Parthenon Theatre by Thumbwood and Danjuro had put the details in the picture, and an ugly one it was. The man, V.C. as he was, had a bad reputation enough. I had watched him that very evening, marked every line upon the hawk-like, cruel face, and thrilled when the vulgar pugilist attacked him. It was the next best thing to thras.h.i.+ng him myself! Yet--I record this as an interesting point of my psychology at the beginning of the enterprise--I was disgusted with and loathed the man only. I did not hate him, for I found it, even now, impossible to believe that he was the abductor of my girl.

Understand me if you can. Danjuro had convinced my intellect, but not my heart. My state was the reverse of the ordinary state in such a situation. Plenty of people believe in anything--a religion for example--by faith, and cannot justify their faith intellectually. Their belief is always confident and strong. I believed intellectually, but had no faith, which was why this quest seemed shadow-like and a thing in a dream. No doubt, the long night drive and my curious companion--I was always conscious of him--intensified the impression of unreality.

About three in the morning Danjuro spoke through the tube and insisted on relieving me. I stopped the huge car in a dark, tree-bordered road, where the moonlight lay in pools and patches of silver, and exchanged seats with the little man. As I stood on the road and stamped with my feet to restore the circulation, the night-breeze rustled in the leaves, and far away I heard the nightjar spinning. Never was such a still and solitary place. Danjuro's face in the moonlight seemed as immobile and lifeless as one of those j.a.panese masks of wax with eyes of opalescent gla.s.s that you can buy in the Oriental shops.

I got inside and, suddenly weary, sank back in the luxuriously cus.h.i.+oned seat. The car started again, and Thumbwood switched on a light in the roof. He produced a Thermos flask of hot soup, which I found delicious and refres.h.i.+ng.

"How have you been getting on with Mr. Danjuro?" I inquired.

"Very well, thank you, Sir John. He knows everything, I do believe. If there's one thing where I should detect a man who was talking through 'is 'at, it's 'osses. Stands to reason. But this gentleman knows 'osses like a blooming trainer, sir. And as for the games of the crooks in the ring and on the course, he's wide to every one of 'em. I generally carries a pack of cards in my pocket, sir, and I've got one with me now.

The things 'e showed me pa.s.ses belief. I've seen a good deal of that sort of work, but Mr. Danjuro's an easy winner. I wouldn't play poker with 'im, no, nor 'alfpenny nap, for a fistful o' thick 'uns!"

We breakfasted at Exeter, and I had the opportunity of a shave and a bath. I remember that when I was half-way up the hotel stairs a horrid thought struck me, and I hurried down again to consult Danjuro.

How would the stuff he had put on my skin stand hot water and soap?

He rea.s.sured me, however. Nothing would remove the beastly stuff but a preparation he carried with him, and I bathed in peace.

It was a beautiful morning when we started again, and for many miles our route lay close to the smiling Devon sea. The waves were sapphire blue, framed in the red sandstone rocks, and the sky resembled a great hollow turquoise. It was a bright morning, and one side of me rejoiced in it; but the thought of my girl was always there, a constant sullen pain, for which the morning held no anodyne.

Thumbwood drove on this stretch of the journey, and Danjuro sat inside studying innumerable maps, and now and then making notes in a pocket-book. I wondered what thoughts were seething and bubbling behind that ma.s.sive dome of skull.

Apart from the scenery, there was plenty to interest a Commissioner of Air Police. The sky was speckled with small private planes, converging upon Plymouth or Exeter from many a pleasant country residence. There was no longer any need for the professional man or the prosperous tradesman to live within a very few miles of his place of business. Men flew to their day's work, and from considerable distances, and as a matter of course. A mile or two out at sea one distinguished the large steady-going pa.s.senger airs.h.i.+ps by which England was now ringed, and occasionally the Royal Mail boats cut the sky like javelins. More than once I spotted one of my police patrols. It was curious to remember that I, who sat here with a stained face and shaven lip, bowling along the Devon roads at a miserable forty miles an hour, had supreme control of all those aerial argosies.

There were few cars upon the roads at this early hour. Contrary to general opinion fifteen years ago, the popularity of flying had by no means killed the automobile. It had lessened their numbers in an appreciable degree, and made the roads more pleasant. I should, of course, have preferred to reach our destination, or, at any rate, to have travelled the greater part of the way towards it by airs.h.i.+p. The system of registration and the police regulations--framed by myself--would have given too much away. My actual ident.i.ty and purpose might not have been discovered, but we should have been easily traced, and Helzephron--if he was what we suspected--would be the first to hear of a private aeroplane making its appearance in the solitudes where he lived.

Towards midday we were approaching Plymouth, when I began to feel uneasy. The agony I had endured there a day or two ago, when Thumbwood burst into my bedroom with news of the _Atlantis_ disaster, clouded my memory. I felt that I never wished to see the pride of Devon again.

This, though, was merely weakness which I crushed down. More practical considerations occurred to me. I made Charles stop the car and got inside with Danjuro.

"Look here," I said, "hadn't we better run straight through the town and get on into Cornwall? We can lunch at St. Germans or somewhere."

"You have some special reason for avoiding Plymouth, Sir John?" Danjuro asked politely.

"Well, it's the air-port for America. One of my largest stations is there. Dozens and dozens of people know me. I've always been a familiar figure in Plymouth, and never more so than lately, of course."

The j.a.panese gave his little weary smile. "I do not think you realize the alteration in your appearance," he said. "I a.s.sure you, and I am an expert in these matters, that no one at all would ever recognize you. I had proposed to stop in Plymouth for at least a couple of hours."

"Why, exactly?"

"For several reasons. One is that I shall be able to purchase some local Cornish maps and a directory or two, which I need, and found no opportunity of procuring in London. But that is not all. Here we are in the very centre of air matters, as far as the Atlantic is concerned. The place is still seething with excitement. Nothing else but the piracies is spoken of. The town is packed with correspondents of the princ.i.p.al European newspapers. It is in a ferment. I much wish to go about with my ears open for an hour or two. I do think, Sir John, that it would be unwise to neglect this opportunity, for you as well as myself. There is no knowing what we may pick up."