Part 21

Sherbrand took the telegram from the jerky hand and read:

"_Your--German--acquaintance--suspected--agent-- robbery--documents--national--importance. At--all-- costs--keep--him--until--I--come._"

The Chief's name at the end was the nail that clinched the thing. But the cry of Macrombie's undersized assistant was the hammer-blow that drove the nail to the quick. His sharp eye, following the climbing aeroplane, had seen her flatten and swing about and leap forwards, exactly as the carrier-pigeon strikes out its line of flight for home.

"My Gawd," he yelped out. "See there! Blimy, if the --'s not done us! Bunked it by air to Kaiserland while I was spellin' out the screed. Gone with the Bird--the Bird and the 'overing gear. My Gawd! Wot's to be done?"

"Shut your head on what you know!" said Sherbrand's voice in the pale clerk's ear as Sherbrand's hand fell ungently on his shoulder. "You've done your best! It's not your fault if luck was on the other side! But--" His eyes went to the Doctor's great figure standing beside the tall white shape with the hat of twinkling silver. "But the boy!" A sickness swirled up in him and a dizziness overtopped it. He caught at and gripped the clerk's thin shoulder to keep himself upright. "My God! How shall I break it to the Doctor," Sherbrand asked himself, "if that German fellow has carried off the boy?"

"Steady-O! Ketch on to me, sir.... Nobody's looking!" said the telegraph clerk. He was a hero-worshipper on a robust scale and Sherbrand his chosen deity. "This ain't our young Boss givin' in, but just his empty inside playin' tricks on him," he assured himself. To Sherbrand he said humbly: "If you'd come over to the cabin there's hot cocoa and toke there. Grub'll steady you, if you'll excuse me taking the liberty of saying so--and you can't do nothing till he comes!"

The person to whom Burgin referred had passed the entrance-gates, almost before the sentence left the lips of the clerk. Now his alert, upright figure came in sight, briskly turning the corner of the restaurant, and wrought to the point of ironic merriment by the greatness of the blow that had fallen on him, Sherbrand shook off his dizziness and faintness, straightened his tall body, clapped both hands to his mouth, and gave the huntsman's view-halloo:

"_Stole away! Stole--awa-aay!_"

Small cause for mirth, and yet he laughed, pointing to the dwindling speck high upon the north horizon that represented the worldly prospects of Sherbrand, and a handsome sum in cash. The Bird, just then entering a broad belt of gold-white mackerel-cloud, was lost to view in another instant. But the Chief had wheeled upon the pointing gesture, and seen, and understood.

Then he was upon them, saying in accents jarred with anger:

"How was this allowed to happen? You were warned. You had my wire?"

Sherbrand's mouth was wrung awry with another spasm of mirthless laughter. He fought it back and held out the crumpled slip of paper, saying:

"I did, but luck was on _his_ side. Thanks to a relapse on Macrombie's part, I got this after the Bird had flown."

"The Bird..."

The blue-grey eyes and the keen hazel met, and struck a spark between them.

"'The Bird.' He has taken French leave--or, more appropriately, German--by the help of your machine?"

Sherbrand nodded, setting his teeth grimly. The wailing voice of the pallid clerk came in like a refrain:

"'Ooked it. Bunked--so 'elp me Jimmy Johnson! With our young guv'nor's mono', and the gyro 'overer!"

Said the Chief, moving sharply towards where the Wireless mast straddled over the telegraph-cabin:

"He has adopted the only means of exit by which it was possible for him to escape. All railways stations are being watched, all highways patrolled by our agents, travelling in high-powered motor-cars. We are on the look-out for him at every ocean shipping-port. One road we left open, not having the means to block it--and that is the road of the stork and the swan! Decidedly, I might have guessed that he would play Young Lochinvar after this fashion. But until I left the ground an hour ago I did not know of the theft of the Clanronald Plan."

"The Clanronald--" Sherbrand was beginning, when the Chief cut him short.

"I had forgotten that you are as little wise as I was an hour back. Better glance at this paragraph while I make use of your O. T. installation and Wireless, and put the fear of Heaven into Macrombie, incidentally and by the way."

He thrust a tightly-folded copy of the _Evening Wire_ upon Sherbrand and vanished into the rum-flavoured stuffiness of the cabin, with the pallid telegraph clerk close upon his heels. And upon Sherbrand, in the act of unfolding the newspaper, rushed his Fate, in a hat of silver spangles: challenging the knowledge in him with blazing eyes well upon the level of his own.

