The Phantom Airman
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"No. Let us continue our journey until we have completed the circuit. We may make another discovery yet. Come along; fortune favours the brave."
They had scarcely crept another hundred yards, however, when a rustling in the leaves, accompanied by a snort, revealed the presence of another wild boar, which had evidently scented their presence.
"Confound the pig!" muttered Sharpe, who was afraid the sounds might lead to their premature discovery. But Keane thought otherwise, for, to his quick mind and instructive genius, this trifling event seemed providential.
"The pig!" he whispered, pointing to the spot whence came the occasional snorts of the angry, disturbed creature.
"What of it?" queried Sharpe.
"Let's get to the other side of the beast and drive it against the wires."
"And roast the brute alive for the benefit of their breakfast, I suppose."
Keane laughed silently, and wondered how far the conspirators used this live wire to keep themselves supplied with food. He knew, however, that a wild boar on the live wires would soon bring out the inmates of that mysterious house in the woods, and would sufficiently distract their attention to give the airmen their opportunity.
The next moment, having made a sufficiently extensive circuit, so as to get the wild boar between them and the wires, they began closing in on the beast, an operation not devoid of peril, should the boar decide to attack them. Fortune favoured them, however. The angry beast, noting the approach of some unseen enemy, by the movements of the tangled undergrowth, half frightened and half infuriated, made off in the direction of the clearing, uttering further snorts. The next moment he had touched the first of those deadly wires, and, with a wild scream which rang through the forest, he leapt into the air, then fell back quivering but dead across that fatal grill.
"Back–back for your life!" hissed Keane, as he made haste back to the spot where they had sheltered, close to the camouflaged hangar.
The next instant the watchers saw the professor and his assistant rush out of the little building, towards the place where the animal lay right across the first four wires. In their excitement they both seemed to have forgotten the presence of the two Englishmen in the woods during the previous evening, for they were both unarmed. Or perhaps it was that they imagined them to be the present victims of their cunning.
"Hoch! Another royal boar for the larder, Fritz!" exclaimed the professor. "We shall have the winter's supply complete very soon."
"Gut, mein herr!" came the answer.
"Better go back and switch off the current, so that we can take it away," urged the chief, and, staying but a second to see the royal victim, the assistant complied.
This was what the two Englishmen had been waiting for. The moment of action had come at last. Gripping their pistols, they made ready to advance and take possession of the hangar during the absence of the inmates.
"Sind Sie fertig, Friedrich?" called the professor.
"Ja, das bin ich!" replied the other, as he left the workshop, and rejoined his companion.
"Come along, the wires are dead now," whispered Keane, and, keeping well within the shadows of the trees, the two men crept forward, gained the rear of the structure, then cautiously worked their way round and entered the hangar unobserved.
One glance about the well-fitted workshop sufficed. There were no further occupants, and they lowered their pistols. Sharpe at once sprang to the lever which regulated the powerful electrical current and clutched it. In another instant the two men without would have paid the extreme penalty, for they would have been instantly killed by their own evil device, but Keane stopped him:–
"Don't!" he said. "We have much to learn. The professor at least must be taken alive, if possible. The secret he holds is too precious to be lost. Let us hide!"
"Where can we hide?" asked the other, somewhat disappointed, and amazed at the further risks which his companion appeared willing to take in order to gratify an insatiable curiosity. "The tables may be quickly turned upon us."
"We can shoot them as a last resort, if that is necessary," urged Keane, who knew the priceless value of the secrets which this place contained.
"Hist! They are coming."
"This way!" whispered Keane, and he drew his companion into a little recess, which had evidently been curtained off for the mechanic's sleeping berth.
They had barely withdrawn themselves into this narrow apartment when the two men entered, dragging the carcase of the wild boar with them.
"Leave it there for a moment, Strauss. The message from the Rittmeister is due. I must also send him that other message again, as the first has not been acknowledged," were the professor's first words.
"Yes, sir. Shall I start the dynamos again?" asked the assistant.
"Perhaps you'd better, but first hand me that message book and the secret code."
