CHAPTER XIX

A FLIGHT AND WHAT CAME OF IT

From the barrier of the aerodrome, where the Minerva pulled up, Desmond could see the machine destined for their night journey. What a puny thing it looked, stranded there, forlorn and solitary, in the centre of the vast open space swept by the glare of the lights of the night landing-station and surrounded by the long, low sheds whose roofs were now silvered by the effulgence of the moon!

On their way to the flying-field the girl had told Desmond her history. Her name was Mary Brewster, and for two years she had been acting as confidential secretary to the head of one of the British missions in Berlin. Her General had recommended her to Bliss as a trustworthy German-speaking messenger, and though she was fully aware of the danger of the mission, she had jumped at the chance of a trip home at Government expense.

She was a funny little girl, Desmond decided. Her work in Berlin had given her some insight into the workings of the Secret Service, and the grave seriousness with which she took her mission amused Desmond, grown blasé in eight years’ experience of its ways. Her very conscientiousness made her profoundly suspicious—even of Desmond at first; and she subjected him to a prolonged cross-examination as to the _bona fides_ of the chauffeur. When the last-named, on their arrival at the aerodrome, went off in search of the pilot, the girl wanted to know whether he was sure that the aviator was to be trusted.

“My dear child,” said Desmond, laughing, “that’s not my responsibility. It’s the Chief’s. Each of us has his job in this show. The chauffeur’s is to bring me alongside the aeroplane and hand me over to the pilot . . .”

As he spoke they saw a hooded and muffled figure detach itself from the knot of mechanics gathered about the plane. It proved to be the pilot, a swarthy young man, to judge by as much as his helmet disclosed of his features, short and stocky, in leather flying-kit. He came up with the chauffeur to the car.

“You’re my passenger, I think,” he said to Desmond. “We’re all ready for you!”

He shot an enquiring glance at the girl. Desmond remarked that she was to accompany them on their journey. The pilot seemed put out. The machine was a two-seater, he protested; and he had been warned to expect only the one passenger. Besides, the girl couldn’t travel in evening dress; she would perish of cold.

Desmond swept aside these objections. The girl, he announced with a humorous side-glance at her, would sit on his knee.

“As for the cold,” he went on, “that extra coat on your arm, which is doubtless intended for me, will do very well for her. I’ve got my overcoat!”

And he tapped his ulster bulging with the packet of precious stones.

The pilot made no further comment, but led the way to the machine. Rather sullenly he helped the girl into the belted leather jerkin he had brought with him, while Desmond swung himself up the short ladder into the passenger’s seat, protected by a curving shield of talc, behind the pilot.

The girl, helped from above and below, clambered after, her hat in her hand. Almost before they knew that the pilot was at the joy-stick, the propellers began to roar, the driver raised his hand, and all the world except the lucent moon and the glittering stars in the wide sky above them seemed to slide away—the flares, the sheds, the trees, the twinkling lights of Brussels in the distance.

Desmond gave a little sigh. “Safe!” he murmured, and patted that comforting bulge in his overcoat.

They had, indeed, he told himself, made a clean escape, shaken old Clubfoot right off their track. Since leaving the theatre they had seen nothing of him or of any of his men. If this were the last episode in the master spy’s career, it had ended, the young man reflected, in his signal discomfiture. Desmond felt his heart swell within him as the icy night air smote his cheek and, hundreds of feet below, the dim chessboard of the Low Countries swayed and heeled over beneath the moon.

Perched demurely on his knee, the girl remained very still. Speech was impossible; the deafening roar of the propellers saw to that—but Desmond’s quick intuitiveness told him she was uneasy. Perhaps she was nervous, he told himself; night-flying is always something of an ordeal.

The channel was yet a silvery streak below them when the pilot, crouched over the wheel in front, turned and made a vague gesture with his gauntleted hand. With his huge goggles and furry helmet he looked like some gesticulating goblin. He seemed to be pointing downwards. At the same moment the rush of air increased, a long black ridge, far below at first, seemed to rise and rise at them while, with a suddenness that was pain, the roar of the propellers abruptly ceased.

“Engine missing!”—the pilot’s voice came to them in a muffled roar—“hang on! Forced landing!”

Out of the blackness, sweeping up at them with hideous velocity, a light winked and blinked. Coughing and spluttering, the engine picked up again. Suddenly they were bumping wildly over the fleeting ground past a handful of stunted trees and bushes and, in hard, black silhouette against the moon, the dark shapes of some scattered houses.

