"Can it be possible——" Saxham checked himself. "You see how rusty I am getting, General. You refer to that machine that turned out from where cars are parked just now. The German fellow went up to it.... It had a groom beside the chauffeur and three other men inside it.... While I was looking—elsewhere—it must have moved away!"
"It has only turned the corner of the café-restaurant," the Chief said in his quiet tones. He glanced in the direction of the squat block of gaily painted wooden buildings devoted to the inner needs of Fanshaw's clients. "The awning hides it, but I can see a bit of it still. Until it moves, I can go on talking. Frankly, I am in the position of the High Church curate who went out wild-pig shooting in the territories of the Limpopo with a single-bore hammer-gun of grandpapa's pattern—and got his choice of pot-shots between a lion and a rhino. Prinz Heinrich is my royal lion and von Herrnung,—who counted for little more than a bush-pig—has suddenly swelled into a rhinoceros."
He pulled the grizzled moustache thoughtfully, keeping his eyes glued on the back of the big blue car.
"If I could get hold of Sherbrand!—but the chance is dead for the rhino and lion winding me. Old von Moltke with the big wart on his ginger-coloured face, and the charming manner that makes you forget that you don't like him!—would certainly recognise me—and the nautical Hohenzollern and I have met once or twice before. I must lay low like Brer Rabbit, and take a single-handed chance. No, no, Doctor, you have your patients to look after! I am not going to drag you into this. But if I'd got a couple of my Boy Scouts handy——" He broke off, encountering Bawne's bright eyes. "By George, Doctor! I'm going to chance it! I'm going to give your youngster an opportunity to prove his Saxham blood!"
The Master-hand gave the Scout's Sign, and Bawne shot across like a brownish streak of swiftness. He drew himself up, gave the Full Salute, and stood waiting, his rigid attitude in sharp contrast with his dancing, expectant eyes. The Doctor looked at his watch and moved away silently. The Chief said in a clear undertone:
"You see that tall, red-haired man in grey clothes over there with Mr. Sherbrand? Don't look at him openly, or he will know we are talking about him, but take a sidelong gliff, and say."
"I see him, sir."
"Do you know anything of him? Stand easy and answer carefully."
The hand came down from the hat-brim. The boy said:
"I've heard him talk, sir, and I think he is German. I'm learning that and French at Charterhouse."
"He is a German. Do you speak enough of the language to understand him, suppose he were talking to one of his countrymen?"
"Ich—kann—lesen, aber Ich kann es—nicht sprechen." The answer came slowly. "And if they weren't using crack-jaw words, sir, or talking very quick, I might manage—I could make out a lot of what they said."
"Very well, keep your man under close observation and—you see that brown satchel he has in his hand?"
"I've seen it close, sir. A flat brown leather despatch case thing—with a criss-cross pattern on the leather, and two locks, and another lock on the strap that goes round. He hadn't it with him when first I saw him talking to—a lady. Then a man—a servant—came and called him away to speak to some gentlemen in a big blue motor-car. One of them—fat and old and bald—with a wart on his cheek, who wore a white topper, and yellowy clothes, and a red necktie, and looked rather like a—like an Inspector of Sunday Schools in shooting-clothes—passed him the leather case. That's how I know he didn't bring it, sir. Oh! and the yellow car he drives isn't British. She's got an oval International plate with the German 'D' in black on a white ground."
"I am glad my Scout knows how to use his eyes!"
The Chief's own eyes were crinkled with merriment. That Moltke, the Chief of the German Great General staff, bosom friend of the All Highest, should resemble a stout Inspector of Sunday Schools in the estimation of a small British boy, was lovely in the extreme.
"Well, I want to know what the big German officer—he is an officer!—does with that leather satchel he's carrying so carefully. Where he goes with it, whom he talks to, and what he says to them. Find out whether it is light or heavy, if it is what I believe it to be, you might be rendering good service to your country in destroying it. But you'll be doing all I want or expect, if you stick to the man who carries it!"
"I'll do that, sir, on my Honour!"
