The Zeppelin Destroyer: Being Some Chapters of Secret History

“Quite so,” I agreed. “We also want arrangements for warning the towns and cities that air-raids are probable, so that people may take cover against both bombs and splinters of shell from anti-aircraft guns.”

“All that will come in due course,” Lionel assured us.

“No doubt,” I hastened to say. “Please understand that I’m not criticising any department of our defences. On the contrary, I only argue from the point of the man who may be desirous of protecting his home. Perhaps, as you say, some efficient means will at last be found by which to deal successfully with the enemy aircraft. If so, the whole country will eagerly welcome it.”

“What we don’t like is attacks without any timely warning,” said Roseye.

Lionel smiled – with a touch of sarcasm I thought.

“There won’t be any more raids for a bit, I feel positive, Miss Lethmere,” was his assurance. “Our friends across the North Sea are not yet fully prepared with their machinery. The raid on the thirteenth was but a mere rehearsal of what they hope to do. And, as you argue, we should certainly be prepared.”

“You speak almost as though you know,” I remarked, not without some surprise at his words.

“I only speak after surveying the matter calmly and logically,” was his slow reply. “The German newspapers have – ever since the early days of the war – threatened to bombard London from the air. This last raid has shown that they are capable of doing so.”

“They’re capable of anything!” I cried. “Remember Scarborough!”

“And Belgium,” chimed in Roseye.

“Well,” said Lionel to me. “You make all sorts of experiments on your new propellers and things down at Gunnersbury. Why don’t you try and devise some plan by which we can destroy Zeppelins? You’re always so intensely ingenious, Claude.”

“So you’ve just said. But far better men than myself have tried – and failed,” was my diplomatic response.

“But surely some means can be devised!” he cried. “Our flying-boys are splendid, as you know – and – ”

“Except when they come to grief, as I did the other day,” I interrupted with a hard laugh.

“Well, you surely can’t complain,” was his answer.

“You’ve had the very devil’s luck ever since you took your certificate.”

“Admitted. But that doesn’t help me to fight Zeppelins,” I replied.

“It only wants somebody to do something, to find out some new invention or other, and the boys will tumble over each other in their eagerness to go up after enemy airships. Of that, I’m positive,” declared Eastwell. “You’ve got a lot of plant down at Gunnersbury, haven’t you? If so, you ought to turn your serious attention to this matter which is at the present moment of the very highest importance to the country.”

Roseye glanced at me, and I saw that my visitor’s words and bearing puzzled her.

“What do you make of Lionel’s questions?” I asked her ten minutes later, when Eastwell had risen and left, having taken the gentle hint that I wished to be alone with Roseye over the tea and muffins.

“I don’t know what to make of them, dear,” replied the girl, seating herself again in the big chair.

“Well, I’ve been watching him for some days,” I said slowly. “And, do you know that, strictly between ourselves, I believe that he has some suspicion of the direction of our experiments, and is pumping us to see what he can glean!”

“How can he possibly know? He is, of course, well aware that you’ve been devising new propellers, but he can know nothing of our real work. Neither Teddy nor Theed would ever let drop a single word, and, as you know, I’ve never breathed a sentence at home.”

“He spoke as though he knew that the enemy intended more raids – but not just at present.”

Roseye suddenly stirred herself and stared at me in amazement with those big expressive eyes of hers.

“What? do you think – do you really suspect that Lionel Eastwell is our enemy, Claude?” she asked, suddenly pale and breathless.

“Well – perhaps not exactly that,” I replied hesitatingly. “Only his queer questions, naturally make one think. We know we have enemies, clever, unscrupulous ones who have not hesitated to attempt to take my life. Therefore we must both be wary – extremely wary – for we never know where the next pitfall may be concealed.”

“I quite agree with all that, dear,” answered Roseye, looking at me earnestly. “But I really can’t think that Lionel is anything else than one of our best friends. At least he’s been a really good chum to me, ever since we first met. No,” she added decisively, “I’m convinced that no suspicion can attach to him. Such an idea, Claude, is to me, too utterly absurd.”

“Yes. Well, I suppose you’re right, dearest,” I replied with a sigh. “Women always see so very much farther than men in matters of this sort.”

And I rose and, crossing to her chair, kissed her fondly upon the lips.

