That Which Hath Wings 7That Which Hath Wings (part 7)
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Literature · Romance
That Which Hath Wings 7
That Which Hath Wings (part 7)
DehanEnglish
"We find it useful for business as well as instructional purposes," he went on. "Macrombie--the man in charge--is a one-time Royal Navy Petty Officer Telegraphist and a first-class operator." Sherbrand's mouth twisted a little at the corners as he added: "About twenty-four days out of thirty, let us say!"
The quick rejoinder came:
"Then he's D.O.D. two working days in the month, not counting Sundays. I've met plenty of Macrombies in my time. This doesn't happen to be the monthly pay-day, by any chance, or one of the other close days in its neighbourhood?"
"No, no! He's as right as rain and as sober as a seal," said Sherbrand. "And--this tall fellow with red hair must be the man who has written to me upon business. I shall have to go to him."
They exchanged a left-handed grip, mutually smiling.
"Good old habits stick," said the Chief, and Sherbrand answered:
"Fortunately, they do. Let me say again how much and how gratefully I have to thank you for the teaching that has helped me to find myself!" His clear light glance reverted to Saxham. "The Doctor too, for giving me this chance of meeting you. Please tell him the story if you think it would interest him. I hope with all my heart, sir, that you will soon come here again!"
"I had already taken the permission for granted," the Chief said, as Sherbrand saluted and went forward to meet "the fellow with red hair." "There is big business in that gyroscopic stabiliser of his," he added to Saxham, "and our friends at the French War Ministry have tumbled to it as one might naturally expect. So much the worse for our bungling bigwigs at Whitehall, who've let a good thing slip, for the millionth time, out of their claws. But taking for granted the value of the patent, and recognising the likelihood of the French bid stimulating Teutonic competition----"
The gentle, modulated voice broke off. Von Herrnung had stepped out upon the green and was striding towards the lightly-moving, less stiffly-carried figure of Sherbrand, the approximation of the two somehow suggesting a salute of gladiators previous to the fight. Now the big, grey-clad German was arrested in the middle of his stride by the sudden kling-a-ling of a motor-gong, a sharp crystal vibration that stiffened him to attention, and pricked his ears for a repetition of the sound.
It did not immediately come. He raised the left hand that held the leather satchel, and swung it from front to rear, so that it was for a moment clear of the outline of his body, as who should signal: "I have it safe!" Quick, watchful eyes noted this. Took in also the ornate bulk of the dark blue F.I.A.T. touring-car, as with the characteristic, noiseless smoothness of its make, it glided between the ranks of parked and waiting automobiles, and stopped in the open, perhaps some forty yards away.
A fat yellow hand, with a twinkling solitaire upon it, waved. A brown hand, with a massive gold curb-chain watch-bracelet on the wrist of it, beckoned imperiously. Something had been forgotten, something was still to say. Von Herrnung wheeled, and went back in his traces as obediently as the pointer that has been called to heel. He did not uncover, perhaps he had been told not to. He saluted, and stood stiffly, listening to a harsh German voice that yapped at him. All his arrogance and swagger seemed to have been juggled out of him by the gestures of the brown hand with the flashing wrist-bracelet, emerging from the white cuff with jewelled sleeve-links and the snowy sleeve with its broad bands of glittering golden braid.
"S'th!"
The slight sound pulled Saxham's head round. He had not been looking at the occupants of the blue F.I.A.T. His eyes were intent on the tall white figure of the woman standing beside his boy. Her black lace sunshade was closed. She held the tall-sticked thing at arm's-length, leaning upon it, and the westering light smote a myriad of multi-coloured sparkles out of the tinsel spangles of the hat with the single black cock's plume. The queer headgear crowning her barbaric hair, and her full white oval face with its wide, low, arched black brows and long eyes, made her seem strange, alluring, as some tall-stemmed, exotic flower, sprung at the incantation of an Oriental conjuror, from a green stretch of English turf.
In the same instant von Herrnung touched his hat, stepped back from the blue car, wheeled and walked away toward the waiting figure of Sherbrand, the sallow man in the Homburg hat gave an order, the chauffeur touched the electric starter, and the F.I.A.T. turned and smoothly bowled away. But in the instant of its turning, the bearded man in the white naval uniform rose in his place, and obtruding half his short, bulky body across the lean person of his sallow neighbour, scrutinised the face and figure of Patrine Saxham with a cool, appraising deliberateness that tortured the wincing flesh it enveloped like the cut of a carriage-whip.
