Chapter IX: Part 9

The driver's seat of the Valkyr held a muffled, burly figure that might be anybody--De Morbihan, Ekstrom, or any other homicidal maniac. At the distance its actions were as illegible as their results were unquestionable: Lanyard saw a little tongue of flame lick out from a point close beside the head of the figure--he couldn't distinguish the firearm itself--and, like Vauquelin, quite without premeditation, he ducked.

At the same time there sounded a harsh, ripping noise immediately above his head; and he found himself staring up at a long ragged tear in the canvas, caused by the bullet striking it aslant.

"What's to be done?" he screamed passionately at Vauquelin.

The aviator shook his head impatiently; and they continued to ascend; already the web of gold that cloaked earth and sea seemed thrice as far beneath their feet as it had when Vauquelin made the appalling discovery of his bullet-punctured sleeve.

But the monoplane was doggedly following suit; as the Parrott rose, so did the Valkyr, if a trace more slowly and less flexibly.

Lanyard had read somewhere, or heard it said, that monoplanes were poor machines for climbing. He told himself that, if this were true, Vauquelin knew his business; and from this reflection drew what comfort he might.

And he was glad, very glad of the dark wind-veil that shrouded his face, which he believed to be nothing less than a mask of panic terror.

He was, in fact, quite rigid with fright and horror. It were idle to argue that only unlikely chance would wing one of the bullets from the Valkyr to a vital point: there was the torn canvas overhead, there was that hole through Vauquelin's sleeve....

And then the barograph on the strut beside Lanyard disappeared as if by magic. He was aware of a slight jar; the framework of the biplane quivered as from a heavy blow; something that resembled a handful of black crumbs sprayed out into the air ahead and vanished: and where the instrument had been, nothing remained but an iron clamp gripping the strut.

And even as any one of these bullets might have proved fatal, their first successor might disable the aviator if it did not slay him outright; in either case, the inevitable result would be death following a fall from a height, as recorded on the barograph dial an instant before its destruction, of more than four thousand feet.

They were still climbing....

Now the pursuer was losing some of the advantage of his superior speed; the Parrott was perceptibly higher; the Valkyr must needs mount in a more sweeping curve.

None the less, Lanyard, peering down, saw still another tongue of flame spit out at him; and two bullet-holes appeared in the port-side wings of the biplane, one in the lower, one in the upper spread of canvas.

White-lipped and trembling, the adventurer began to work at the fastenings of his surtout. After a moment he plucked off one of his gloves and cast it impatiently from him. A-sprawl, it sailed down the wind like a wounded sparrow. He caught Vauquelin's eye upon him, quick with a curiosity which changed to a sudden gleam of comprehension as Lanyard, thrusting his hand under the leather coat, groped for his pocket and produced an automatic pistol which Ducroy had pressed upon his acceptance.

They were now perhaps a hundred feet higher than the Valkyr, which was soaring a quarter of a mile off to starboard. Under the guidance of the Frenchman, the Parrott swooped round in a narrow circle until it hung almost immediately above the other--a manoeuvre requiring, first and last, something more than five minutes to effect.

Meanwhile, Lanyard rebuttoned his surtout and clutched the pistol, trying hard not to think. But already his imagination was sick with the thought of what would ensue when the time came for him to carry out his purpose.

Vauquelin touched his arm with urgent pressure; but Lanyard only shook his head, gulped, and without looking surrendered the weapon to the aviator....

Bearing heavily against the chest-band, he commanded the broad white spread of the Valkyr's back and wings. Invisible beneath these hung the motor and driver's seat.

An instant more, and he was aware that Vauquelin was leaning forward and looking down.

Aiming with what deliberation was possible, the aviator emptied the clip of its eight cartridges in less than a minute.

The vicious reports rang out against the drum of the motor like the cracking of a blacksnake-whip.

Momentarily, Lanyard doubted if any one bullet had taken effect. He could not, with his swimming vision, detect sign of damage in the canvas of the Valkyr.

He saw the empty automatic slip from Vauquelin'p numb and nerveless fingers. It vanished....

A frightful fascination kept his gaze constant to the soaring Valkyr.

Beyond it, down, deep down a mile of emptiness, was that golden floor of tumbled cloud, waiting ...

He saw the monoplane check abruptly in its strong onward surge--as if it had run, full-tilt, head-on, against an invisible obstacle--and for what seemed a round minute it hung so, veering and wobbling, nuzzling the wind. Then like a sounding whale it turned and dived headlong, propeller spinning like a top.

Down through the eighth of a mile of space it plunged plummet-like; then, perhaps caught in a flaw of wind, it turned sideways and began to revolve, at first slowly, but with increasing rapidity in its fatally swift descent.