“I’m sorry – very sorry indeed, dearest, that I’ve cast any reflection upon your friend,” I said in deep apology. “Do please forgive me, and we’ll never mention the subject again.”

Chapter Nine

Contains More Curious Facts

One afternoon a week later, when out at Hendon, I heard accidentally from a man I knew – one of the instructors at the Grahame-White Aviation School – that Eastwell was very queer, and in bed.

The weather proved bad for flying, therefore I sent Theed off and returned to town. Teddy had gone down to the naval air-station at Yarmouth to see the test of a new seaplane, so I went along to look up Lionel at his rooms in Albemarle Street.

His man, a thin-faced, dark-haired fellow named Edwards, who admitted me, said that his master had had a bad attack of something, the true import of which the doctor had failed to diagnose.

I found him lying in bed in his narrow but artistic bachelor bedroom, looking very wan and pale.

“Hulloa, Claude!” he cried with sudden joy, as I entered. “Awfully good of you to come in, old chap! I’ve been horribly queer these last three days, but I’ll be fit again in a day or two, the doctor says. Well – what’s the news? How are the boys out at Hendon?”

“All right. I was there this morning. Harrington had rather a bad smash yesterday afternoon, I hear. Came down outside Ruislip, and made an unholy mess.”

“Not hurt, I hope?”

“Tore his face and hands a bit – that’s all. But his biplane is in scraps, they say.”

He pointed to the box of cigarettes, and I took one. Then, when I had seated myself at his bedside, I saw that he had newspapers scattered everywhere, including the Paris Matin, the Journal, and the Rome Tribuna. That was the first time I had known that our friend was a linguist.

“Well,” he asked. “What about the Zeppelin raids? Any more news?”

He had returned to the subject by which he seemed obsessed. Yet, after all, this was not surprising, for many people talked air-raids incessantly. One section of the public, as usual, blamed the authorities, while the other supported them.

“Well,” I said cheerily, “there’s a new invention they are all talking of at Hendon to-day. Somebody has claimed to be able to construct a biplane which will rise from the ground without running, and can attain any speed from ten to two hundred miles an hour.”

“Phew! That’s interesting,” exclaimed Lionel, raising himself upon his elbow, and taking a sip of a glass of barley-water at his side. “And who is this wonderful man who has such a wonderful scheme?”

“Oh, I forget his name,” I said. “But the theory, as far as I can gather, is rather a good one. He can rise so quickly.”

“How?”

“Well,” I replied. “From what I can hear, there is a kind of rotary wing – not a propeller and not a thing which can be classed as a helicoptic.”

Lionel Eastwell grew intensely interested in the new invention which everybody at the aerodrome was discussing.

“Yes,” he said. “I follow. Go on, Claude. Tell me all you’ve heard about it. The whole thing sounds most weird and wonderful.”

“Well,” I said, “from what I can find out, the machine is not designed to screw itself through the air in the direction of its axis, or, by pushing the air downwards, to impart upward motion to the structure, as a screw propeller in water imparts a forward motion to the vessel by pushing the water backwards. The biplane is designed to obtain by a rotary motion the same upward thrust in opposition to the downward pull of gravity as the flapping wings, and the passive outspread wings of birds, and to obtain it by the blades being projected through the air in such a manner as to extract and utilise the practically constant energy of the expansive force of the air.”

“By Jove!” my friend exclaimed, stirring himself in his bed. “That theory is very sound indeed – the soundest I’ve ever heard. Who’s invented it?”

“As I’ve told you, I’ve forgotten,” I replied. “But what does it matter? There are hosts of new inventions every month, and the poor misguided public who put their money into them generally lose it. But I quite agree that the general idea of this is splendid. The war-inventions authorities ought at once to take it up hot and strong. The inventor is, no doubt, an ingenious man of thought and knowledge – whoever he may be. But alas! nobody ever meets with very much encouragement in aeronautics.”

“No,” he said, pillowing his head comfortably. “It is all so mysterious. We take on a wild-cat idea one day and manufacture machines that are declared to work miracles. Then, next week, we abandon the type altogether, and woo some other smooth-tongued inventor.”

“That’s just it,” I laughed. “If the authorities could only adopt some really reliable type to fight Zeppelins. But alas! it seems that they can’t,” I added.