The next moment the professor was busy at the wireless keys, transmitting some message to the far deserts of Arabia.
"By all the saints," gasped Keane, "he's sending a message to the raider, the Scorpion, as he calls it. I must have that secret code at all hazards. I wonder what he is saying?"
For some time the chief conspirator was engaged coding and decoding messages at the little table where the aerials, carefully hidden amongst the trees without, had their terminus. And in that moment Keane thanked his stars that he had waited for this, for he saw new possibilities opening out before him. Once in possession of this mechanism and the necessary codes, he could communicate at will with the distant raider, who was threatening the whole civilised world by his almost superhuman powers of brigandage. He could recall the raider also, and make his capture certain, once he could secure absolute possession of this little citadel.
For the present he could do nothing but wait, however, and see how matters developed. Once, the assistant came quite close to their hiding-place, and both men again gripped their Webleys. At this moment even to breathe seemed fraught with danger. If the man should enter the little apartment, he must die, and the professor must be immediately threatened with the same penalty unless he surrendered.
"Ha! So far so good!" gasped Keane, as the mechanic recrossed the workshop without actually entering their hiding-place.
"Teufel!" spluttered the professor. "Here is that fool Tempest trying to communicate with those two verdammt Englishmen who are still roaming about in the Schwarzwald. He little knows that we possess his secret code."
"Himmel! What does he say?" asked the other.
"Wants them to report progress at once, and let him know how matters stand," said Weissmann in a mocking tone. "He says he will come over himself, if necessary."
"Donnerwetter! Ask him to come, Professor. He might as well grill with his accomplices on the live wires, for that's where they'll be before the day is out, unless they abandon their futile search," replied Strauss.
"This fiend is a perfect wizard!" thought Keane, and his glance signified as much to Sharpe. "How he manages to get hold of these secrets is beyond me. And yet, there is a defect in his mad science, for he does not know that we're here, and that his own life is in our hands. Fool that he is, he will soon learn that the wit of an Englishman is more than a match for his boasted knowledge," and here the senior airman carefully withdrew a cartridge from his Webley and inserted another, silently–a cartridge that had a specific mission. His companion watched him and repeated the action with his own weapon, for he understood.
"Blitz! but I've half a mind to send for Tempest," mused the professor, who was still toying with the keys of the wireless instrument.
"Send for him, Professor," urged his accomplice. "Those Englishmen are getting too close to be pleasant. The British army of occupation will be carrying out a thorough search of the Schwarzwald if these men get away, and then where shall we be?"
"We are in the neutral zone, though," replied the other.
"But we're contravening the Peace Regulations, sir, and the English will not stand upon ceremony. It will be too late should these men get away."
"Donner und Teufel!" rasped out the angry professor. "Don't speak to me of the Peace Regulations. There will be no peace till Germany regains all and more than all she has lost. I will send for this Commissioner of Aerial Police, for I believe that he and his two accomplices, Keane and Sharpe, are the only ones so far who know anything that matters about the secret of the Schwarzwald," and he began to tap the keys, reeling out the words as he sent them.
Keane listened acutely for the cyphers of the code. They were:–
"Z–X–B–T–V–O–P…"
and he understood that Tempest was to come at once, make for Mulhausen aerodrome, then take a bee-line, east-north-east over the Schwarzwald until he saw a smoke column, where a suitable landing-ground would be found, and his accomplices would await him.
"Ach!" shrieked the professor, with a fiendish laugh. "The smoke column will mark his last resting-place. They shall all be buried together, these mad Englishmen. We will have more live wires stretched across his landing-ground, and as the wild boar died, so will these men die who dared to follow me into the Schwarzwald."
"The wild boar! Hoch! Hoch!" exclaimed his companion. "It is a fitting tribute for the English are swine!"
"And the Scorpion shall witness the inglorious end of these men," cried the professor, as a sudden idea came into his mind.
"Der Scorpion?" queried Fritz, looking up amazed from his task. "What do you mean, Professor?"
"Why, the Rittmeister will have finished his work in the Hamadian Desert this afternoon. His instructions are to resign the Sultanate of those regions for the present, for the skies will be thick with British scouts by to-morrow."