Toward the beginning of its revolutions, something was thrown off, something small, dark and sprawling ... like that glove which Lanyard had discarded. But this object dropped with a speed even greater than that of the Valkyr, in a brace of seconds had diminished to the proportions of a gnat, in another was engulfed in that vast sea of golden vapour.

Even so the monoplane itself, scarcely less precipitate, spun down through the abyss and plunged to oblivion in the fog-rack....

And Lanyard was still hanging against the chest-band, limp and spent and trying not to vomit, when, of a sudden and without any warning whatever, the stentorian chant of the motor ceased and was blotted up by that immense silence, by the terrible silence of those vast solitudes of the upper air, where never a sound is heard save the voices of the elements at war among themselves: a silence that rang with an accent as dreadful as the crack of Doom in the ears of those three suspended there, in the heart of that unimaginably pellucid and immaculate radiance, in the vast hollow of the heavens, midway between the deep blue of the eternal dome and the rose and golden welter of the fog--that fog which, cloaking earth and sea, hid as well every vestige of the tragedy they had wrought, every sign of the murder that they had done that they themselves might not be murdered and cast down to destruction.

And, its propeller no longer gripping the air, the aeroplane drifted on at ever-lessening speed, until it had no way whatever and rested without motion of any sort; as it might have been in the cup of some mighty and invisible hand, held up to that stark and merciless light, under the passionless eye of the Infinite, to await a Judgment....

Then, with a little shudder of hesitation, the planes dipped, inclined slightly earthwards, and began slowly and as if reluctantly to slip down the long and empty channels of the air.

At this, rousing, Lanyard became aware of his own voice yammering wildly at Vauquelin:

"Good God, man! Why did you do that?"

Vauquelin answered only with a pale grimace and a barely perceptible shrug.

Momentarily gathering momentum, the biplane sped downward with a resistless rush, with the speed of a great wind--a speed so great that when Lanyard again attempted speech, the breath was whipped from his lips and he could utter no sound.

Thus from that awful height, from the still heart of that immeasurable void, they swept down and ever down, in a long series of sickening swoops, broken only by negligible pauses. And though they approached it on a long slant, the floor of vapour rose to meet them like a mighty rushing wave: in a trice the biplane was hovering instantaneously before plunging on down into that cold, grey world of fog.

In that moment of hesitation, while still the adventurer gasped for breath and pawed at his streaming eyes with an aching hand, pierced through and through with cold, the fog showed itself as something less substantial than it had seemed; blurs of colour glowed through its folds of gauze, and with these the rounded summit of a brownish, knoll.

Then they plunged on, down out of the bleak, bright sunshine into cool twilight depths of clinging vapours; and the good green earth lifted its warm bosom to receive them.

Tilting its nose a trifle, fluttering as though undecided, the Parrott settled gracefully, with scarcely a Jar, upon a wide sweep of untilled land covered with short coarse grass.

For some time the three remained in their perches like petrified things, quite moveless and--with the possible exception of the aviator--hardly conscious.

But presently Lanyard became aware that he was regularly filling his lungs with air sweet, damp, wholesome, and by comparison warm, and that the blood was tingling painfully in his half-frozen hands and feet.

He sighed as one waking from a strange dream.

At the same time the aviator bestirred himself, and began a bit stiffly to climb down.

Feeling the earth beneath his feet, he took a step or two away from the machine, reeling and stumbling like a drunken man, then turned back.

"Come, my friend!" he urged Lanyard in a voice of strangely normal intonation--"look alive--if you're able--and lend me a hand with mademoiselle. I'm afraid she has fainted."

The girl was reclining inertly in the bands of webbing, her eyes closed, her lips ajar, her limbs slackened.

"Small blame to her!" Lanyard commented, fumbling clumsily with the chest-band. "That dive was enough to drive a body mad!"

"But I had to do it!" the aviator protested earnestly. "I dared not remain longer up there. I have never before been afraid in the air, but after _that_ I was terribly afraid. I could feel myself going--taking leave of my senses--and I knew I must act if we were not to follow that other... God! what a death!"

He paused, shuddered, and drew the back of his hand across his eyes before continuing: "So I cut off the ignition and volplaned. Here--my hand. So-o! All right, eh?"

"Oh, I'm all right," Lanyard insisted confidently.

But his confidence was belied by a look of daze; for the earth was billowing and reeling round him as though bewitched; and before he knew what had happened he sat down hard and stared foolishly up at the aviator.

"Here!" said the latter courteously, his wind-mask hiding a smile--"my hand again, monsieur. You've endured more than you know. And now for mademoiselle."

