Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Fifteen.In Search of the Secret.For once Casteno was full of sympathy with me.No sooner did I explain to him the extraordinary development of that mystery at Whitehall Court than he was all eagerness, all attention, all resource to prove to me that I must think the best and not the worst of Colonel Napier’s disappearance.At first, I own, I was not at all inclined to take help from such a quarter; I had not forgotten those suspicious circumstances in which he left my office at the time the murder was committed. Nevertheless, before we had finished our dinner in that quaint old Shrewsbury hotel he had practically won me over to his way of looking at the occurrence.“After all,” said he, as he drained his last glass of wine, “you can certainly rely on the impression that Colonel Napier has come to no harm. If he had, Miss Doris would not be here at all as she is, as bright and gay as a lark, and as keen as a hawk on getting the benefit of those manuscripts for Lord Cuthbertson. Neither he nor Lord Fotheringay would dare to keep bad news from her. They are, after all, both of them gentlemen, whatever may happen to be the Chauvinistic tactics they adopt to push themselves forward in their own particular little intrigues in politics. Silence in such a crisis would be monstrous—utterly monstrous.”“But where can he be?” I cried helplessly. “What is he doing? Why doesn’t he come forward and tell the police as much as he knows of the affair?”“Perhaps he has,” said Casteno significantly, dealing with my last question first. “Who knows? Naylor has dropped his part in the search, you see, and if that means anything at all it means that the murder has precious little to do with this wild chase after the old parchment records. My own impression is that the daughter is not the only member of the Napier family who has taken sides against us in this hunt for the submerged treasure. When the truth is told I think you will find both father and daughter have determined, in a perfectly friendly way, to work against me, just to prove to you how foolish and futile you have been not to take their advice. Hence Colonel Napier may have been despatched in one direction to circumvent us and Miss Doris in another. That disposition of their forces would be quite fair, you know, and might have most important results.”“And the man found dead in the colonel’s bed?”“Any theory could account for his presence,” said the Spaniard, shrugging his shoulders and walking towards the window as though heartily tired of my objections. “One is that he was some burglar who had got the office that the colonel had left the flat, and had disguised himself to resemble the master, had walked in at the front door and personated him over-night, and had been assassinated in error. Such cases of impersonation are much more common than people imagine, but they have such ludicrous, as well as tragic, results that they seldom, if ever, get into the police courts. Another theory—and to me not at all a bad one—is that the whole business has been engineered by some secret society for a purpose that will eventually become apparent. As you know, there are plenty of secret organisations in London that do not content themselves with mystic signs and passwords and occasional extravagances in the shape of nitro-glycerine and dynamite. I know there is a branch of the Spanish ‘Friends of Liberty’ in England, for instance; and I am sure if they have got some hint from Mexico about the discovery of those manuscripts they will stop at nothing—not even a crime like this—to frighten off Colonel Napier.”“Well, I had better leave it,” I said at last, with a sigh, throwing the paper on to the floor and joining my companion at the casement. “After all, you are really the leader of this expedition, and you have a right to require of me that I shall pay some attention to your conclusions.”“Yes; leave it,” repeated Casteno. “Remember, you are only one man with one brain and one pair of hands. You can’t do everything in a maze that has such extraordinary ramifications as this. I tried alone, remember, and failed; and, first, I had to get your help, and then Mr Cooper-Nassington’s, and heaven alone knows where we shall end. But this brings me to another point, Glynn,” he went on, with increasing earnestness. “I want you not to approach Miss Doris until this flying machine experiment is over. It is quite natural of you to wish to do so, I admit, but I want you to consider my interests a little for a day or two, and to refrain.”“I see,” I said meditatively. “You are afraid something might happen, some injudicious word of hers, some careless act, which might scare off some of the people we want to keep blind to our movements, eh?”“Yes,” answered Casteno; “but that’s not all. You must recollect, too, that the people who are not for us are against us. It is not really to the Napier interest that your side should win. They are fighting, in my opinion, on the side of the authorities as represented by the Foreign Secretary and the earl. Well, let them, that’s all, and only when we’ve won let us put our heads above the hedge.”Some other conversation followed, but in the end I agreed to do as José Casteno wished. As a consequence, we kept quite quiet in our rooms until we had got word from a friendly waiter that the hunchback, Miss Doris, and Captain Sparhawk had returned to the hotel, apparently on good terms again, and then in the darkness of night we slipped off and had a good tramp about the ancient streets and by-ways of Shrewsbury, rising next morning as fresh and as sturdy as ever. For a time, it is true, we feared that after his compact to help Lord Cyril Cuthbertson the hunchback might deem it prudent to avoid the excursion. As a matter of fact, I was the one who thought so. Casteno didn’t, because, in the first place, he was sure that his father would never in any circumstances