For a few seconds he remained silent. I saw that he was reflecting deeply.

“Well,” he said. “We’ve established listening-posts all round London for its protection.”

“A real benefit they are!” I laughed. “We have officers and men listening all night, it is true. Of course as a picturesque fiction in order to allay public curiosity they publish photographs of men listening to things like gramophone-trumpets.”

“Exactly. The theory of that new invention is extremely sound. That’s my opinion.”

“And mine also,” I said. “I hear that the inventor has told the authorities that if they will assist him to complete his machine – which I expect is a costly affair – he will be able to carry out daily raids on Cuxhaven, Essen, Düsseldorf, and even as far as Berlin; carrying several tons of explosives.”

“How many?” asked my friend.

“Oh! four or five it is said.”

“Phew!” remarked Lionel, again stirring in his bed. “That sounds really healthy – doesn’t it?”

“Yes – the realisation of the dream of every flying-man to-day,” I said.

Then our conversation drifted into another channel, and, half an hour later, I left him.

During the past few days Teddy and I had been very busy with our own invention, and had made a number of further experiments down at Gunnersbury.

We could easily direct the electric current upon those insulated steel guys around our distant wireless-pole, but our difficulty was how to increase our power without increasing the bulk of the apparatus which we should be compelled to take up in the monoplane for purposes of attacking a Zeppelin.

There was a limit to the weight which my Breguet with its 200 horse-power engines would carry, and though, of course, we believed it would be unnecessary to use bombs, yet some should be carried for purposes of defence, as well as a Lewis gun.

Therefore we were faced by a very difficult problem, that of weight.

The next day was Sunday, and Teddy having returned from Yarmouth, we spent the whole afternoon and evening down at the workshop, making further experiments. I had not seen Roseye since Friday evening, which I had spent at Lady Lethmere’s, Sir Herbert being absent in Liverpool. Therefore, as we had carried out an alteration of the apparatus and intended to try sparking upon the pole again after dark, I rang Roseye up on the telephone shortly after five o’clock.

Mulliner, Lady Lethmere’s maid, replied, and a few minutes later Lady Lethmere herself spoke to me.

“Oh, I’ve rung you up at your rooms half a dozen times to-day, Mr Munro – but could get no answer!” she said.

“Being Sunday, my man is out,” I exclaimed. “I’m down here at Gunnersbury.”

“Can you take a taxi at once, and come over and see me?” she urged. “I want to speak to you immediately.”

“What about?” I asked anxiously.

“I can’t say anything over the telephone,” she answered in a distressed voice. “Do come at once, Mr Munro. I am in such trouble.”

I promised. And after briefly relating the curious conversation to Teddy, I found a taxi, and at once drove to Cadogan Gardens.

“Mr Munro!” exclaimed Lady Lethmere, looking at me with a pale, anxious expression as I entered the morning-room. “Something has happened!”

“Happened – what?” I gasped.

“Roseye! She went out yesterday morning to go over to Hendon to meet you – she told me —and she’s not come back!”

“Not back!” I cried, staring at her. “Where can she be?”

“Ah! That’s exactly what I want to know,” replied the mother of my well-beloved. “I thought perhaps she might have flown somewhere and had a breakdown, and was therefore unable to return, or to let me know last night. That happened, you recollect, when she came to grief while flying over the Norfolk Broads.”

“But she never arrived at Hendon yesterday,” I exclaimed. “I was there all the morning.”

“So I understand from Mr Carrington of the Grahame-White School, to whom I telephoned this morning. It was after learning this curious fact that I began to try and get into communication with you.”

“Well – where can she possibly be?” I asked in blank dismay.

“The only thing I can think of is that she altered her mind at the last moment, and went to see some friends. She may have given a servant a telegram to send to me, and the servant forgot to dispatch it. Such things have happened, you know.”

I shook my head dubiously. Knowing Roseye as I did, I knew that she always sent important messages herself.

“One thing is certain, that she has not met with an accident while flying, for her machine is still locked up in the hangar.”

“Yes. It is a consolation to know that she has not gone up and disappeared.”

“No,” I said. “She seems to have intended to meet me. But we had no appointment to meet. My intention yesterday morning was to go over to Gunnersbury, and I only changed my mind five minutes before I left my rooms. I spent part of the afternoon with Eastwell, who is queer in bed.”