But when they approached the girl, she surprised both by shivering, sitting up, and obviously pulling herself together.

"You feel better now, mademoiselle?" Vauquelin enquired, hastening to loosen her fastenings.

"I'm better--yes, thank you," she admitted in a small, broken voice--"but not yet quite myself."

She gave a hand to the aviator, the other to Lanyard, and as they helped her to the ground, Lanyard, warned by his experience, stood by with a ready arm.

She needed that support, and for a few minutes didn't seem even conscious of it. Then gently disengaging, she moved a foot or two away.

"Where are we--do you know?"

"On the South Downs, somewhere?" Lanyard suggested, consulting Vauquelin.

"That is probable," this last affirmed--"at all events, judging from the course I steered. Somewhere well in from the coast, at a venture; I don't hear the sea."

"Near Lewes, perhaps?"

"I have no reason to doubt that."

A constrained pause ensued. The girl looked from the aviator to Lanyard, then turned away from both and, trembling with fatigue and enforcing self-control by clenching her hands, stared aimlessly off into the mist.

Painfully, Lanyard set himself to consider their position.

The Parrott had come to rest in what seemed to be a wide, shallow, saucer-like depression, whose irregular bounds were cloaked in fog. In this space no living thing stirred save themselves; and the waste was crossed by not so much as a sheep track. In brief, they were lost. There might be a road running past the saucer ten yards from its brim in any quarter. There might not. Possibly there was a town or village immediately adjacent. Quite as possibly the Downs billowed away for desolate miles on either hand.

"Well--what do we do now?" the girl demanded suddenly, in a nervous voice, sharp and jarring.

"Oh, we'll find a way out of this somehow," Vauquelin asserted confidently. "England isn't big enough for anybody to remain lost in it--not for long, at all events. I'm sorry only on Miss Shannon's account."

"We'll manage, somehow," Lanyard affirmed stoutly.

The aviator smiled curiously. "To begin with," he advanced, "I daresay we might as well get rid of these awkward costumes. They'll hamper walking--rather."

In spite of his fatigue Lanyard was so struck by the circumstances that he couldn't help remarking it as he tore off his wind-veil.

"Your English is remarkably good, Captain Vauquelin," he observed.

The other laughed shortly.

"Why not?" said he, removing his mask.

Lanyard looked up into his face, stared, and fell back a pace.

"Wertheimer!" he gasped.

XXVII

DAYBREAK

The Englishman smiled cheerfully in response to Lanyard's cry of astonishment.

"In effect," he observed, stripping off his gauntlets, "you're right, Mr. Lanyard. 'Wertheimer' isn't my name, but it is so closely identified with my--ah--insinuative personality as to warrant the misapprehension. I shan't demand an apology so long as you permit me to preserve an incognito which may yet prove somewhat useful."

"Incognito!" Lanyard stammered, utterly discountenanced. "Useful!"

"You have my meaning exactly; although my work in Paris is now ended, there's no saying when it may not be convenient to be able to go back without establishing a new identity."

Before Lanyard replied to this the look of wonder in his eyes had yielded to one of understanding.

"Scotland Yard, eh?" he queried curtly.

Wertheimer bowed. "Special agent," he added.

"I might have guessed, if I'd had the wit of a goose!" Lanyard affirmed bitterly. "But I must admit..."

"Yes," the Englishman assented pleasantly; "I did pull your leg--didn't I? But not more than our other friends. Of course, it's taken some time: I had to establish myself firmly as a shining light of the swell mob over here before De Morbihan would take me to his hospitable bosom."

"I presume I'm to consider myself under arrest?"

With a laugh, the Englishman shook his head vigorously.

"No, thank you!" he declared. "I've had too convincing proof of your distaste for interference in your affairs. You fight too sincerely, Mr. Lanyard--and I'm a tired sleuth this very morning as ever was! I would need a week's rest to fit me for the job of taking you into custody--a week and some able-bodied assistance!... But," he amended with graver countenance, "I will say this: if you're in England a week hence, I'll be tempted to undertake the job on general principles. I don't in the least question the sincerity of your intention to behave yourself hereafter; but as a servant of the King, it's my duty to advise you that England would prefer you to start life anew--as they say--in another country. Several steamers sail for the States before the end of the week: further details I leave entirely to your discretion. But go you must," he concluded firmly.

"I understand..." said Lanyard; and would have said more, but couldn't. There was something suspiciously like a mist before his eyes.

Avoiding the faces of his sweetheart and the Englishman, he turned aside, put forth a hand blindly to a wing of the biplane to steady himself, and stood with head bowed and limbs trembling.

Moving quietly to his side, the girl took his other hand and held it tight....