"Good! Make your little German serve you. I may have to leave here upon this business, but I'll be back within, at least—half an hour. If he goes before I get back, find out where he is going. If you can't find out, follow him. On foot if he walks, in a taxi if he doesn't. Here are six separate shillings—in that case you'll want money for fares. Remember, if things take a puzzling turn and you find yourself in a tight place, whisper a quiet word to Sherbrand, though I'd prefer you to carry through on your own! Report to me, in case he goes before I get back here—at Headquarters, Victoria Street. Have you got all this tucked away safe in your head?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then quit yourself like a man. My signal to you that I have left will be a dog's yelping. Ah!" The keen bright eyes, glued on the distant back of the blue car, had seen the rear wheels moving. Before the F.I.A.T. glided smoothly out of eyeshot the Chief had hurried away.
In the opposite direction to the archway of exit, the slight, active figure in the perfectly-cut blue serge morning clothes and pot hat of Bond Street block, was rapidly walking. Bawne doubted his eyes for a moment before he remembered that the Collingwood Avenue ran along that side of the Flying Ground fence. There was a smaller gate in charge of a commissionaire, in the fence, about a hundred yards along it. Taxi-cabs were standing outside the gate. Any person on foot or awheel, leaving the Flying Ground, must pass the gate and the taxi-stand. You could see through the chinks in the fence when they passed, nip out when they were well by, and follow in a green-flagged chuffer. Bawne had settled this to his satisfaction before a wrench at the rein of duty pulled his head round to the business on hand.
"I'm not spying on Mr. Sherbrand," the boy told himself, gritting his small square teeth doggedly. "I've got to listen, so as to understand the German's game. And I'm going to. This is how I'm going to!"
He began to turn hand-springs after the fashion of the London street Arab, thus lessening the distance between himself and the talking men. They glanced at him, and Sherbrand grinned, but they looked back again directly at each other. Then Bawne threw himself down and panted, rolled over and lay, still panting. Now he was near enough to hear what passed between the two.
Sherbrand said:
"No, I was not particularly solid in my conviction that the aërial stabiliser would take the fancy of the Chiefs of the Service Aëronautique. An accident prevented me from witnessing the final test, and I got what the Americans call cold feet and judged it no use staying in France longer. So I flew back here, starting early by daylight the next morning, with Davis, my mechanic, and found a cable waiting at my office to say the working of the invention had been observed with interest by the Chiefs of the S. Aë. F., and that if I could carry out a satisfactory time-trial at my headquarters in the presence of the French Consul, the authorities at the Ministry of War would be willing to buy my patents for France. As it happened, I was suffering from a slight obstruction in the nasal passages, that spoiled my climbing. It was absolutely necessary to go into Hospital. That is why I could not give M. Jourdain an earlier date for the hovering-test you have just seen carried out."
Von Herrnung demanded:
"But did you not receive a letter containing a business proposal? A communication from Rathenau, Wolff and Brothers, Aëromotor Engineers of Paris, 200, Rue Gagnette? I happen to know that it was posted, and the date being that of the Paris trial, Herren Rathenau and Wolff certainly possess the prior claim!"
"Their communication reached me in Hospital, three days later than the French War Office cable," Sherbrand answered. "It had been forwarded from the makeshift hangar I rented at Drancy—a mistake in the address being the reason of the delay!"
"That fellow Lindemann is a Dummer Teufel," said von Herrnung, shrugging.
"My German landlord.... Why—do you know him?" asked Sherbrand with a look of surprise.
"No, certainly. But you—you said the fellow's name was Lindemann. Not so? No?—then I am mistaken," said von Herrnung with another shrug. He hurried on as though to cover a mistake with a spate of sentences:
"Of course, with Rathenau and Wolff I have nothing to do. Save as an old customer, of whom they have asked a favour—you understand? Indeed I—you will pardon me!—do not your hoverer regard as an original invention. In 1912 our German Ministry of Marine completed a gun-boat fitted with a gyroscopic stabiliser to prevent rolling—you understand—in stormy weather. The device was hellishly effective."
"So effective," rejoined Sherbrand, without the quiver of a facial muscle, though there was laughter in his eyes, "that it broke up the ship."
"Es mag wohl sein!" returned von Herrnung, covering discomfiture, if he felt it, with his imperturbable shrug and hard blue stare.
