Chapter Seven.

Chapter Seven.The Peril of the Préfet.It was a mystery of the City of Paris which engaged the trio—a secret that has never been told, though many enterprising newspapers have tried to fathom it. Here it is related for the first time.On a gloomy mid-December morning the sensation-loving Parisians awoke to a new and eminently agreeable thrill. It was only last year and the occasion will be well remembered.There had been trouble enough in the City of Light, which for once at any rate belied its name. A series of strikes had half-paralysed the capital. Coal and light were almost unobtainable; the public lamps remained unlit; at night the City of Pleasure was plunged in profound gloom. There were misery and wretchedness in the haunts of squalor and poverty which flanked the wealthier districts where, at a price, all things agreeable were as usual obtainable.But the dumb underworld was becoming vocal!“À Mort L’Assassin!” At daybreak the startling legend suddenly, and without warning, revealed itself from a thousand vantage-points to the awakening city. In crude, blazing red it flared from the hoardings—sinister, ill-omened and, above all, full of significance. Parisians alone knew.There could be no possibility of doubt as to the individual referred to. It was, beyond question, Raoul Gregoire, the Prefect of Police, whose cold, ruthless vendetta against the dark, turbulent forces which flowed beneath the effervescent gaiety of the gay life of Paris, had earned for him the vindictive hatred of the criminal world, and had gained him his unenviable sobriquet of “Assassin!”For months Raoul Gregoire’s life had hung by a thread. Before his appointment he had been Prefect of Finisterre. A series of efforts to “remove” him had been defeated only in the nick of time. Twice he had been badly wounded. Once a bomb had wrecked his car just after he had left it. A less courageous man would have given up the unequal contest and sought a pretext for retirement—back to the quiet, sea-beaten coast of Finisterre.But Monsieur le Préfet was of a different mould. Stern and ruthless he was, but his courage was invincible. He remained calm and imperturbed—far more so, indeed, than many of his subordinates, who feared that the vengeance of the underworld might fall, by accident or design, upon themselves.“Gregoire has pushed things a bit too far,” was Yvette’s verdict, as she talked over with Dick Manton and Jules the latest and most blatant challenge to the forces of the law and order. “They mean to make certain this time. I’m sure of it?”“It certainly seems so,” Dick agreed. “But I wonder when and how it will be? That’s the point. Gregoire doesn’t show himself much in public now; he is practically living in the Prefecture, and surrounded by his agents he is far too well guarded for any attempt to be made there.”“They will have a good chance at the Sultan’s reception,” remarked Jules reflectively. “Monsieur le Préfet will have to be in the procession—he can hardly stay away even if he wanted to. It would show the white feather.”It was a day to which the gaiety-loving Parisians were looking forward with special interest. France’s age-long quarrel with the wild tribes of the Morocco hinterland had at length been amicably settled, and their Sultan, Ahmed Mohassib, a picturesque figure whose eccentric doings provided the gossip-loving boulevard with hundreds of good stories, was “doing” Paris as the guest of the Quai d’Orsay. It was expedient to show the barbaric ruler all the honour possible, and the following Friday was the day on which he was to pay a ceremonial visit to the Elysée. There was to be a great procession, and the Government had let the Press understand that a skilfully worked-up popular demonstration was desirable. The papers had responded nobly, and it was certain that “tout Paris” would be out to see the show.On the occasion, at any rate, Monsieur le Préfet must be greatly in evidence. He was responsible for public order and must ride in the procession whatever the risk to himself, a plain target, for once, for the bullet or bomb of the assassin.“To-day is Saturday,” Yvette remarked. “We really have not much time to spare between now and the twenty-second. I think I will make a few inquiries to-night. Jules had better go with me.”Dick’s heart sank. He knew what Yvette’s “inquiries” meant—hours, perhaps days, spent in the lowest quarters of Paris, surrounded by such horrible riff-raff that if her purpose were even suspected her life would be worth hardly a moment’s purchase.But he knew it was useless to remonstrate. Yvette had a perfect genius for “make-up,” and what was far more important, a perfect knowledge of the strangeargotwhich served the underworld of Paris. Jules was almost as clever as Yvette. But in this particular, of course, Dick was far behind. He could not hope to sustain his part in surroundings where a single wrong word would mean instant suspicion, and probably a swift and violent death for all three.“I wish I could go with you, Yvette,” he said wistfully, “but, alas! I know it is quite impossible.”Yvette had many friends in the lower quarters of the Montmartre. The proprietors of many of the lowbuvettesof the slums—places where one could get absinthe and drugs—were secretly in her pay, and so far as they were concerned she had no fears; the traffickers trusted her because they knew their secrets were safe. And by an ingenious code system which depended upon a mere vocal inflexion of certain common words she could reveal her identity, no matter what her disguise, to those who were in her secret.Darkness had fallen upon the city when two appalling specimens of the worst vagabondage of Paris—a man and a woman—crept silently through the market quarter towards one of Paris’s vilest haunts of villainy. They were such woebegone specimens of humanity as might have served for figures in some new “Inferno.” Bedraggled and unkempt, their hands and faces besmirched with grime, their clothes hanging in tatters, it would have been impossible for even the keenest eye to have detected the smart French girl and her usually debonair brother. So far as appearances went they were safe enough. The risk would come when they began to talk, and especially when they began to ask questions. Here a slip of the tongue might betray them. But the risk had to be taken.The Préfet himself, quite as anxious as Dick for the safety of Yvette and Jules, had taken precautions to protect them as far as possible. Actual escort, of course, was out of the question. Both Yvette and Jules carried revolvers, but in addition Jules had concealed in the ample pockets of his villainous clothing, a tiny but delicate wireless telegraph apparatus, powerful enough upon a dry battery to send out a wireless wave which would carry a thousand yards or so.This dainty little bit of electrical work was the invention of Dick Manton. Hardly larger than an old-fashioned watch it was operated by a hundred-volt battery which fitted into a specially made pocket, and the tiny transmitting key could be operated with one finger without arousing the slightest suspicion. Gregoire’s agents were dotted thickly around the unsavoury neighbourhood, each in touch, by means of the wireless, with every movement Yvette and Jules might make. Dick himself was not far away. How amply these precautions were justified the events of the night were to show.For hour after hour Yvette and Jules slunk from one haunt of vice to another, always keenly on the alert, frequently helped by one or another of Yvette’s disreputable friends, but yet unable to pick up the slightest vestige of the trail of which they were in such active search.At length their patient vigil culminated.Plunging deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the slums, they had penetrated at length to a tiny bar in the very lowest and most dangerous portion of the market section. The place was crowded with a mass of riff-raff at which even Yvette and Jules, accustomed as they were to such sights and sounds, could not repress a shudder.The proprietor, as it happened, was a beetle-browed Provençal whose one redeeming feature was gratitude to Yvette. His character was utterly bad and he had been mixed up in dozens of affairs more or less disreputable. A year or two before a serious charge of which he happened to be innocent had been brought against him. Yvette had managed, with considerable trouble, to lay the real culprit by the heels, and Jules Charetier, Apache though he was, would now go through fire and water to serve her. Yvette knew that in his house she was personally far safer than she would have been in many more pretentious establishments.Charetier raised his eyebrows when he caught the slight inflexion that instantly revealed to him Yvette’s identity. But he took no further notice beyond serving the drinks for which she had asked.A moment later, with a significant look, he quitted the room. Yvette, with a slang caution to look after her drink for a moment, slipped into the filthy street and round the corner to the side entrance of the house. Charetier was waiting for her, and a few moments later they were seated in the man’s dingy room on the floor above the bar.“Whatever are you doing here, mademoiselle?” Jules burst out impulsively. “This is no place, even for you!”“Listen, Charetier,” replied the girl rapidly. “Something is brewing for next Friday. Something serious! You have seen the posters. Imustfind out about it. Can you tell me where any of the ‘Seven’ are to-night?”Jules Charetier paled at the mention of “The Seven,” the powerful camarilla whose hidden influence was felt throughout the criminal underworld of Paris, London, and New York. The men who, practically without risk to themselves, were responsible for half the anarchist crimes of the three great capitals. Who they were, and their real names, not even Yvette knew. Never appearing directly themselves, they worked entirely through agents, and fighting against them, the police found themselves in a stifling fog of mystery. But, as Yvette knew, Charetier was deep in the councils of Continental Anarchism, and she knew, too, that in his hands the life of the ordinary police agent would have been worth nothing. Even for herself she was not very confident, but she had decided on a bold stroke, trusting Charetier with everything on the ground of the service she had done him.At first the man was obdurate.“Not even for you, my dear mademoiselle,” he said sullenly. “But, mademoiselle,” he went on earnestly, “we have been friends, therefore I implore you for your own sake to drop the matter and get away as speedily as possible. I cannot tell you anything.”Yvette’s revolver flashed out and in an instant she had the innkeeper covered.“Listen, Jules!” she cried imperiously. “My brother is below, and the house is surrounded. If I stamp upon the floor you will be raided instantly. And you know there are things here you would not like the police to see—they don’t know it, but you and I do! Suppose Demidoff learned that his papers had fallen into Raoul Gregoire’s hands—eh?”For a moment Yvette thought Charetier would have risked everything and sprung at her. But it was only for a moment. Then he collapsed. It was evident he feared Demidoff, the notorious Bolshevik agent, even more than he feared the police.“Very well, mademoiselle,” he replied, beads of perspiration standing out upon his wide white forehead and, despite his bravado, a hunted look crept into his eyes. “You might try the ‘Chat Mort.’ There will be a meeting there at three o’clock this morning. But again I implore you not to go. You cannot get in and if you did you would never come out alive.”“In which room do they meet?” was Yvette’s only reply.“The one at the back, looking out upon the old courtyard,” was Charetier’s reply. “I know no more than that.”“Thanks, Charetier,” said Yvette as she rose to go.“But, my dear mademoiselle,” implored the innkeeper, “you will not breathe—”Yvette cut him short.“That’s enough, Charetier,” she said in a freezing tone. “You surely know you are safe so far as I am concerned. You have done me a great service to-night and I shall not forget.” Five minutes later Yvette and Jules were hastening to the “Chat Mort,” a tavern of a gayer night-life than the one they had just quitted. It stood on the corner of two filthy slums in the Villette Quarter and at the rear was one of those tiny courtyards which so often go with old French houses—a place given over to the storage of odds and ends of flotsam and jetsam which are hardly worth the trouble of keeping, or even stealing. Only a rickety wooden fence divided it from the horrible alley deep in mud and refuse.They realised at once that to enter the house would be impossible. It was now long past two o’clock and the street was deserted; everything was silent as the grave, and from the closely shuttered “Chat Mort” there was not a glimmer of light. To all appearances the inhabitants were soundly asleep.But Yvette placed implicit trust in Charetier. She was sure that the mysterious meeting would be held at the appointed hour.They crept silently to the rear of the building, cautiously forced a way through the crazy fence, and a moment later were outside the window of the room which Charetier had indicated as the meeting-place.Crouching beneath the window they listened intently. They were safe enough except for some unforeseeable accident.There was no sound in the room; no glimmer of light through the shutters.Jules took from his pocket a tiny drill which speedily and silently bit a half-inch hole through the rotting woodwork of the window. Into this he thrust a plug which at the end bore an extremely delicate microphone receiver. With telephones at their ears they listened intently. Not a word would be uttered in the room without their knowledge. They could see nothing, but if anything was whispered they would certainly hear it.The minutes dragged slowly past until just before three o’clock a slight sound caught Jules’ attention. Some one had entered the room. A moment later came the rasp of a match being struck.Three o’clock boomed from a distant church dock. Footsteps echoed inside. The meeting was assembling!How they longed to see into that room of mystery! But that was impossible; they must rely upon the microphone alone for all the information they could obtain. Jules’ hand sought Yvette’s wrist, and in the Morse code he tapped out with his fingers—he dared not speak—a caution to listen acutely. Their only hope of identifying the criminals was by their voices.They could see nothing. They could not even tell how many people there were in the room. But the mutter of conversation in varying tones came dearly to their ears. It consisted mainly, as they expected, of fierce denunciation of Monsieur le Préfet of Police, whom they named “the Assassin.”Soon it became clear that the meeting had been called solely to settle the time and place of the attack; evidently the method had been decided upon earlier. Not a single word could the listeners catch of how the attack was to be carried out, whether by bomb, or bullet, or knife. Little did they guess the secret and deadly swiftness of the anarchists’ plan.For some time the discussion continued. Place after place was suggested and rejected upon one ground or another.Suddenly a hard masterful voice cut across the talking.