"But then he goes to Ireland to work with the revolutionists there, does he not, mein herr?"
"Ja! ja! but I will ask him to call here for a day or two before he proceeds. He will have much to tell us, and Spitzer, Carl and Max would like to see these dangerous opponents safely out of the way, for at present they are the only enemies to be considered."
"Gut!" ejaculated Strauss, catching something of the professor's enthusiasm.
Keane would have intervened before this, for he had noted Sharpe's impatience, but he intimated as well as he could by mute signs and otherwise, that the fiend was doing their work for them.
"Let him send this message first," he whispered in his companion's ears, "and then–" But the sentence was completed by further cabalistic signs.
Again the professor turned to the keys, and sent his last instructions through the ether waves to his confederate, the brigand of the eastern skies.
CHAPTER XX
"HANDS UP!"
"Haende in die hohe!" cried Keane as soon as the last message had been sent.
"Der Teufel!" gasped the professor as two swift shadows darted out from behind the curtain, and the two men whom he had just been discussing with such utter contempt confronted him and his accomplice with gleaming pistols.
"Hands up!" repeated Keane, anxious to give the professor another chance.
With a blasphemous oath the man of evil genius, who saw that he had been outwitted, reached for a small hand grenade which lay beside him on the table, and shouted:–
"Never!"
"Then take that!" cried the Englishman, and two puffs of greenish smoke, following a sharp crackle, burst simultaneously from the pistols, for they had both fired together.
The new Asphixor bullets took immediate effect. Both the Germans staggered, clutched their throats as though to ward off the effects of this new powerful gas recently discovered and adapted by that eminent British scientist, Sir Joseph Verne–then lurched and fell, whilst their opponents stepped back and quickly fitted on their safety masks.
"They are both sound asleep," observed Keane, when, the fumes having cleared away, he threw aside his respirator and carefully examined the unconscious men.
"Let them sleep," said Sharpe, who would have adopted even more drastic measures if he could have had his own way. "'Tis scant mercy they would have shown to us if we had been in their power."
"And now let us get to work, for they will awaken in seven or eight hours, and we have much to do. We must prepare for Colonel Tempest, and also for this raider," urged Keane.
"But they will not come to-day, Captain."
"Scarcely, but we must be prepared for anything. There are only a couple of us."
"Shall we secure these men, in case they awake earlier than the stipulated time?"
"No, let us remove their slumbering forms behind the curtain there; we will attend to them before they awake. I do not like the idea of strapping down unconscious men, even though they are criminals. We will watch them from time to time."
Then for the next half-hour they carried out a careful examination of the hangar and its contents. They were amazed at the intricate and wonderful mechanism with which the place was fitted. It seemed impossible that these things could have been transported hither without attracting attention. Parts of aeroplane wings, struts, propellers, engine-fittings, strange, weird-looking cylinders, retorts, analytical appliances, instruments and vessels for chemical research, powerful but silent dynamos, and numberless other things, all neatly arranged, and apparently in working order, half filled the place.
The further they carried their investigation the more were these two Englishmen bewildered by what they saw.
"Is it possible," gasped Keane, "or am I only dreaming? We have discovered the home of the super-alchemist. After this, nothing will surprise me."
"We have discovered the devil's workshop," replied Sharpe, who did not appear to be half so enraptured as his friend.
"Nay, we shall find the philosopher's stone, or the elixir vitae soon," replied Keane, continuing his investigation.
"We are more likely to find the elixir mortis than anything else," said the gloomy one. "This place gives me the shivers. I am sure that I shall have cold feet for the rest of my life."
"After this, Hermes and Geber will be dull reading," continued the enthusiast. "Give me the Schwarzwald every time for the real thrill of the alchemist."
"Their time might have been more profitably employed, at any rate," remarked Sharpe.
"Yes, it is a thousand pities that the wonderful brain which designed and organised all this should have had nothing better in view than brigandage and world revolution."
"More misdirected energy," moaned Sharpe; "the greatest brains often make the greatest criminals."