"Mr. Sherbrand.... Tell me what has happened? Why do you look so--queer and--white?"

She herself was whiter than her narrow dress, and the mouth the eager rush of words poured from was pale under its rose-tinted salve. She hurried on breathlessly:

"They show no signs of coming back--it fidgets me horribly. And--I was looking--from over there, where I was with Uncle Owen,--when you called out, 'Stole away!' and waved your arm." She glanced at the sky, shuddered and looked back at him. "Am I silly? But all the same, the General told you something! I don't ask what! But I funk--I don't know why, but it's beastly--the sensation! Tell me I've nothing to be afraid of--I swear I'll take your word!"

That she was just then a creature full of fears was written large upon her. She might have quoted Queen Constance, who I think was also a galumpher, meaning a woman of big build and sweeping gestures, and an imperious temper withal. Sherbrand feared also, and the pang of solicitude for the pretty boy so unexpectedly dragged into the vortex of a diplomatic and political felony was, to do him credit, quite as sharp as the pang caused him by the rape of the Bird.

He answered:

"Miss Saxham, I do not believe that there is any danger of an accident. But--that there will be delay--I shall not try to disguise. The fact is----"

A guttural, Teutonic voice said close at Sherbrand's shoulder.

"_Gnaediges Fraeulein_ will wish to return home? It is getting late, so very late! I haf instructions from my master to drive the _Fraeulein_ back to her address."

Sherbrand wheeled, to be confronted by the thickset figure of the moustached and uniformed attendant who had occupied the seat beside the chauffeur of the big blue F.I.A.T. car.

"Who is this?" he demanded in a look, and Patrine, her pallor drowned in a scarlet blush of horrible embarrassment, stammered:

"I really--haven't the least idea!"

"You hear!" Sherbrand's tone was not pleasant. "The lady does not know you--that ought to be enough!"

Patrine felt herself drowning in chill waves of horror. The man persisted:

"The lady is a friend of the gentleman who brought her here.... I haf my orders to drive the lady home in the yellow car!"

In his muddy eyes there flickered a leer or a menace. Patrine saw the Doctor coming and flew to his side. Sherbrand said, looking sternly at the German:

"You understand, your orders are nothing to the lady. She does not choose to be driven home by you!"

The man protested:

"But my master----"

Sherbrand demanded:

"Who is your master?" Then a sudden light dawned upon him, and he turned and knocked sharply at the cabin-door. At which the liveried attendant, as a man who finds hesitancy a double-edged weapon, wheeled in military fashion and retreated, casting a surly glance over his shoulder, and quickening his heavy footsteps to a jog-trot as the General's active person appeared at Sherbrand's side.

"That man, Sir Roland!" Sherbrand's slight gesture indicated the thickset figure now getting hurriedly into the yellow Darracq. He added, as the car swirled round the corner of the restaurant and vanished in the direction of the entrance-gates, "Ought I to have grabbed the brute, and hung on to him? He was certainly with a party of foreign-looking people, who interviewed von Herrnung just before he got away. You saw them?"

"I certainly saw them. And I agree with you that their unexpected appearance has had to do with their countryman's sudden departure," said the Chief. "But to grab an orderly of the German Embassy would be--only less risky than grabbing a Kaiser's messenger, on suspicion of his carrying stolen War Secrets in his official bag."

"A Kaiser's messenger!" Sherbrand's mouth shaped a soundless whistle, "Why, now I remember, he had a dispatch-case or valise with him. Wouldn't hear of leaving it behind!"

"I--daresay not," the Chief's dry smile commented.

Sherbrand went on:

"I developed muscle in persuading him to let it go in the observer's cockpit for fear of it fouling the warping-controls. No wonder he stuck to it. War Secrets!"

"It is plain you haven't glanced at the _Evening Wire_. It tells the story rather pithily, beginning with an outbreak of fire on Tuesday night at Gwyll Castle, Denbigh, caused by a short-circuit in the electric-lighting apparatus of the North Tower."

He went on:

"I waste no time telling you, for all that's possible has been done now in setting our agents on the track of the flying thief! The North Tower at Gwyll holds the priceless Clanronald library, and the Muniment Chamber, where they bottle up the original MSS. detailing the War Plan of the old Earl. The short-circuit that set up the blaze was--the kind that any amateur can arrange for with rubber gloves, a pair of pliers and a bit of soda-water wire."

