CHAPTER XXI
ROSEYE'S SECRET
Old Theed, the stalwart ex-police officer, was greatly excited.
'Just before half-past eight, my son having gone in the car over to Horsham to see his young lady, and afterwards to pick up Mr. Ashton, I was sitting in the kitchen with Mulliner,' he said. 'Suddenly I thought I heard footsteps out in the yard. I listened for a few moments and then I heard, quite distinctly, a curious sawing noise. I went silently out by the front door and was just creeping round the corner of the house, when the figure of a man—who was evidently on the watch—suddenly sprang from the shadow. I was seized by the collar, and the next I knew was that a handkerchief was stuffed into my mouth and a rope tied round my arms and legs. I tried to cry out, but I could not. I was trussed like a fowl. My assailants were two men, and pretty tough ones they were, too!'
'Mulliner was in the house—eh?' asked Roseye.
'Yes, miss. They flung me down into the garden yonder, up against those rose-bushes, and then went into the house after her,' Theed went on. 'I heard her scream, but could not move to assist her. She shouted for help, but I couldn't answer. But she was plucky and she saved the situation.'
'How?' I asked, amazed.
'Why, she shouted out to me: "It's all right, Theed! I've telephoned down to Nutley. The police will soon be here!"'
'That was certainly a master-stroke, considering that we have no telephone here,' I exclaimed.
'No. But it scared the thieves—or whoever they were—for they didn't wait, but made off in a car which they had waiting down the lane. I heard them hurry away down to the lane, and soon afterwards the car started.'
'Who released you?' I asked.
'They had tied Mulliner to a chair in the kitchen but, after half an hour, she managed to get free, and came out to find and release me. Then, on going into the yard with a lamp, we found a curious thing. They had evidently been examining your aeroplane, sir.'
'They've been in there!' I gasped. 'Strangers!'
'Yes, sir. But, as far as I can see, they've done nothing.'
I at once took one of the side-lamps from the car and, with Roseye, went into the barn. Mulliner, who had now recovered from her fright, followed us.
As far as I could discern by a cursory glance, nothing had been tampered with. It was fortunate, however, that we had removed the box containing the secret electrical apparatus, and that it was concealed in the house, as was our constant habit.
The story told by the pair was certainly alarming.
Once again I recognized here the evil finger-prints of the Invisible Hand.
'You saw the men who attacked you?' Roseye said to Mulliner when we were again in the house. 'Describe them to us.'
'Well, miss. There's the difficulty. There were two men, I know, as well as a woman—a tallish woman, dressed in a fur-coat and a small motor-hat. She had a thin, dark-looking face and funny eyes, and she spoke to the men in some foreign language—Italian, I think.'
'Ah!' gasped Roseye, turning to me terrified. 'The woman! I feared it—I knew it! The woman with the Leopard's Eyes!'
'And the men?' I asked. 'Did you not see them?'
'I only caught a glimpse of one of them,' and the description she gave of him almost tallied with that of the man whom we had seen in the woman's company at the roadside. The pair had evidently been on the watch ever since afternoon. They no doubt had seen us leave, and also watched Teddy and Theed's son go away.
'But the second man?' I demanded eagerly. 'Can't you give us any description of him?'
The maid hesitated, and fidgeted slightly. I saw that she was undecided and a little unwilling. Her hair was still awry from her attack, and she had forgotten, in her excitement, to replace her well-starched Dutch-cap.
'Well, sir,' she answered at last, 'I have a suspicion—but only a very faint one—remember I couldn't really see his face, for he sprang upon me from behind. But he spoke to his companion, and I thought I recognized his voice—only a faint suspicion,' the woman added. 'Indeed, I don't really like mentioning it, because I'm sure you'll laugh at me. You'll think it too absurd.'
'No. This is no laughing matter, Mulliner,' I said. 'We are in deadly earnest. It is only right of you to tell us any suspicion that you entertain.'
'Well—to tell you the truth, sir, I thought I recognized the voice of a gentleman who often visits Cadogan Gardens—Mr. Eastwell.'
'Eastwell!' I echoed. 'Do you really think it was actually Mr. Eastwell?'
I glanced at Roseye and saw that, at mention of the man's name, her face had instantly gone pale as death, and her hands were trembling.
'Are you quite sure of that, Mulliner?' she asked breathlessly.
'No. Not quite. I only know that he wore a big pair of motor-goggles with flaps on the cheeks, and those effectively altered his appearance, but as he assisted in tying me up in the chair, my eyes caught sight of his watch-chain. It was familiar to me—one of alternate twisted links of gold and platinum of quite uncommon pattern. This I recognized as Mr. Eastwell's, for I had seen it many times before, and it went far to confirm my suspicion that the voice was undoubtedly his. I admit, miss, that I was staggered at the discovery.'
I led Roseye into the best room and, having closed the door, stood before her in front of the log fire and asked:
'Now what is your opinion, dear? Has Lionel Eastwell been here to-night, do you really think?'
Her pale lips compressed, and her eyes narrowed at my words. I saw that she was unnerved and trembling.
'Yes,' she whispered at last. 'Yes—Claude—I believe he has been here!'
'Then he's not our friend, as we have so foolishly believed—eh?'
She drew a long breath, and gazed about the room as though utterly mystified.
'I—I never suspected this!' was her low reply. 'But'
'But what? Tell me, darling. Do tell me,' I begged.
'But he may be acting in conjunction with that woman in some desperate plot against us!'
'I believe he is,' I declared. 'I believe that whatever has happened to you, and my accident also, are both the result of cunning and dastardly plots directed by this man who has so long posed as our friend. Have you never suspected it?' I asked of her.
'Never—until to-night,' was her reply. 'But if he has dared to come here in order to assist that woman, then his action places an entirely fresh complexion upon the whole affair.'