help England against Spain; and in the second, the dwarf was too keen on flying machines and their commercial and military possibilities to let Sparhawk slip through his fingers when he had got hold of a really serviceable invention that would take seven or eight people careering through the air at will. And, as it turned out, Casteno was correct, and I wasn’t. The hunchback did turn up in the flying machine enclosure at the great floral fête, all prepared for the expedition, and, oddly enough, he brought with him as companion—he seemed to have quite forgiven all her previous day’s tricks—my own Doris, who looked as bright and gay as though a trip in a flying machine were one of the most enjoyable things in existence.Captain Sparhawk himself, now that the critical day of trial had dawned, looked, I must confess, very nervous and overwrought. Attired in a costume that proved to be a compromise between what is usually adopted by the driver of a fast motor car and the captain of a penny steamboat, he flitted about from point to point in the enclosure, the personification of anxiety and restlessness.“First we must think of the weather, Miss Doris,” we caught him saying as, disguised in the uniform of sergeants in the Royal Engineers, we showed our tickets which entitled us to the trip in his company and joined the mob of experts and committeemen who buzzed about him like so many noisy and curious bees. As for our features, they were works of art—the art of the painter and the art of the wig-maker—while our voices had developed a military bluffness and roughness, which left our throats lined with something like sandpaper every time we opened our mouths.“It all depends on the wind,” he repeated, and he directed her gaze anxiously to the sky, as though she could see at a glance whether the wind were likely at the time of the ascent to blow forty miles an hour, or four. “You see, I have got the inflation well advanced,” he went on, pointing to the huge, slowly-swelling monster, which lay like a gigantic but quarter-filled balloon of fishlike shape on the greensward as men in mechanics’ clothes hastened here and there pulling a hose straight, slackening a rope, or dragging out the folds of the silk as if they were so many sheets of lead. “This particular machine is Number 9 of my series, two ahead of Santos-Dumont. As you are going with us to-day,” at which news both Casteno and I started, for we had not bargained for that, “I crave your permission to name it the ‘Doris.’”“By all means,” said the girl, beaming with pleasure; “and I trust it will have the best of good luck, and bring all connected with it fame and fortune!” Whereat the little mob I have mentioned broke into a loud cheer, which was taken up by the thousands who lined the ropes that marked off the enclosures, and amongst whom the news of the machine’s informal christening passed like so much wildfire.At this point somebody—I think it was the chairman of the fête—appeared bearing three or four magnums of champagne, which were opened, and the contents passed amongst the select coterie gathered around the inventor. Thus encouraged, the gallant captain went further.“You need not really fear the trip, Miss Napier,” he said, raising the glass with a proud gesture to his lips. “Nor you two gentlemen,” he added, nodding in the direction of Casteno and myself, who had been pointed out to him by the gatekeeper as his two paying fellow-passengers. “As for Mr Zouche here,” now he included the hunchback, “he is a practical aeronaut like myself. I always say, where he would lead I would follow; but, for to-day, we have reversed things a bit, although my opinion of his skill and knowledge remains just the same.”“Then you think the machine is perfectly safe?” said a voice in the crowd.“It’s as safe as going to heaven in a rocking-chair,” promptly answered the captain, like an oracle. “The fact is,” he proceeded in a lower tone, “I have had the thing well tested. In the first place, I had it filled with air and coal gas, for the purpose of arranging the rigging, and then I took a little trip with it myself with proper hydrogen, and the petroleum motor hard at work, and it sailed aloft like a bird. In form, of course, it is similar to the balloon, ‘La France,’ experimented with as long ago as 1834 by some French officers at Meudon—that is, it is shaped like a plaice—the front end being larger than the rear; while it is provided with a compensating ballonet, which is inflated with air by means of a fan controlled from the motor. The two cars, to hold three passengers each, like the motor, are supported by a pine framework, and are suspended at a distance of fifteen feet under the balloon. The propeller is an exceptionally large and strong one, and resembles a fish’s tail, a mackerel’s, for I contend we find all our true air affinities in the sea. It turns at the rate of two hundred and fifty revolutions a minute, and the whole apparatus is strong enough to let us take a fair amount of ballast; for the secret of my success in my invention does not turn on lightness, where so many flying-machine inventors have gone wrong of late, but on weight—weight to subdue the pressure of the wind, to conquer the dead force of the air, and to answer the power of the motor to get up anything approaching a decent speed.”The enthusiast stopped. Some detail in the rigging as the great aerial monster rose higher and higher suddenly required his attention; and for the next few minutes none of us spoke at all, as the captain moved hither and thither, directing his subordinates, and getting everything into working order. Curiously enough, all his feverishness left him like magic directly there was any serious work to do. For that time he might have been quite alone in his workshop. He moved and spoke and acted as one who had perfect confidence in himself and in the issue of the daring experiment which he was about to undertake.