“The Place d’Italie will be the best,” it declared. “Half the road is up there and the procession must go along the Avenue des Gobelins, close to the old villa. At that distance it will be impossible to miss. And there will be no noise and no fuss till the job is done.”The Old Villa! Jules knew the place well—an ancient building dating back to Louis XV, solidly built, and with all the quaint architectural features of the time. Quite unsuitable for any modern purposes, its vast apartments had by degrees been turned into a queer medley of rooms which served partly as flats and partly as offices to a heterogeneous mass of tenants, many of them of more than doubtful reputation. But how any attack on Raoul Gregoire could be projected from a building which it was certain would, on the day of the procession, be packed with sightseers, Jules was at a loss to conceive.That, however, remained to be discovered. For the moment the important thing was to capture the band of conspirators before they could make their escape.Jules withdrew, and adjusting his portable instrument—a marvel of compactness—placed his foot against an iron lamp-post to make an earth contact, and swiftly called the Prefecture of Police by Morse.The telephones were on his ears, and almost next second he heard the answering signal. Then he tapped out on his wireless transmitter an urgent message. A moment later he and Yvette had slipped clear of the place, and ran swiftly away. It was no part of their plan to risk recognition by any of the prisoners.At the head of the alley they waited for about six or seven minutes, when they met Roquet, the inspector of the Sûreté, who was in charge of the detectives who were rapidly converging on the inn. To him Jules briefly explained the situation.“We have them safely enough,” declared Roquet with a strong accent of the Midi. “Every approach has been guarded for the last hour, and no one has been allowed to pass in or out. You can now leave it to us, m’sieur.”Yvette and Jules were glad enough to sayau revoirand to hurry home for a much-needed rest. They could examine the prisoners at their leisure at the Prefecture and, if possible, identify them by their voices.But a startling surprise awaited the detectives.Their imperious knocking at the door of the frowsy Chat Mort at first brought no reply. A few minutes later the proprietor appeared, half-dressed and yawning drowsily as though just awakened from profound sleep. He was instantly arrested and handcuffed and the police poured into the house, revolvers drawn and ready for what they expected would be a furious combat with reckless and desperate men.To their utter amazement the house was empty!The room looking on to the courtyard, in which, according to Jules and Yvette, the conspirators had held their meeting, was in perfect order, apparently as it had been left the night before when the place was shut up. There was not a sign that anyone had been there for hours, not even a whiff of fresh tobacco smoke to suggest that the room had been recently occupied.Roquet was utterly mystified. He had, with very good reason, dreamed any escape impossible. Could Jules and Yvette have been mistaken?That, he felt, was out of the question. None the less the problem remained—where were the men? The house was speedily searched from attic to cellars, but in vain. There was not the smallest indication that any meeting had been held there!Roquet naturally felt intensely foolish, and his embarrassment was in no way lessened by the voluble protestations of the proprietor who demanded, with every show of righteous indignation, the reason of what he was pleased to term “an outrageous domiciliary visit.” There was, of course, no charge against him, and ultimately the baffled police were compelled to release him and retire, furious and puzzled at the utter failure of what had promised to be a brilliantcoup.Three days later the mystery was solved.From the cellar of the “Chat Mort” a narrow tunnel had been driven to an equally disreputable establishment a short distance away, and when the police had raided the house the plotters had swiftly bolted, leaving the innkeeper to drop behind them the stone slab in the cellar floor which covered the entrance to the tunnel.The position now was grave enough, and Yvette, Jules, and Dick discussed it at length with the Préfet and his lieutenants. To all entreaties that he should stay out of the procession the Chief resolutely turned a deaf ear, and they found it impossible to shake his resolve.Would the conspirators stick to the arrangement made at the “Chat Mort,” or would they, alarmed by the raid on the house, make an eleventh-hour change in their plans? That was the problem to be solved.Monsieur le Préfet was living on the edge of a volcano, and all his precautions would, he feared, be of no avail against them.Dick felt convinced they would carry out the plan arranged. It could not be imagined, he argued, that they would dream they had been overheard, and it was evident that the plan had been very carefully considered. Ultimately it was decided to relax none of the ordinary precautions, but to keep a specially close watch on the old villa in the Place d’Italie. Dick decided that, whatever the police did, he would make his own arrangements for that purpose. The sequel proved that it was well he did so.On the night prior to the procession the police carried out a very drasticcoup. Every known anarchist in Paris was arrested on some pretext or another and locked up. One by one they were briefly interrogated, while Jules and Yvette, concealed in the room behind a screen, tried to recognise any of the voices they had heard in the Chat Mort.Fifty or sixty prisoners had been interviewed before Jules and his sister standing behind a screen heard a voice they recognised. It was that of the man who had suggested the old villa in the Place d’Italie as a suitable base for the attempt on the Préfet. None of the others could be identified, and it was evident that the worst of the miscreants were still at large.The man whom they recognised proved to be Anton Kapok, a Hungarian of whom nothing was known except that he was in the habit of delivering violent harangues at Socialist and Anarchist meetings. But it was evident now that he was far more dangerous than the police had hitherto supposed.Closely interrogated, he denied everything. He knew nothing, he declared, of the “Chat Mort” and had not been mixed up in any conspiracy. His Anarchist proclivities, however, he boldly admitted and declared that the police knew all there was to know about him.To the police a search of Kapok’s room in Bellville revealed nothing more incriminating than a mass of Anarchist literature. But Dick made a discovery which they had overlooked.Close to the ceiling, immediately above the fireplace, was suspended on two hooks what looked like a rod from which pictures might be hung. The police had, in fact, so regarded it. Dick never knew what aroused his suspicions, but something impelled him to mount a ladder and fetch the rod down. Then he made a startling discovery.The supposed rod was nothing less than one of the wonderful blow-pipes used by some of the aboriginal tribes of South America and elsewhere to shoot their poisoned darts with which they either fought their enemies or killed dangerous animals. One of the darts, a tiny affair fashioned out of a sharp thorn with a tuft of cotton which just filled the tube, was actually in position.Instantly Dick’s mind travelled back to the strange deaths nearly a year before of two police officials who had been specially astute in the anti-anarchist campaign. Both had been found dead in lonely streets, and in each case the only mark on the body was a tiny scratch on the cheek which no one had dreamed of connecting with their inexplicable death. As Dick gazed at the deadly blow-pipe those scratches assumed a new and sinister significance.Carefully removing the dart, Dick hurried with it to the laboratory of Doctor Lepine, the well-known toxicologist.Doctor Lepine smiled.“Lucky you didn’t scratch yourself with it, Monsieur Manton,” he said in French. “It would mean almost instant death!”He listened gravely as Dick described the death of the two police agents. The doctor had been away in England at the time and had not even heard of the circumstances. But he hurried round to the Prefecture with Dick and carefully examined the documents which dealt with the two cases and described minutely the appearance of the bodies.“I have not the slightest doubt,” he declared, “that both men were killed with one of these darts. Every indication points to it. But as the darts were not found we must presume they were removed after death to avoid arousing suspicion. The victim would be paralysed almost instantly, and would fall and die almost on the spot where he was standing when the dart infected him. If there are any more of these accursed things in Paris it will, I fear, be a difficult matter to protect Monsieur le Préfet, for a favourable opportunity must come in the long run.”Dick hurried back to Kapok’s room, meaning to secure the blow-pipe. To his amazement the deadly weapon had disappeared! The police agents on duty outside the room asserted that no one had entered. But an open window told its tale; some one had crept along the ledge outside, entered the room and possessed himself of the weapon.Dick spent several anxious hours with the Préfet, Raoul Gregoire, and Inspector Roquet, arranging a plan of campaign.Next morning found him crouched in an upper window of a locked room in a house facing the old villa in the Place d’Italie. Close at hand lay a powerful pneumatic gun, a weapon perfected by Jules and almost as deadly and efficient as a rifle. He was haunted by a sickeningsenseof foreboding. Against every evidence of his reason and senses he felt convinced that it was from that old villa that danger threatened Gregoire.Yet he was bound to admit that his fears seemed absurd. The old house opposite was packed with sightseers, but there was a detective in every room close to the window. Even the garrets had been searched. It was obvious that they had not been entered for months.Yet Dick could not shake off the uncanny feeling which haunted him.At last the head of the procession came in sight, with the blare of military bands and a crash of cheers from the thousands of spectators lining the streets. But Dick had no eyes for the show. His whole attention was riveted on the building before him.The Sultan Ahmed Mohassib, of Morocco, in his whiteburnouswith many decorations, passed amid a hurricane of cheers. Glancing along the procession Dick saw the Préfet—a soldierly figure sitting erect in his car. In a few moments he would be abreast of the villa.Suddenly Dick’s eye was caught by a flash of light. Glancing quickly upward he saw to his amazement that the window of a garret facing him—a room which had already been searched—had suddenly opened. Only the chance reflection of the sun upon the glass had attracted his attention to the swift movement.As Raoul Gregoire passed, a dark rod, clutched in a hand which rested on the grimy windowsill, projected itself from the window. It wavered for a moment, then steadied itself and pointed downward.Instantly Dick fired.The hand disappeared with a jerk, while the rod slid forward and fell over to the ground!Wild with excitement Dick dashed down into the street. It was utterly impossible to force his way through the cheering crowd and he could only watch Monsieur le Préfet in a fever of anxiety.It was soon dear that Raoul Gregoire was untouched. Evidently the would-be assassin, if he had indeed dispatched one of the poisoned darts, had missed his aim.Five minutes later Dick and half a dozen detectives were in the garret of the old villa. But they were too late. The bird had flown, badly hurt to judge by the blood which stained the floor. But on the window-sill lay three little poisoned darts ready for use.A glance at the open skylight in the low roof was enough. In a moment they were out on the roof of the adjoining house.A few yards away was a rope ladder hooked over the parapet and dangling to the exterior fire-escape leading from the roof of a big drapery store only ten feet below. The miscreant himself had vanished.The would-be murderer, it was clear, must have climbed the fire-escape during the darkness of the previous night, and lain hidden on the roofs till the procession came along. After the garret had been searched, he had slipped down with impunity while every one was excitedly watching the procession.They never caught him. But when Gregoire returned to the Prefecture a poisoned dart was found sticking in the upholstery of his car, close to his head. Had it been a bare half-inch lower down it would, no doubt, have struck him with fatal result. Dick’s lightning shot had spoilt the miscreant’s aim and saved the Préfet’s life.The incident is one of the secrets of the life of official Paris and led to the Préfet’s resignation a month later, an occurrence which filled all France with dismay and was the cause of much conjecture and speculation.Raoul Gregoire has returned to the provinces and is now Préfet of the Department of the Alpes-Maritimes an appointment which he much prefers.