The engine was shut off again and they careered to a standstill, the machine trembling to the gentle jar of the earth. The pilot heaved himself up in his cockpit and pushed the goggles back from his eyes.

“Sorry,” he said, and began some technical explanation to which Desmond Okewood paid no attention. His thoughts were busy with the next step. He did not relish the idea of wandering about the country-side at dead of night with some hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of jewels in his overcoat pocket. He looked at his watch. Its hands marked ten minutes to one on the luminous dial.

“Have you any idea where we are?” Desmond asked. “I am positive,” he added, “that I saw a light as we were planing down, but there’s no sign of it now.”

The pilot, who had jumped down and was fussing with the landing-wheels, turned round.

“Distance is very deceptive at night,” he said. “That light is probably five or six miles away. It’s devilish fortunate,” he went on. “I know exactly where we are. This is the War Office rifle ground at Stoke Bay, about six miles out of Lympne. I was at Dover during the war and know the whole of this country like my pocket. So, when the engine started petering out over the Channel just now, I steered straight for this spot.”

“How long is it going to take you to put things right?” asked Desmond.

The pilot shook his head sadly at the plane. “Can’t say. At any rate, I’ll never get up here again in the dark. We’d break our necks most likely. You’ll have to go on to London in the morning.”

Desmond swore under his breath. It seemed to him that the airman was taking things very lightly.

“That’s all very well,” he remarked with some heat. “But I’m on duty, and it is essential that I should get on to town without delay. And in any case Miss Brewster can’t spend the night in the open, you know. What are we going to do about it? Isn’t there anybody we can knock up?”

“It’s just occurred to me,” answered the pilot, wiping his hands on a wisp of cotton waste, “that I know a fellow who lives close at hand. Magnus is his name, a very sound chap. He has a bungalow a piece down the beach road. We’ll knock him up. I’ve no doubt when we’ve explained things to him he’ll be pleased to give us a shake-down for the night. He’s on the telephone, too. Just let me turn off the juice!”

He clambered back into the cockpit and busied himself with the engine. Desmond and Miss Brewster alighted. Suddenly the former felt his sleeve plucked. He turned round to find Mary Brewster’s big eyes staring at him. With an upward glance at the machine, she drew her companion unobtrusively aside.

“Don’t trust him!” she whispered. “He’s . . . he’s got a dishonest face! How do you know that this landing isn’t a plant? He cut off the engine on purpose; I’m sure he did. He meant to land here all along. Look at the ground! It’s perfectly smooth. It’s an aerodrome . . .”

“Aerodrome?” broke in the pilot. He had descended from the machine and was standing behind them. “Of course it’s an aerodrome, an experimental ground. That’s why I steered for it.”

Desmond looked at him. Certainly the fellow had a shifty eye. Now that he regarded the pilot more closely, he noticed that he seemed to be labouring under some excitement. The man saw that the other had remarked his distress.

“It’s a nervy business, landing in the dark!” he was quick to explain.

Desmond felt that his suspicions were ungenerous. He knew how airmen loathe night-flying.

“You made a devilish good landing!” he said. “I’m afraid you must have thought us very unappreciative. Now, what about your friend Magnus?”

The girl said no more and they set off in silence across the moonlit grass. In front of them a black shape loomed immensely out of the darkness. As they drew nearer, Desmond saw, to his astonishment, that it was an aeroplane, a huge machine with metal wings on which the moonbeams glinted.

Desmond stopped. “What’s that plane doing here?” he demanded.

The pilot shrugged his shoulders. “They’re trying out machines all the time,” he replied. “We’re getting too much to the left,” he added. “We want to bear more to the right or we’ll miss the gate!”

But Desmond was walking in the direction of the machine.

“I say!” the pilot called out. “They don’t like strangers monkeying about with . . .”

Desmond heard no more. He had reached the machine. Mary Brewster was just behind him. It was a tremendous machine and its immense spread of wing quite dwarfed them. A blast of warm air smote them on the cheeks.

“Why,” cried Desmond, “the engine’s warm. This machine has been out this very night . . .”

He turned swiftly round to the girl. As his eyes fell on her face, it blanched with terror.

“Behind you! . . .” she gasped; but, before he had time to defend himself, a cloth fell across his face from the back and was pulled taut, an iron grip clutched his throat and he was borne to the ground. A guttural voice said close to his ear: “A sound and I blow out your brains!”

Out of the darkness rang a woman’s scream.