Presently Lanyard shook himself impatiently and lifted his head again.

"Sorry," he said, apologetic--"but your generosity--when I looked for nothing better than arrest--was a bit too much for my nerves!"

"Nonsense!" the Englishman commented with brusque good-humour. "We're all upset. A drop of brandy will do us no end of good."

Unbuttoning his leather surtout, he produced a flask from an inner pocket, filled its metal cup, and offered it to the girl.

"You first, if you please, Miss Shannon. No--I insist. You positively need it."

She allowed herself to be persuaded, drank, coughed, gasped, and returned the cup, which Wertheimer promptly refilled and passed to Lanyard.

The raw spirits stung like fire, but proved an instant aid to the badly jangled nerves of the adventurer. In another moment he was much more himself.

Drinking in turn, Wertheimer put away the flask. "That's better!" he commented. "Now I'll be able to cut along with this blessed machine without fretting over the fate of Ekstrom. But till now I haven't been able to forget----"

He paused and drew a hand across his eyes.

"It was, then, Ekstrom--you think?" Lanyard demanded.

"Unquestionably! De Morbihan had learned--I know--of your bargain with Ducroy; and I know, too, that he and Ekstrom spent each morning in the hangars at St. Germain, after your sensational evasion. It never entered my head, of course, that they had any such insane scheme brewing as that--else I would never have so giddily arranged with Ducroy--through the Surete, you understand--to take Vauquelin's place.... Besides, who else could it have been? Not De Morbihan, for he's crippled for life, thanks to that affair in the Bois; not Popinot, who was on his way to the Sante, last I saw of him; and never Bannon--he was dead before I left Paris for Port Aviation."

"Dead!"

"Oh, quite!" the Englishman affirmed nonchalantly, "When we arrested him at three this morning--charged with complicity in the murder of Roddy--he flew into a passion that brought on a fatal haemorrhage. He died within ten minutes."

There was a little silence....

"I may tell you, Mr. Lanyard," the Englishman resumed, looking up from the motor, to which he was paying attentions with monkey-wrench and oil-can, "that you were quite off your bat when you ridiculed the idea of the 'International Underworld Unlimited.' Of course, if you _hadn't_ laughed, I shouldn't feel quite as much respect for you as I do; in fact, the chances are you'd be in handcuffs or in a cell of the Sante, this very minute.... But, absurd as it sounded--and was--the 'Underworld' project was a pet hobby of Bannon's--who'd been the brains of a gang of criminals in New York for many years. He was a bit touched on the subject: a monomaniac, if you ask me. And his enthusiasm won De Morbihan and Popinot over ... and me! He took a wonderful fancy to me, Bannon did; I really was appointed first-lieutenant in Greggs' stead.... So you first won my sympathy by laughing at my offer," said Wertheimer, restoring the oil-can to its place in the tool-kit; "wherein you were very wise.... In fact, my personal feeling for you is one of growing esteem, if you'll permit me to say so. You've most of the makings of a man. Will you shake hands--with a copper's nark?"

He gave Lanyard's hand a firm and friendly grasp, and turned to the girl.

"Good-bye, Miss Shannon. I'm truly grateful for the assistance you gave us. Without you, we'd have been sadly handicapped. I understand you have sent in your resignation? It's too bad: the Service will feel the loss of you. But I think you were right to leave us, the circumstances considered.... And now it's good-bye and good luck! I hope you may be happy.... I'm sure you can't go far without coming across a highroad or a village; but--for reasons not unconnected with my profession--I prefer to remain in ignorance of the way you go."

Releasing her hand, he stepped back, saluted the lovers with a smile and gay gesture, and clambered briskly to the pilot's seat of the biplane.

When firmly established, he turned the switch of the starting mechanism.

The heavy, distinctive hum of the great motor filled that isolated hollow in the Downs like the purring of a dynamo.

With a final wave of his hand, Wertheimer grasped the starting-lever.

Its _brool_ deepening, the Parrott stirred, shot forward abruptly. In two seconds it was fifty yards distant, its silhouette already blurred, its wheels lifting from the rim of the hollow.

Then lightly it leaped, soared, parted the mists, vanished....

For some time Lanyard and Lucy Shannon remained motionless, clinging together, hand-in-hand, listening to the drone that presently dwindled to a mere thread of sound and died out altogether in the obscurity above them.

Then, turning, they faced each other, smiling a trace uncertainly, a smile that said: "So all that is finished! ... Or, perhaps, we dreamed it!"...

Suddenly, with a low cry, the girl gave herself to Lanyard's arms; and as this happened the mists parted and bright sunlight flooded the hollow in the Downs.

THE END