It was a mystery of the City of Paris which engaged the trio—a secret that has never been told, though many enterprising newspapers have tried to fathom it. Here it is related for the first time.

On a gloomy mid-December morning the sensation-loving Parisians awoke to a new and eminently agreeable thrill. It was only last year and the occasion will be well remembered.

There had been trouble enough in the City of Light, which for once at any rate belied its name. A series of strikes had half-paralysed the capital. Coal and light were almost unobtainable; the public lamps remained unlit; at night the City of Pleasure was plunged in profound gloom. There were misery and wretchedness in the haunts of squalor and poverty which flanked the wealthier districts where, at a price, all things agreeable were as usual obtainable.

But the dumb underworld was becoming vocal!

“À Mort L’Assassin!” At daybreak the startling legend suddenly, and without warning, revealed itself from a thousand vantage-points to the awakening city. In crude, blazing red it flared from the hoardings—sinister, ill-omened and, above all, full of significance. Parisians alone knew.

There could be no possibility of doubt as to the individual referred to. It was, beyond question, Raoul Gregoire, the Prefect of Police, whose cold, ruthless vendetta against the dark, turbulent forces which flowed beneath the effervescent gaiety of the gay life of Paris, had earned for him the vindictive hatred of the criminal world, and had gained him his unenviable sobriquet of “Assassin!”

For months Raoul Gregoire’s life had hung by a thread. Before his appointment he had been Prefect of Finisterre. A series of efforts to “remove” him had been defeated only in the nick of time. Twice he had been badly wounded. Once a bomb had wrecked his car just after he had left it. A less courageous man would have given up the unequal contest and sought a pretext for retirement—back to the quiet, sea-beaten coast of Finisterre.

But Monsieur le Préfet was of a different mould. Stern and ruthless he was, but his courage was invincible. He remained calm and imperturbed—far more so, indeed, than many of his subordinates, who feared that the vengeance of the underworld might fall, by accident or design, upon themselves.

“Gregoire has pushed things a bit too far,” was Yvette’s verdict, as she talked over with Dick Manton and Jules the latest and most blatant challenge to the forces of the law and order. “They mean to make certain this time. I’m sure of it?”

“It certainly seems so,” Dick agreed. “But I wonder when and how it will be? That’s the point. Gregoire doesn’t show himself much in public now; he is practically living in the Prefecture, and surrounded by his agents he is far too well guarded for any attempt to be made there.”

“They will have a good chance at the Sultan’s reception,” remarked Jules reflectively. “Monsieur le Préfet will have to be in the procession—he can hardly stay away even if he wanted to. It would show the white feather.”

It was a day to which the gaiety-loving Parisians were looking forward with special interest. France’s age-long quarrel with the wild tribes of the Morocco hinterland had at length been amicably settled, and their Sultan, Ahmed Mohassib, a picturesque figure whose eccentric doings provided the gossip-loving boulevard with hundreds of good stories, was “doing” Paris as the guest of the Quai d’Orsay. It was expedient to show the barbaric ruler all the honour possible, and the following Friday was the day on which he was to pay a ceremonial visit to the Elysée. There was to be a great procession, and the Government had let the Press understand that a skilfully worked-up popular demonstration was desirable. The papers had responded nobly, and it was certain that “tout Paris” would be out to see the show.

On the occasion, at any rate, Monsieur le Préfet must be greatly in evidence. He was responsible for public order and must ride in the procession whatever the risk to himself, a plain target, for once, for the bullet or bomb of the assassin.

“To-day is Saturday,” Yvette remarked. “We really have not much time to spare between now and the twenty-second. I think I will make a few inquiries to-night. Jules had better go with me.”

Dick’s heart sank. He knew what Yvette’s “inquiries” meant—hours, perhaps days, spent in the lowest quarters of Paris, surrounded by such horrible riff-raff that if her purpose were even suspected her life would be worth hardly a moment’s purchase.

But he knew it was useless to remonstrate. Yvette had a perfect genius for “make-up,” and what was far more important, a perfect knowledge of the strangeargotwhich served the underworld of Paris. Jules was almost as clever as Yvette. But in this particular, of course, Dick was far behind. He could not hope to sustain his part in surroundings where a single wrong word would mean instant suspicion, and probably a swift and violent death for all three.

“I wish I could go with you, Yvette,” he said wistfully, “but, alas! I know it is quite impossible.”

Yvette had many friends in the lower quarters of the Montmartre. The proprietors of many of the lowbuvettesof the slums—places where one could get absinthe and drugs—were secretly in her pay, and so far as they were concerned she had no fears; the traffickers trusted her because they knew their secrets were safe. And by an ingenious code system which depended upon a mere vocal inflexion of certain common words she could reveal her identity, no matter what her disguise, to those who were in her secret.

Darkness had fallen upon the city when two appalling specimens of the worst vagabondage of Paris—a man and a woman—crept silently through the market quarter towards one of Paris’s vilest haunts of villainy. They were such woebegone specimens of humanity as might have served for figures in some new “Inferno.” Bedraggled and unkempt, their hands and faces besmirched with grime, their clothes hanging in tatters, it would have been impossible for even the keenest eye to have detected the smart French girl and her usually debonair brother. So far as appearances went they were safe enough. The risk would come when they began to talk, and especially when they began to ask questions. Here a slip of the tongue might betray them. But the risk had to be taken.

The Préfet himself, quite as anxious as Dick for the safety of Yvette and Jules, had taken precautions to protect them as far as possible. Actual escort, of course, was out of the question. Both Yvette and Jules carried revolvers, but in addition Jules had concealed in the ample pockets of his villainous clothing, a tiny but delicate wireless telegraph apparatus, powerful enough upon a dry battery to send out a wireless wave which would carry a thousand yards or so.

This dainty little bit of electrical work was the invention of Dick Manton. Hardly larger than an old-fashioned watch it was operated by a hundred-volt battery which fitted into a specially made pocket, and the tiny transmitting key could be operated with one finger without arousing the slightest suspicion. Gregoire’s agents were dotted thickly around the unsavoury neighbourhood, each in touch, by means of the wireless, with every movement Yvette and Jules might make. Dick himself was not far away. How amply these precautions were justified the events of the night were to show.

For hour after hour Yvette and Jules slunk from one haunt of vice to another, always keenly on the alert, frequently helped by one or another of Yvette’s disreputable friends, but yet unable to pick up the slightest vestige of the trail of which they were in such active search.

At length their patient vigil culminated.

Plunging deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the slums, they had penetrated at length to a tiny bar in the very lowest and most dangerous portion of the market section. The place was crowded with a mass of riff-raff at which even Yvette and Jules, accustomed as they were to such sights and sounds, could not repress a shudder.

The proprietor, as it happened, was a beetle-browed Provençal whose one redeeming feature was gratitude to Yvette. His character was utterly bad and he had been mixed up in dozens of affairs more or less disreputable. A year or two before a serious charge of which he happened to be innocent had been brought against him. Yvette had managed, with considerable trouble, to lay the real culprit by the heels, and Jules Charetier, Apache though he was, would now go through fire and water to serve her. Yvette knew that in his house she was personally far safer than she would have been in many more pretentious establishments.

Charetier raised his eyebrows when he caught the slight inflexion that instantly revealed to him Yvette’s identity. But he took no further notice beyond serving the drinks for which she had asked.

A moment later, with a significant look, he quitted the room. Yvette, with a slang caution to look after her drink for a moment, slipped into the filthy street and round the corner to the side entrance of the house. Charetier was waiting for her, and a few moments later they were seated in the man’s dingy room on the floor above the bar.

“Whatever are you doing here, mademoiselle?” Jules burst out impulsively. “This is no place, even for you!”

“Listen, Charetier,” replied the girl rapidly. “Something is brewing for next Friday. Something serious! You have seen the posters. Imustfind out about it. Can you tell me where any of the ‘Seven’ are to-night?”

Jules Charetier paled at the mention of “The Seven,” the powerful camarilla whose hidden influence was felt throughout the criminal underworld of Paris, London, and New York. The men who, practically without risk to themselves, were responsible for half the anarchist crimes of the three great capitals. Who they were, and their real names, not even Yvette knew. Never appearing directly themselves, they worked entirely through agents, and fighting against them, the police found themselves in a stifling fog of mystery. But, as Yvette knew, Charetier was deep in the councils of Continental Anarchism, and she knew, too, that in his hands the life of the ordinary police agent would have been worth nothing. Even for herself she was not very confident, but she had decided on a bold stroke, trusting Charetier with everything on the ground of the service she had done him.

At first the man was obdurate.

“Not even for you, my dear mademoiselle,” he said sullenly. “But, mademoiselle,” he went on earnestly, “we have been friends, therefore I implore you for your own sake to drop the matter and get away as speedily as possible. I cannot tell you anything.”

Yvette’s revolver flashed out and in an instant she had the innkeeper covered.

“Listen, Jules!” she cried imperiously. “My brother is below, and the house is surrounded. If I stamp upon the floor you will be raided instantly. And you know there are things here you would not like the police to see—they don’t know it, but you and I do! Suppose Demidoff learned that his papers had fallen into Raoul Gregoire’s hands—eh?”

For a moment Yvette thought Charetier would have risked everything and sprung at her. But it was only for a moment. Then he collapsed. It was evident he feared Demidoff, the notorious Bolshevik agent, even more than he feared the police.

“Very well, mademoiselle,” he replied, beads of perspiration standing out upon his wide white forehead and, despite his bravado, a hunted look crept into his eyes. “You might try the ‘Chat Mort.’ There will be a meeting there at three o’clock this morning. But again I implore you not to go. You cannot get in and if you did you would never come out alive.”

“In which room do they meet?” was Yvette’s only reply.

“The one at the back, looking out upon the old courtyard,” was Charetier’s reply. “I know no more than that.”

“Thanks, Charetier,” said Yvette as she rose to go.

“But, my dear mademoiselle,” implored the innkeeper, “you will not breathe—”

Yvette cut him short.

“That’s enough, Charetier,” she said in a freezing tone. “You surely know you are safe so far as I am concerned. You have done me a great service to-night and I shall not forget.” Five minutes later Yvette and Jules were hastening to the “Chat Mort,” a tavern of a gayer night-life than the one they had just quitted. It stood on the corner of two filthy slums in the Villette Quarter and at the rear was one of those tiny courtyards which so often go with old French houses—a place given over to the storage of odds and ends of flotsam and jetsam which are hardly worth the trouble of keeping, or even stealing. Only a rickety wooden fence divided it from the horrible alley deep in mud and refuse.

They realised at once that to enter the house would be impossible. It was now long past two o’clock and the street was deserted; everything was silent as the grave, and from the closely shuttered “Chat Mort” there was not a glimmer of light. To all appearances the inhabitants were soundly asleep.

