That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
and understood.
Then he was upon them, saying in accents jarred with anger:
"How was this allowed to happen? You were warned. You had my wire?"
Sherbrand's mouth was wrung awry with another spasm of mirthless
laughter. He fought it back and held out the crumpled slip of paper,
saying:
"I did, but luck was on _his_ side. Thanks to a relapse on Macrombie's
part, I got this after the Bird had flown."
"The Bird..."
The blue-grey eyes and the keen hazel met, and struck a spark between
them.
"'The Bird.' He has taken French leave--or, more appropriately,
German--by the help of your machine?"
Sherbrand nodded, setting his teeth grimly. The wailing voice of the
pallid clerk came in like a refrain:
"'Ooked it. Bunked--so 'elp me Jimmy Johnson! With our young guv'nor's
mono', and the gyro 'overer!"
Said the Chief, moving sharply towards where the Wireless mast straddled
over the telegraph-cabin:
"He has adopted the only means of exit by which it was possible for him
to escape. All railways stations are being watched, all highways
patrolled by our agents, travelling in high-powered motor-cars. We are
on the look-out for him at every ocean shipping-port. One road we left
open, not having the means to block it--and that is the road of the
stork and the swan! Decidedly, I might have guessed that he would play
Young Lochinvar after this fashion. But until I left the ground an hour
ago I did not know of the theft of the Clanronald Plan."
"The Clanronald--" Sherbrand was beginning, when the Chief cut him
short.
"I had forgotten that you are as little wise as I was an hour back.
Better glance at this paragraph while I make use of your O. T.
installation and Wireless, and put the fear of Heaven into Macrombie,
incidentally and by the way."
He thrust a tightly-folded copy of the _Evening Wire_ upon Sherbrand and
vanished into the rum-flavoured stuffiness of the cabin, with the pallid
telegraph clerk close upon his heels. And upon Sherbrand, in the act of
unfolding the newspaper, rushed his Fate, in a hat of silver spangles:
challenging the knowledge in him with blazing eyes well upon the level
of his own.
"Mr. Sherbrand.... Tell me what has happened? Why do you look so--queer
and--white?"
She herself was whiter than her narrow dress, and the mouth the eager
rush of words poured from was pale under its rose-tinted salve. She
hurried on breathlessly:
"They show no signs of coming back--it fidgets me horribly. And--I was
looking--from over there, where I was with Uncle Owen,--when you called
out, 'Stole away!' and waved your arm." She glanced at the sky,
shuddered and looked back at him. "Am I silly? But all the same, the
General told you something! I don't ask what! But I funk--I don't know
why, but it's beastly--the sensation! Tell me I've nothing to be afraid
of--I swear I'll take your word!"
That she was just then a creature full of fears was written large upon
her. She might have quoted Queen Constance, who I think was also a
galumpher, meaning a woman of big build and sweeping gestures, and an
imperious temper withal. Sherbrand feared also, and the pang of
solicitude for the pretty boy so unexpectedly dragged into the vortex of
a diplomatic and political felony was, to do him credit, quite as sharp
as the pang caused him by the rape of the Bird.
He answered:
"Miss Saxham, I do not believe that there is any danger of an accident.
But--that there will be delay--I shall not try to disguise. The fact
is----"
A guttural, Teutonic voice said close at Sherbrand's shoulder.
"_Gnaediges Fraeulein_ will wish to return home? It is getting late, so
very late! I haf instructions from my master to drive the _Fraeulein_
back to her address."
Sherbrand wheeled, to be confronted by the thickset figure of the
moustached and uniformed attendant who had occupied the seat beside the
chauffeur of the big blue F.I.A.T. car.
"Who is this?" he demanded in a look, and Patrine, her pallor drowned in
a scarlet blush of horrible embarrassment, stammered:
"I really--haven't the least idea!"
"You hear!" Sherbrand's tone was not pleasant. "The lady does not know
you--that ought to be enough!"
Patrine felt herself drowning in chill waves of horror. The man
persisted:
"The lady is a friend of the gentleman who brought her here.... I haf
my orders to drive the lady home in the yellow car!"
In his muddy eyes there flickered a leer or a menace. Patrine saw the
Doctor coming and flew to his side. Sherbrand said, looking sternly at
the German:
"You understand, your orders are nothing to the lady. She does not
choose to be driven home by you!"
The man protested:
"But my master----"
Sherbrand demanded:
"Who is your master?" Then a sudden light dawned upon him, and he
turned and knocked sharply at the cabin-door. At which the liveried
attendant, as a man who finds hesitancy a double-edged weapon, wheeled
in military fashion and retreated, casting a surly glance over his
shoulder, and quickening his heavy footsteps to a jog-trot as the
General's active person appeared at Sherbrand's side.
"That man, Sir Roland!" Sherbrand's slight gesture indicated the
thickset figure now getting hurriedly into the yellow Darracq. He
added, as the car swirled round the corner of the restaurant and
vanished in the direction of the entrance-gates, "Ought I to have
grabbed the brute, and hung on to him? He was certainly with a party of
foreign-looking people, who interviewed von Herrnung just before he got
away. You saw them?"
"I certainly saw them. And I agree with you that their unexpected
appearance has had to do with their countryman's sudden departure," said
the Chief. "But to grab an orderly of the German Embassy would be--only
less risky than grabbing a Kaiser's messenger, on suspicion of his
carrying stolen War Secrets in his official bag."
