The Air Pirate Part 18

I swallowed in my throat with loathing, but the next words drove all thought of Feddon's career from my mind.

"Everything is ready on a tray in the kitchen, and the soup is on the electric stove. It will be hot by now," said Vargus, in his soft, creamy voice.

"I'll get it, and I wish the d.a.m.ned business was over. I said from the first that when the Chief brought those two women here we ran more risk than ever before. It'll turn out badly yet. Mark my words, Vargus."

Vargus took up a bottle which stood on a table by the piano. It was brandy, and he poured out two gla.s.ses half full, adding soda from a siphon.

"Here's luck; not a bit of it," he said. "If all goes well to-night, a couple more expeditions will see us finished, with a hundred thousand each, and scattered all over the globe. We all have our fancies. The Chief's is this Shepherd girl. Well, in another fortnight he'll disappear with her. Every man to his taste."

Feddon swallowed his brandy at a gulp. "She'll lead him a dance yet!" he said. "I never saw such a spitfire. I hate going near her, and I wish it wasn't my turn to stay at home. I'd tame her, though, if she were mine.

I wouldn't stand her pretty ways and the things she says, like the Chief does. He's mad about the girl."

"And what would you do, my beefy friend?" said Vargus, with his abominable smile.

Feddon touched his middle. He was wearing a leather belt. "Take this to her," he said, "and beat her black and blue."

Vargus rose, grinning. "Well, get the food," he said. "I'll go down at once. You'll find me in the wireless cabin."

Feddon lurched forward. I had just time to press myself into the alcove, when he came through the curtain and strode heavily through the room into the hall.

Vargus went to a tall mirror by the piano, as I watched him breathlessly. He did something that I could not see, and it swung open like a door. There was the snap of an electric switch, and I saw him step into a lift, pull a rope, and sink out of sight, leaving the door open.

He could not have sunk ten feet when I was in the room. It was large and square, furnished with something like luxury, and brilliantly lit with electric globes.

There was an arm-chair in full view of the archway. I sat down, and it was still warm from its last occupant. That seemed to me amusing, and I smiled.

Something clanked, a soft swis.h.i.+ng noise changed to a distant rumble, and the lift came into sight. I had it covered, but it was empty--waiting for the man who was going to "feed the canaries."

I waited for him, too. There was a box of cigarettes close by. I lit one and smoked quietly. Then I heard him coming through the dining-room, his footsteps and the rattle of a tray.

The half-drawn curtain bellied out and was pushed aside. Feddon stood there with the tray in his hands and the light s.h.i.+ning on his ugly red hair.

He saw me. His mouth opened and his eyes started out. He seemed unutterably foolish, like a great cod, and I laughed aloud.

But he was quick, oh, quick and clever! Like the famous footballer that he was! In a second he had ducked, and the loaded tray was skimming across the room straight at my head, as he hurled himself after it, quick as a snake strikes.

I was ready, though. He was not. My first shot broke his shoulder and stopped him for an instant. Then, with a roar of pain and fury, he came on again, and I shot him through the heart when he was three feet away.

Mr. Feddon would feed no more canaries.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SECRET THAT PUZZLED TWO CONTINENTS

I stood looking down at Michael Feddon's body. I was stunned. For the man I had just killed I cared nothing, felt no emotion. I had saved him from the drop; that was all. But, though I had been convinced that Danjuro's and my own suspicions were absolute fact, the full realization had come so suddenly that it clouded the mind.

Constance _was_ here, and she was unharmed!

I had, indeed, penetrated into the very centre of this lair of the air-wolves, and already had enough evidence to hang the lot. For a minute the mingled joy and relief was so great that I could not grasp them.

The brandy bottle of Mr. Vargus was still on the side table. I stepped over the body--the leather belt which he had proposed as an instrument of correction for Constance was in full view--and helped myself sparingly. Almost immediately my brain cleared.

I listened intently. The two shots from my automatic had alarmed no one. The sinister house was as silent as before. It seemed quite certain that Feddon and Vargus alone remained to guard it. Even the two Tibetan mastiffs of which I had heard so much had disappeared.

To my right, the tall mirror swung on its hinges, and the lift beyond was lit by a globe in the roof. To what it led I did not know, probably some cellar where poor Constance and her maid were imprisoned, though a lift seemed superfluous. At any rate, Vargus--the next person to tackle--was down there, and it was long odds that I could not get the better of him. Moreover, and this was in my favour, he was expecting Feddon, and the arrival of the lift would not startle him at first, if he were close by.

I examined the lift. It was electrically operated, and of a type perfectly familiar to me, fitted with an automatic magnetic brake. I saw that it travelled from its secret recess behind the mirror to one other spot only, stopping nowhere on the way. A touch of the rope started it, and it would stop itself when its journey was done.