But Yvette placed implicit trust in Charetier. She was sure that the mysterious meeting would be held at the appointed hour.

They crept silently to the rear of the building, cautiously forced a way through the crazy fence, and a moment later were outside the window of the room which Charetier had indicated as the meeting-place.

Crouching beneath the window they listened intently. They were safe enough except for some unforeseeable accident.

There was no sound in the room; no glimmer of light through the shutters.

Jules took from his pocket a tiny drill which speedily and silently bit a half-inch hole through the rotting woodwork of the window. Into this he thrust a plug which at the end bore an extremely delicate microphone receiver. With telephones at their ears they listened intently. Not a word would be uttered in the room without their knowledge. They could see nothing, but if anything was whispered they would certainly hear it.

The minutes dragged slowly past until just before three o’clock a slight sound caught Jules’ attention. Some one had entered the room. A moment later came the rasp of a match being struck.

Three o’clock boomed from a distant church dock. Footsteps echoed inside. The meeting was assembling!

How they longed to see into that room of mystery! But that was impossible; they must rely upon the microphone alone for all the information they could obtain. Jules’ hand sought Yvette’s wrist, and in the Morse code he tapped out with his fingers—he dared not speak—a caution to listen acutely. Their only hope of identifying the criminals was by their voices.

They could see nothing. They could not even tell how many people there were in the room. But the mutter of conversation in varying tones came dearly to their ears. It consisted mainly, as they expected, of fierce denunciation of Monsieur le Préfet of Police, whom they named “the Assassin.”

Soon it became clear that the meeting had been called solely to settle the time and place of the attack; evidently the method had been decided upon earlier. Not a single word could the listeners catch of how the attack was to be carried out, whether by bomb, or bullet, or knife. Little did they guess the secret and deadly swiftness of the anarchists’ plan.

For some time the discussion continued. Place after place was suggested and rejected upon one ground or another.

Suddenly a hard masterful voice cut across the talking.

“The Place d’Italie will be the best,” it declared. “Half the road is up there and the procession must go along the Avenue des Gobelins, close to the old villa. At that distance it will be impossible to miss. And there will be no noise and no fuss till the job is done.”

The Old Villa! Jules knew the place well—an ancient building dating back to Louis XV, solidly built, and with all the quaint architectural features of the time. Quite unsuitable for any modern purposes, its vast apartments had by degrees been turned into a queer medley of rooms which served partly as flats and partly as offices to a heterogeneous mass of tenants, many of them of more than doubtful reputation. But how any attack on Raoul Gregoire could be projected from a building which it was certain would, on the day of the procession, be packed with sightseers, Jules was at a loss to conceive.

That, however, remained to be discovered. For the moment the important thing was to capture the band of conspirators before they could make their escape.

Jules withdrew, and adjusting his portable instrument—a marvel of compactness—placed his foot against an iron lamp-post to make an earth contact, and swiftly called the Prefecture of Police by Morse.

The telephones were on his ears, and almost next second he heard the answering signal. Then he tapped out on his wireless transmitter an urgent message. A moment later he and Yvette had slipped clear of the place, and ran swiftly away. It was no part of their plan to risk recognition by any of the prisoners.

At the head of the alley they waited for about six or seven minutes, when they met Roquet, the inspector of the Sûreté, who was in charge of the detectives who were rapidly converging on the inn. To him Jules briefly explained the situation.

“We have them safely enough,” declared Roquet with a strong accent of the Midi. “Every approach has been guarded for the last hour, and no one has been allowed to pass in or out. You can now leave it to us, m’sieur.”

Yvette and Jules were glad enough to sayau revoirand to hurry home for a much-needed rest. They could examine the prisoners at their leisure at the Prefecture and, if possible, identify them by their voices.

But a startling surprise awaited the detectives.

Their imperious knocking at the door of the frowsy Chat Mort at first brought no reply. A few minutes later the proprietor appeared, half-dressed and yawning drowsily as though just awakened from profound sleep. He was instantly arrested and handcuffed and the police poured into the house, revolvers drawn and ready for what they expected would be a furious combat with reckless and desperate men.

To their utter amazement the house was empty!

The room looking on to the courtyard, in which, according to Jules and Yvette, the conspirators had held their meeting, was in perfect order, apparently as it had been left the night before when the place was shut up. There was not a sign that anyone had been there for hours, not even a whiff of fresh tobacco smoke to suggest that the room had been recently occupied.

Roquet was utterly mystified. He had, with very good reason, dreamed any escape impossible. Could Jules and Yvette have been mistaken?

That, he felt, was out of the question. None the less the problem remained—where were the men? The house was speedily searched from attic to cellars, but in vain. There was not the smallest indication that any meeting had been held there!

Roquet naturally felt intensely foolish, and his embarrassment was in no way lessened by the voluble protestations of the proprietor who demanded, with every show of righteous indignation, the reason of what he was pleased to term “an outrageous domiciliary visit.” There was, of course, no charge against him, and ultimately the baffled police were compelled to release him and retire, furious and puzzled at the utter failure of what had promised to be a brilliantcoup.

Three days later the mystery was solved.

From the cellar of the “Chat Mort” a narrow tunnel had been driven to an equally disreputable establishment a short distance away, and when the police had raided the house the plotters had swiftly bolted, leaving the innkeeper to drop behind them the stone slab in the cellar floor which covered the entrance to the tunnel.

The position now was grave enough, and Yvette, Jules, and Dick discussed it at length with the Préfet and his lieutenants. To all entreaties that he should stay out of the procession the Chief resolutely turned a deaf ear, and they found it impossible to shake his resolve.

Would the conspirators stick to the arrangement made at the “Chat Mort,” or would they, alarmed by the raid on the house, make an eleventh-hour change in their plans? That was the problem to be solved.

Monsieur le Préfet was living on the edge of a volcano, and all his precautions would, he feared, be of no avail against them.

Dick felt convinced they would carry out the plan arranged. It could not be imagined, he argued, that they would dream they had been overheard, and it was evident that the plan had been very carefully considered. Ultimately it was decided to relax none of the ordinary precautions, but to keep a specially close watch on the old villa in the Place d’Italie. Dick decided that, whatever the police did, he would make his own arrangements for that purpose. The sequel proved that it was well he did so.

On the night prior to the procession the police carried out a very drasticcoup. Every known anarchist in Paris was arrested on some pretext or another and locked up. One by one they were briefly interrogated, while Jules and Yvette, concealed in the room behind a screen, tried to recognise any of the voices they had heard in the Chat Mort.

Fifty or sixty prisoners had been interviewed before Jules and his sister standing behind a screen heard a voice they recognised. It was that of the man who had suggested the old villa in the Place d’Italie as a suitable base for the attempt on the Préfet. None of the others could be identified, and it was evident that the worst of the miscreants were still at large.

The man whom they recognised proved to be Anton Kapok, a Hungarian of whom nothing was known except that he was in the habit of delivering violent harangues at Socialist and Anarchist meetings. But it was evident now that he was far more dangerous than the police had hitherto supposed.

Closely interrogated, he denied everything. He knew nothing, he declared, of the “Chat Mort” and had not been mixed up in any conspiracy. His Anarchist proclivities, however, he boldly admitted and declared that the police knew all there was to know about him.

To the police a search of Kapok’s room in Bellville revealed nothing more incriminating than a mass of Anarchist literature. But Dick made a discovery which they had overlooked.

Close to the ceiling, immediately above the fireplace, was suspended on two hooks what looked like a rod from which pictures might be hung. The police had, in fact, so regarded it. Dick never knew what aroused his suspicions, but something impelled him to mount a ladder and fetch the rod down. Then he made a startling discovery.

The supposed rod was nothing less than one of the wonderful blow-pipes used by some of the aboriginal tribes of South America and elsewhere to shoot their poisoned darts with which they either fought their enemies or killed dangerous animals. One of the darts, a tiny affair fashioned out of a sharp thorn with a tuft of cotton which just filled the tube, was actually in position.

Instantly Dick’s mind travelled back to the strange deaths nearly a year before of two police officials who had been specially astute in the anti-anarchist campaign. Both had been found dead in lonely streets, and in each case the only mark on the body was a tiny scratch on the cheek which no one had dreamed of connecting with their inexplicable death. As Dick gazed at the deadly blow-pipe those scratches assumed a new and sinister significance.

Carefully removing the dart, Dick hurried with it to the laboratory of Doctor Lepine, the well-known toxicologist.

Doctor Lepine smiled.

“Lucky you didn’t scratch yourself with it, Monsieur Manton,” he said in French. “It would mean almost instant death!”

He listened gravely as Dick described the death of the two police agents. The doctor had been away in England at the time and had not even heard of the circumstances. But he hurried round to the Prefecture with Dick and carefully examined the documents which dealt with the two cases and described minutely the appearance of the bodies.

“I have not the slightest doubt,” he declared, “that both men were killed with one of these darts. Every indication points to it. But as the darts were not found we must presume they were removed after death to avoid arousing suspicion. The victim would be paralysed almost instantly, and would fall and die almost on the spot where he was standing when the dart infected him. If there are any more of these accursed things in Paris it will, I fear, be a difficult matter to protect Monsieur le Préfet, for a favourable opportunity must come in the long run.”

Dick hurried back to Kapok’s room, meaning to secure the blow-pipe. To his amazement the deadly weapon had disappeared! The police agents on duty outside the room asserted that no one had entered. But an open window told its tale; some one had crept along the ledge outside, entered the room and possessed himself of the weapon.

Dick spent several anxious hours with the Préfet, Raoul Gregoire, and Inspector Roquet, arranging a plan of campaign.

Next morning found him crouched in an upper window of a locked room in a house facing the old villa in the Place d’Italie. Close at hand lay a powerful pneumatic gun, a weapon perfected by Jules and almost as deadly and efficient as a rifle. He was haunted by a sickeningsenseof foreboding. Against every evidence of his reason and senses he felt convinced that it was from that old villa that danger threatened Gregoire.

Yet he was bound to admit that his fears seemed absurd. The old house opposite was packed with sightseers, but there was a detective in every room close to the window. Even the garrets had been searched. It was obvious that they had not been entered for months.

Yet Dick could not shake off the uncanny feeling which haunted him.

At last the head of the procession came in sight, with the blare of military bands and a crash of cheers from the thousands of spectators lining the streets. But Dick had no eyes for the show. His whole attention was riveted on the building before him.

The Sultan Ahmed Mohassib, of Morocco, in his whiteburnouswith many decorations, passed amid a hurricane of cheers. Glancing along the procession Dick saw the Préfet—a soldierly figure sitting erect in his car. In a few moments he would be abreast of the villa.

Suddenly Dick’s eye was caught by a flash of light. Glancing quickly upward he saw to his amazement that the window of a garret facing him—a room which had already been searched—had suddenly opened. Only the chance reflection of the sun upon the glass had attracted his attention to the swift movement.

As Raoul Gregoire passed, a dark rod, clutched in a hand which rested on the grimy windowsill, projected itself from the window. It wavered for a moment, then steadied itself and pointed downward.

Instantly Dick fired.

The hand disappeared with a jerk, while the rod slid forward and fell over to the ground!

Wild with excitement Dick dashed down into the street. It was utterly impossible to force his way through the cheering crowd and he could only watch Monsieur le Préfet in a fever of anxiety.

It was soon dear that Raoul Gregoire was untouched. Evidently the would-be assassin, if he had indeed dispatched one of the poisoned darts, had missed his aim.