They were full, bright, and rather handsome grey-blue eyes shadowed by the white cap-peak, and they had the indefinable expression of authority and power. Their glance said--and the face with the perfectly-trimmed beard and the upturned moustache wore a curious smile that bore out the glance's meaning:
"So! That's the woman!" And a surge of scalding shame and bitter resentment rose in the heart of Patrine Saxham and filled it to the brim.
She could not have explained why she felt certain that her shameful secret was known to the man with the powerful eyes, the cast of whose face with its pointed beard faintly reminded one of the King and the Tsar.
Patrine had always abominated cheap sentiment. She had once laughed until she cried at a revival of an old four-decker drama, whose hero, waking to the knowledge of a committed, irrevocable deed cried in throaty, stagy tones of anguish upon God to put back the dreadful clock of Time and give him yesterday.
Now she perceived the deep, vital interest of the common-place human story. If asking Him on whom that other sinner cried would wipe from Time's register a span of hours between twelve P.M. and three o'clock in the morning--blot one deed from the Roll of things that done, are beyond Humanity's undoing--Patrine told herself that it would be worth while to wear sackcloth, live on boiled field-peas, drink brook-water, and pray--until her knees were worn to the bone.
She caught Saxham's piercing glance across the intervening strip of greensward. He turned away his eyes, and a shudder went through her frame. Had he suspected--could anyone have found out and told him? The Doctor's head was bent now as the General talked to him. It seemed to her that a muscle in his lean cheek twitched, a characteristic sign with him of excitement, or emotion. She wondered what the General had said to Uncle Owen to make him look like that.
As a fact, the quiet voice was saying in Saxham's ear: "And prepare against a surprise, Doctor--for though your nerves are tough as aluminium bronze, a few million gallons of water have rolled under the Thames bridges since you and I held Council of War.... As I mentioned before, the interest taken by the French Government in Sherbrand's gyroscopic hoverer may well have stimulated the interest of our Teuton neighbours. But it doesn't explain the presence on Fanshaw's Flying Ground of Lieutenant-General Count Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the German Great General Staff, and--Grand Admiral Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of the Kaiser--in a F.I.A.T. touring-car!"
*CHAPTER XXIX*
*A SECRET MISSION*
"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 cafe-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 aerial stabiliser would take the fancy of the Chiefs of the Service Aeronautique. 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. Ae. 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, Aeromotor 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 aerial 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. Haemorrhage 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 cafe 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 aerial 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 aerodrome. 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 cafe 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!"
*CHAPTER XXX*
*THE REAPING*
To Patrine, when the shadow of the familiar figure of the Doctor mingled with hers upon the dry green grass, and Saxham's voice called her by her name, it was as though his presence had a weight that physically oppressed her, and his scrutiny seared her flesh like the approach of white-hot iron.
Through her mind passed swift sentences: "Yet another of us has disgraced him! My father and mother are not the only traitors of our name!" In the rawness of her mental anguish every sense was unnaturally exaggerated. The ticking of Saxham's watch, that the furious beating of her heart could not drown, tormented by its iteration. And worst of all, was the consciousness of defilement in the physical sense.
"Did not your mother give you my message?"
Always pale, her pallor did not demand particular attention, save that under their ruddy salve the edges of her lips showed white. She answered, forcing the lips to smile, compelling her eyes to meet Saxham's.
"About coming to see you?" She remembered and drew from her gilt-chain vanity bag the letter she had not posted: "This was written to you to-day. Then I thought I would have been able to look in at Harley Street, and in the end----"
"In the end you neither paid the visit nor posted the excuse. Well, be more considerate in future to those who love you. Sincere, clean love does not grow on every gooseberry bush, my dear!"