Sherbrand went on, straightening his wide shoulders and clasping his hands loosely at his back as he talked:
"I don't claim that my patent is an absolutely new invention. Far from it. But it is a new arrangement of some old ideas, and limited though its use may be—it works. You have seen it working. You agree that it justifies its name?" He waited for the assent, and went on: "Possibly if I had described it as an aërial drag-anchor, I should have explained its uses more clearly. It is no good at all when your machine isn't flying level—of course you understand that? If you were ass enough to try to dive without cutting out the power that drives the horizontal screws you would drop to the ground like a plummet and break into a million of little bits—or dig a hole in the earth big enough for a Tube Station. But—keeping an even line of flight—when you switch it on it pulls against the tractor just sufficiently to give you—not immovability—but poise. Sufficient to take a photograph or drop an explosive with a good deal of accuracy."
The small boy lying outstretched on the warm turf near them, thought dolefully:
"Dummer Teufel meant 'stupid devil' in German. But this talk is dreadfully business, I can't stow away much. Man alive! I wish Roddy Wrynche or some other fellow with a top-hole memory had got this job to tackle. And yet the Chief trusted it to me!"
All this, while Sherbrand was explaining.
"M. Jourdain declared himself completely satisfied. His observer said that I maintained poise and stability for five minutes longer than the stipulated twenty-five. He looked at the altimeter and said I should receive a definite answer within a couple of days.... Unlucky brute! Someone must have run over him!"
The shrill yelp of a hurt dog had evoked Sherbrand's exclamation. The sufferer's plaint came from the Collingwood Avenue, on the other side of the fence. Thrice the excruciating sound ripped the ears, then died out in a sobbing whimper.... That was for me! Bawne told himself, as von Herrnung went on:
"Still, you are not pledged. There is no definite understanding. In the interests of the wealthy firm I am asked to represent—solely as a matter of courtesy, because they have been immensely civil to me in business,—you would not refuse me a test?"
Sherbrand said, drawing off his left glove and showing blood oozing from under bluish-looking finger-nails:
"I found it uncommonly parky to-day at 10,000 feet. There was a nor'-east breeze, a regular piercer. Found myself spitting blood rather badly, and to be candid, I was uncommonly grateful that the French Consul declined my offer, in case he was not satisfied, to do the thing again. The fact is, the operation, slight as it was, has weakened me a little. I wouldn't care to repeat the performance without a good night's rest to buck me up."
Von Herrnung shrugged and agreed:
"That it is cold at 10,000 I can credit easily. I have had the oil in my own gauges frozen at 7,000 in midsummer. Da ist nicht zit strassen. Hæmorrhage and dizziness are the chief enemies of the aviator. One's stomach betrays one also, the cursed beast!—after a good hearty meal!"
"I don't give mine the chance!" Sherbrand returned, "but stave off the pangs of appetite with milk-tablets and meat-lozenges. Do all my flying on these and chocolate. Keep a little store of the things and a Thermos of hot coffee, in a cache I've made for them, under the map-desk on the left of the instrument-frame, facing the pilot's seat. If you will come over to the Bird I'll show you, and explain the working of the gyroscopic hoverer." He added, looking squarely at von Herrnung: "Of course the cutting of the double screw is the chief thing about the invention. I've registered every way I know and got a trade-mark. They tell me at the Patent Office that my international rights are secure!"
"They should be, if you have those precautions taken. It does not do to trust," said von Herrnung, "too much! The monkey proverb is law for most men." He shrugged. "It comes, by the way, from Namaland in German South-West Africa. 'Nuts in your pouch are nuts in mine!'"
The freemasonry of their calling had established a degree of friendliness between them. They were laughing over the monkey's philosophy as they went over together to the Bird. The small boy who had been idly sprawling on the hot turf near them, with his tilted hat shielding his face from the westering sun-rays, got up and trotted after them like a collie pup.
"Coming too, young man?" Sherbrand said, glancing back and smiling. The boy nodded in answer, and thence-forward kept close at the heels of the men, his ears industriously drinking in their conversation, while his eyes were glued on the brown leather satchel depending from the German's gloved left hand. Both men, now leaning over the side of the pilot's cockpit, examined the gearing of the hoverer, protected by a transparent casing set in the tough ash, copper-riveted planking of the fuselage. Then with the aid of sulky Davis they tilted the Bird, and inspected the pair of thin circular plates of toughened steel with flanged edges that, revolving at high velocity in different. directions, constituted the horizontal screw.