Five minutes later Dick and half a dozen detectives were in the garret of the old villa. But they were too late. The bird had flown, badly hurt to judge by the blood which stained the floor. But on the window-sill lay three little poisoned darts ready for use.

A glance at the open skylight in the low roof was enough. In a moment they were out on the roof of the adjoining house.

A few yards away was a rope ladder hooked over the parapet and dangling to the exterior fire-escape leading from the roof of a big drapery store only ten feet below. The miscreant himself had vanished.

The would-be murderer, it was clear, must have climbed the fire-escape during the darkness of the previous night, and lain hidden on the roofs till the procession came along. After the garret had been searched, he had slipped down with impunity while every one was excitedly watching the procession.

They never caught him. But when Gregoire returned to the Prefecture a poisoned dart was found sticking in the upholstery of his car, close to his head. Had it been a bare half-inch lower down it would, no doubt, have struck him with fatal result. Dick’s lightning shot had spoilt the miscreant’s aim and saved the Préfet’s life.

The incident is one of the secrets of the life of official Paris and led to the Préfet’s resignation a month later, an occurrence which filled all France with dismay and was the cause of much conjecture and speculation.

Raoul Gregoire has returned to the provinces and is now Préfet of the Department of the Alpes-Maritimes an appointment which he much prefers.

