That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
brother of the Kaiser--in a F.I.A.T. touring-car!"
*CHAPTER XXIX*
*A SECRET MISSION*
"Can it be possible----" Saxham checked himself. "You see how rusty I
am getting, General. You refer to that machine that turned out from
where cars are parked just now. The German fellow went up to it.... It
had a groom beside the chauffeur and three other men inside it.... While
I was looking--elsewhere--it must have moved away!"
"It has only turned the corner of the cafe-restaurant," the Chief said
in his quiet tones. He glanced in the direction of the squat block of
gaily painted wooden buildings devoted to the inner needs of Fanshaw's
clients. "The awning hides it, but I can see a bit of it still. Until
it moves, I can go on talking. Frankly, I am in the position of the
High Church curate who went out wild-pig shooting in the territories of
the Limpopo with a single-bore hammer-gun of grandpapa's pattern--and
got his choice of pot-shots between a lion and a rhino. Prinz Heinrich
is my royal lion and von Herrnung,--who counted for little more than a
bush-pig--has suddenly swelled into a rhinoceros."
He pulled the grizzled moustache thoughtfully, keeping his eyes glued on
the back of the big blue car.
"If I could get hold of Sherbrand!--but the chance is dead for the rhino
and lion winding me. Old von Moltke with the big wart on his
ginger-coloured face, and the charming manner that makes you forget that
you don't like him!--would certainly recognise me--and the nautical
Hohenzollern and I have met once or twice before. I must lay low like
Brer Rabbit, and take a single-handed chance. No, no, Doctor, you have
your patients to look after! I am not going to drag you into this. But
if I'd got a couple of my Boy Scouts handy----" He broke off,
encountering Bawne's bright eyes. "By George, Doctor! I'm going to
chance it! I'm going to give your youngster an opportunity to prove his
Saxham blood!"
The Master-hand gave the Scout's Sign, and Bawne shot across like a
brownish streak of swiftness. He drew himself up, gave the Full Salute,
and stood waiting, his rigid attitude in sharp contrast with his
dancing, expectant eyes. The Doctor looked at his watch and moved away
silently. The Chief said in a clear undertone:
"You see that tall, red-haired man in grey clothes over there with Mr.
Sherbrand? Don't look at him openly, or he will know we are talking
about him, but take a sidelong gliff, and say."
"I see him, sir."
"Do you know anything of him? Stand easy and answer carefully."
The hand came down from the hat-brim. The boy said:
"I've heard him talk, sir, and I think he is German. I'm learning that
and French at Charterhouse."
"He is a German. Do you speak enough of the language to understand him,
suppose he were talking to one of his countrymen?"
"_Ich--kann--lesen, aber Ich kann es--nicht sprechen._" The answer came
slowly. "And if they weren't using crack-jaw words, sir, or talking
very quick, I might manage--I could make out a lot of what they said."
"Very well, keep your man under close observation and--you see that
brown satchel he has in his hand?"
"I've seen it close, sir. A flat brown leather despatch case
thing--with a criss-cross pattern on the leather, and two locks, and
another lock on the strap that goes round. He hadn't it with him when
first I saw him talking to--a lady. Then a man--a servant--came and
called him away to speak to some gentlemen in a big blue motor-car. One
of them--fat and old and bald--with a wart on his cheek, who wore a
white topper, and yellowy clothes, and a red necktie, and looked rather
like a--like an Inspector of Sunday Schools in shooting-clothes--passed
him the leather case. That's how I know he didn't bring it, sir. Oh!
and the yellow car he drives isn't British. She's got an oval
International plate with the German 'D' in black on a white ground."
"I am glad my Scout knows how to use his eyes!"
The Chief's own eyes were crinkled with merriment. That Moltke, the
Chief of the German Great General staff, bosom friend of the All
Highest, should resemble a stout Inspector of Sunday Schools in the
estimation of a small British boy, was lovely in the extreme.
"Well, I want to know what the big German officer--he is an
officer!--does with that leather satchel he's carrying so carefully.
Where he goes with it, whom he talks to, and what he says to them. Find
out whether it is light or heavy, if it is what I believe it to be, you
might be rendering good service to your country in destroying it. But
you'll be doing all I want or expect, if you stick to the man who
carries it!"
"I'll do that, sir, on my Honour!"
"Good! Make your little German serve you. I may have to leave here
upon this business, but I'll be back within, at least--half an hour. If
he goes before I get back, find out where he is going. If you can't
find out, follow him. On foot if he walks, in a taxi if he doesn't.
Here are six separate shillings--in that case you'll want money for
fares. Remember, if things take a puzzling turn and you find yourself
in a tight place, whisper a quiet word to Sherbrand, though I'd prefer
you to carry through on your own! Report to me, in case he goes before
I get back here--at Headquarters, Victoria Street. Have you got all
this tucked away safe in your head?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then quit yourself like a man. My signal to you that I have left will
be a dog's yelping. Ah!" The keen bright eyes, glued on the distant
back of the blue car, had seen the rear wheels moving. Before the
F.I.A.T. glided smoothly out of eyeshot the Chief had hurried away.
