The Air Pirate
Vargus took up a bottle which stood on a table by the piano. It was
brandy, and he poured out two glasses 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 swishing 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 shining 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 mâché_ handcuffs from Japan! Mr.
Trewhella 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-glass 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 shored 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 passage of many feet. The air was hot and
stagnant.
I prowled down this passage 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 passage 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
muffled 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
space. 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 shell 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
warships. They've had to run for it, but the Chief thinks he's shaken
them off. I must switch on the guides!"
I gave an answering shout, keying my voice down to something like
Feddon's bass growl.
"It's C.Q.D.!--C.Q.D.!" came in a shrill voice of alarm, and Mr. Vargus
ran down the ladder like an ape.
C.Q.D.! The signal of "extreme danger." Well, I rather thought it was!
Where I stood I was in deep shadow, and my face could not possibly be
seen. I was much the same height and build as the dead man, and Vargus
ran down the cave without the least suspicion. He had gone to his left,
my right, to where I had already seen a pale light, and I followed him,
more slowly, at a distance of some ten yards. It was a natural instinct
enough. My only idea was to silence him, find Constance, and fly from
the horrible place. I could not know that I was making a fatal mistake.
I was running forward into complete understanding. The great cave turned
a little to the right. It opened out every second until at length I saw
the mouth, wide as that of the largest-sized hangar on an aerodrome,
flooded with moonlight!
Opposite, sixty yards away, was a precipitous wall of black rock;
between it and the mouth of the cave a terrible chasm, which fell sheer
to the water. It was all clear now. Far above, on the top of the cliffs,
was that fenced-in part with the "dangerous" notice boards. You will
remember that I had lain down by the side of this fence and peered
downwards. I had looked into the same gulf that I was now looking into
from a much lower altitude. And the rock there overhung so greatly that