For once Casteno was full of sympathy with me.

No sooner did I explain to him the extraordinary development of that mystery at Whitehall Court than he was all eagerness, all attention, all resource to prove to me that I must think the best and not the worst of Colonel Napier’s disappearance.

At first, I own, I was not at all inclined to take help from such a quarter; I had not forgotten those suspicious circumstances in which he left my office at the time the murder was committed. Nevertheless, before we had finished our dinner in that quaint old Shrewsbury hotel he had practically won me over to his way of looking at the occurrence.

“After all,” said he, as he drained his last glass of wine, “you can certainly rely on the impression that Colonel Napier has come to no harm. If he had, Miss Doris would not be here at all as she is, as bright and gay as a lark, and as keen as a hawk on getting the benefit of those manuscripts for Lord Cuthbertson. Neither he nor Lord Fotheringay would dare to keep bad news from her. They are, after all, both of them gentlemen, whatever may happen to be the Chauvinistic tactics they adopt to push themselves forward in their own particular little intrigues in politics. Silence in such a crisis would be monstrous—utterly monstrous.”

“But where can he be?” I cried helplessly. “What is he doing? Why doesn’t he come forward and tell the police as much as he knows of the affair?”

“Perhaps he has,” said Casteno significantly, dealing with my last question first. “Who knows? Naylor has dropped his part in the search, you see, and if that means anything at all it means that the murder has precious little to do with this wild chase after the old parchment records. My own impression is that the daughter is not the only member of the Napier family who has taken sides against us in this hunt for the submerged treasure. When the truth is told I think you will find both father and daughter have determined, in a perfectly friendly way, to work against me, just to prove to you how foolish and futile you have been not to take their advice. Hence Colonel Napier may have been despatched in one direction to circumvent us and Miss Doris in another. That disposition of their forces would be quite fair, you know, and might have most important results.”

“And the man found dead in the colonel’s bed?”

“Any theory could account for his presence,” said the Spaniard, shrugging his shoulders and walking towards the window as though heartily tired of my objections. “One is that he was some burglar who had got the office that the colonel had left the flat, and had disguised himself to resemble the master, had walked in at the front door and personated him over-night, and had been assassinated in error. Such cases of impersonation are much more common than people imagine, but they have such ludicrous, as well as tragic, results that they seldom, if ever, get into the police courts. Another theory—and to me not at all a bad one—is that the whole business has been engineered by some secret society for a purpose that will eventually become apparent. As you know, there are plenty of secret organisations in London that do not content themselves with mystic signs and passwords and occasional extravagances in the shape of nitro-glycerine and dynamite. I know there is a branch of the Spanish ‘Friends of Liberty’ in England, for instance; and I am sure if they have got some hint from Mexico about the discovery of those manuscripts they will stop at nothing—not even a crime like this—to frighten off Colonel Napier.”