"Driven from the engine, as you see, by an endless chain-drive arrangement. By manipulation of levers, you can throw the tractor out of gear, and hover, under favourable circumstances and in still weather, by means of the horizontal screw alone. But as a rule you keep the tractor working, and the screw acts in one as a lifter and floating-anchor. That's about all it amounts to!—I've said I don't pretend to hang immovable in the air like the albatross and the condor, not to mention the gull and sparrow-hawk and dragon-fly! While I hover I am making way—but way to an inappreciable amount. One of these days we shall find out the big Secret of Stability. Until then we must rub along as best we can!"
Von Herrnung returned:
"I am hellishly interested in your invention. It now occurs to me that as you happen to know my flying record"—he shrugged his great shoulders and smoothed his tight red roll of moustache with a well-manicured finger-tip—"that it is possible you would have sufficient confidence to allow me to test your gyroscopic hoverer myself?" He laughed again pleasantly as he finished: "Whatever else I may do, I give you my word of honour I shall not pile up your machine. Will you consent? It may lead—supposing you do not close with the French offer—to big business—done with my friends!"
Sherbrand had looked doubtful, only for an instant. Before the twelve-year-old eavesdropper had recovered from the shock that had set his brain spinning and his heart thumping, the situation had been accepted by the owner of the Bird of War. He held out his left hand, and von Herrnung gripped and wrenched it, noting with inward amusement that his grip had brought fresh lines of blood creeping about the edges of Sherbrand's finger-nails.
"You shake hands with the left," he commented, smiling. "Not for the first time have I noticed the peculiarity in Englishmen of the younger breed."
"It is a custom," Sherbrand answered, "with—members of an organisation to which I had, and still have, the honour to belong."
His eyes, in speaking, went to the bright-haired boy in Scout's uniform standing near them, but von Herrnung's glance had not followed his. The boy was staring wistfully at the round-faced clock on the front gable of the café restaurant—ten minutes to the half-hour and no sign of the Chief's returning. Bawne's courage began to ooze away at the ends of his fingers and toes.
"Then," von Herrnung was beginning impatiently, when a sallow, undersized young man, whose hollow chest and inky paper cuffs advertised his clerical employment, came up, touched a pen sticking out from behind his ear, and said as Sherbrand turned to him:
"Beg pardon, sir, but the telegraph-cabin is locked up proper, and Mr. Macrombie 'as carried orf the key."
"Out of sorts to-day, is he?" Sherbrand asked meaningly, and the telegraph-clerk answered:
"I've never seen 'im so bad before—in the middle of the month!"
As Fate would have it, Macrombie, ex-Petty Officer Telegraphist of the R.N.—from whose sleeve the golden Crown and thunderbolt had been reft by reason of his anti-teetotal habits, had received a visit that morning from a friend who had repaid a debt. Hence the licensed operator of Fanshaw's experimental and educational Wireless-station had succumbed to an attack of his intermittent complaint.
Hear Macrombie's assistant continuing the recital:
"He's left the aërial connected to the transmitter and gone out for lemon-squashes four times since one o'clock grub. 'That's the drink for men who have souls to save, ye little fag-eater!' he says to me; 'Salvation for soul and body, sucked through a straw! If thae deboshed and hopeless drunkards at the Admiralty could be induced to swear off their cursed alcohol and take to it, I wad no longer be deaved to the point of steeping my tongue in profanity, by the kind o' eediots' gibberish that is yammering at my lugs!'"
"He'd been raking a lot of Admiralty strays in?" Sherbrand queried. Von Herrnung, who had been grinding his heel into the turf and gnawing his lip with ill-concealed impatience, turned his head sharply, and listened to the colloquy with all his ears.
