CHAPTER XI
THE SIGNALMAN'S STORY
I sat, staggered by that damning evidence placed before me!
Proof indisputable lay there that Roseye—my own dear well-beloved, she whose ready lips met mine so often in those fierce, trustful caresses—the intrepid girl who had been as 'a pal' to Teddy and myself in our secret experiments, and who knew all the innermost secrets of our invention and our power to fight Zeppelins—was a traitor to her country!
It was incredible!
Was it by her connivance that the steel bolt in my machine had been withdrawn, and one of wood substituted?
In this terrible war men laughed, and women wept. The men went out to the front in Flanders with all the fine patriotic sentiment of Britons, singing gaily the various patriotic songs of war. But alas! how many went to their death, and the women wept in silence in the back streets of our dear old London, and of every town in the work-a-day kingdom.
In official circles it was known—known indeed to the public at large—that the Zeppelin menace was a real and serious one. Teddy and I had, in secret, striven our best to discover a means by which to combat these sinister attacks upon our non-combatants.
Yet upon that leather-covered table before me lay that puzzling cryptic message found among the belongings of my missing beloved.
The whole affair was, indeed, a mystery. After a few moments of silence I raised my head and, looking again at Pollock, said:
'All this is, of course, very interesting from the point of view of a police problem, but the hard, real fact remains.'
'What fact?' he asked.
'That I, with my friend Ashton, am in possession of certain discoveries by which we can, under given conditions, bring Zeppelins to the ground.'
The red-tabbed captain curled his lip in a rather supercilious smile.
He was evidently one of those persons imported into the Department after the outbreak of war and, in comparison with Barton as an investigator, was a nonentity.
True, a piece of paper bearing a message in the enemy's cipher had been found secreted in Roseye's card-case.
But I argued that before the owner of the card-case could be condemned, she must be found, and an explanation demanded of her.
'You surely cannot condemn an accused person in her absence!' I argued.
Barton agreed with me. It was against all principles of justice to condemn an accused person unheard.
'Well,' explained the red-tabbed captain, 'upon the face of it, there can be no real defence. Here we have the missing lady's belongings found in a tunnel, and in them—fortunately, for ourselves—we discover a message intended for transmission to the enemy. That message, Mr. Munro, is quite plain, and speaks for itself. You have made an interesting scientific discovery. Possibly they have ferreted out your secret. It interests them: they fear you and, therefore, they have plotted your death.'
'I won't believe that! ' I cried in angry resentment. 'Ask yourself! Would you yourself believe it of the woman whom you loved?'
'My dear Mr. Munro,' replied the captain coldly, 'we are at war now. We cannot gauge either our feelings, or our beliefs, by the standard of pre-war days.'
'Well,' I declared bluntly, 'I don't believe it. Miss Lethmere would never hold any communication with the enemy. Of that I'm quite positive.'
'But we have it written down here—in black and white!'
'True. But before we take this as authentic we must discover her, and question her. To you mysterious people of the Secret Service the task will, surely, not be so very difficult. You know the mystery of Miss Lethmere's sudden and unaccountable disappearance. Therefore I leave all to you—to investigate, and to elucidate the puzzle. I don't pretend to account for it. You, both of you, of the War Intelligence Department and the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, have the facts before you—plain facts—the disappearance of Lady Lethmere's daughter. When her whereabouts is ascertained then the remainder of the inquiry is surely quite easy. I am not an investigator,' I added with biting sarcasm. 'I'm only an inventor, and I leave it to you both to discover why Miss Lethmere disappeared.'
'You apparently have invented something of which the enemy is determined, at all hazards, to learn the truth,' remarked Inspector Barton.
I laughed, and slowly took a cigarette from my case.
'They will never know that,' I declared with entire confidence. 'I can tell you both that the secret experiments of Ashton and myself have been crowned with success. We have, however, been most wary and watchful. We are well aware that at our works out at Gunnersbury there have been intruders, but those who have dared to enter at night to try and discover our plans have been entirely misled and, up to the present, no single person beyond ourselves has ever seen, or has ever gained any knowledge whatsoever of that electrical arrangement which constitutes our discovery.'
'Then you really can fight Zeppelins?' asked Barton, much interested.
I nodded in the affirmative, and smiled.
'So what is written here in cipher is perfectly correct?' asked Pollock.
'Perfectly. The missing lady has actively assisted Mr. Ashton and myself in our experiments.'
'And apparently the lady wrote down this message giving you away,' remarked Barton.
'Somebody wrote it—but it certainly is not her handwriting.'
'Quite so. Spies frequently get other persons to copy their messages in order that they can disclaim them,' replied the Intelligence officer. 'We've had several such cases before us of late.'
His words aroused my anger bitterly. That Roseye had held any communication with the enemy I absolutely refused to believe. Such suggestion was perfectly monstrous!
Yet how was it possible that anyone should know of the success of our experiments at Gunnersbury?
Recollection of that well-remembered night when Teddy had declared there had been strangers prowling about, flashed across my mind.
I knew, too well, that the evil that had befallen me, as well as the disappearance of my well-beloved, had been the work of the Invisible Hand—that dastardly, baneful influence that had wrecked my machine and nearly hurled me to the grave.
'Well,' I said at last, 'I would much like a copy of this remarkable document.'
'I fear that I cannot give it to you, Mr. Munro,' was the captain's slow reply. 'At present it is a confidential matter, concerning only the Department, and the person in whose possession it was.'
'We must find that person,' I said resolutely. 'What is your theory regarding Miss Lethmere?' I asked, turning to Barton.
'Well, Mr. Munro, it would appear that either the lady herself, or some thief, threw the chatelaine from a train passing north through the tunnel.'