'My opinion is that Lionel Eastwell has, all along, suspected that we have perfected our invention, and has formed a most clever and desperate plot to possess himself of our secret, in order to transmit it to Germany,' I declared, as I held her hand tenderly in mine.
'Yes,' she replied, sighing after a pause. 'Your surmise may be correct, Claude.'
'But do you share my views?'
'Well—' she responded at last, 'yes, Claude—I do! But,' she added, 'the whole affair is too mystifying—too utterly amazing. When, one day, I can tell you what happened to me you will, I know, stand aghast. Ah! when I think of it all,' she cried hoarsely, 'I often regard it as a miracle that I am alive and at your side again—at the side of the man I love!'
More than this she refused to tell me.
I had, at last, established that the hand of Lionel Eastwell, the popular pilot at Hendon, was the hand of the enemy. I had suspected it, but here was proof!
His association with the mysterious woman was, of course, still an enigma, but I saw that Roseye herself held the key to it, and now that we had agreed that Eastwell was playing us both false, I hoped that this, in itself, would induce her to tell me the frank and open truth.
When Teddy returned he heard from my lips what had happened during our absence, and he stood speechless.
'Let's run the dynamo, light up, and examine the machine,' he suggested, and though it was already midnight we readily adopted his suggestion.
That it had again been tampered with I felt no doubt.
That statement of old Theed's that he had heard 'sawing' made it plain that some devil's work had been done—and by Eastwell no doubt, because he was an expert in aviation. The expert knows exactly the point at which he can weaken the strongest aeroplane.
Well, we soon ran the dynamo, and had a good light going, one that was almost too glaring in that confined space. All of us were present, including the maid Mulliner, as slowly we examined and tested, piece by piece, every bolt, nut, strainer, and indeed every part of the machine.
It was past three o'clock in the morning ere we finished, yet we could find absolutely nothing wrong. The engines worked well: the dynamo was in order, the intensified current for the working of the invisible wave was up to the high voltage as before, and as far as we could discover the machine had not been tampered with in any way.
'They intended to investigate the secrets of the box,' Teddy remarked. 'No doubt that's what they were after.'
'Well—they didn't see very much!' I laughed, for already I had been up to the locked attic to which we had carried it on the previous night, and found it there with the door still secure.
Then, having satisfied ourselves that no damage had been done, we all retired to rest.
But sleep did not come to my eyes.
Hour after hour I lay awake until the grey dawn, pondering over the events of that night. That a desperate plot of the enemy was afoot against us could not be doubted, and I realized that it would take all our ingenuity and foresight to combat the plans of an unscrupulous enemy well provided with money, and desperate upon a resolve.
To go boldly to the authorities and denounce Lionel Eastwell as a spy would avail me nothing. Indeed, there was no actual evidence of it. No more popular man at Hendon, at Brooklands, or at the Royal Automobile Club was there than Eastwell. Yet, was not that popularity, purchased by the ample means at his disposal, and the constant dinners and luncheons which he gave regardless of their cost, proof in itself that he was acting secretly against the interests of Great Britain? Long ago I had suspected that his was the Invisible Hand that sent every secret of our progress in aviation to Germany by way of the United States. He had several American friends to whom I had been introduced, apparently business men who had come over for various reasons, and it was, no doubt, those men who conveyed back to New York secret information which, later on, returned across the Atlantic and was duly docketed in the Intelligence Bureau of the German General Staff at Berlin. Truly the wily Teuton leaves nothing to chance, and has his secret agents in the most unsuspected places.
Yet, reflecting as I did in those long wakeful hours, I saw that it was not surprising, and that the enemy would, naturally, have kept a very watchful eye upon anyone who had devised a means of fighting Zeppelins, and, if possible, defeat him in his attempt.
This thought decided me. I meant, at all hazards, to try my device against an enemy airship, even though I might fail. I had foreseen all the risks of machine-guns mounted upon the top of the latest airship, of the dangers of night-flying, of landing difficulties even if successful, and the hundred and one mishaps which might occur in the excitement and darkness.
Indeed, in following a Zeppelin at a high altitude and in clouds, I might very easily be mistaken for an enemy attendant aeroplane, and thus draw the fire of our own anti-aircraft guns. In addition, I held no official position in the anti-aircraft service. As far as the newly-formed Joint Naval and Military Air Committee were concerned, I might be a mere man-in-the-street. Therefore I should be compelled to act upon my own initiative. Indeed, I had already offered my invention to the proper official quarter, but had only received a type-written acknowledgment. I, however, was not surprised, because that Department had, I knew, been flooded by the devices of hot-air cranks.
Still, as I lay reflecting, I remembered that we could build 1,700 aeroplanes for the cost of one Dreadnought, and a Zeppelin would cost a good deal less than a destroyer. I did not approve of that shrieking section of the Press which was loudly declaring that we had lost the supremacy in aeroplanes which we possessed at the beginning of the war. That was not a fact. We, of course, had no dirigibles worth the name and, perhaps, we were asking pilots to fly machines inferior to the Fokker. Yet we had brought Fokkers down at the front, and with good experimental work and a speedy policy of construction we should, I believed, soon be far ahead of the Central Powers as far as aircraft was concerned.
Those days were dark and perilous days for Britain.
That something must be done, every one was agreed. Yet, as I tossed upon my bed in that narrow little room in the obscure farm-house, I knew that within my hand I possessed a great, and yet mysterious power—and that power I intended to use and prove at the earliest opportunity.
Still I had to reckon with enemies: cool, clever, cunning persons who would hesitate at nothing in order to nullify my efforts, and wreck my machine and all my hopes.
Ah! If only Roseye, my well-beloved, would reveal to me the truth.
Why did she so persistently refuse?
Why? I wondered why?