Well, there was no use waiting. Again I must plunge into the unknown.

Connie was waiting! I wondered how honourable Danjuro was getting on, and laid myself long odds that he wasn't having such an exciting time as I was! How he would stare if he came back to "The Miners' Arms" in a few hours and found me there with Connie, and the artistic Mr. Vargus cooling down in the patent _papier mache_ handcuffs from j.a.pan! Mr.

Trewh.e.l.la of the inn had shown me a large pig, which he called "Gladys,"

and of which he was fond. There was a vacant and stoutly-built sty next door, which would be an excellent place of confinement for the interpreter of Chopin!

... Yes, I thought these thoughts, even at that moment. I was madly exhilarated. Everything had gone so easily and well. I stepped into the lift humming a song. It was the old chanty that the pirates had roared in the inn two short hours ago:

"_Fifteen men on the dead man's chest._"

There was a looking-gla.s.s on one side of the lift--probably the thing had been bought entire at some sale--and I saw myself in it. The song died away. Whose was this grim and terrible face, gashed with deep lines, with eyes that smouldered with a red light? Mine? I have told you how Danjuro looked when the bloodhound that he was emerged for an instant from behind the bland Oriental mask. There was not a pin to choose between us.

The lift sank slowly. Every second I expected the soft jerk of its stopping. But the seconds went on. Down and down, what cellar was it that lay so low? Were we dropping to the centre of the earth? It seemed an age before the motion slowed, and I had already obtained an inkling of the truth when a dim archway rose up before me, and the machine came to rest.

This was no cellar. I was deep down in Tregeraint Mine, which must run under the house itself! In the necessity for fox-like caution, I did not follow out the thought--not yet. But I believe that the subconscious brain had already seen far into the mystery....

I stepped out into a mine cutting. The walls were cut in the rock, and the roof here and there sh.o.r.ed up with heavy timber props. It was wide enough for two men to walk abreast, and quite eight feet high. Every fifteen yards or so hung a roughly-wired electric lamp, and the floor was beaten hard by the pa.s.sage of many feet. The air was hot and stagnant.

I prowled down this pa.s.sage without a sound, my pistol in my hand, ready to shoot at sight, but for what seemed an interminable time I met no one, and saw nothing but the damp walls, here and there sparkling with yellow pyrites and the green of copper.

There came at length a rough wooden door, which swung easily open, and beyond a much narrower and higher pa.s.sage than before, a more natural cleft in the immemorial rock, it seemed, owing nothing to the agency of human hands. It dripped with water. Hitherto I had been walking on a level, now I trod a fairly steep descent, while the path was no longer straight, but full of fantastic twistings. Each moment the air grew cooler, and each moment a deep, murmurous noise, like very faint and m.u.f.fled drums, grew louder.

The lights, now suspended from a thick and tarry cable, were less frequent than at first, and the place was full of shadows. But as for the noise, that could only be one thing, the Atlantic ground-swell. I was approaching the sea, doubtless by one of the old mine "adits," made for ventilation many years ago and long before the invention of the electric fan.

The narrow way ended in a door. It was latched but not locked, and I pushed it slowly open. Immediately there was a sense of vast and gloomy s.p.a.ce. I say "gloomy," for it was not absolutely dark. Here and there hung dim, yellow lights....

Advancing a step or two upon a floor of hard earth on sand, I found myself in a vast cavern. It seemed as large as the sh.e.l.l of a cathedral, and for organ there was the plangent, echoing sound of sea waves. The sound came from my right, and was carried on a current of sweet, brine-laden air. Peering through the darkness, I seemed to be aware of a faint, ghostly radiance, a considerable distance away.

I had lost the capacity for amazement, but not of quick thinking. In a lightning flash of realization I knew that I had penetrated to the heart of Helzephron's secret, even before my thoughts arranged themselves in sequence. And then, as near as possible coincident with my stepping through the door, I heard a shout.

Someone had seen me....

The shout came from the other side of the long, aisle-shaped cave.

Simultaneously, half-way up the side, at a height of thirty feet from the floor, there was a sudden illumination. I saw a broad ledge in the wall, railed round, with a ladder staircase descending from it. A little black figure was leaning over the rail, and it was from this that the shouting came. It did not need his words to tell me that here was a wireless station. I could see the drum and the battery shelf quite distinctly.

"A signal!" he shouted, and I knew that he took me for the dead man above. "They're coming back! The sky swarms with armed patrols and wars.h.i.+ps. They've had to run for it, but the Chief thinks he's shaken them off. I must switch on the guides!"