"You're a veritable misanthrope, Sharpe!" said his companion, laughing.
"I have reason to be," returned the other.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean this–we're not out of the wood yet."
"I agree; we're in the very centre of it," replied Keane.
"Yet you did not inflict the coup de grâceon the diabolical vipers, and they will shortly awake. Moreover, the Scorpion may arrive unexpectedly, and we shall be unprepared for her."
"What would you do?"
"Bring over the machines from Mulhausen, ready to fight this air fiend when he comes."
"Ho! So you're longing for another real air fight, are you, like the 'scraps' we used to have with the Richthofen 'circus'?"
"At any rate, we'd better prepare. Then I'd bind those two criminals hand and foot or surround them with live wires, so that, should they awake unexpectedly, they would not dare to stir."
"There is certainly something in what you suggest about bringing the aeroplanes over, though we should have a deuce of a job to land them in this place; they're by no means possessed of the powers of a helicopter. However, I'll get into touch with Colonel Tempest and ask for immediate assistance, and also ask him to bring over Professor Verne to investigate these mysterious engineering and chemical appliances."
So, leaving the workshop, the live wires and the prisoners to the care of Sharpe, the senior airman devoted all the rest of that morning to investigating the wireless apparatus, examining the secret codes, and trying to get into touch with the Commissioner of Aerial Police. In this, however, he was not very successful, for the air was full of messages, concerning an overdue air-liner which had been expected for some time at Cairo. Perhaps his message had been jammed or lost in the aerial jostle.
Colonel Tempest was almost at his wits' end. He sorely needed the help of his able assistants. He wanted to send them out east to chase this daring brigand off the trade routes.
He was unable also to comply with the request for assistance, when at length it did reach him, for all his best fighting men, with the exception of these two in the Black Forest, had been sent after the raider. He promised, however, to come personally at the earliest possible moment, as soon as matters had been cleared up a little.
Again and again Keane tried to reach him with brief, but urgent coded messages, for he was now getting extremely anxious lest the raider should appear before they were ready. Sharpe, however, who was eminently practical, had taken the professor's own tip, and had laid wires across the glade, which, when properly connected up, would make it a dangerous proceeding for a hostile aeroplane to land there, while, in the event of a friendly one appearing, the current could be immediately switched off. He had seen to the prisoners as well, for, unknown to Keane, he had, on the first signs of awakening, given to each of them a sufficiently strong soporific to extend the period of their quiescence for a considerably longer period, so that, late that afternoon, his friend was somewhat alarmed at their quietude.
That night they watched in turns, and relieved each other every two hours. When morning came they climbed the highest trees and scanned the horizon in every direction for the promised help, and also for the Scorpion. But although the column of smoke from the fire which had been lighted, ascended all day in one long grey streak to guide the British airmen, yet morning wore on to afternoon, and no assistance came.
Keane sent message after message, but apparently to no purpose. The very heavens were full of messages, for the whole civilized world had been roused by the last daring feat of the phantom airman. London, Paris, Cairo, Delhi and New York were clamouring for his immediate capture and execution. Strong things, too, were being said about the incapacity of the much vaunted aerial police, but all the world realised that the task before these men was almost superhuman.
Twice an urgent message came recalling the two Englishmen, but Keane replied with the one word, "Impossible!"
And all this time the raider, who was carefully hiding for a few days, delighted his companions by retailing with much gusto such of these messages as he had been able to piece together from the aerial jumble.
"Let them send all their available machines and pilots out east," he had said to Carl and Max, "then we will quietly slip across Europe to Ireland, where everything is ripe for the promised revolution."
"And the Schwarzwald?" queried Max.
"Oh, we will call there for a few hours en route," replied the pirate, calmly relighting his pipe, "The professor will understand our silence and inactivity."
So the third morning came, and Keane, whose anxiety regarding the still sleeping prisoners had been allayed by Sharpe, who smilingly confessed what he had done, now became fearfully uneasy as to the condition of affairs.
"For heaven's sake light that beacon again!" he ordered. "If assistance does not arrive to-day, all these secrets I have endeavoured to rescue will be lost."