The curt speech, made in the Doctor's brusquest tone, conveyed to Patrine an impression of exquisite kindness. So many boons, so many benefits had been conferred in that grim, curt way. She had wept and would not weep again, but her hard bright eyes grew misty as she thanked him, and asked after Lynette, with a touch of wistfulness that recalled to the Doctor that unforgettable time when greedy Death had threatened to rob him of his joy. He answered her cheerfully, and they found themselves chatting of familiar, everyday matters across the gulf that yawned between. And then, warned by some swift change of expression in her face, Saxham glanced up to see Sherbrand approaching.
"Doctor!" he called. "Sorry to interrupt, but would you listen a minute?"
The tall, lightly-built, lightly moving figure came swinging towards them. He still carried the eared cap with the goggled visor, his thick, silvery-blonde hair was darkened at the temples with the dampness generated under the close covering of waterproof. His light grey-blue eyes were smiling, yet there was a pucker of anxiety between his eyebrows, as he put von Herrnung's case.
"So," he ended, "instead of taking a second flight in the Bird with me as we arranged, would you trust your boy to this foreign crack who's in a hole for a passenger? He is Captain von Herrnung of the German Flying Service--winner of the two-days' flight from Hanover to Paris in April--a famous run!" He added, "I need hardly say that with such a record as von Herrnung holds you cannot be apprehensive of any rashness or neglect on his part. But I'll own I would rather take Bawne up another day myself. Still, von Herrnung----"
"I am aware of the reputation held by the person you mention. I am going now to speak to him."
The Doctor's face was devoid of all expression. But he battled, as he spoke, with a masterful desire to forbid Bawne the expedition. To assert parental authority on this point would have been the mode of dealing approved by one of the two men who dwelt within the Dop Doctor. The other Saxham said "Hold!"
Dare you place your paternal love, that other Saxham asked--between your son and his duty? Because it would be so easy to do it, is the reason why you should refrain! The Doctor had walked a few paces towards the object of his troubled reflections. He wheeled abruptly, returned, and presented Sherbrand to his niece.
A faint blush rose in Patrine's white cheeks as her eyes met those of the tall young aviator. They looked at her without any sign of recognition, and the conviction, "He has forgotten!" shot stingingly across her mind. "He did not think me worth remembering" came next. And then she could have laughed, recalling that she had dismissed him from her own thoughts on the discovery of his connection with Fanshaw's. She had made so certain that a teacher of Flying couldn't be a gentleman.
Now, face to face with him again, in his upright easy bearing, in his straight and fearless regard, in the pleasant well-bred voice that addressed her in a brief conventional sentence or so, she read his patent of gentlehood.
From whatever root it sprang, the flower was noble. Her swift eyes shot a glance at the bigger figure in grey. What a hoggish knight of the dunghill, what a high-born clown had she not distinguished by her choice and selection. The smile of scorn that curved her mouth was suddenly banished by the sudden recollection of Bawne.
"Uncle Owen, you have not yet told Mr. Sherbrand whether Bawne may go up again or not. I am sure--if you won't think me--if you don't mind my saying so!--that he has had enough for to-day! I think it would be better if you would not----"
It was not the deep warm voice of Patrine's characteristic utterance, but a weaker, thinner voice that hesitated and faltered and trailed away. It recalled nothing to Sherbrand. He looked at her and transferred his gaze to Saxham, who asked:
"Does this German officer intend climbing to any high altitude, or perpetrating anything in the nature of a display?"
Sherbrand explained:
"He does not want to go higher than three thousand. Just to try the hoverer, regarding which some business friends of his are bitten with curiosity. My mechanic is not able to go up with him, and he wants a light-weight passenger. He is over sixteen stone himself, and the Bird has been built to carry me with Davis. I calculated her wing-area to----"
Sherbrand travelled into the realm of technicalities, using terms that were Volapuk and Esperanto to Patrine. He had supple, finely-shaped hands, and used them as he talked with vivid illustrative gestures.
"So," he ended, "as your plucky youngster asked to go, it seemed a way out of the difficulty, provided you weren't dead against the thing. Of course we'll swadd the little chap in a sweater or so under the pneumatic jacket. It'll be a bit parky, even at three thousand, now the sun's beginning to down."
He added:
"I'll see to the strapping myself. You may rely upon it, Doctor."
Saxham said with a look of kindness at the handsome face with the clear candid eyes:
"I am sure of that!" He added, mastering that inward impulse: "I shall not forbid the flight if Bawne is set on it. But first, I must speak to him!"
