The Air Pirate
of respect. Flew down from Park Lane after breakfast."
"I'm on my way west. We only stopped here for an hour or two, as Danjuro
had some business."
"I've ordered lunch in a private room overlooking the square. Come right
up, Sir John, you'll be able to see everything from there."
"Thank you. But I'm still in the dark. I'm right away from the office
now, as you know. I saw Commander Muir Lockhart here just now, but I
couldn't speak to him...."
He took me by the arm and led me along the corridor to the lift.
"Captain Lashmar, of your force and the five men of the patrol boat are
being buried to-day," he said; "also Captain Swainson, of the
_Atlantis_, and the boys murdered on _his_ ship."
I flushed under my dye. I had never heard a word of it. I felt an
absolute beast as we entered the private room, and I tried to explain to
the millionaire.
"Think you callous and unfeeling?" he said in answer. "Guess I know
better than that, my friend. You're out to prevent just such a
spectacle as we're going to witness from ever happening again. You're
playing a better game than prancing along at the head of a procession.
You're getting busy at the heart of things. Now sit down and share the
pork bosom and beans, or whatever they've given us. And tell me all
about it."
We sat down to lunch, and after a glass of Burgundy, I told Van Adams of
all that had occurred, and also expressed my complete confidence in
Danjuro.
"You're right," he said. "There isn't an investigator on the globe
that'd carry a tune to him. He has his orders to stick to you right
through and he'll carry them out. That little man's got a brain like the
Mammoth Cave, and he's without human passions, save only one--he'd go to
hell in a paper suit for me! See here----" and the millionaire told me a
string of anecdotes about the uncanny little Jap that would make the
fortunes of a writer of Romance.
He was still on the same subject when he stopped in the middle of a
sentence.
The noise in the square outside was suddenly hushed, and we heard a
muffled chord of music. Rising from our chairs we went to the windows.
Everywhere, as far as eye could reach, was a black sea of heads, from
among which the slender clocktower on its island in the centre rose
like a sentinel.
The pavements were lined by troops, soldiers and sailors in equal
proportions, and there was a flutter as of falling leaves as every head
was bared and the piercing sweetness of Chopin's "Funeral March" filled
all the air.
Then they came, following the band: thirteen coffins covered with
flowers, thirteen brave heroes, who would never slant down the long
reaches of the upper air again.
After the hearses walked Paget and Fowles, the two heroic airmen who had
called the rescuing ship by wireless, and then came the chaplains and
Muir Lockhart.
For my part I saw the whole procession in a dream. The head of the
Transatlantic Air Line, the Mayor and Corporation in their robes--the
stately funereal pomp of it all seemed unsubstantial and unreal.
Mr. Van Adams was kneeling a yard or two away from the window. His head
was bent, he had a crucifix and a string of golden beads in his hands,
and was saying prayers. Who would have thought it of this master of
millions with the pike-like jaw? I suppose he was a Catholic.
But my mind was far away, above the heaving wastes of the Atlantic, and
I saw an unnamed, unknown ship rushing through the air, at a speed
undreamed of hitherto in the history of flight. And in the pilot's seat
I had a vision of a hawk-faced man with cruel eyes and a smile upon his
hard, thin lips....
I stood there for so long that the very tail of the procession was
passing by, and Mr. Van Adams rose from his prayers with the sign of the
Cross, and touched me on the arm.
"Look!" he said, pointing down into the street.
I followed his finger and saw Danjuro standing on the opposite kerb. He
was looking after the cortège, and his face, with the expression on it,
was quite clear to see....
In an instant I came out of my dream.
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN WITH THE WICKED FACE
On the morning after our arrival I stepped out of my bedroom window at
Penzance and stood upon the balcony.
Many times had I flown over Cornwall; never had I set foot in the Duchy
until now. Plymouth had always been my furthest west.
The sea was blue as the Mediterranean, the sky a huge hollow turquoise,
the air all Arabia. Away in the bay St. Michael's Mount, crowned with
towers, gleamed like a vision of the New Jerusalem in some old monkish
missal--and the heart within me was so hard, stern, and full of deadly
purpose that no summer seas nor balmy western winds could touch the
rigour of my mood.
For we were on the battlefield now. There was no more vagueness nor
speculation. I, in the place I occupied, owed a debt to society, and to
myself a personal and bitter revenge. And those debts should be paid.
Danjuro knocked and entered the bedroom. Yesterday afternoon, within
half an hour of our arrival at Penzance, he had disappeared, telling me
not to wait up for him, as he could not say what time he would return. I
accordingly went to bed early, for I was tired out, and had not seen him
until now.
"I have been very busy, Sir John," he said. "In the characters of a
mining engineer at one place and agent for a foreign shipping firm at
another, I have been making some very necessary inquiries. I engaged a
local motor--our own would hardly have suited the part--and I have
covered a great deal of country."
"And your exact object?"
"I have two. One is to discover any private engineering works where
special engines could have been made in secret. You will remember that
we both came to the conclusion that the Air Pirate could have obtained
silent engines in no other way. The other is--petrol."