'There may have been a struggle,' I remarked, 'and in trying to raise the alarm it might have dropped from her hand.'
'That certainly might have been the case,' the inspector admitted.
An hour later, accompanied by Teddy and Barton, I set out from King's Cross station and, on arrival at Welwyn—a journey a little over twenty miles—we spent the evening in searching inquiry.
The station-master knew nothing, except that both tunnels had been searched without result.
The story told by the platelayer who found the chatelaine was to the effect that he noticed a paper bag lying in the centre of the up-express line and, on picking it up, found the jingling bunch of gold impedimenta. The paper bag had probably been blown along there by a passing train and had somehow become entangled among the short lengths of chain composing the chatelaine.
'Of course it might ha' been there a couple o' days,' the stout, sooty-faced man replied to a question of Barton's. 'I work in the tunnels all the time, but I didn't see it before to-day. We often finds things thrown out o' trains—things people want to get rid of. They must 'ave quite a fine collection o' things up at King's Cross—things what I and my mates have found while we've been a goin' along with our flares.'
'You can form no idea when it might have been thrown out?' I asked.
'Probably late last night, or early this mornin',' was the man's reply. 'I started to examine all the rails just after eleven o'clock last night, and had not quite finished when the 11.30 express out o' King's Cross for Edinburgh came through.'
'It might have been thrown from that,' I remarked. 'Where was the first stop made by that express?'
'Grantham, sir—at 1.33 in the morning—then York,' he replied, in a hard, rough voice. His face was deeply furrowed, and his eyes were screwed up, for he spent more than half his life in the darkness, choking smoke and wild racket of those two cavernous tunnels through which trains roared constantly, both night and day. 'Of course, sir,' he added, 'there were lots o' trains a passing on the up-line during the night, mails, goods, and passengers. Therefore it's quite impossible to say from which the gold stuff was thrown. My idea is that a thief wanted to get rid of it.'
'No,' I replied. 'If that were so he'd most certainly have taken the money from the purse. The Treasury-notes and silver could not have been identified.'
'Then your theory is that it was dropped out by accident?' asked Teddy, who had been listening to the man's story with keenest interest.
'Well—it certainly was not got rid of purposely by any thief,' was my answer, and with this Barton agreed.
Of other railwaymen we made inquiry. To each I showed Roseye's photograph, but none of the porters had any recollection of seeing her.
The signalman who was on night duty in the box north of the second tunnel was somewhat dubious.
When I showed him the photograph he said:
'Well, sir, Saturday night was a bright calm night and when the Scotch express was put through to me from Welwyn box I was wondering if there were any Zeppelins about, for it was just such another night as that on which they recently attacked London. They always seem to look for the railway lines for guidance up to town. After I had attended to my signals, and accepted the express, I went to the window of my cabin to look out. As I was standing there the express came out of the tunnel and flew by. The driver was a little late and was, I saw, making up time. As it went past nearly all the windows had drawn blinds—all but about three, I think. At one of them I caught a glimpse of two women who, standing up near the door, seemed to be struggling with each other.'
'You saw them distinctly?' I asked eagerly. 'Two women?'
'Yes. I saw them quite plainly,' he replied, and I realized that he was a man of some intelligence. 'When trains go by, especially the expresses, the glimpse we get is only for a fraction of a second. But in that we can often see inside the carriages at night, if the regulations are broken and the blinds are up. A good many people disregard the danger—even in these days of Zeppelins.'
'They do,' I said. 'But please describe, as far as you are able, exactly what you saw.'
'Well, sir, the Scotch express tore past just as I was standing at the window star-gazing. My mate at Stevenage had just put through an up-goods, and all was clear, so I stood wondering if the Zepps would dare to venture out. Then I heard the low roar of the Edinburgh night-express approaching up the tunnel, and a moment later it ran past me. As it did so I saw in one of the carriages the two women standing there. Both had their hats off. One, a fine big strong person I should take her to be, seized the other, whose hair had fallen about her shoulders, and she seemed to be helplessly in her grip.'
'Did you report it?' Barton asked quickly.
'I rang up Stevenage and told my mate that something was going on in the express. But he replied later on to say that he had watched, and seen nothing. Later on in the night he spoke to me again, and said that the man in the Hitchin box, who had kept a look out, had reported back that all blinds of the express had then been drawn.'
'So the assumption seems to be that Roseye was attacked by some strange woman,' I said, turning to Teddy. 'She struggled at the door, and in the struggle the chatelaine which she had in her hand fell out upon the line.'
Barton drew a long breath.
'It's all a profound mystery, Mr. Munro,' he said. 'If your theory is correct, then we must go a step further and assume that the stout woman overpowered Miss Lethmere, and afterwards drew down the blinds before the express reached Hitchin, where there is a junction and the train would, I suppose, slow down.'
'Yes, sir,' exclaimed the signalman. 'Drivers have orders to go slow through Hitchin because of the points there.'
'But why should Miss Lethmere be attacked by a woman?' I queried in dismay.
'Why should she have disappeared from home at all, Mr. Munro?' asked Barton. 'Yes. I quite agree with you, sir, the more we probe this mystery, the more and more complicated it becomes.'
'Well, Mr. Barton?' I exclaimed. 'Now, tell me frankly, what's your theory. Why has Miss Lethmere disappeared?'
The inspector, one of the best and shrewdest officials attached to the Criminal Investigation Department, paused for a few moments and, looking me full in the face, replied:
'To tell you the truth, Mr. Munro, I'm still absolutely puzzled. The whole affair seems to grow more involved, and more astounding.'