And the great form with the stern thoughtful face and scholar's stoop moved across the greensward, followed by the tall young figures of Sherbrand and Patrine. Of the two, the man was by a bare inch the taller. This Patrine realised in a swift side-glance. Certain featural characteristics of him, personal impressions received half-unconsciously, retained their clear sharpness then and for many days....
The silvery-yellow hair toning into the pale brown skin. The powerful sweep of the brows over eyes set flush with their large orbits, prominent, brilliant, mobile as the eyes of a bird of flight. The nose, arched and jutting like a kite's beak, with large sensitive nostrils, the somewhat sunken cheek and the sharply-angled jaw, the little ear and the rounded skull superbly set upon the full muscular neck rising out of the collar of the gabardine, made up a portrait upon which some happy woman might well dote and dream.
It was five o'clock and the breeze that smelt of heather and clover-hay and strawberries blew more strongly, straight from under the westering sun. Patrine drank in deep draughts of the buoyant sweetness. The leaden gyves had fallen from her limbs, the leaden weight had lifted from her bosom. She had recovered something of her old, elastic grace of movement, that even the sheath-skirt could not spoil. Looking at her, Sherbrand said to himself:
"She walks like a Highland hill-woman or a native girl of the Philippines. And--did Heaven or a Bond Street specialist give her that extraordinary hair? I rather hate it, and yet I have to go on looking at it. Does she know? I wonder if she knows?"
She felt his eyes on her. And the buoyant sense of well-being that his presence brought to her was mingled with an agony of apprehension. Her heart clamoured, like a brooding thrush attacked by the owl, that Bawne should not be permitted to risk himself with von Herrnung. "Does any other living being know him as I know him?" she asked herself. "If by some misadventure it came to a question of one life or the other, would he scruple--no! he would not scruple for an instant to sacrifice the child?"
Three words to Uncle Owen--if one only dared to speak them--would have put the thing out of the question. But at the thought of the dreadful avowal to which such an utterance might lead, Patrine was stricken dumb. She could not face the music. This was one little ear of wild oats out of the full field that waited for her reaping, sown in the hours that lie between the midnight of pleasure and the dawn of the Day of Remorse.
Perhaps she and Sherbrand had walked more slowly than it had seemed to her. She saw Saxham and his son meet, heard, indistinctly the exchange of a few brief sentences, and then the boy, with a jump to hug his father round the neck, ran to her as she came up.
"Cousin Pat, I'm going to get into my flying-kit in a minute." His heart was thumping so that it shook him, and the short upper lip with the gold-brown dust of freckles on it quivered, hard as he tried to keep it stiff: "One doesn't do it before people generally--but I'd rather like you to kiss me now!"
"My precious, a dozen times!"
She said it impetuously in the deep womanly baritone that Bawne loved, and Sherbrand started as he heard it. She dropped her tall-sticked sunshade, and caught the little boyish figure to her broad womanly bosom, hugged him until he panted, and kissed his pale cheeks red. You do not need to be reminded that Patrine was a galumpher. "Don't go! don't go!" she whispered in her darling's neck. "I hate your going! and I don't believe Uncle Owen likes it.... Say you've been up once and you're 'nuffy! Pretend you funk it. Do, for my sake!"
"I--can't. Ouch! You tickle! Please let me go. This is business!" He squirmed, and she burst out laughing, and released him. The act was a wrench that tore her bleeding heart anew.
He bounded instantly after Sherbrand, seeing him go forward to join von Herrnung, who was standing watching Davis fill the Bird's tank with petrol, and her reservoir with oil.
There was no spurring these lazy devils of English into movement.... The accursed pig-dogs, the stupid sheep's heads! If that fragmentary Wireless message had really to do with the business, within the next ten minutes everything might be ruined. One walked perilously, as amongst pebbles, holding a watch-glass of High Explosive in one's hand. Here came the man and the boy. He joined them with a noisy burst of forced laughter. Presently you saw all three moving in the direction of a building where the "flying-kits of all sorts and shapes and sizes," of which Sherbrand had boasted, were kept for the use of the patrons of Fanshaw's School. As they went in, Bawne cast a wistful glance up at the clock on the front gable of the cafe restaurant, now supplying afternoon tea served in brown teapots, and rolls and butter on thick white platters, to a thin sprinkling of customers.