Chapter Eight.The Message for One Eye Only.The heat was stifling in the Gran Ancora at Barcelona, an obscure but grandiloquently named café of more than doubtful reputation. At dilapidated tables in the long apartment which served as a saloon groups of rough-looking men were drinking steadily. The fumes of strong tobacco poisoned the heavy atmosphere, flies swarmed over everything, the air was full of the reek of stale drink and unwashed humanity.Though it was but early evening the ill-omened place was already filling up. It was a notorious haunt of betting men and some of the worst characters of the town, frequented by desperadoes who were ready to undertake any deed of violence if it offered the promise of plunder. The swarms of anarchists, who are the curse of Spain, found there a ready welcome and congenial companionship.At a table at one end of the long room, sat a solitary individual who was reading the “Diario,” an anarchist journal devoted to the preaching of doctrine of the most revolutionary type. He spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him, though now and again curious glances were directed towards him. He took no notice of the hubbub around him, but went on calmly reading his paper and sipping slowly at a glass of the villainous wine which seemed to be the favourite beverage of the habitués of the house.The stranger was no other than Dick Manton. He had come to Barcelona on the trail of a gang of international crooks who had got away with a hundred thousand francs by a clever bank swindle in Paris. Had his identity been suspected his life in that haunt of depravity would not have been worth five minutes’ purchase.But he sat there undisturbed, apparently oblivious of what was going on around him, but in reality keenly on the alert and with one hand close to the butt of the heavy revolver which, as he well knew, he might be called upon to use at any moment in the deadliest earnest.Manton stiffened suddenly as his eye fell on the queer jumble of figures quoted above. They were buried away in a mass of advertisements and might well be overlooked by the casual reader. As Dick well knew, the “Diario” was used for all kinds of queer communications to all kinds of queer people, and he was attracted by the hint of mystery, a lure which he could never resist. The jumble of figures fascinated him. He had a strange feeling that it would be well worth while to try to decipher the weird cryptogram. But he knew better than to try to do so there. It was not healthy to try in public to pry into the secrets of the underworld of Barcelona.Dick Manton had had a strange and adventurous career. But as he gazed at the odd announcement, he had a premonition that he was on the edge of a mystery stranger than anything that he had so far encountered.Having read the queer cryptogram over and over again, Dick slipped the paper into his pocket.Presently he finished his wine and sauntered out, with an uneasy feeling that made him wonder whether he would reach the door without a bullet in his back. He got out in safety, however, and once clear of the doubtful neighbourhood of the café, made his way swiftly to his rooms at the “Hôtel Falcon.”It took several hours of hard work before he could obtain the key of the cipher. Then he realised with a gasp that it was in one of the simplest of British signal codes. The key read:At first Dick was completely mystified. The message conveyed nothing to him. Who were Mataza, Wilson, and Greening? Where was Chalkley? And, above all, why should such a message appear in an English code in an obscure paper published in Barcelona?It was the last point which worried him most.He felt instinctively that the message must conceal a meaning of which he was necessarily ignorant, and that it must be related to some affair which was pending in England. The more he thought about it the more uneasy he grew. He had the premonition which so often comes to the help of the detective, and at length, though he was almost ashamed of acting on such slender grounds, he decided to consult his chief. An hour later he was on his way to Paris, leaving the affair of the bank swindlers in the hands of a capable subordinate.Arriving in Paris he drove straight to Regnier’s private apartment, just off the Place de la Concorde.“Why, Manton, what brings you here?” asked Regnier in surprise. “Have you finished at Barcelona already?”For answer Dick laid the deciphered cryptogram before the Chief.“What do you make of that?” he asked abruptly.Regnier read the slip of paper with knitted brows.“Queer,” he commented. “Why should it be published in the ‘Diario’? I think it means mischief. Do you know Chalkley?”Dick shook his head.“No,” he replied, “but it sounds like an English name. And yet I have a feeling that I must have heard it somewhere. It sounds familiar, but I cannot place it. In the meantime I will run home and see if the English papers will tell me anything.”Dick found Jules and Yvette eager for news; he had telegraphed them that he was returning. Dick, Jules, and Yvette had become the most formidable combination in the French Secret Service. They always insisted on working together, they would accept no assistance except that which they chose themselves, and they would work only under the direction of Regnier, who was astute enough to realise their abilities. Yvette had been prevented by a slight illness from accompanying Dick to Barcelona, and both she and Jules, who had stayed with her, hated inaction. There had been a slump in international crime of the kind in which they specialised, and they were suffering fromennui. Anything which promised excitement and adventure was welcome.They listened eagerly while Dick told his story.“And now,” said Dick, half ruefully, as he concluded, “I don’t know whether we are on the track of something or whether I have been an idiot.”Yvette’s eyes were dancing with merriment.“Well, Dick,” she said, “you are certainly a pretty Englishman not to know one of the most famous places in your own country. Don’t you really know Chalkley?”“No,” replied Dick in bewilderment. “What do you know about it?”For answer Yvette rummaged among a pile of newspapers and produced a copy of the “Times” dated a week before.“There?” she said. “Read that.”“That” was a closely printed column which Dick proceeded to scan with attention. It was an article describing the wonderful deposits of pitchblende, the ore from which radium is extracted, which had been discovered in the Ural region in the neighbourhood of Zlatoust. An English combine had secured the monopoly of the working for fifteen years, and already a supply of radium valued at one hundred and fifty thousand pounds had been brought home by the famous Professor Fortescue for the use of British chemists and medical men.The discovery and acquisition of the monopoly by British interests, the article pointed out, had put England far ahead in the field of radium research, for she had now a big supply of the precious commodity at her disposal, while other nations were struggling along with the tiny quantities obtained from other and far less rich deposits. And, as was fully explained, it was not in medicine alone that the radium would be valuable; there was hardly a department of commerce, to say nothing of the arts of warfare, in which radium was not playing a considerable and constantly increasing part. So many new discoveries were being made by the band of experts, of whom Professor Fortescue was the acknowledged head, that it was beginning to be realised that radium in the future was likely to be as valuable as coal and oil had been in the past.But—and here was the fact of most significance to Dick—the radium was at Chalkley, Professor Fortescue’s home in the wilds of the Durham moors. He had taken it there on his return from Zlatoust for use in some critical experiments he had in hand before it was sent on to the young but growing school of Medicine at Durham University.They had at least approached the heart of the mystery! It was evident that some band of international desperadoes had designs on the precious radium. In spite of their enormous value, the two tubes containing the salt could easily be carried in a man’s pocket, and in Germany there would be a ready market for it among the great chemical firms, whose business consciences were sufficiently elastic to permit them to pay a big price and ask no awkward questions.Dick was reading the report carefully, when he suddenly gave a startled exclamation.“Why, look here,” he said, “the radium is only to be kept at Chalkley till the twenty-ninth. That explains the twenty-nine in the advertisement. And to-day is the twenty-seventh. If anything is to happen it must be at once or they will be too late. I must ring up Regnier.” Regnier was with them in half an hour. He was filled with excitement when he learned the facts which Yvette had discovered.“That,” he said, “puts an entirely new complexion on the affair. There can now be very little doubt about the matter. Clearly ‘lead’ means radium, and I think we can interpret ‘bull market’ as an intimation that it is a big prize. They are evidently well informed, whoever they are. We must tell London at once.”But before anything could be done a messenger for Regnier arrived post haste from the bureau of the Secret Service in the Quai d’Orsay with strange news.A big aeroplane, flying at a tremendous speed, had crossed the Franco-Spanish frontier near Bagnères de Luchon having apparently come right across the Pyrenees. It had ignored all the signals of the French frontier guards, whose aeroplanes had, in consequence, gone up in pursuit. Only one of them was fast enough to approach the stranger, and a fight had followed in which the French machine was crippled and forced to descend. Thereupon the strange machine had proceeded, flying in the direction of Bordeaux. Telephone messages had brought warning of its approach, and several attempts had been made to stop it, but without success. It had been reported, chased by French aeroplanes over Bordeaux, Nantes, and St. Malo, and at the latter place, just as dusk was falling, it had left the French coast and laid a course apparently for England. No further news of it had been received.Regnier looked grave.“Of course,” he said, “we have absolutely no reason to couple this machine with the advertisement in the ‘Diario,’ but I confess I am uneasy. There is at Chalkley radium worth a fortune, easily carried if anyone can get hold of it, and readily convertible into cash. What better device could be employed than a fast aeroplane which could get to Durham and away before anyone could hope to stop it? In any case, I am going to telephone Scotland Yard at once.”Half an hour later he was in communication with Inspector Cummings, the senior officer on duty at the Yard. To him he explained his suspicions, half afraid, with the Frenchman’s dread of ridicule, that the other would laugh at his story as an old woman’s tale.But Inspector Cummings was too experienced to be neglectful or sceptical of anything which could disturb Regnier, whom he well knew to be one of the most astute and level-headed of men. He took the matter seriously enough.“We have heard nothing yet,” he said. “But I will ’phone Durham at once and let you know in the course of an hour.”They waited anxiously for the reply. It came at last.“Cummings speaking,” said the voice on the ’phone. “I have spoken to Durham. They have heard nothing there, but they are unable to obtain any reply from Professor Fortescue. The telephone exchange reports his line out of order.“But here is a queer thing. A big aeroplane, evidently a foreigner, was reported this morning to have been seen over the Midlands flying north. There was a lot of mist about, and we have not been able to trace the machine yet. But it was certainly not one of ours.”“Well,” said Regnier, “will you keep me posted? I fancy you will have more news before long. In any case, you will have Durham warned?”“I have warned them myself,” replied Cummings, “and they are sending a couple of men out in a motor to make inquiries. You know Chalkley is about twenty-five miles from Durham and quite in the wilds. Professor Fortescue was, a couple of years ago, carrying out some experiments in which it was absolutely necessary he should be away from anything like traffic vibrations, and he chose this place for the purpose because it was remote from any railway or heavy traffic. He has stayed there ever since; he said it suited him to be ‘out of the world,’ as he called it.”Three hours later came still more startling news.The police officers who had gone from Durham to Chalkley had found that two armed men had made a raid on Professor Fortescue’s house. They had gagged the servants, who were found lying bound and helpless, and the Professor himself was found lying unconscious in his laboratory, having apparently been sandbagged. The raiders had leisurely helped themselves to food, and, having cut the telephone wires, had departed without any particular haste.But the great leaden safe, weighing several hundredweights, in which the precious radium had been brought to England, was found to have been broken open.The radium was gone!Nothing in the meantime had been heard of the strange aeroplane. But a few hours later an old shepherd walked into one of the local police-stations and told a queer story.His sheep the previous evening, he reported, had been disturbed by the passing of an aeroplane which, flying very low, had landed on the moors a few miles away from the Professor’s house. It had stayed there all night and, so far as he knew, was still there. He had been unable to approach it closely as it was separated from where he had been by a deep gorge and a stream which he could not cross without making a détour of several miles. He had seen two men near the machine who had walked away and disappeared in the folds of the moor.A strong party of police, Cummings added, had left at once for the spot where the aeroplane had been seen, taking the shepherd with them as guide. The place was remote from any road, and it would be an hour or two before they could get there. But the Air Ministry had been warned, and already aeroplanes were going up in the hope of locating the strange machine.“I must be in this,” said Dick. “Ask him if I can come over. I cannot, of course, go unasked.”“Of course,” said Cummings in reply to Regnier’s request. “We shall be only too glad to have Mr Manton. Miss Pasquet can come too, if she likes. But I’m afraid he won’t be able to get here in time. We shall either have got these fellows or lost them hopelessly in a few hours.”Dick turned to Jules.“Ring up the British Air Ministry,” he said, “and ask them if the strange machine gets off the ground to send us every movement as it is reported. Keep the telephone on all the time. I am going to try to cut these chaps off with the Mohawk. You will have to report to me by wireless every movement as it comes through. From what we have heard I fancy there are very few machines in England fast enough to catch those fellows if they once get started. Of course you will come, Yvette?”An hour later, Dick and Yvette, seated in the helicopter, were in full flight for England. Yvette was at the controls; Dick, in view of the work that might be before them, crouched over the tiny machine gun which peered from the bow of the machine.Professor Fortescue was in a terrible state of distress. He had been working in his laboratory, when a slight noise had caused him to turn round. A man, apparently a foreigner as the Professor judged from the hasty glance he got at him, was standing close behind him. Before the Professor could speak or move he received a violent blow on the head, and remembered nothing more till he recovered consciousness some time later under the care of the police.His chief concern was for the radium, and his distress at its loss was pitiful. It was a disaster from which he seemed unable to recover. But he appeared to derive a strange satisfaction from the danger in which the thieves would find themselves.“I don’t know how they will get it away,” he declared to the police inspector. “It was dangerous to stay very near the safe for long owing to the terrible power of the radium rays. If the thieves try to carry the tubes in their pocket they will not get very far. Surely they cannot realise the terrible risk they are running. However, that need not distress us; all we want is to get the radium back.”In the meantime a strong party of police had arrived from Durham at the Professor’s house, and, under the guidance of the old shepherd, started across the moors for the spot at which the strange aeroplane had been seen. It was slow going over rough and difficult ground which tested the endurance even of the younger men. The only unconcerned person was the old shepherd who trudged stolidly on at a pace with which they found it difficult to keep up.They had gone eight or nine miles before the old man spoke.“Not far now,” he said.A mile farther on he halted.“It’s just over yon hill,” he said, pointing to a small eminence a few hundred yards away. “You will see it as soon as you get at the top.”Breasting the rise, the police cautiously approached the ridge and glanced over. There in the valley, only five or six hundred yards away, was the aeroplane. Two men in air kit stood beside it.Scattering into a thin line the police rushed down the slope, every man with a revolver ready in his hand.But they were just too late. They had only gone a few yards when the men hastily took their places in the machine, there was a loud whirr as the engine broke into action, and while the policemen were still a hundred yards away, the strange machine rose into the air and was gone. A furious volley rattled out from the revolvers, but the range was too great and the breathless policemen had the mortification of seeing the machine disappear rapidly to the south.Immediately the fastest runner of the party started at a trot for the Professor’s house to send out a warning. But it was not necessary. The aerodromes all over the kingdom had been warned by wireless from the Air Ministry, and already a host of machines were scouting in every direction.The stranger, flying due south, had reached Bradford before he was signalled. Instantly there was a rush of aeroplanes from all parts of the Midlands to cut him off. But he slipped through the cordon, flying very high and at a tremendous speed. Outside Birmingham a fast scout picked him up and reported by wireless, and from the huge aerodrome at Cheltenham over twenty fighting planes leaped into the air to stop the career of the marauder.There was now no chance, at least, of his getting away unobserved. He was under constant observation, alike from the air and the ground, and every moment wireless messages were pouring into the Air Ministry reporting his progress. But to catch him proved impossible. Only two of the pursuing machines were fast enough to keep up with the stranger, and even they could not overtake him. So the headlong flight went on, drawing ever nearer to the southern coast. If the stranger could get out to sea all chance of stopping him would vanish.But, unknown to the furious British airmen, help was close at hand.Warned by Jules’ wireless messages of the direction the strange machine was taking, Yvette had steered a course to intercept him somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bournemouth, and the Mohawk, with its wireless chattering incessantly, was now swinging lazily at half speed in a big circle between Salisbury and the Hampshire watering-place.“Over Salisbury now,” called Yvette to Dick, her voice ringing out clearly above the muffled hum of the propeller, the only sound which came from the helicopter, with its beautifully silenced engines.A few minutes later Dick pointed to the north. “Here he comes,” he shouted.Far away were three tiny specks in the sky.Through his glasses Dick could make them out clearly enough. The leader was a machine of a type he had never seen before; a mile behind it were a couple of planes which he at once recognised as the Bristol fighters which had been so familiar to him in France.The pace of the three machines was terrific. It was clear the English airmen were going all out in a desperate effort to catch the stranger before he reached the water, and they were expending every ounce of energy. But a moment or two later it was quite clear they were falling behind. Presently a puff of smoke from the leader signalled “petrol exhausted,” and he dropped in a long slant to the ground.The second machine, however, held on grimly, though slowly losing ground. Evidently his predicament was the same as that of his colleague, and a moment later he, too, dipped earthward and was out of the fight.Only the Mohawk stood between the stranger and safety!But it was a Mohawk very different from the comparatively crude machine of a year before, wonderful though that was. Dick and Jules had worked out a revolutionary improvement in the lifting screws, with the result that a small supplementary engine, using comparatively little power, was now sufficient to keep the machine suspended in the air. As a result the full power of the big twin driving engines was now available for propulsion, and the speed of the Mohawk, when pushed to the limit, was something of which Dick had hardly dreamed in his earlier days. So far as he knew the Mohawk was easily the fastest craft in existence.But what of the stranger? Had the men of the mystery craft a still greater secret up their sleeve? That they had something big Dick could plainly see by the way the fastest craft of the British Air Service, the best in the world, had dropped astern of the stranger. Was the Mohawk fast enough to beat the pirate? They would soon know.As the big machine came on, Yvette set the elevating propellers of the Mohawk to work, and the helicopter shot upward. The stranger saw the manoeuvre and at once followed suit. But here he was at a disadvantage. Yvette’s object, of course, was to get above him. He would then be at their mercy, for he could not fire vertically, while the gun of the Mohawk was specially constructed so as to be able to fire downwards through a trap which opened in the flooring. If they could get what in the air corresponded to the “weather gauge” at sea, they would have the marauder at their mercy if the Mohawk had speed enough to hold him. Could they do it?Plainly the fugitive saw his danger. As Yvette shot upward he must have realised that in speed of climbing he was no match for his antagonist. He decided to trust to his heels.Yvette, climbing rapidly, had got a couple of thousand feet above the stranger and was heading to meet him. They were now twelve thousand feet in the air.Suddenly, with a tremendous nose dive, the foreign aeroplane slipped below them. The manoeuvre was so smartly carried out that Yvette was completely taken by surprise, and before she could recover herself the chance of bringing the stranger to battle had gone. He had passed five thousand feet below them, and the issue now depended upon speed and endurance.With a cry of disappointment, Yvette swung the Mohawk round in pursuit. Their quarry, by his daring manoeuvre, had gained a couple of miles before she could turn, and was fast disappearing towards the sea.Dick shook his head. He had seen the speed of which the fugitive was capable, and he had the gravest doubts whether the Mohawk could equal it.Waiting for the strange aeroplane, Yvette had set the Mohawk to a comparatively slow pace. She had misjudged the distance and her error had enabled the raider to get a more than useful—possibly a decisive—lead.But even as she swung round she had pressed the accelerator and the Mohawk quivered as the big twin engines began to work up to their maximum. Watching keenly, Dick saw the apparent rush away of the foreigner slacken and finally stop. They were at least holding their own. He signalled Yvette for more speed. She shook her head.Dick was in despair. The pace at which they were going was not enough. He thought it was their best. But he had not calculated on Yvette’s resourcefulness.The French girl had swiftly made up her mind. She knew they had plenty of petrol for several hours’ flight. They were holding their own already in the matter of speed, and the Mohawk, though Dick did not know it, had still some knots in reserve. Yvette would not jeopardise the engines by instantly pushing them to the limit.But they were “warming up” under her skilful handling. They were two miles behind as they passed over Bournemouth and started the long flight to the French coast which the stranger was seeking.Half an hour slipped by and Dick suddenly realised that the Mohawk was gaining, slowly, it was true, but unmistakably. He looked inquiringly at Yvette, who nodded and smiled.“All right, Dick,” she shouted. “We can get them any time we want.”Dick realised her plan. His own thought, as a fighting man, would have been to close at once and have it out. But Yvette had the radium in mind. If they smashed the stranger over the sea the priceless radium would inevitably be lost.With the Mohawk gradually gaining, the chase drew near to the French coast. Cherbourg loomed ahead of them, drew near, and disappeared beneath them. They were over France.Instantly Yvette began to coax the Mohawk to do its best. Splendidly the engines responded, the plane shot forward at a pace which surprised Dick, and a few minutes later they were directly above the fugitive. The battle was all but won. In vain their quarry sought, by diving and twisting, to shake them off. His position was hopeless.Seeing a good landing-place ahead Dick fired a couple of shots as a signal. They could see the terrified face of the passenger in the plane below gazing upward at the strange shape of the Mohawk above them.Then the signal of surrender came, and the fugitive dipped earthward. A couple of minutes later it came to land, and the two occupants stood holding up their hands while the Mohawk came gently to earth fifty yards away, dropping vertically from the sky in a fashion which caused the pilot of the foreign machine the wildest astonishment.The radium was saved! But it enacted a fearful revenge. The unfortunate passenger, who they found out later was a well-known Spanish anarchist, had imprudently placed the two tubes in his pocket, apparently ignorant of their terrible power. Even in the short time he had them in his possession he was so terribly burned that he died a couple of days later in spite of the efforts made to save him, while the pilot, who had, of course, been near enough to the tubes to get some of the effects, was also so seriously injured that for weeks his life hung in the balance. It was found impossible to remove the tubes to England until Professor Fortescue, overjoyed at the good news, came bringing the leaden safe into which the precious tubes were placed.The sequel came a week later. Not even the British War Office could ignore the fact that the Mohawk, single-handed, had achieved a feat at which the British Air Force had signally failed. A highly placed official sought Dick out. The result was that the plans of the Mohawk were sold jointly to England and France at the price of one hundred thousand pounds.And Regnier lost his “star” combination. Dick had no longer before his eyes the fear that had haunted him for so long that in marrying Yvette he would be condemning her to a life of comparative poverty. And so the companionship born amid the stress and tumult of war came at last to perfect fruition in the marriage between the two lovers which took place in Paris just three months after their last air adventure.The End.