"Petrol! I never thought of that! I see what you mean."
"Precisely, Sir John. An airship such as the one we are after must have
a constant supply of petrol, and, of course, consumes enormous
quantities. When I can connect a certain private individual with the
receipt of such quantities, we are another step forward."
"How have you got on?" I asked eagerly.
"I have nothing definite. But there are certain indications--slight,
oh, very slight!--which I am following up. I will go into everything
with you this evening. Meanwhile you have your own day mapped out."
"Yes. I have studied the local maps and asked a good many questions.
After breakfast I shall walk over the moors to this little lonely
village of Zerran. It is about eight miles away from here, and, I
understand, not more than one and a half from Tregeraint Sea House,
which is the home of Major Helzephron. There is a fair-sized
old-fashioned inn on the cliffs where we shall probably be able to get
rooms."
"And settle down to our reading party," he replied, with a sudden gleam
in his narrow eyes. "I have the Greek texts of Plato's 'Republic' and
the 'Meno' in my portmanteau; it is wise to pay attention to details! We
shall, then, meet at dinner this evening, and I expect that your news
will be of great importance. With your permission, I shall take
honourable Thumbwood with me. He will be useful."
After breakfast, with some sandwiches and a flask, I set out, passing
down the main street of the far western town, and by the last station in
England, till I found myself mounting a winding road which led upwards
through a suburb towards the moorlands.
The air was heavy with the perfume of innumerable flowers. Tall
palm-trees grew in the gardens of old granite houses, a sub-tropical
flora flourished everywhere, and it was difficult to believe that one
was in England. The hedges were luxuriant with ferns that grow in
hot-houses elsewhere, Royal Osmunda and Maidenhair, and every moment the
road grew steeper.
If you look at the map of Cornwall you will see that the extremity of
the county forms a sort of peninsula. Penzance is on the south, and
faces the English Channel on the south. My back was now turned to this,
and I was walking due north, towards my objective, the vast and little
known "Hinterland" of mountainous moor and savage coast which lies
between the Channel and the Atlantic.
As I went, the warmth and colour, the riot of Nature all round, seemed
as unreal as a dream. It brought no ease or healing to my soul. Deep,
deep down, though controlled and prisoned by the will, an unending agony
was lying. I'm not going to insist upon this, or often obtrude it in my
story. But you must not think that, until the very end, I knew a
moment's peace. My dear love and her awful fate were ever before me, and
all the sights and sounds of Nature in this western paradise breathed
nothing but her name.
... At last the habitations of man grew fewer. Gardens gave place to
sloping fields enclosed by "hedges" of stone, and at length a long,
level sky-line above and in front showed me that the moors were close.
I reached the top at last, and took in a great breath of the sweetest,
most exhilarating air that I have ever known. The unfenced road
stretched away ahead of me for miles, a long, white ribbon laid upon the
heath and yellow gorse. I was on a vast plateau of gold and brown and
purple. To the left great hills crowned with rock granite tors cut into
the sky, and to the right was the jagged summit of Carne Zerran, three
miles away as the crow flies. At its foot, on the edge of mighty cliffs
that fell away a sheer three hundred feet to the ocean, I knew lay the
little village that I sought.
I looked at my map for a moment, took out my pocket compass, and then
plunged into the heather. Already I had a good idea of the lie of the
country--it is an instinct with your flying man--and I realized that an
accurate knowledge of it would prove invaluable in the task before me.
I met no living soul during that first walk over the moor. Larks were
singing high above in the blue; a pair of the rare Cornish choughs, with
their scarlet bills, flew screeching from the summit of a lichen-covered
rock as big as a house; but until I got to Carne Zerran, and looked down
to the narrow strip of pasture lands and cornfields that lie along the
cliffs, there was no sign of human habitation.
Far down below I saw a church tower and a little cluster of grey houses.
Beyond was the coast-line, with a creamy froth of breakers at the foot
of the jagged cliffs, and the Atlantic, "Mother of Oceans," beyond.
There was no land between me and New York! I suppose that in all the
glory of sun and colour, superb spaces of sea and sky, I stood alone,
and looked upon a scene as fair as any on this earth. But as I focussed
my binoculars, and swept the coast, my only thought was that here--if
anywhere at all--was the heart of the mystery I had come to solve.
Well! It was a fitting setting, in its lonely vastness. Anything might
happen here among these Druid-haunted hills. A crafty fiend, a man with
a great intellect and Satan in his soul, might well find this his proper
theatre!
About a mile from the village, and just below me, I saw the cliffs bent
inwards between two projecting headlands. This must be the Zerran Cove
of the map, and--yes, seemingly upon the very edge of the precipice was
a long, grey building, which could be none other than "The Miners'
Arms."
I began the descent, leaping from rock to rock, where the adders lay
basking in the sun. After a few hundred yards, I struck a gorge,
through which a stream fell towards the sea. Here I found a well-defined
path, which looped downwards to the ruins of a deserted tin-mine. I saw,
as I passed it, the windowless engine-house, and the gaunt timbers of
the winding gear still in place. The gibbet-like erection and the dumps