"Is it known who the amateur was?"

"There is reason to suspect one Heir Rassing, an under-librarian of German nationality, who behaved like a hero, according to the local Fire Brigade! He it was, who suggested--Clanronald being absent on a yachting-cruise in the Fjords of Norway--that the contents of the Muniment Chamber should be transferred to the strong-room in the basement of the East Wing. He superintended the removal, armed with knowledge, enthusiasm, and a large-sized Webley Scott revolver, with which he volunteered to keep solitary guard till morning, outside the strong-room door!"

"And when daylight came--" hinted Sherbrand.

"It discovered the zealous Herr Rassing to be missing, and a corresponding hiatus in the treasures of the Muniment Chamber. Item, a sharkskin case inlaid with ivory figures, Japanese, antique and valuable,--containing the original diagrams--chemical _formulae_ and so on--embodying the famous Plan."

Sherbrand asked.

"Was it as tremendous as they tell one?"

The crisp voice answered:

"Tremendous it not only was, but Is. The most terrible and effective method of annihilating an enemy, that has ever been conceived by the brain of man."

Sherbrand said, drawing a deep breath:

"And that is what von Herrnung carried in the brown leather valise-thing that he took away with my machine! Not that I trouble about the Bird. She was old, and I've got the stuff to build a new one. But my patent--the hawk-hoverer--that's another pair of shoes!"

"The hawk--! Phee-eew!"

The Chief whistled a rueful note and his keen eyes softened in sympathy:

"I had forgotten your invention. So von Herrnung has scooped for Germany the gyroscopic hovering-apparatus that the French War Ministry were proposing to buy. Now I understand the something about you that has puzzled me. You wear the look of a father, Sherbrand, bereaved of an uncommonly promising son."

Saxham's stern face rose up in Sherbrand's thought, stamped with that look, and his throat contracted chokingly. The Chief asked:

"What sort of man is the mechanic von Herrnung has commandeered? A fellow easy to bribe, or intimidate? It would be worth while to know?"

"It's a boy--not a man!" broke from Sherbrand, hurriedly and hoarsely. "General, no more unlucky thing could have happened! ... Dr. Saxham's twelve-year-old nipper took a tremendous shine to von Herrnung, and--and--he's gone with him! That's the news the Doctor's got to hear by and by!"

There was a silence. The Chief's face was turned away. Then he said quietly:

"There was no question of 'a shine.' My Scout was obeying an order. His Chief Scout had said, 'Keep this man under observation; and if he leaves the Flying Ground--follow him, if you can!"

Sherbrand could not speak for pity of the small white face that had grinned at him out of the clumsy woollen helmet. He understood now, that when he had bent to strap the safety-belt about the little body swathed in the flannel-lined pneumatic jacket, he had felt a terrified child-heart bumpity-bumping under his hand. And he struggled with his grief and rage in silence, broken by an utterance from the other man.

"So he followed him into the air, seeing no other course before him. My old friend Saxham has good reason to chortle over such a son. I said to-day, 'I am proud of my Scouts!' Well, to-night I am ten times prouder. I shall tell the Doctor this--when I get a private word with him--and wind up with: 'Thanks to Bawne!'"

"Then the Doctor--" Sherbrand began, a weight lifting with the hope that the news might not have to be broken:

"The Doctor knew. I had said to him, doggily: 'I'll give your pup a fighting chance to prove his Saxham breed.' It's a stark breed--hard as granite, supple as incandescent lava,--with a strain of Berserk madness, and a dash of Oriental fatalism. They can hate magnificently and forgive grandly, and love to the very verge of death."

Could _she_, Sherbrand wondered, letting his eyes travel to the tall white woman standing by the Doctor, as the Chief went over to them and grasped his old friend's hand. Then both men moved away across the dusky ground together. Those words of thanks and praise were being spoken. Coming from such a source they must be heartening to listen to. But presently when their glow had paled and faded, and the boy did not come back...

Presently, when the empty chair and the vacant bed, and the little garments hanging in the wardrobe should be filled and occupied and worn only by a shadow-child wrought of lovely memories. By and by, when the silence in the house should clamour in the tortured ears of the woman and the man...