"Not so much X's as definites, sir," responded Macrombie's assistant. "He was upset about ten minutes before he broke out by getting an 'Urgent' without a Preparative Call. Then comes 'Important' in International Code, and 'Administration' and 'Emergency.' Then 'War Office,' and 'Documents,' and 'Enforcement of the Law.' By that time 'e was purple in the face and 'arf crazy. 'If I had my way wi' you, ye bung-nosed intemperates,' he says, groaning-like—'I wad keep ye on grits an' caller watter for a fortnicht! Oh, that men, as auld Hosea says in the inspired Screeptures'—an' I 'appen to know myself it was Shakespeare—'should pit an enemy intil their mooths to steal awa' their brains!' An' 'e snatches off the telephone 'ead-band and chucks it into the corner, and just as my own instrument starts to tick out a call, he ketches me by the neck as if I'd bin a tame rabbit, an' slings me out o' the office an' locks the door. 'Out o' this!' 'e says, puttin' the cabin key in 'is pocket. 'I will no' have your lugs, dirr-ty as they are, polluted by the unclean counsels o' the wicked. I'm awa' to cool the wrath o' the righteous wi' anither lemon squash!' An' the winder is blocked by the Morse key instrument, an' even if it wasn't, it's too small for me to get in through!" Macrombie's victim ended, with an injured sniff.
"Well, well! Better hang about the cabin a bit and possess your soul in patience. If any pupils drop along, tell them they'll have to wait! Perhaps Macrombie'll turn up sober enough to take them on by-and-by. As for the message in transmission, I daresay it will keep. Mr. Fanshaw's not expecting any particularly important communication that I know of. Oh, hang it!" Sherbrand whistled dismally. "I'd forgotten. That's just what I am!"
"Shall I go and see if I can find Rumball?" suggested Macrombie's assistant helpfully. "He's at the engine-sheds. He's been a locksmith. 'Twouldn't take him more than a sec. to open the office door!"
"Cut then!" acceded Sherbrand, and the telegraph-clerk touched his pen—discovering by a jab of the inky nib that he was wearing it—and set off at a trot in the direction of the engine-sheds.
You are to suppose that von Herrnung's sharp ears had gathered the pith of the communication. Some meaning in the isolated words the clerk had repeated had had a palpable effect upon his nerves. His face looked bluish-grey and streaky, as he said to Sherbrand, stammering in his eagerness:
"So then, it is agreed about my flying your machine?"
"I see no objection."
"Gut!" Von Herrnung went on, concealing a huge joy under a careless camaraderie: "Can you lend me a cap and coat and a pair of Schulzbrille? Goggles you call them, yes! The coat should better to be a large one"—he stumbled in his English now through sheer excitement—"I am so much a bigger man than you!"
"Certainly. We keep Flying rigs in all manner of sizes. It's in the way of business," Sherbrand said. Then his glance fell upon Davis, whose little black-avised countenance wore an expression of sulky resentment, and he uttered a slight exclamation. "I forgot, Davis! I really am very sorry!" He turned to von Herrnung and explained in a tone of finality that enraged the hearer: "This is Davis's afternoon off. I cannot ask him to repeat the climb."
"It is hellishly annoying! But see! Listen, my fellow!" He addressed himself to little grimy Davis, unhelmeted and unbuttoned, leaning against the Bird's flank with his hands in the pockets of his oily overalls, chewing a blade of grass; "You will go up with me if I tip you? A sovereign! Come then! The gold does it! You will go up with me, will you not, yes?"
Davis spat out grass and delivered himself:
"Not even for my young guv'nor—and a Bank of England finnup, do I do the soaring heagle hact again this blooming Wednesday."
Welsh Davis had come to London from a mountain farm in Merioneth, speaking nothing but his native Cymric, and had culled his Sassenach from Cockney lips. Von Herrnung bid another sovereign, and then two more, ineffectually.
"Naow!" Davis was rock. "I've done my day's stunt an' I'm nuffy. D'yer tumble? Nuffy! Yer knaows wot that means—if you're a Flying Bloke!"
"Damn you, I will gif you ten pounds!" Von Herrnung's face was wrung and streaked with passion. He breathed hard, and the brown leather satchel jumped and wobbled in his shaking hand.
"It isn't any use," said Sherbrand, "really! Money doesn't count with Davis where his off-time's concerned. Davis doesn't want to go up again, and I've not another man of his weight available. What do you turn the scale at? I should guess 16 stone or thereabouts?"
"I weigh 16 st. 8 lbs. in my ordinary clothes."