"Three minutes to the half-hour," said the clock.
Would the Chief come, or must this thing be carried out by a small boy whose heart lay, a palpable lump of cold lead in the pit of his stomach, and whose knees were turning to jelly as he went?
If Cousin Pat, when she begged him not to go, had known how badly he, Bawne, had wanted to hold her round the neck and beg her not to let him, he would at this moment have been unheroically safe.
She was so big. He had most dreadfully wanted to cling to her and cry--imagine a fellow of twelve doing anything so kiddish. But he had swallowed the unmanly tears, and wriggled out of her strong protecting arms.
He looked back and saw her tall white figure, standing near the hulking black-clad shape of the Doctor, who had pulled his hat-brim low down over his eyes, and did not seem to be talking or laughing at all. Davis was doing something with a spanner to the Bird's under-carriage, and the long, thin shadow of her in combination with the squat shadow of the little stooping Welshman, stretched eastwards over the dry green grass.
He heaved a big sigh and followed his man in. Von Herrnung was already trying on pneumatic coats, swearing in nervous German when they were not big enough. At last he was caparisoned, in a heavy suit of flannel-lined Carberrys and a buttonless hooded jacket. He had stripped the burst glove from his wounded hand, thrown it away, and replaced the magpie pearl ring upon his little finger. He had put on a woollen helmet and tied over that a flapped cap with goggles and ear-pieces. While he attended to his outfit, the leather satchel lay at his feet, or sometimes between them, or he would keep a boot-toe on a corner of it. And his hard blue eyes were vigilantly watchful against surprise.
Sherbrand and the dresser--who presided over a long room of shelves and pegs laden with queer garments, and who looked like a washed mechanic in spotless blue overalls--put Bawne into a woollen sweater, and added to the panoply he had worn already that morning, and which consisted of leggings, slip-strapped to a webbing waistbelt, a pneumatic jacket, a knitted helmet such as von Herrnung wore, and a pair of goggles. They looked like the Eskimo hunter and his little boy in the "Book of The Arctic"--a volume specially beloved of Saxham's small son.
It was five minutes past the half-hour when they emerged from the dressing-shed. Saxham came to meet them, turned and walked by his son's side. Davis, whose weakness as regards the sex we know, had pinched from the visitor's enclosure a green-painted iron chair for Patrine. She half-rose, stung by an impulse of escape, when she saw von Herrnung approaching, and then controlled herself and sat down again.
Nothing escaped her long eyes. They saw Sherbrand glance from Saxham to von Herrnung, and read the intention of an introduction in his look. He had just begun:
"Doctor, I don't think you have met Captain----" when von Herrnung lengthened his long stride, outstripped his companions, and went over swiftly and stood beside Patrine.
*CHAPTER XXXI*
*VON HERRNUNG BAITS THE HOOK*
She knew that he had interpreted her movement as an invitation.
He saluted her and said, speaking thickly:
"It is necessary that I have a word with you. Walk with me for one moment. I shall not keep you more!"
He bulked huge in his rig-out, but looked thoroughly at home, and deadly workmanlike. He pushed up his goggles as though conscious that they discounted his personal attractions, and his blue eyes were stony and glittering, and his full mouth showed pale and hard-set under the scarlet roll of his moustache.
"I shall not see you again to-day, and I have something important to tell you." He spoke rapidly and his breathing was harsh and loud. "I have been recalled by my Chiefs and return to Germany in--another two or three days. That we do not meet again before I leave is possible, therefore I wish to give you my address."
She did not look up. A white hand with red hairs growing thick on the back of it offered her a pencilled card. She made no movement to take it. He said, thrusting the card underneath her eyes:
"It is printed here in German letters. You read and speak my language badly, so I will translate for you--'Squadron-Captain-Pilot Count Theodor von Herrnung, Imperial Field Flying Service, Flight Station XXX., Taubefeld, near Diebrich, West Hessen, Germany.' Write your letter to me in English. The address copy from this. Will you not take the card?"
"There is no need to. I do not mean to write to you!"