“I heard that he was not well. Roseye told me so yesterday morning before she went out.”

“I wonder how she knew?” I exclaimed.

“I believe he spoke to her on the telephone on Friday night.”

“You overheard some of their conversation, I suppose?”

“None. She was shut up in the telephone-box, and when she came out I asked her who had rung up. She replied, ‘Oh! only Lionel!’ Next morning, while we were at breakfast, she remarked that Mr Eastwell was ill and in bed. He must have told her so on the previous night.”

I remained silent. This disappearance of Roseye, following so closely upon the dastardly attempt upon my life, caused me to pause. It was more than curious. It was distinctly suspicious.

Was the Invisible Hand – the claw-grip of which had laid such a heavy grasp upon Great Britain ever since August 1914 – again at work? Was the clutch of that hand, which had so cunningly protected the enemy alien and fed the Germans, again upon myself and the woman I loved?

“Lady Lethmere, this is all too amazing. I had no idea that Roseye was missing,” I said. “Sir Herbert has not returned, I suppose?”

“No. I expect him to-morrow. I have not yet sent him word. But I must say I am now getting most anxious.”

“Of course,” I said. “We have to remember that to-day is Sunday, and that few telegraph offices are open.”

“Yet there is always the telephone,” Lady Lethmere said.

I argued that, in many country places, the telephone service was not available on Sundays and, though I felt intensely anxious, I endeavoured to regard the matter with cheerful optimism. I saw, however, that Lady Lethmere, a good, kindly and most charming woman, who had ever been genuinely friendly towards me, was greatly perturbed regarding her daughter’s whereabouts.

And surely not without cause. Roseye had left that house at eleven o’clock on the previous morning – dressed as usual in a navy-blue gaberdine coat and skirt, with her skunk boa and muff, intending to change later on into her Burberry flying-suit which she kept at Hendon. From the moment when she had closed the front door behind her, she had vanished into space.

Such was the enigma with which I – her lover – was at that moment faced.

I ask you, my reader, to place yourself for a moment in my position, and to put to yourself the problem.

How would you have acted?

Would you have suspected, as I suspected, the sinister and deadly touch of the Invisible Hand?

Chapter Ten

The Tunnel Mystery

I went back to my rooms in Shaftesbury Avenue and, in consequence of my telephone message, Teddy came and threw himself in the chair opposite me half an hour later, to discuss the curious disappearance of my well-beloved.

Teddy suggested that we should report the occurrence to the police, and give them Roseye’s photograph, but I was averse to this course. I pointed out that, in all probability, she was with friends somewhere, and that Monday morning would bring me a letter from her.

Well – Monday morning came. Eagerly I went through my correspondence, but there was no word from her, either to her mother or to myself. It was only then that I began to be really anxious, and at noon I went down to Scotland Yard and there, in the cold waiting-room, stated exactly what had occurred.

The inspector, when he looked at the photograph I produced, exclaimed:

“Ah, sir. I’ve often seen Miss Lethmere’s picture in the papers. Why, she’s the famous flying-lady – isn’t she?”

I replied in the affirmative, and explained how she had left her home in Cadogan Gardens to go to Hendon to meet me.

“I see. She was lost sight of between Cadogan Gardens and Hendon,” he exclaimed, adding a memorandum to what he had already written down. “Well, sir,” he said. “We’ll do our best, of course. But – you don’t think Miss Lethmere has disappeared intentionally – eh?”

And he looked at me inquiringly with his dark, serious eyes.

“Intentionally! No – why?”

“Well, because we get many young ladies reported missing in the course of a year, and many of them we find, on inquiry, have hidden themselves purposely, for their own private reasons, quarrels, run-away matches, hiding from angry parents, and such-like causes. I tell you,” he added, “some of the cases give us quite a lot of trouble and annoyance.”

“I’m quite sure that Miss Lethmere is not hiding herself purposely,” I declared quickly. “There can be no object in her doing so.”

“No. Not as far as you are aware, sir,” the inspector replied very politely. “But neither you nor I can always follow the trend of the feminine mind,” he added with a faint smile. “You, of course, do not suspect the existence of any motive which would lead her to disappear intentionally. Nobody in such circumstances as yours, ever does. Do you happen to know whether she took any money with her when she left home?”

