William Le Queux

“ Without much delay Teddy and I slipped into our air-kit, while Theed, with the machine wheeled out into the park, reported that all was in readiness.
I met Roseye in the corridor above the central staircase of the great old-world house, and there kissed her fondly.
“For your dear sake I go, and for the sake of my King and country!” I whispered. “Good-bye, my darling. Keep a stout heart until you hear of me again!”
“But—oh!—oh!—I fear, Claude!” she cried anxiously, clinging to me.
“No, my darling. We must, to-day, all make sacrifices. There must be no fear. I shall be back with you to-morrow.” ”

“ I declared very emphatically. “That is what, notwithstanding the efforts of prowling strangers who are seeking to know in what direction our experiments are being conducted, we intend to achieve. To-night, Roseye, we have made one great and astounding discovery—a discovery which has placed within our hands a power which Germany, with all her science and investigation, little dreams. We now know the true secret which will eventually prove the undoing of the Kaiser and his barbarous hordes.” ”

“ Was it by her connivance that the steel bolt in my machine had been withdrawn, and one of wood substituted?
In this terrible war men laughed, and women wept. The men went out to the front in Flanders with all the fine patriotic sentiment of Britons, singing gaily the various patriotic songs of war. But alas! how many went to their death, and the women wept in silence in the back streets of our dear old London, and of every town in the work-a-day kingdom.
In official circles it was known—known indeed to the public at large—that the Zeppelin menace was a real and serious one. ”

“ Two minutes later I brought the machine round to the wind.
Down went her nose—down, down. The air screamed about our ears. The earth rushed up to meet us, as it always seems to do. Truth to tell, by my own fault, I had had a nasty nose-dive, but I righted her and, touching the grass, managed to pull up dead.
Teddy, who had been watching it all, never turned a hair.
Only when I shut off the roar of the engine, he remarked:
“By Jove! Devilish good landing! That nose-dive was rather a nasty one, Claude—wasn’t it?” ”

“ We shot forward into the darkness, a sharp gust of wind struck our faces, we bumped for a few seconds along the ground, and then left the earth, the noise of the powerful engines almost splitting the drums of our ears.
I saw before me a belt of trees and, pulling over the lever, rose above them, described a semicircle, and then, watching my compass, rose at once and headed for Stockhurst church, where I knew Teddy was anxiously awaiting our arrival. ”

“ Was it possible that my love desired again to assist in the completion of our experiments in order to know the result of them—and perhaps to betray them?
No. I could not—even in my inward anger at the knowledge that she had spent the previous afternoon with the man I suspected—bring myself to believe that she was really acting in contradiction to the interests of the country.
Somebody has truly said that love is blind. Well, I loved Roseye. And my blindness had been a very pleasant and delightful affliction up to that tragic day of her disappearance. ”

“ One evening we had played cards and Teddy had wished us good night, taken his candle and ascended the narrow creaky stairs, worn hollow by the tread of generations of farmers.
“Claude,” exclaimed my love, when we were alone, “I feel so very worried over you! I know how keen you are to act your part in this war, and to put your theory to the test. But is it really wise? Remember that you are going to risk your life. The creation of that electric wave, when in the air, may re-act upon your own engines and seize them—or it may create a spark across your own petrol-tank. ”

“ No more popular man at Hendon, at Brooklands, or at the Royal Automobile Club was there than Eastwell. Yet, was not that popularity, purchased by the ample means at his disposal, and the constant dinners and luncheons which he gave regardless of their cost, proof in itself that he was acting secretly against the interests of Great Britain? Long ago I had suspected that his was the Invisible Hand that sent every secret of our progress in aviation to Germany by way of the United States. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Blinded by the glare, I had banked a little too steeply, and nearly had another bad nose-dive. Teddy noticed it, and said something, but what it was I could not hear for the roar. That an enemy airship was about, and that it had dropped incendiary bombs was proved by the three or four red glares we could distinctly see beneath us.
No doubt the Zeppelin was moving fast, dropping her bombs preparatory to rising and escaping beyond the zone of our anti-aircraft guns. I rose higher, but still no sign of it. ”

“ The wind was light, the barometer high, and both of us had been up, as we had been testing our monoplanes.
As he stood leaning against a half-finished machine idly smoking a “gasper”—a cigarette in the airman jargon—he presented a fine picture of the clean-limbed young Englishman in his wind-proof aviation suit, with leather cap and ear-pieces, while his goggles had been pushed upon his brow.
Both of us, “as quirks,” had learned to fly at the same school at Brooklands before the outbreak of war, and both of us were enthusiastic airmen. ”

“ One was, perhaps, gazing through his glasses at the pole and, seeing in the darkness the sparking over the insulators set in the steel guys, ejaculated the natural expression of surprise that I overheard. But they got away noiselessly, and all my search failed to discover them.”
“Well—we must be very wary, my dear Teddy,” I repeated. “They must not get at this secret of ours, otherwise from the gondola of a Zeppelin they will be able to use the invisible force against any of our aeroplanes in a stronger and greater degree than we could ever hope to do it. ”

“ That Lionel Eastwell was a real stolid John Bull patriot had been proved times without number. We all liked him, for he was ever courteous to Roseye, and always wholehearted and easy-going with both Teddy and myself.
“You ask a question which I can’t answer, Lionel,” I replied at last.
“I thought, perhaps, you had some scheme,” he laughed airily. “You’re always so very inventive.” ”

“ Though we are at war—though thousands upon thousands of our poor brave fellows have been killed or maimed in the defence of their homes and their loved ones, yet the London public are still the same. Nothing seems to disturb them. Bond Street, with all its fripperies, is still in full swing: the drapers everywhere are paying big dividends—money is being squandered in luxuries by those who have never previously known such things; jewellers are flourishing, and extravagance runs riot through the land. ”