The heat was stifling in the Gran Ancora at Barcelona, an obscure but grandiloquently named café of more than doubtful reputation. At dilapidated tables in the long apartment which served as a saloon groups of rough-looking men were drinking steadily. The fumes of strong tobacco poisoned the heavy atmosphere, flies swarmed over everything, the air was full of the reek of stale drink and unwashed humanity.

Though it was but early evening the ill-omened place was already filling up. It was a notorious haunt of betting men and some of the worst characters of the town, frequented by desperadoes who were ready to undertake any deed of violence if it offered the promise of plunder. The swarms of anarchists, who are the curse of Spain, found there a ready welcome and congenial companionship.

At a table at one end of the long room, sat a solitary individual who was reading the “Diario,” an anarchist journal devoted to the preaching of doctrine of the most revolutionary type. He spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him, though now and again curious glances were directed towards him. He took no notice of the hubbub around him, but went on calmly reading his paper and sipping slowly at a glass of the villainous wine which seemed to be the favourite beverage of the habitués of the house.

The stranger was no other than Dick Manton. He had come to Barcelona on the trail of a gang of international crooks who had got away with a hundred thousand francs by a clever bank swindle in Paris. Had his identity been suspected his life in that haunt of depravity would not have been worth five minutes’ purchase.

But he sat there undisturbed, apparently oblivious of what was going on around him, but in reality keenly on the alert and with one hand close to the butt of the heavy revolver which, as he well knew, he might be called upon to use at any moment in the deadliest earnest.

Manton stiffened suddenly as his eye fell on the queer jumble of figures quoted above. They were buried away in a mass of advertisements and might well be overlooked by the casual reader. As Dick well knew, the “Diario” was used for all kinds of queer communications to all kinds of queer people, and he was attracted by the hint of mystery, a lure which he could never resist. The jumble of figures fascinated him. He had a strange feeling that it would be well worth while to try to decipher the weird cryptogram. But he knew better than to try to do so there. It was not healthy to try in public to pry into the secrets of the underworld of Barcelona.

Dick Manton had had a strange and adventurous career. But as he gazed at the odd announcement, he had a premonition that he was on the edge of a mystery stranger than anything that he had so far encountered.

Having read the queer cryptogram over and over again, Dick slipped the paper into his pocket.

Presently he finished his wine and sauntered out, with an uneasy feeling that made him wonder whether he would reach the door without a bullet in his back. He got out in safety, however, and once clear of the doubtful neighbourhood of the café, made his way swiftly to his rooms at the “Hôtel Falcon.”

It took several hours of hard work before he could obtain the key of the cipher. Then he realised with a gasp that it was in one of the simplest of British signal codes. The key read:

At first Dick was completely mystified. The message conveyed nothing to him. Who were Mataza, Wilson, and Greening? Where was Chalkley? And, above all, why should such a message appear in an English code in an obscure paper published in Barcelona?

It was the last point which worried him most.

He felt instinctively that the message must conceal a meaning of which he was necessarily ignorant, and that it must be related to some affair which was pending in England. The more he thought about it the more uneasy he grew. He had the premonition which so often comes to the help of the detective, and at length, though he was almost ashamed of acting on such slender grounds, he decided to consult his chief. An hour later he was on his way to Paris, leaving the affair of the bank swindlers in the hands of a capable subordinate.

Arriving in Paris he drove straight to Regnier’s private apartment, just off the Place de la Concorde.

“Why, Manton, what brings you here?” asked Regnier in surprise. “Have you finished at Barcelona already?”

For answer Dick laid the deciphered cryptogram before the Chief.

“What do you make of that?” he asked abruptly.

Regnier read the slip of paper with knitted brows.

“Queer,” he commented. “Why should it be published in the ‘Diario’? I think it means mischief. Do you know Chalkley?”

Dick shook his head.

“No,” he replied, “but it sounds like an English name. And yet I have a feeling that I must have heard it somewhere. It sounds familiar, but I cannot place it. In the meantime I will run home and see if the English papers will tell me anything.”

Dick found Jules and Yvette eager for news; he had telegraphed them that he was returning. Dick, Jules, and Yvette had become the most formidable combination in the French Secret Service. They always insisted on working together, they would accept no assistance except that which they chose themselves, and they would work only under the direction of Regnier, who was astute enough to realise their abilities. Yvette had been prevented by a slight illness from accompanying Dick to Barcelona, and both she and Jules, who had stayed with her, hated inaction. There had been a slump in international crime of the kind in which they specialised, and they were suffering fromennui. Anything which promised excitement and adventure was welcome.

They listened eagerly while Dick told his story.

“And now,” said Dick, half ruefully, as he concluded, “I don’t know whether we are on the track of something or whether I have been an idiot.”

Yvette’s eyes were dancing with merriment.

“Well, Dick,” she said, “you are certainly a pretty Englishman not to know one of the most famous places in your own country. Don’t you really know Chalkley?”

“No,” replied Dick in bewilderment. “What do you know about it?”

For answer Yvette rummaged among a pile of newspapers and produced a copy of the “Times” dated a week before.

“There?” she said. “Read that.”

“That” was a closely printed column which Dick proceeded to scan with attention. It was an article describing the wonderful deposits of pitchblende, the ore from which radium is extracted, which had been discovered in the Ural region in the neighbourhood of Zlatoust. An English combine had secured the monopoly of the working for fifteen years, and already a supply of radium valued at one hundred and fifty thousand pounds had been brought home by the famous Professor Fortescue for the use of British chemists and medical men.

The discovery and acquisition of the monopoly by British interests, the article pointed out, had put England far ahead in the field of radium research, for she had now a big supply of the precious commodity at her disposal, while other nations were struggling along with the tiny quantities obtained from other and far less rich deposits. And, as was fully explained, it was not in medicine alone that the radium would be valuable; there was hardly a department of commerce, to say nothing of the arts of warfare, in which radium was not playing a considerable and constantly increasing part. So many new discoveries were being made by the band of experts, of whom Professor Fortescue was the acknowledged head, that it was beginning to be realised that radium in the future was likely to be as valuable as coal and oil had been in the past.

But—and here was the fact of most significance to Dick—the radium was at Chalkley, Professor Fortescue’s home in the wilds of the Durham moors. He had taken it there on his return from Zlatoust for use in some critical experiments he had in hand before it was sent on to the young but growing school of Medicine at Durham University.

They had at least approached the heart of the mystery! It was evident that some band of international desperadoes had designs on the precious radium. In spite of their enormous value, the two tubes containing the salt could easily be carried in a man’s pocket, and in Germany there would be a ready market for it among the great chemical firms, whose business consciences were sufficiently elastic to permit them to pay a big price and ask no awkward questions.

Dick was reading the report carefully, when he suddenly gave a startled exclamation.

“Why, look here,” he said, “the radium is only to be kept at Chalkley till the twenty-ninth. That explains the twenty-nine in the advertisement. And to-day is the twenty-seventh. If anything is to happen it must be at once or they will be too late. I must ring up Regnier.” Regnier was with them in half an hour. He was filled with excitement when he learned the facts which Yvette had discovered.

“That,” he said, “puts an entirely new complexion on the affair. There can now be very little doubt about the matter. Clearly ‘lead’ means radium, and I think we can interpret ‘bull market’ as an intimation that it is a big prize. They are evidently well informed, whoever they are. We must tell London at once.”

But before anything could be done a messenger for Regnier arrived post haste from the bureau of the Secret Service in the Quai d’Orsay with strange news.

A big aeroplane, flying at a tremendous speed, had crossed the Franco-Spanish frontier near Bagnères de Luchon having apparently come right across the Pyrenees. It had ignored all the signals of the French frontier guards, whose aeroplanes had, in consequence, gone up in pursuit. Only one of them was fast enough to approach the stranger, and a fight had followed in which the French machine was crippled and forced to descend. Thereupon the strange machine had proceeded, flying in the direction of Bordeaux. Telephone messages had brought warning of its approach, and several attempts had been made to stop it, but without success. It had been reported, chased by French aeroplanes over Bordeaux, Nantes, and St. Malo, and at the latter place, just as dusk was falling, it had left the French coast and laid a course apparently for England. No further news of it had been received.

Regnier looked grave.

“Of course,” he said, “we have absolutely no reason to couple this machine with the advertisement in the ‘Diario,’ but I confess I am uneasy. There is at Chalkley radium worth a fortune, easily carried if anyone can get hold of it, and readily convertible into cash. What better device could be employed than a fast aeroplane which could get to Durham and away before anyone could hope to stop it? In any case, I am going to telephone Scotland Yard at once.”

Half an hour later he was in communication with Inspector Cummings, the senior officer on duty at the Yard. To him he explained his suspicions, half afraid, with the Frenchman’s dread of ridicule, that the other would laugh at his story as an old woman’s tale.

But Inspector Cummings was too experienced to be neglectful or sceptical of anything which could disturb Regnier, whom he well knew to be one of the most astute and level-headed of men. He took the matter seriously enough.

“We have heard nothing yet,” he said. “But I will ’phone Durham at once and let you know in the course of an hour.”

They waited anxiously for the reply. It came at last.

“Cummings speaking,” said the voice on the ’phone. “I have spoken to Durham. They have heard nothing there, but they are unable to obtain any reply from Professor Fortescue. The telephone exchange reports his line out of order.

“But here is a queer thing. A big aeroplane, evidently a foreigner, was reported this morning to have been seen over the Midlands flying north. There was a lot of mist about, and we have not been able to trace the machine yet. But it was certainly not one of ours.”

“Well,” said Regnier, “will you keep me posted? I fancy you will have more news before long. In any case, you will have Durham warned?”

“I have warned them myself,” replied Cummings, “and they are sending a couple of men out in a motor to make inquiries. You know Chalkley is about twenty-five miles from Durham and quite in the wilds. Professor Fortescue was, a couple of years ago, carrying out some experiments in which it was absolutely necessary he should be away from anything like traffic vibrations, and he chose this place for the purpose because it was remote from any railway or heavy traffic. He has stayed there ever since; he said it suited him to be ‘out of the world,’ as he called it.”

Three hours later came still more startling news.

The police officers who had gone from Durham to Chalkley had found that two armed men had made a raid on Professor Fortescue’s house. They had gagged the servants, who were found lying bound and helpless, and the Professor himself was found lying unconscious in his laboratory, having apparently been sandbagged. The raiders had leisurely helped themselves to food, and, having cut the telephone wires, had departed without any particular haste.

But the great leaden safe, weighing several hundredweights, in which the precious radium had been brought to England, was found to have been broken open.The radium was gone!

Nothing in the meantime had been heard of the strange aeroplane. But a few hours later an old shepherd walked into one of the local police-stations and told a queer story.