“Well, I had better leave it,” I said at last, with a sigh, throwing the paper on to the floor and joining my companion at the casement. “After all, you are really the leader of this expedition, and you have a right to require of me that I shall pay some attention to your conclusions.”

“Yes; leave it,” repeated Casteno. “Remember, you are only one man with one brain and one pair of hands. You can’t do everything in a maze that has such extraordinary ramifications as this. I tried alone, remember, and failed; and, first, I had to get your help, and then Mr Cooper-Nassington’s, and heaven alone knows where we shall end. But this brings me to another point, Glynn,” he went on, with increasing earnestness. “I want you not to approach Miss Doris until this flying machine experiment is over. It is quite natural of you to wish to do so, I admit, but I want you to consider my interests a little for a day or two, and to refrain.”

“I see,” I said meditatively. “You are afraid something might happen, some injudicious word of hers, some careless act, which might scare off some of the people we want to keep blind to our movements, eh?”

“Yes,” answered Casteno; “but that’s not all. You must recollect, too, that the people who are not for us are against us. It is not really to the Napier interest that your side should win. They are fighting, in my opinion, on the side of the authorities as represented by the Foreign Secretary and the earl. Well, let them, that’s all, and only when we’ve won let us put our heads above the hedge.”

Some other conversation followed, but in the end I agreed to do as José Casteno wished. As a consequence, we kept quite quiet in our rooms until we had got word from a friendly waiter that the hunchback, Miss Doris, and Captain Sparhawk had returned to the hotel, apparently on good terms again, and then in the darkness of night we slipped off and had a good tramp about the ancient streets and by-ways of Shrewsbury, rising next morning as fresh and as sturdy as ever. For a time, it is true, we feared that after his compact to help Lord Cyril Cuthbertson the hunchback might deem it prudent to avoid the excursion. As a matter of fact, I was the one who thought so. Casteno didn’t, because, in the first place, he was sure that his father would never in any circumstances help England against Spain; and in the second, the dwarf was too keen on flying machines and their commercial and military possibilities to let Sparhawk slip through his fingers when he had got hold of a really serviceable invention that would take seven or eight people careering through the air at will. And, as it turned out, Casteno was correct, and I wasn’t. The hunchback did turn up in the flying machine enclosure at the great floral fête, all prepared for the expedition, and, oddly enough, he brought with him as companion—he seemed to have quite forgiven all her previous day’s tricks—my own Doris, who looked as bright and gay as though a trip in a flying machine were one of the most enjoyable things in existence.

Captain Sparhawk himself, now that the critical day of trial had dawned, looked, I must confess, very nervous and overwrought. Attired in a costume that proved to be a compromise between what is usually adopted by the driver of a fast motor car and the captain of a penny steamboat, he flitted about from point to point in the enclosure, the personification of anxiety and restlessness.

“First we must think of the weather, Miss Doris,” we caught him saying as, disguised in the uniform of sergeants in the Royal Engineers, we showed our tickets which entitled us to the trip in his company and joined the mob of experts and committeemen who buzzed about him like so many noisy and curious bees. As for our features, they were works of art—the art of the painter and the art of the wig-maker—while our voices had developed a military bluffness and roughness, which left our throats lined with something like sandpaper every time we opened our mouths.

“It all depends on the wind,” he repeated, and he directed her gaze anxiously to the sky, as though she could see at a glance whether the wind were likely at the time of the ascent to blow forty miles an hour, or four. “You see, I have got the inflation well advanced,” he went on, pointing to the huge, slowly-swelling monster, which lay like a gigantic but quarter-filled balloon of fishlike shape on the greensward as men in mechanics’ clothes hastened here and there pulling a hose straight, slackening a rope, or dragging out the folds of the silk as if they were so many sheets of lead. “This particular machine is Number 9 of my series, two ahead of Santos-Dumont. As you are going with us to-day,” at which news both Casteno and I started, for we had not bargained for that, “I crave your permission to name it the ‘Doris.’”

“By all means,” said the girl, beaming with pleasure; “and I trust it will have the best of good luck, and bring all connected with it fame and fortune!” Whereat the little mob I have mentioned broke into a loud cheer, which was taken up by the thousands who lined the ropes that marked off the enclosures, and amongst whom the news of the machine’s informal christening passed like so much wildfire.

