Donley approached me and Kinvarra straightened for a stare at me. Nothing in their manner today indicated consideration of me as a prospective partner; I had passed into another category as regards them. Donley nodded to me coolly—very coolly—and cautioned the mechanic who unstrapped me, so that I could rise from the seat, "Leave his hands as they are."
"How long has Bane been back?" I asked Donley who debated before he decided to inform me.
"A little while."
"Miss Lacey with him?"
"Yes."
"Logan still here?"
"At the house," said Donley and returned to Kinvarra.
I saw them beside the airplanes not as pilots but, today, as glorified gunmen. Nothing of the dreamer or of the impossibilist adhered to these two—or to Boggs and Mendell for that matter. Much more definitely than yesterday I was able to place them—gunmen from Cawder's criminal organization, gunmen trained to the modern vehicle, the airplane, and introduced to the modern weapon, the airplane bomb.
Much more positively than yesterday, they impressed me as purely practical souls adhering to Bane because he had started something which they would carry out as they pleased and for their own purposes and ends. No; nothing of the impractical about them. Bane had trained them and put into their hands tremendous engines of destruction which they would employ for no fanciful revenge upon society but for loot for themselves and their women.
I was thrust into an automobile; and after three minutes, arrived at the terrace where, as yesterday, ladies lounged; but their temper, too, was changed. The atmosphere also was of completed preparations, contemplation of great gains to be got—and risks to be run.
Donley's bride, more over-rouged and with her bleached hair fuzzier, perched on a stone balustrade overlooking the lake and puffed, with imperfect complaisance, at her cigarette while she turned the diamond rings on her fingers. She dreamed, not of taking over authority, but of bigger diamonds and more of them. Mendell's beloved stood on the tile pavement tossing grain to doves and dreamed, I was sure, not of domination, but of brighter silks for her body, richer food and service.
Sally Gessler arose from an inconspicuous seat in the shadow.
"So you're back," she said with some satisfaction; and the sight of her partly reassured me. "You must have been kept going."
"I've been moving," I agreed.
"Danced you, did they?"
"Is that what they call it? Yes; they did."
She considered me, with her dark eyelids, naturally heavy and languorous, drooped over her green irises which were bright with excitement. Gin supplied some of the stimulation; perhaps a drug helped with the brightness; but there were other excitations too.
She seemed thinner than yesterday, drawing her dress with her long hands close to her figure. This was a reflex habit; she was making no particular play for me, except as she assigned me to a scheme of her own running concurrently with the greater enterprise about her and running somewhat, at least, contrary to it.
"You've had company most of the time?" she inquired. This of course, was why she stopped me; she wanted to know whether Bane had kept me with him and with her rival when in Chicago.
"Not too much," I told her and asked, "Where's Logan?"
"He's inside," she replied, accenting it in a way I was shortly to understand. My guide pushed me toward the house whither I proceeded readily enough after I had glanced through the open doorway.
Helen Lacey hovered in the entry awaiting me. Bane was not about; nor did she expect him suddenly to appear. For the moment, she was free of him; that was what I gathered at my glimpse of her. She wanted the moment with me.
The imminence of the enterprise, which excited the others, terrified her. She had learned the plan.
She looked at me but did not speak to me; she said to my guard, "You may leave Lieutenant Carrick with me."
"I'm to put him with Lieutenant Logan," the man replied.
"Who told you?" she demanded.
"Mr. Donley; he said it was Mr. Bane's orders."
"That must have been before I saw Mr. Bane; he's just been here with me. You may leave Lieutenant Carrick with me."
If she failed to convince, she succeeded in confusing him.
At best, her situation with regard to Bane must have puzzled the mechanics and pilots quartered across the lake. It was none too plain to the pilots in the house. Kvery one knew that Bane craved her praise and approval; everyone knew she had certain influence with him. So the man modified his original intentions and let me accompany her into the library.
To be sure, he followed to the door and he made no move to unlock my hands. She did not risk the mistake of requesting it, but she did close the door upon him. There was no other door to the room and the windows on that side overlooked a sheer drop to deep water, so he contented himself with standing sentinel.
She glanced out the window and what she saw held her for a moment fascinated in her fright. With one hand, she clasped my arm, with the other she pointed across the lake where a crew was launching a seaplane.
"See; they've just changed another and are putting it into the water."
"Another what?" I asked.
"Another land machine into a seaplane; they're taking off all the wheels and putting on pontoons. They've decided on the ship attack; they're striking at sea!"
"When?"
"Tomorrow—early tomorrow morning. He's told me the time."
"What are they striking? What ship?"
"He hasn't told me that. He said, I'd see. But it's the Wotan, I know. It's the Wotan!"
"The Wotan!" I repeated.
"The new big ship! The greatest ship on the seas! Here! Here's what it is; here's what it has aboard! It's making its maiden voyage now, you know. Here!"
She picked up a newspaper, showed it to me and then spread it for me upon a table while I bent over to read.
The Wotan, just completed and the greatest and fastest ship on the water, was making its maiden trip. Fifty millions it had cost; ten thousand passengers it carried; a newspaper column was crowded with the list of only the most famous names. It was bringing over Rembrandts', Rubens' and Raphaels' for which the Metropolitan museum had paid ten millions; ten millions in stones from Amsterdam, emeralds, rubies and Rand diamonds were aboard; twenty million more was in platinum and gold bullion.
The vessel was due at New York tomorrow noon.
I straightened, staring at her; and I better understood Donley's and Kinvarra's caution with me and, also the absent-mindedness of the ladies on the terrace. Before them lay loot—loot gathered in one place and put at their mercy—beyond dreams of buccaneers. Forty millions for the trouble of the taking; five or ten millions more, perhaps, if they bothered to despoil, personally, the passengers.
The airplane put the plan—almost any plan—within their power. With airplanes and bombs, and night to cover them, they could fly and at dawn do whatever it pleased them to do—if no warning went before them.
"Where's your father?" I asked her and she winced.
"Here; but I haven't seen him. They won't let me."
"They've locked him up?"
"Yes."
"Logan's here?"
"He's locked up too."
"Then they're locking me up."
"That's it."
"That all?" I asked.
"All?" she echoed and shivered. "What do you mean?"
"Did he bring me back just to lock me up here?"
"He's some idea of his own with you," she said, suddenly, tightening her clasp on my arm. "I was with him this morning, you know."
"I thought so," I told her. "Who was the third with you?"
"A new pilot he was bringing on from Chicago."
"Who danced me? Bane himself, wasn't it?"
She nodded, her little fingers clinging close tome. "I thought, once, he had killed you."
"I thought he might, by accident," I admitted. "But I didn't think he would purposely, while you were with him."
"I begged for you, of course," she said. "I begged for you."
"I was sure you did."
"He let you off—but he'll not let off the ship! The rest of them mean simply to rob; they're after the diamonds and gold. But he—you've heard him."
"I've heard him," I said.