"Well, I tot 11 st. 6 lbs. in the fullest of flying-rig, and Davis only 8 st. 5 lbs. And the Bird is built to carry in addition to her engine—what with the instruments, so forth, and man-freight, a cargo of something like 22 stone. You see, even with Davis, you'd load the machine a good bit over her"—he smiled at the conceit—"her Plimsoll mark. Again, I'm sorry. It's your luck! No flying for you to-day!"
"It is damnably annoying! But"—von Herrnung's red-lashed blue eyes were busily scanning Bawne's face and figure—"but suppose I could get a boy of 6 stone to go up with me? Merely as ballast, for I do not require an assistant—the difficulty might be got over in this way? What you say, my little English fellow?" He turned on the boy with a great air of jovial patronage. "Are you plucky enough? Shall we go for a voyage together in the sky?"
"Yes—please!"
The dark blue eyes met the hard light ones bravely, though every vestige of colour had sunk out of the young face. Then back to lips and cheeks the banished colour came racing. Bawne flushed crimson, as von Herrnung held up a bright bit of gold, and sharply shook his head.
"Was? Will you not take the sovereign?" von Herrnung demanded. "Are you a faint-heart after all?"
The boy bit his lip and said, clenching his small fists desperately:
"It's against the rule for Scouts to take tips. So I don't want the money. But I'm ready to come with you!"
"Look here, old fellow!" Sherbrand was beginning anxiously. The boy stopped him with:
"Really and truly I'm not funky—and you said I was to have another flight."
"So I did, and so you shall," agreed Sherbrand. "But this won't be just a 'bus trip around the aërodrome. It will be climbing and spiralling and hovering, and all the rest!"
Bawne persisted:
"You could strap me in. And I'm not afraid—really!"
"And," von Herrnung interposed, "I shall not ascend higher than three thousand. Probably less will do for my purpose. The boy will be quite safe. Surely you are able to trust him with me?"
Sherbrand hesitated, then said to Bawne in a relieved tone: "Well, there's the Doctor talking to a tall lady in white with a hat that glitters. Run across to your father and ask him whether you may go?"
"I'd rather you asked him—if you must—and let me stop here!"
"Gut! Sehr gut!" Von Herrnung's tautened nerves would have been relieved by some hard Prussian swearing. He jangled out a laugh instead. He caught hold of the boy under the armpits and lifted him high above his head. "What is your weight? Six stone? Come now, have I not guessed nearly!" He had not relinquished his grip on the leather satchel, and as it banged against his ribs, Bawne realised that it was quite light.
"Papers inside!" he said to himself. Something quite hard was under the leather at the corners, perhaps the thinnest of metal plates. Its contact with the boy's body seemed to sober von Herrnung's exultation. He dropped Bawne unceremoniously, and straightened himself again.
"How much petrol has been used?" he asked hastily of Davis, going over to the Bird and mounting on the landing-carriage to look at the gauges. "Because when I fly I never take risks. You will have to fill up the tank again. Do you hear, my fellow?"
"If Mr. Sherbrand orders me," Davis spat out another piece of grass, "dessay I shall do it!" He eyed von Herrnung with surly disapproval as he craned over the Bird's fuselage, while audibly commenting to an acquaintance who had strolled up:
"Sheer blinders, I call 'em, these ere Fritzies! Walk into Buckingham Pallis next minute and ask to look into the Privy Puss. 'Ope the Governor comes back before 'e gits Nosey Parkerin' into the 'orizontal 'overing gear! Perish me if I ever met a bloke with such a nerve! Watto, old sonny?" He addressed himself to the boy. "Ain't you feelin' up to the posh?"
"I am quite all right, thank you!" Bawne responded, while his heart bumped against his ribs. In his brain words and sentences kept forming:
"I'm only a little chap. And this is—a Big thing! Bigger than the Chief expected, perhaps! And he said he'd be back in half an hour." Half an hour meant thirty minutes. He glanced at the big round white-faced clock above the entrance of the café restaurant. More than fifteen minutes of the half-hour had gone.
To stick to the big, brutal German was his—Bawne's—Secret Mission. And the inspiring, uplifting voice that thousands of boy-hearts thrill to all the big world over had said to him:
"Quit yourself like a man!"