Then, Sherbrand knew no praise of their lost darling would console Bawne's parents.... Dry-eyed they might smile until their lips cracked, but their hidden hearts would weep. Their tongues might be silent, but their hearts would cry always; Did we wish our child to be heroic? Had he been a craven we would have had him now beside us! Give us our living boy again! O! keep your empty words!

A cry from Patrine prodded Sherbrand to active sympathy. So at last they had told her. She knew all. And true to her type she was raging at the Doctor and the Chief like a very termagant; upbraiding them with a spate of words rushing over her writhing lips and lioness-frenzy in her blazing eyes.

"I begged you not to let him go!" This was to the Doctor. "Faint! Do you take me for a bally idiot--to faint when there's something to be done! Follow that man and get him back! If he takes him away to Germany--don't you know we shall never see Bawne again! Oh! why--why can't I make you understand!"

The raging voice grew hoarse with sobs, though her furious eyes were dry as enamel. She added with an inflection that made Sherbrand blink and gulp:

"Don't you know--don't you _know_ it will kill Aunt Lynette? And I shall be guilty--I who love them so! Oh, God, I must do something or die raving mad!"

The Doctor's great arm held her firmly round the body. Saxham was strong as an oak-tree, but who can control a woman in the frenzy of hysteria, standing six feet tall in high-heeled No. 7 shoes? She wrestled and fought, and her tawdry hat of silver spangles tumbled off, and her superb hair shed its pins of tortoiseshell, and rolled, yellow-tawny as a South African torrent in flood-time, down over her heaving shoulders, over the supple back and writhing loins, reaching nearly to her knees. Then her strength went from her, and her tears came. She dropped into a chair Sherbrand had got her, and crumpled up there, crying bitterly.

*CHAPTER XXXVII*

*PATRINE CONFESSES*

With her hat off and her hairpins out, and her tawny-coloured mane tumbling over her heaving shoulders, the superb illusion of maturity vanished. The three men viewed Patrine with clear, unprejudiced eyes. Stripped of the magic cloak of Circe, here was no transformer of Man into the hoofed and rooting mammal, but a great galumphing schoolgirl, pouring out a heartful of trouble, without the least concern for her complexion; mopping her streaming eyes with a little sopping handkerchief; temporarily ending its brief career of usefulness with a dismal blast upon the nose.

"Take mine!" said Saxham, thrusting the large-sized square of cambric upon her.

"Th--thank you, Uncle Owen!"

She said it in the voice of a child. The torrent of tears, so different from those shed earlier, had washed her heart clean. Something hard and cynical and evil had passed out of her. She was Bawne's dear Pat again.

A lean brown hand that wore a chipped and ancient signet was next held out to her. She grasped it and was straightway hauled upon her feet.

"Are you better?" said a friendly voice, in a crisp way.

"I--think so. Thank you, Sir Roland!" She added in a tone as tear-soaked as her handkerchief, while Saxham offered her her hat, and Sherbrand tendered tortoiseshell hairpins:

"I'm awfully afraid I have behaved like a fool!"

"Like a woman!" said the friendly voice even more crisply.

"Do you think women are fools?" she was beginning, when she caught his eye and broke off. For she had met Sir Roland's mother and she knew his young wife quite well, and her Aunt Lynette, the one living being whom she worshipped, was one of his closest friends. No! To this man women were sacred. Why had she uttered such a banality? For the life of her she did not know.

She drew a sobbing breath, and looked about her vaguely, and suddenly a mist rolled away from her brain. The net of Tragedy whirled high and fell upon her, and the steel trident was driven deep between her ribs again:

"I--had forgotten!" She stared upon them. "What must you all think of me?"

Saxham's arm came round her, and Saxham's voice answered:

"Nothing, my dear, but that you are human, and have had a tremendous shock!"

She leaned against the Doctor's great shoulder, sighing:

"Thank you! ... I'm all right now! Not going to cry any more.... But Bawne! If we wait long enough there will be news of him? We--shall get him back?"

She felt Saxham's iron muscles jerk, and his ribs heave as though the trident had found a home between them. Perhaps he could not find his voice, for it was the Chief who said:

"We are doing everything possible. Mr. Sherbrand is helping. He has been good enough to place the telegraph installation at our disposal and the Wireless also. A call, Burgin?"