His sheep the previous evening, he reported, had been disturbed by the passing of an aeroplane which, flying very low, had landed on the moors a few miles away from the Professor’s house. It had stayed there all night and, so far as he knew, was still there. He had been unable to approach it closely as it was separated from where he had been by a deep gorge and a stream which he could not cross without making a détour of several miles. He had seen two men near the machine who had walked away and disappeared in the folds of the moor.

A strong party of police, Cummings added, had left at once for the spot where the aeroplane had been seen, taking the shepherd with them as guide. The place was remote from any road, and it would be an hour or two before they could get there. But the Air Ministry had been warned, and already aeroplanes were going up in the hope of locating the strange machine.

“I must be in this,” said Dick. “Ask him if I can come over. I cannot, of course, go unasked.”

“Of course,” said Cummings in reply to Regnier’s request. “We shall be only too glad to have Mr Manton. Miss Pasquet can come too, if she likes. But I’m afraid he won’t be able to get here in time. We shall either have got these fellows or lost them hopelessly in a few hours.”

Dick turned to Jules.

“Ring up the British Air Ministry,” he said, “and ask them if the strange machine gets off the ground to send us every movement as it is reported. Keep the telephone on all the time. I am going to try to cut these chaps off with the Mohawk. You will have to report to me by wireless every movement as it comes through. From what we have heard I fancy there are very few machines in England fast enough to catch those fellows if they once get started. Of course you will come, Yvette?”

An hour later, Dick and Yvette, seated in the helicopter, were in full flight for England. Yvette was at the controls; Dick, in view of the work that might be before them, crouched over the tiny machine gun which peered from the bow of the machine.

Professor Fortescue was in a terrible state of distress. He had been working in his laboratory, when a slight noise had caused him to turn round. A man, apparently a foreigner as the Professor judged from the hasty glance he got at him, was standing close behind him. Before the Professor could speak or move he received a violent blow on the head, and remembered nothing more till he recovered consciousness some time later under the care of the police.

His chief concern was for the radium, and his distress at its loss was pitiful. It was a disaster from which he seemed unable to recover. But he appeared to derive a strange satisfaction from the danger in which the thieves would find themselves.

“I don’t know how they will get it away,” he declared to the police inspector. “It was dangerous to stay very near the safe for long owing to the terrible power of the radium rays. If the thieves try to carry the tubes in their pocket they will not get very far. Surely they cannot realise the terrible risk they are running. However, that need not distress us; all we want is to get the radium back.”

In the meantime a strong party of police had arrived from Durham at the Professor’s house, and, under the guidance of the old shepherd, started across the moors for the spot at which the strange aeroplane had been seen. It was slow going over rough and difficult ground which tested the endurance even of the younger men. The only unconcerned person was the old shepherd who trudged stolidly on at a pace with which they found it difficult to keep up.

They had gone eight or nine miles before the old man spoke.

“Not far now,” he said.

A mile farther on he halted.

“It’s just over yon hill,” he said, pointing to a small eminence a few hundred yards away. “You will see it as soon as you get at the top.”

Breasting the rise, the police cautiously approached the ridge and glanced over. There in the valley, only five or six hundred yards away, was the aeroplane. Two men in air kit stood beside it.

Scattering into a thin line the police rushed down the slope, every man with a revolver ready in his hand.

But they were just too late. They had only gone a few yards when the men hastily took their places in the machine, there was a loud whirr as the engine broke into action, and while the policemen were still a hundred yards away, the strange machine rose into the air and was gone. A furious volley rattled out from the revolvers, but the range was too great and the breathless policemen had the mortification of seeing the machine disappear rapidly to the south.

Immediately the fastest runner of the party started at a trot for the Professor’s house to send out a warning. But it was not necessary. The aerodromes all over the kingdom had been warned by wireless from the Air Ministry, and already a host of machines were scouting in every direction.

The stranger, flying due south, had reached Bradford before he was signalled. Instantly there was a rush of aeroplanes from all parts of the Midlands to cut him off. But he slipped through the cordon, flying very high and at a tremendous speed. Outside Birmingham a fast scout picked him up and reported by wireless, and from the huge aerodrome at Cheltenham over twenty fighting planes leaped into the air to stop the career of the marauder.

There was now no chance, at least, of his getting away unobserved. He was under constant observation, alike from the air and the ground, and every moment wireless messages were pouring into the Air Ministry reporting his progress. But to catch him proved impossible. Only two of the pursuing machines were fast enough to keep up with the stranger, and even they could not overtake him. So the headlong flight went on, drawing ever nearer to the southern coast. If the stranger could get out to sea all chance of stopping him would vanish.

But, unknown to the furious British airmen, help was close at hand.

Warned by Jules’ wireless messages of the direction the strange machine was taking, Yvette had steered a course to intercept him somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bournemouth, and the Mohawk, with its wireless chattering incessantly, was now swinging lazily at half speed in a big circle between Salisbury and the Hampshire watering-place.

“Over Salisbury now,” called Yvette to Dick, her voice ringing out clearly above the muffled hum of the propeller, the only sound which came from the helicopter, with its beautifully silenced engines.

A few minutes later Dick pointed to the north. “Here he comes,” he shouted.

Far away were three tiny specks in the sky.

Through his glasses Dick could make them out clearly enough. The leader was a machine of a type he had never seen before; a mile behind it were a couple of planes which he at once recognised as the Bristol fighters which had been so familiar to him in France.

The pace of the three machines was terrific. It was clear the English airmen were going all out in a desperate effort to catch the stranger before he reached the water, and they were expending every ounce of energy. But a moment or two later it was quite clear they were falling behind. Presently a puff of smoke from the leader signalled “petrol exhausted,” and he dropped in a long slant to the ground.

The second machine, however, held on grimly, though slowly losing ground. Evidently his predicament was the same as that of his colleague, and a moment later he, too, dipped earthward and was out of the fight.

Only the Mohawk stood between the stranger and safety!

But it was a Mohawk very different from the comparatively crude machine of a year before, wonderful though that was. Dick and Jules had worked out a revolutionary improvement in the lifting screws, with the result that a small supplementary engine, using comparatively little power, was now sufficient to keep the machine suspended in the air. As a result the full power of the big twin driving engines was now available for propulsion, and the speed of the Mohawk, when pushed to the limit, was something of which Dick had hardly dreamed in his earlier days. So far as he knew the Mohawk was easily the fastest craft in existence.

But what of the stranger? Had the men of the mystery craft a still greater secret up their sleeve? That they had something big Dick could plainly see by the way the fastest craft of the British Air Service, the best in the world, had dropped astern of the stranger. Was the Mohawk fast enough to beat the pirate? They would soon know.

As the big machine came on, Yvette set the elevating propellers of the Mohawk to work, and the helicopter shot upward. The stranger saw the manoeuvre and at once followed suit. But here he was at a disadvantage. Yvette’s object, of course, was to get above him. He would then be at their mercy, for he could not fire vertically, while the gun of the Mohawk was specially constructed so as to be able to fire downwards through a trap which opened in the flooring. If they could get what in the air corresponded to the “weather gauge” at sea, they would have the marauder at their mercy if the Mohawk had speed enough to hold him. Could they do it?

Plainly the fugitive saw his danger. As Yvette shot upward he must have realised that in speed of climbing he was no match for his antagonist. He decided to trust to his heels.

Yvette, climbing rapidly, had got a couple of thousand feet above the stranger and was heading to meet him. They were now twelve thousand feet in the air.

Suddenly, with a tremendous nose dive, the foreign aeroplane slipped below them. The manoeuvre was so smartly carried out that Yvette was completely taken by surprise, and before she could recover herself the chance of bringing the stranger to battle had gone. He had passed five thousand feet below them, and the issue now depended upon speed and endurance.

With a cry of disappointment, Yvette swung the Mohawk round in pursuit. Their quarry, by his daring manoeuvre, had gained a couple of miles before she could turn, and was fast disappearing towards the sea.

Dick shook his head. He had seen the speed of which the fugitive was capable, and he had the gravest doubts whether the Mohawk could equal it.

Waiting for the strange aeroplane, Yvette had set the Mohawk to a comparatively slow pace. She had misjudged the distance and her error had enabled the raider to get a more than useful—possibly a decisive—lead.

But even as she swung round she had pressed the accelerator and the Mohawk quivered as the big twin engines began to work up to their maximum. Watching keenly, Dick saw the apparent rush away of the foreigner slacken and finally stop. They were at least holding their own. He signalled Yvette for more speed. She shook her head.

Dick was in despair. The pace at which they were going was not enough. He thought it was their best. But he had not calculated on Yvette’s resourcefulness.

The French girl had swiftly made up her mind. She knew they had plenty of petrol for several hours’ flight. They were holding their own already in the matter of speed, and the Mohawk, though Dick did not know it, had still some knots in reserve. Yvette would not jeopardise the engines by instantly pushing them to the limit.

But they were “warming up” under her skilful handling. They were two miles behind as they passed over Bournemouth and started the long flight to the French coast which the stranger was seeking.

Half an hour slipped by and Dick suddenly realised that the Mohawk was gaining, slowly, it was true, but unmistakably. He looked inquiringly at Yvette, who nodded and smiled.

“All right, Dick,” she shouted. “We can get them any time we want.”

Dick realised her plan. His own thought, as a fighting man, would have been to close at once and have it out. But Yvette had the radium in mind. If they smashed the stranger over the sea the priceless radium would inevitably be lost.

With the Mohawk gradually gaining, the chase drew near to the French coast. Cherbourg loomed ahead of them, drew near, and disappeared beneath them. They were over France.

Instantly Yvette began to coax the Mohawk to do its best. Splendidly the engines responded, the plane shot forward at a pace which surprised Dick, and a few minutes later they were directly above the fugitive. The battle was all but won. In vain their quarry sought, by diving and twisting, to shake them off. His position was hopeless.

Seeing a good landing-place ahead Dick fired a couple of shots as a signal. They could see the terrified face of the passenger in the plane below gazing upward at the strange shape of the Mohawk above them.

Then the signal of surrender came, and the fugitive dipped earthward. A couple of minutes later it came to land, and the two occupants stood holding up their hands while the Mohawk came gently to earth fifty yards away, dropping vertically from the sky in a fashion which caused the pilot of the foreign machine the wildest astonishment.

The radium was saved! But it enacted a fearful revenge. The unfortunate passenger, who they found out later was a well-known Spanish anarchist, had imprudently placed the two tubes in his pocket, apparently ignorant of their terrible power. Even in the short time he had them in his possession he was so terribly burned that he died a couple of days later in spite of the efforts made to save him, while the pilot, who had, of course, been near enough to the tubes to get some of the effects, was also so seriously injured that for weeks his life hung in the balance. It was found impossible to remove the tubes to England until Professor Fortescue, overjoyed at the good news, came bringing the leaden safe into which the precious tubes were placed.

The sequel came a week later. Not even the British War Office could ignore the fact that the Mohawk, single-handed, had achieved a feat at which the British Air Force had signally failed. A highly placed official sought Dick out. The result was that the plans of the Mohawk were sold jointly to England and France at the price of one hundred thousand pounds.

And Regnier lost his “star” combination. Dick had no longer before his eyes the fear that had haunted him for so long that in marrying Yvette he would be condemning her to a life of comparative poverty. And so the companionship born amid the stress and tumult of war came at last to perfect fruition in the marriage between the two lovers which took place in Paris just three months after their last air adventure.

The End.

Back to IndexNext