“ As soon as we had that integral propeller the Germans knew, and copied us; the secret of Jack Pardon’s new dope was known in a few days, and the enemy are using it on every one of their machines to-day. Nothing is secret from those brutes.”
“But who does all this?” asked Roseye.
“Why, what I call the Invisible Hand,” was my reply. “The Invisible Hand was established in our midst in about 1906, when the Kaiser sat down and craftily prepared for war. He saw himself faced by the problem of the great British power and patriotism, and knew that the Briton would fight every inch for his liberty. ”

“ I knew it to be from a railway engine, the stoker of which had been firing up. Moving trains, notwithstanding the pulling down of carriage-blinds, and the darkening of railway platforms so that persons break their legs in descending, or getting out at a supposed platform and falling upon the line, form the best guides for aircraft at night. ”

“ Why, I don’t know, but my bus usually attracted some onlookers. About the aerodrome we always have a number of idle persons with a sprinkling of the eternal feminine silk-stockinged hangers-on to the pilots and pupils who, not being able to fly, do the next best thing, become friends of flying-men. In that little knot of people gathered about my machine—probably on account of the Zeppelin sensation—I noted, in particular, one podgy fat-faced little man. ”

“ Like myself, and like Teddy also, he would not hear of any allegation against his daughter. That cryptic message he regarded as the work of the Invisible Hand which, since August 1914, had been raised against our dear beloved country.
Once or twice Lionel Eastwell had called upon me in Shaftesbury Avenue and sat beside my fire, discussing the war, the Zeppelin menace and the apparent apathy in certain quarters to deal firmly with it. At that moment the popular Press were loud in their parrot-cries that we had no adequate defence. In a sense, they voiced the public demand. ”

“ I laughed. “How can I put forward any scheme by which to fight an airship, except that of fast aeroplanes capable of mounting above the airship and dropping bombs? And, surely, that’s one which our Aircraft Factory have considered long ago.”
Lionel shook his head in reply.
“No. There must be some other mode than that—if we could only discover it. That poor women and children are being blown to pieces while in their beds is too terrible to contemplate,” he declared. “To-day Great Britain seems inadequately defended. But somebody will, of course, devise something. ”

“ That strange, daring little world of flying-men—knew it, but they were level-headed and, keeping themselves to themselves, gave the cold shoulder to the unknown ones who drifted in from nowhere to display their brilliant raiment, and to watch, in a bored way, such feats as looping the loop, and other exercises which have proved such splendid training for our flying-boys to-day. ”

“ We never like to hear an unpleasant truth.”
“True, we’re aroused now. This Zeppelin raid on London has inflamed the public mind. The people are clamouring loudly for something to be done. What can be done?” he asked. “How can we possibly fight those enemy airships—eh?” And he looked me straight in the face with those calm blue-grey eyes of his.
I paused.
I would have greatly liked to tell him of our secret discovery, for, after all, he was our most intimate friend. Yet I had given a promise to Roseye and to Teddy and, therefore, could not break it. ”

“ Yet a pilot never likes to trust himself upon something he has not tested with his own hands.
Each one of us had his or her own work, and each one of us worked with a true spirit of patriotism. I had argued that if the Anti-Aircraft Service were unable to bring down Zeppelins, then I, as a private individual and a pilot who had had some experience in the air, was ready to risk my own life in the attempt. And in this Teddy was whole-heartedly with me.
Naturally, Roseye often grew apprehensive. ”

“ This, however, did not prevent me from loving Roseye Lethmere, daughter of Sir Herbert, who had come into my life quite unexpectedly a year ago.
As she stood there chatting with us, attired in her airwoman’s clothes, her appearance was certainly workwomanlike. She was dressed in a wool-lined leather coat, and overall trousers, with a knitted Balaclava helmet, and over that again a leather skull-cap, the whole tied down tightly beneath the chin. A huge khaki woollen muffler was around her throat, while a pair of unsightly goggles hanging around her neck completed the picture. ”

“ I declared with entire confidence. “I can tell you both that the secret experiments of Ashton and myself have been crowned with success. We have, however, been most wary and watchful. We are well aware that at our works out at Gunnersbury there have been intruders, but those who have dared to enter at night to try and discover our plans have been entirely misled and, up to the present, no single person beyond ourselves has ever seen, or has ever gained any knowledge whatsoever of that electrical arrangement which constitutes our discovery.” ”

“ I suggested.
“But, surely, Claude, there must arise very soon some real live man who will show us the way to win the war?” asked Roseye.
I drew a long breath. She knew our secret—the secret of that long dark shed out at Gunnersbury which was watched over at night by the sturdy old Theed, father of my mechanic, he being armed with a short length of solid rubber tyre from the wheel of an old disused brougham—about the best weapon of personal defence that could ever be adopted. ”

“ The papers had been full of the Fokker aeroplane, of its great superiority over anything we possessed, and of it as a real peril to our pilots in Flanders.
“The real fact is,” declared Teddy, in the intervals of a deal of hammering, “that there’s nothing extraordinary about the Fokker except that it is built sensibly for a definite job and does it, while our own ‘experts’ have tangled themselves and the British aircraft industry in a web of pseudo-science and political scheming which has resulted in our lack of the proper machines and engines to fight the Zeppelins.” ”

“ But hard facts, shown to us in black and white, shown to us in prosecutions and actual executions of spies, had convinced me—as they must have convinced every Briton unless he were a pro-German or a lunatic—that dastardly secret agents existed even in the most unsuspected quarters, and that the Invisible Hand had been responsible for many a disaster to the British arms on land and at sea. ”