"Danke. You are candid," he said, "at least. You give me to understand that whatever happens--" he repeated the words with a singular inflection "whatever happens!--you will have no more to do with me?"
"Have I not told you so twice already?"
He gritted his teeth and said, controlling furious anger:
"Erklaeren Sie! Was giebt es? Why are you so--rottenly furious with me? You have yourself to thank for--what has happened! You led me on. You made me crazy about you. And the devil of it is I am so still! The sight of you maddens me! Listen! Do not be stupid--unkind to yourself and to me! In three days from now, you will get an envelope at your Club with plenty of money. Join me at my headquarters at Taubefeld and then--you will see! We will be happy--you shall have plenty of money to throw about when we visit Berlin and other big cities, and jewels, dresses, pleasure, admiration--everything a beautiful woman wants! Grosse Gott! Can I offer anything more tempting? What are you saying? 'Yes!' or 'No!'"
Her narrowed eyes looked like long black slits in her white face. The pale lips barely moved to answer:
"Neither! Are you proposing to marry me?"
He laughed woodenly, and repeated:
"Marry you! Ha, ha! What verdammt nonsense are you talking? What has love to do with getting married? Nothing that I have ever heard! Of course I shall marry--my family have arranged all that for me. But my Countess will not interfere with my mistress--that I promise you! Come, be kind, my beautiful Isis! Whisper now that you agree!"
He bent his head to hear. The whisper came from the pale lips:
"I will see you in Hell first!"
He started, taken aback. Her own utterance had shocked her. "Am I a street-walker already," she asked herself, "that I begin to curse and swear?"
A whistle trilled. He started and said:
"So then, all is over between us?"
She bent her head assentingly, and her glance fell guiltily on Bawne who was standing near. Von Herrnung, aware of him at the same instant, turned on him with a scowl and the harsh demand:
"What is this? Do little English boys pry and listen?"
Bawne returned, looking at the other squarely:
"Beg pardon, but Mr. Sherbrand's calling you. He says it's getting jolly late."
"So!" Von Herrnung glanced at his wrist-watch, in the act lifting the brown leather satchel into fullest view. The boy queried with open-eyed innocent curiosity:
"Shall I carry that? Are you going to take it with you?"
"Es mag wohl sein," von Herrnung answered. Then he clicked his heels and bowed formally, and kissed Patrine's cold and heavy hand. She felt his teeth grit as he did it. She knew he was swearing in his way.
"Adieu, then," he said, smiling at her maliciously. "Will you not wish me Angenehme Reise?"
"Certainly. A pleasant voyage, and a safe landing!" Her eyes fell on Bawne's little, oddly garbed figure and her woman's heart spoke in spite of her. "Take care of my dearest!" broke from her, and von Herrnung answered:
"He is your dearest? Ah yes! I will certainly take very good care of him!"
He bowed, wheeled about and walked from her with his long strides, and the boy, with a face all flushed and quivering, suddenly jumped at her neck and hugged her; bringing with the rough little embrace the queer scent of water-proofed material and dubbined leather, knocking the silver-spangled hat awry, loosening divers tortoiseshell hairpins and an amethyst slide-buckle holding up the heavy tresses of the dead beech-leaf coloured hair, as he whispered:
"Remember I love you, Pat. Don't mind!"
And she shuddered as he freed her, and ran from her, asking herself: How much had the child overheard of von Herrnung's proposal? What had he comprehended of what he had heard?
Next, she was aware of the pleasant voice of Sherbrand calling, and saw von Herrnung imperiously beckoning. A cold sickness of dread assailed her, and her knees trembled underneath her weight. A mechanic came running past, carrying away the chair Davis had brought her. He set it down at a safe distance from the aeroplane, and she staggered to it, leaning on the long staff of her sunshade, and sat heavily down, feeling chilly and old....
Saxham had squeezed Bawne's shoulder and kissed him, and then withdrawn to a distance whence he could see all that took place. He watched Davis and Sherbrand help the boy into the forward cockpit, and fasten about him the safety belt attached to the fuselage on either side of the fixed bamboo seat.
"You are sure you really want to fly again? Mind, I believe you're as safe with him as houses, but if you don't want to go, say the word, and you shan't!"