The undersized clerk had waved a hand from the threshold of the cabin. The Chief vanished. Patrine sighed:

"Oh, if there should be news!"

"You are too sensible to be bowled over if there happens to be no news," said the Doctor's voice. But his arm was tense about her waist and she felt the beating of his heart.

"Uncle Owen!"

Sherbrand had withdrawn out of earshot. She squeezed the kind responsive hand, turned her mouth towards the Doctor's ear, and whispered tremulously:

"Uncle Owen! You don't know _him_ as I do. That's why I am so--horribly afraid for Bawne! He would be cruel to anyone you liked, if he hated you. And he is furious with me! I have thwarted him in--something he wishes! He is bad!--dangerous!--do you understand?"

"He cannot be a bad pilot with such a record. And in such calm weather there is little danger of an accident. We must be patient; there is nothing else to do at the moment, but wait!"

Saxham had feigned to misunderstand her, for very pity, you can conceive. Blurting out her miserable secret in this moment of unselfish sorrow, his heart was wrung in him to an anguish of compassion for Patrine. But no less was he wrung by the truth her words conveyed. His son and Lynette's was in the power of an evil man! What was David's daughter saying?

"Uncle Owen!" The tall figure of Sherbrand had moved away into the reddish twilight, and a wild desire of confession spurred on the girl to desperate frankness of speech. She hurried on, nerving herself to the change that would presently show in Saxham. "Uncle Owen! I think you had better know! Since I met _him_ in Paris I----"

"Stop!" said Saxham. But she would not stop. She had his blood in her, and went on, though to have set her naked foot on glowing iron would have been easier than to tell.

"I have flirted with him!--gone alone with him to restaurants and music-halls!--let him take me to the Upas!"--there was a tightness like knotted whipcord about her throat; "That's--not the worst!"

"I guessed it. Stop!" Saxham repeated:

"Who told?"--she faltered brokenly, and shivered at the deep stern whisper:

"No one told, but the reputation of the--man is known to me. His type does not hesitate where a woman's virtue is concerned."

A great sigh burst from her. "And you can speak to me and touch me kindly--you don't hate the sight of me?"

"No, my poor girl, God forbid!"

"How good!--" she began, broke off and said, shuddering: "But--Aunt Lynette! How could I bear it, if she were ever to know----"

Saxham said harshly:

"She shall not know! Who do you dream will tell her? Not I! So set your mind at rest, my girl. You are a girl--though you talk like a woman of thirty!"

She said with a miserable catch in her throat:

"Nineteen _is_ rather young, isn't it? Perhaps things would have been different if only Dada had lived!"

The utterance was as inapposite as it was sentimental. If David had still been in existence his daughter would have had no less cause for regret. But Saxham, inwardly quivering and wrung with pity, could only acquiesce:

"Perhaps things would! What you have got to do now is--Forget! Do you hear me? I order you, and I will be obeyed! And I will have you leave this titled lady who employs you, and who is all kindness and no discretion. Resign your post to-morrow! You need not return to your mother. My house is your home!" He went on in his rare tone of tenderness, "You need no telling that I care for you as a daughter. Come to me, and to Lynette who loves you dearly. She will want comfort--now that--" His voice broke and his mouth twisted. He fought with his anguish, in silence, turning his grim white face away.

"Who will tell Aunt Lynette? Oh! who will tell her?" he heard Patrine whisper. He commanded himself to answer:

"For the present, I have telephoned her that we may be detained here until late. Suppose you twist up your hair now, and put your hat on. Sherbrand!"

A sweet, manly voice answered out of the dimness of the Flying Ground: "Here, Doctor! You called me?"

In the madder and umber light of the dying sunset Sherbrand's tall brown shape came towards them. Saxham said as Patrine swept her tawny tresses into one rough rope:

"I am going to ask you to find out whether the people at the refreshment-place could give my niece something by way of substitute for dinner. A cup of coffee, or cocoa with milk, a roll and butter, and a slice of cold beef or ham?"

Sherbrand said eagerly:

"I am sure Miss Saxham can get anything like that. Mrs. Durrant keeps open house till nine o'clock, or later, if there is reason. She caters for the School Staff, respectably, by contract. I lodge--a very decent berth--over the dining-room, where I have my grub. Noisy by day but quiet enough at night-time. Will you come this way, Miss Saxham? You too, Doctor?"