"A Kaiser's messenger!" Sherbrand's mouth shaped a soundless whistle,
"Why, now I remember, he had a dispatch-case or valise with him.
Wouldn't hear of leaving it behind!"
"I--daresay not," the Chief's dry smile commented.
Sherbrand went on:
"I developed muscle in persuading him to let it go in the observer's
cockpit for fear of it fouling the warping-controls. No wonder he stuck
to it. War Secrets!"
"It is plain you haven't glanced at the _Evening Wire_. It tells the
story rather pithily, beginning with an outbreak of fire on Tuesday
night at Gwyll Castle, Denbigh, caused by a short-circuit in the
electric-lighting apparatus of the North Tower."
He went on:
"I waste no time telling you, for all that's possible has been done now
in setting our agents on the track of the flying thief! The North Tower
at Gwyll holds the priceless Clanronald library, and the Muniment
Chamber, where they bottle up the original MSS. detailing the War Plan
of the old Earl. The short-circuit that set up the blaze was--the kind
that any amateur can arrange for with rubber gloves, a pair of pliers
and a bit of soda-water wire."
"Is it known who the amateur was?"
"There is reason to suspect one Heir Rassing, an under-librarian of
German nationality, who behaved like a hero, according to the local Fire
Brigade! He it was, who suggested--Clanronald being absent on a
yachting-cruise in the Fjords of Norway--that the contents of the
Muniment Chamber should be transferred to the strong-room in the
basement of the East Wing. He superintended the removal, armed with
knowledge, enthusiasm, and a large-sized Webley Scott revolver, with
which he volunteered to keep solitary guard till morning, outside the
strong-room door!"
"And when daylight came--" hinted Sherbrand.
"It discovered the zealous Herr Rassing to be missing, and a
corresponding hiatus in the treasures of the Muniment Chamber. Item, a
sharkskin case inlaid with ivory figures, Japanese, antique and
valuable,--containing the original diagrams--chemical _formulae_ and so
on--embodying the famous Plan."
Sherbrand asked.
"Was it as tremendous as they tell one?"
The crisp voice answered:
"Tremendous it not only was, but Is. The most terrible and effective
method of annihilating an enemy, that has ever been conceived by the
brain of man."
Sherbrand said, drawing a deep breath:
"And that is what von Herrnung carried in the brown leather valise-thing
that he took away with my machine! Not that I trouble about the Bird.
She was old, and I've got the stuff to build a new one. But my
patent--the hawk-hoverer--that's another pair of shoes!"
"The hawk--! Phee-eew!"
The Chief whistled a rueful note and his keen eyes softened in sympathy:
"I had forgotten your invention. So von Herrnung has scooped for
Germany the gyroscopic hovering-apparatus that the French War Ministry
were proposing to buy. Now I understand the something about you that has
puzzled me. You wear the look of a father, Sherbrand, bereaved of an
uncommonly promising son."
Saxham's stern face rose up in Sherbrand's thought, stamped with that
look, and his throat contracted chokingly. The Chief asked:
"What sort of man is the mechanic von Herrnung has commandeered? A
fellow easy to bribe, or intimidate? It would be worth while to know?"
"It's a boy--not a man!" broke from Sherbrand, hurriedly and hoarsely.
"General, no more unlucky thing could have happened! ... Dr. Saxham's
twelve-year-old nipper took a tremendous shine to von Herrnung,
and--and--he's gone with him! That's the news the Doctor's got to hear
by and by!"
There was a silence. The Chief's face was turned away. Then he said
quietly:
"There was no question of 'a shine.' My Scout was obeying an order.
His Chief Scout had said, 'Keep this man under observation; and if he
leaves the Flying Ground--follow him, if you can!"
Sherbrand could not speak for pity of the small white face that had
grinned at him out of the clumsy woollen helmet. He understood now, that
when he had bent to strap the safety-belt about the little body swathed
in the flannel-lined pneumatic jacket, he had felt a terrified
child-heart bumpity-bumping under his hand. And he struggled with his
grief and rage in silence, broken by an utterance from the other man.
"So he followed him into the air, seeing no other course before him. My
old friend Saxham has good reason to chortle over such a son. I said
to-day, 'I am proud of my Scouts!' Well, to-night I am ten times
prouder. I shall tell the Doctor this--when I get a private word with
him--and wind up with: 'Thanks to Bawne!'"
"Then the Doctor--" Sherbrand began, a weight lifting with the hope that
the news might not have to be broken:
"The Doctor knew. I had said to him, doggily: 'I'll give your pup a
fighting chance to prove his Saxham breed.' It's a stark breed--hard as
granite, supple as incandescent lava,--with a strain of Berserk madness,
and a dash of Oriental fatalism. They can hate magnificently and
forgive grandly, and love to the very verge of death."
Could _she_, Sherbrand wondered, letting his eyes travel to the tall
white woman standing by the Doctor, as the Chief went over to them and
grasped his old friend's hand. Then both men moved away across the
dusky ground together. Those words of thanks and praise were being
spoken. Coming from such a source they must be heartening to listen to.
But presently when their glow had paled and faded, and the boy did not
come back...
Presently, when the empty chair and the vacant bed, and the little
garments hanging in the wardrobe should be filled and occupied and worn
only by a shadow-child wrought of lovely memories. By and by, when the
silence in the house should clamour in the tortured ears of the woman
and the man...
Then, Sherbrand knew no praise of their lost darling would console