Sherbrand whispered the words as he busied himself with the boy. And Bawne set his small teeth and squared his sturdy boyish shoulders, registering an unspoken vow to go in spite of all....
One had been told to drop a word to Sherbrand if one found oneself in a tight place. But could one ever hold up one's head again before the Patrol, if one did this? To share one's Mission with another when the Chief had said "I'd rather you'd carry through on your own" wasn't to be thought of. Mother--he swallowed hard at the thought of her--would say so too.
It troubled his faithful little soul that he could no longer see von Herrnung. He heard him talking in his guttural English, to Davis, whom Bawne could not see either--as he stood near the nose of the machine, in readiness to start the tractor--any more than the two mechanics who steadied the Bird, pressing each a toe on the axle of the under-carriage as they held on to a steel rod that ran along under the rearward edges of her single plane.
His final directions sharply given, von Herrnung stepped up on the under-carriage, threw a long leg over the bulwark of the fuselage, and stepped into the pilot's pit. Bawne screwed his head round and saw, through and over a low talc wind-shield, the upright torso of the German, big, hard, and indomitable, the leather satchel still gripped in his strapped-up left hand.
"Are you going to take that leather case along with you?" Sherbrand's voice had a note of surprise in it. "You'll find it a handicap, let me say. You can't sit on it or lean against it, and if you tried to put it under you, you'd find it dead-certain to foul the controls."
To Sherbrand's voice, von Herrnung's answered harshly and rather angrily:
"Surely I shall be able to carry this? It is nott-thing but a folding camera, with a telephoto lens made especially for Survey and Reconnaissance. There is still a good light. If I fly with the sun behind me, I shall be able to take quite a panorama of London North-West. It is not forbidden--no? Your Government would not object?"
"I don't suppose my Government would care a little hang!" Sherbrand's voice answered. "But--this isn't one of your German Army Albatros's or Kondors, and I don't see where you're to stow your camera, unless in the observer's pit. Of course the hovering installation takes up a lot of room, and I can't possibly risk your hampering the controls."
"Ganz recht! Very good!" came von Herrnung's voice, giving in with simulated heartiness. In another moment his long legs, followed by his great body, came scrambling into the forward cockpit, and his hands busied themselves about the stout belt of pig-leather that secured the boy in the observer's seat.
"Look here, my fellow! You will take care of this for me? See, I have passed the belt-strap through the handle. Do not touch it!" The guttural whisper had menace in it. "I shall be sure to know if you touch it, or try to unbuckle the strap."
"What's up?" Sherbrand's head and shoulders came thrusting over the other side of the cockpit. "Why did you unstrap him?" he demanded brusquely of von Herrnung. "Don't you know that he is my friend's son, and that it is my business to see to this?" Sherbrand's hand felt over Bawne's belts and bucklings before his head and shoulders vanished. Then von Herrnung's big body withdrew itself. His voice, sounding from the pilot's pit on the other side of the low wind-shield, gave a peremptory order, and the tractor began slowly to revolve. An instant later, with a blinding flash, it began to roar and whizz round furiously. The Bird, freed from the hands that detained her, leaped forwards, hurtling over the smooth turf at the speed of a racing motor-car. The smooth floor of the cockpit unexpectedly tilted up, and a rough cold wind buffeted Bawne about the head and shoulders, sent eddies down about his dangling feet, bellowed in his covered ears and made him gasp for breath. Then--houses and people, trees, and hangars fell suddenly away, and he knew that the Bird was rushing upwards at the bidding of its "Gnome" motor--long superseded now, but then the latest marvel in aerial engineering--towards the blue sky with its lines of gilt mackerel clouds. On each side of the roaring, flashing whirl that meant the tractor, spread North Middlesex, with its fields fast diminishing to the size of billiard tables. That patch no bigger than a garden-lawn, with a row of wooden things like dog-kennels and chicken-coops, must be--Bawne knew that it was--the aerodrome. Deafened by the noise and a little sick, for the roaring, striving, hurtling Thing in whose body he sat fastened, stank horribly of castor oil, and seemed to agonise and call on Bawne to suffer with it--he looked up and took courage from the warm, blue, beautiful, cheerful sky.