"What will you do?" asked his companion, who was already applying a match to the pile of dried tinder and sticks.
"Blow the whole place up," he replied.
"And shoot the prisoners?" ventured his friend, slyly.
"No."
"What then?"
"Rouse them up, somehow, handcuff them together and take them away."
"Some job that," remarked Sharpe, looking up at the long thin trail of smoke, for there was still an absence of wind currents.
Even as he gazed into the sky, however, he caught sight of a tiny speck hovering at twelve thousand feet, and he almost shouted, "Aeroplane!"
"Where?" asked his startled comrade, whose nerves had undergone some strain during the past few days.
"Right up in the blue. There, can you see her?"
"Yes, I have her now, but she's very high. Can it be the Scorpion, do you think?" asked the senior.
"Cannot say yet. I'll fetch the glasses."
"Run for them, quickly! I cannot hear her engines at all. It must be the brigand."
"Ah, there, I hear the engines now, very faintly, though. Rolls-Royce engines too, thank God!" exclaimed Keane fervently, as he recognised the well-known sound, and knew that assistance had arrived at last, in the shape of at least one Bristol Fighter.
"It's all right, Sharpe. Cut off that beastly current. Tempest will be here in a minute."
"Are you sure it's Tempest?"
"Yes. Listen to that! Now he's cut his engine out again, and he's coming down. It's the chief right enough; I should know his flying amongst a score of aeroplanes."
The wires were cut off, a temporary landing-tee quickly rigged up on the ground, and frantic signals were made to the pilot, who was now rapidly coming down in sharp spirals.
A few minutes later the intrepid pilot flattened out above the tree tops, dipped again, banked steeply, and sideslipped almost to the ground, in order to get into the confined and narrow space which served the Scorpion for an aerodrome. Scarcely had he landed when another machine, which had followed him from England, performed the same highly-skilled manoeuvre, and taxied up to the little group.
CHAPTER XXI
THE COMING FIGHT
"Good-morning, Colonel!" cried the two airmen, saluting their chief smartly, as he still sat in the aeroplane, looking not a little crabbed and sour, as he secretly swore at the infamous stretch of ground misnamed an aerodrome; then turned his gaze upon the two airmen who had appealed for assistance.
"Morning! So this is where you young cubs spend your holidays, while the whole world is ramping at me for not catching this infernal brigand. What have you got to say for yourselves?"
Keane was not at all put out by this dour greeting; he knew his chief too well, and admired him accordingly. Merit is not always accompanied by a bland and urbane countenance, neither do brains always accompany a white shirt front.
"I have that to say which will almost make you jump out of your skin, sir," replied Keane, "but we must somehow get these aeroplanes under cover, or properly camouflaged, for the Scorpion may arrive any minute."
"Eh? What's that you say, boy?" exclaimed Tempest, leaping from the fuselage. "The Scorpion?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why, that is the name of your infernal raider, isn't it, Captain Watson?" and here the colonel turned and addressed his passenger, who was none other than the skipper of the air-liner which had been so roughly handled in the Hamadian Desert.
"The same, sir."
"And the professor, Keane? I sent you to track the professor. Have you found him?"
"He is our prisoner, Colonel," and Keane bowed stiffly, and pointed to the half-hidden hangar, where the two prisoners, who were now partly roused, had been safely secured.
An exclamation of pleasure and surprise broke from this dour-looking man when he heard this news, and his face became wreathed with smiles as he advanced to both Keane and Sharpe, shook them warmly by the hand, and said:–
"Thank you, my boys; I knew if it could be done you would do it, though I could ill spare you for the job. Yesterday my reputation was in shreds; I am to be charged with inefficiency, and a public enquiry is to be held. But you two wolf cubs have re-established my character; I can never thank you enough. Now lead on, show us this evil-minded genius! Professor Verne here, who has come in the second Bristol, with Captain Hooper, is anxious to see him. He may redeem him yet from the error of his ways, and it is vital that this secret of his should be in other and better hands, else it will always be a danger to the public."