“Mulliner, Lady Lethmere’s maid, says that just before going out Miss Lethmere glanced in her purse, found that she only had a few shillings, and took four Treasury-notes from her jewel-box.”

“Was that all the money in the jewel-box?” he asked.

“No. About eighteen pounds remains there now.”

“H’m. She evidently did not make any preparation for a journey – or any long absence.”

“Well,” replied the inspector after a brief pause, “we will certainly circulate her description, and see what we can gather. The young lady may have met with a street accident, and be in one of the hospitals. Though I hope she hasn’t, of course!”

So with that rather poor assurance I had to be content, and took my leave.

That afternoon I again went out to Hendon, making inquiry everywhere of the men who were Roseye’s friends, but she certainly never went there on the Saturday, and I found her machine still in the hangar. Her mechanic knew nothing, for he had received no orders from her since Friday.

Three days – three breathless anxious days passed. Ah! shall I ever forget the awful tension of those terrible hours!

Sir Herbert had returned, and, with his wife, was naturally distracted. He was making inquiries in every quarter of friends and acquaintances, and of anyone who might have been likely to see his missing daughter. In this, both Teddy and I actively assisted him.

On the third evening I returned to my rooms to wash, intending to go along to the Automobile Club to dine with the flying-boys who assembled there every night, when Theed told me that the police had, an hour before, rung me up from Scotland Yard, and requested me to go down there at once.

This I did without delay and, having been shown into that big, bare waiting-room, the same dark-haired inspector came to see me.

“Well, Mr Munro,” he exclaimed, “we’ve met with no very great result, though the description of the missing young lady has been circulated right through the country. But the affair is certainly a mystery.”

“Then you don’t suspect that she has purposely disappeared – eh?” I asked quickly.

“Well – after all – I don’t know,” was his hesitating reply. “Something belonging to her has been found which rather leads to that supposition.”

“What has been found?” I gasped eagerly.

“This,” he answered, and he placed upon the table a gold chatelaine which I at once recognised as belonging to Roseye – for. I had given it to her. It formed a jingling bunch. There was a chain-purse, a combined match-box and cigarette-case, a powder-box with its little mirror in the cover, and a card-case all strung upon thin gold chains which, in turn, were attached to a ring – so that it could be carried upon the finger.

“Wherever was that found?” I asked, turning pale at sight of it.

“It was discovered this morning by a platelayer engaged in examining the rails in the long tunnel just beyond Welwyn Station on the Great Northern Railway.”

“In a tunnel!”

“Yes. The two tunnels which are quite near to each other have, at our request, been thoroughly searched by the local police and the platelayers, but nothing else has been found. My first fear was,” added the inspector, “that there might have been a tragedy in the tunnel. Happily, however, there is no ground for any such suspicion.”

“But there may have been a struggle in the train!” I suggested.

“Possibly,” answered the inspector. “It’s fortunate that the cards were in the case, for when the chatelaine was handed to the sergeant of constabulary at Welwyn, he at once recognised Lethmere as the name of the lady whose description had been circulated by us. Therefore the constabulary sent it up here at once.”

I took it and found that in the purse were the four Treasury-notes, as the maid Mulliner had described, together with some silver. Three of my own particular brand of Russian cigarettes remained in the case, while among the cards which I opened upon the table was one of my own upon which I had, only a few days previously, written down the address of the makers of a new enamel which I had advised her to try upon her machine.

The tiny powder-puff and the small bevelled mirror were there, though the latter had been cracked across in its fall in the tunnel.

“Seven years bad luck!” I remarked to the inspector, whose name I had learned to be Barton.

I was turning over with curiosity that bunch of jingling feminine impedimenta which I knew so well, when the door suddenly opened, and a red-tabbed captain in khaki entered.

“This is Captain Pollock,” Barton said, introducing him. “He wished, I believe, to ask you a question, Mr Munro.”

I looked at the new-comer with some surprise, as he bowed and, in rather an authoritative manner, took a chair at the big leather-covered table at which I was seated with the inspector.

“The facts of your friend Miss Lethmere’s disappearance have been communicated to us, Mr Munro,” he commenced, “and we find that the lady’s disappearance is much complicated by certain rather curious facts.”