The Air Pirate
My heart beat fast. It was what I wanted him to say. "To the home of
Helzephron?"
"Yes. For it is there we shall be in the very centre of the web. In
those far western solitudes, despite the recent opening up of the Duchy
to tourists, there are still vast spaces of lonely moorland and
unvisited coast where one may walk for half a day and meet no living
soul. There is a great Hinterland between the little town of St. Ives
and the Land's End that for all practical purposes is unknown and
unexplored. Later on, I will show you certain maps.... It is in one of
the remotest spots of all that Major Helzephron has his house. I tell
you, Sir John," he continued, with a sort of passion, "that in those
lost and forgotten solitudes, where England stretches out her granite
foot to spurn the Atlantic, strange secrets lie hid to-day! On those
grey and lonely moors, where the last Druids practised their mysterious
rites, and which are still covered with sinister memorials of the past,
lies the explanation of the terror which is troubling the world! There,
and there only, shall we discover the secrets of the air, and--if human
skill and determination are of any avail--Miss Constance Shepherd!"
An obsequious waiter came with iced _consommé_. He was followed by the
great Nicholas himself, bulging out of his buttoned frock-coat--Nicholas
never wore evening dress--who bowed low and had a whispered
confabulation with Danjuro.
I remarked on this unusual honour. "I do what I wish here," the
Japanese replied. "It is, of course, through Mr. Van Adams. I hold this
place in the hollow of my hand--as you will presently see!"
He gave one of his rare and weary smiles, and then said quietly: "Please
do not get up or move. Major Helzephron has just come into the gallery!"
I could not have moved. His words turned me to stone.
"I felt sure," he went on, "that for a day or two Helzephron would show
himself in London. Knowing what we know--or at least suspect--such a
move was a certainty. He is in the habit of coming here. He booked his
usual seat at this restaurant, and his usual box at the Parthenon
Theatre--and for reasons obvious to you and me, if to no one else in the
world! I confess to an anxiety to look upon this man."
"You have had this corner darkened?" I said quickly. "No one can see
_us_ here?"
"Not clearly. And Helzephron would not know who we are if he did see us.
But, as he is sure to come upon us in Cornwall, it is better to take no
risks. To that end I have had a little device arranged for us which
proved of great service to me once in Chicago."
He bent forward to the mass of ferns and flowers in the centre of the
table, disarranging the greenery at its base. At once a green-painted
tube became visible, and then a slanting mirror, the size of a postcard.
"What on earth is that?" I whispered.
"An adaptation of the periscope!" he replied, taking a magnifying glass
from his pocket, adjusting it, and bending over the mirror. "The lens is
focussed upon Helzephron's table. With this magnifier I enlarge the
image in the mirror. Ah! So that is the honourable gentleman!"
A faint hissing noise came from him. His face stiffened into fixed and
horrible intentness as he stared through his magnifier at the little
oblong of mirror.
"Shi-ban, Go-ban, hei!" he muttered. "There are two, then. I expect the
younger man is the Honourable Herbert Gascoigne, of whom we have heard!"
The hissing noise continued, the ecstasy of attention did not relax for
two or three minutes.
At last Danjuro looked up. His face, which had seemed carved out of
jade, relaxed.
"Will you take my seat?" he said politely, handing me his reading-glass.
"A little drama will commence in a few minutes. It will interest you!"
I gave him a glance of interrogation as we exchanged chairs.
"We shall be in Cornwall to-morrow, and in advance of our friends," he
whispered. "But, in order that we may carry out our preliminary
inquiries quite undisturbed, I have thought out a little plan by which,
if all goes well, Major Helzephron will be detained in London for a day
or two--you will see."
Trembling with eagerness I stared down at the mirror.
The periscope was perfectly focussed. The addition of the reading-glass
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 shirt-front. He was passing Helzephron's table when his
dinner jacket caught a wine-glass 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 passing
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 fashion 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 assault."
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 ships, 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 moonshine. 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 "circumstantial evidence," the folly of
pure assumption, and so forth. "Behold this dreamer cometh!" would have
been their attitude.
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 circumstances 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 space 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 Japanese had already achieved, the quiet
and masterly skill of his analysis, 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
glass-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 thrashing
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