In the opposite direction to the archway of exit, the slight, active
figure in the perfectly-cut blue serge morning clothes and pot hat of
Bond Street block, was rapidly walking. Bawne doubted his eyes for a
moment before he remembered that the Collingwood Avenue ran along that
side of the Flying Ground fence. There was a smaller gate in charge of
a commissionaire, in the fence, about a hundred yards along it.
Taxi-cabs were standing outside the gate. Any person on foot or awheel,
leaving the Flying Ground, must pass the gate and the taxi-stand. You
could see through the chinks in the fence when they passed, nip out when
they were well by, and follow in a green-flagged chuffer. Bawne had
settled this to his satisfaction before a wrench at the rein of duty
pulled his head round to the business on hand.
"I'm not spying on Mr. Sherbrand," the boy told himself, gritting his
small square teeth doggedly. "I've _got_ to listen, so as to understand
the German's game. And I'm going to. This is how I'm going to!"
He began to turn hand-springs after the fashion of the London street
Arab, thus lessening the distance between himself and the talking men.
They glanced at him, and Sherbrand grinned, but they looked back again
directly at each other. Then Bawne threw himself down and panted,
rolled over and lay, still panting. Now he was near enough to hear what
passed between the two.
Sherbrand said:
"No, I was not particularly solid in my conviction that the aerial
stabiliser would take the fancy of the Chiefs of the Service
Aeronautique. An accident prevented me from witnessing the final test,
and I got what the Americans call cold feet and judged it no use staying
in France longer. So I flew back here, starting early by daylight the
next morning, with Davis, my mechanic, and found a cable waiting at my
office to say the working of the invention had been observed with
interest by the Chiefs of the S. Ae. F., and that if I could carry out a
satisfactory time-trial at my headquarters in the presence of the French
Consul, the authorities at the Ministry of War would be willing to buy
my patents for France. As it happened, I was suffering from a slight
obstruction in the nasal passages, that spoiled my climbing. It was
absolutely necessary to go into Hospital. That is why I could not give
M. Jourdain an earlier date for the hovering-test you have just seen
carried out."
Von Herrnung demanded:
"But did you not receive a letter containing a business proposal? A
communication from Rathenau, Wolff and Brothers, Aeromotor Engineers of
Paris, 200, Rue Gagnette? I happen to know that it was posted, and the
date being that of the Paris trial, Herren Rathenau and Wolff certainly
possess the prior claim!"
"Their communication reached me in Hospital, three days later than the
French War Office cable," Sherbrand answered. "It had been forwarded
from the makeshift hangar I rented at Drancy--a mistake in the address
being the reason of the delay!"
"That fellow Lindemann is a _Dummer Teufel_," said von Herrnung,
shrugging.
"My German landlord.... Why--do you know him?" asked Sherbrand with a
look of surprise.
"No, certainly. But you--you said the fellow's name was Lindemann. Not
so? No?--then I am mistaken," said von Herrnung with another shrug. He
hurried on as though to cover a mistake with a spate of sentences:
"Of course, with Rathenau and Wolff I have nothing to do. Save as an
old customer, of whom they have asked a favour--you understand? Indeed
I--you will pardon me!--do not your hoverer regard as an original
invention. In 1912 our German Ministry of Marine completed a gun-boat
fitted with a gyroscopic stabiliser to prevent rolling--you
understand--in stormy weather. The device was hellishly effective."
"So effective," rejoined Sherbrand, without the quiver of a facial
muscle, though there was laughter in his eyes, "that it broke up the
ship."
"_Es mag wohl sein!_" returned von Herrnung, covering discomfiture, if
he felt it, with his imperturbable shrug and hard blue stare.
Sherbrand went on, straightening his wide shoulders and clasping his
hands loosely at his back as he talked:
"I don't claim that my patent is an absolutely new invention. Far from
it. But it is a new arrangement of some old ideas, and limited though
its use may be--it works. You have seen it working. You agree that it
justifies its name?" He waited for the assent, and went on: "Possibly
if I had described it as an aerial drag-anchor, I should have explained
its uses more clearly. It is no good at all when your machine isn't
flying level--of course you understand that? If you were ass enough to
try to dive without cutting out the power that drives the horizontal
screws you would drop to the ground like a plummet and break into a
million of little bits--or dig a hole in the earth big enough for a Tube
Station. But--keeping an even line of flight--when you switch it on it
pulls against the tractor just sufficiently to give you--not
immovability--but poise. Sufficient to take a photograph or drop an
explosive with a good deal of accuracy."
The small boy lying outstretched on the warm turf near them, thought
dolefully:
"_Dummer Teufel_ meant 'stupid devil' in German. But this talk is
dreadfully business, I can't stow away much. Man alive! I wish Roddy
Wrynche or some other fellow with a top-hole memory had got this job to
tackle. And yet the Chief trusted it to _me_!"
All this, while Sherbrand was explaining.
"M. Jourdain declared himself completely satisfied. His observer said
that I maintained poise and stability for five minutes longer than the
stipulated twenty-five. He looked at the altimeter and said I should
receive a definite answer within a couple of days.... Unlucky brute!
Someone must have run over him!"
The shrill yelp of a hurt dog had evoked Sherbrand's exclamation. The
sufferer's plaint came from the Collingwood Avenue, on the other side of
the fence. Thrice the excruciating sound ripped the ears, then died out