At this point somebody—I think it was the chairman of the fête—appeared bearing three or four magnums of champagne, which were opened, and the contents passed amongst the select coterie gathered around the inventor. Thus encouraged, the gallant captain went further.

“You need not really fear the trip, Miss Napier,” he said, raising the glass with a proud gesture to his lips. “Nor you two gentlemen,” he added, nodding in the direction of Casteno and myself, who had been pointed out to him by the gatekeeper as his two paying fellow-passengers. “As for Mr Zouche here,” now he included the hunchback, “he is a practical aeronaut like myself. I always say, where he would lead I would follow; but, for to-day, we have reversed things a bit, although my opinion of his skill and knowledge remains just the same.”

“Then you think the machine is perfectly safe?” said a voice in the crowd.

“It’s as safe as going to heaven in a rocking-chair,” promptly answered the captain, like an oracle. “The fact is,” he proceeded in a lower tone, “I have had the thing well tested. In the first place, I had it filled with air and coal gas, for the purpose of arranging the rigging, and then I took a little trip with it myself with proper hydrogen, and the petroleum motor hard at work, and it sailed aloft like a bird. In form, of course, it is similar to the balloon, ‘La France,’ experimented with as long ago as 1834 by some French officers at Meudon—that is, it is shaped like a plaice—the front end being larger than the rear; while it is provided with a compensating ballonet, which is inflated with air by means of a fan controlled from the motor. The two cars, to hold three passengers each, like the motor, are supported by a pine framework, and are suspended at a distance of fifteen feet under the balloon. The propeller is an exceptionally large and strong one, and resembles a fish’s tail, a mackerel’s, for I contend we find all our true air affinities in the sea. It turns at the rate of two hundred and fifty revolutions a minute, and the whole apparatus is strong enough to let us take a fair amount of ballast; for the secret of my success in my invention does not turn on lightness, where so many flying-machine inventors have gone wrong of late, but on weight—weight to subdue the pressure of the wind, to conquer the dead force of the air, and to answer the power of the motor to get up anything approaching a decent speed.”

The enthusiast stopped. Some detail in the rigging as the great aerial monster rose higher and higher suddenly required his attention; and for the next few minutes none of us spoke at all, as the captain moved hither and thither, directing his subordinates, and getting everything into working order. Curiously enough, all his feverishness left him like magic directly there was any serious work to do. For that time he might have been quite alone in his workshop. He moved and spoke and acted as one who had perfect confidence in himself and in the issue of the daring experiment which he was about to undertake.

Chapter Sixteen.Above the Clouds.At last everything seemed in readiness.The beautiful grounds of the Quarry were black with thousands upon thousands of anxious spectators, and at a signal from the aeronaut Casteno and I, amidst loud cheers from the mob in the enclosure, took our places first in the car. There was room for a third passenger, and for a few seconds the Spaniard and I debated eagerly whether we should have Doris or the hunchback as the last party in the trio, and, if so, what line we ought to take with them lest they should suspect we were not those harmless members of a curious section of the public which we had given ourselves out to be. Unfortunately, as it happened, we were destined to have as travelling companion a total stranger to both of us. All at once we saw Doris beckon to the captain, and when he approached she introduced him to a tall venerable-looking figure with a long white beard.“This is the Professor Stephen Leopardi of the Meteorological Office, whom I mentioned to you,” she said in her clear, ringing tones. “He is an old friend of my father and myself from London, but just now he happens to be staying near the Wrekin, and he is very anxious, if you will take him, to make the ascent with you. He is a man of science too, of considerable reputation, and any testimony he can bear to the uses of your invention must, in the natural course of things, be very valuable to you.”“Quite so! Quite so!” rejoined both Captain Sparhawk and the hunchback, whose eyes gleamed with avarice at the prospect of getting so famous an expert to go with them and to speak up for them without a fee. “We shall really be only too delighted if the professor will make the sixth in our party—if he will consent to do so. There is a very nice seat vacant in the car we have reserved for independent passengers. Will he honour us by occupying that?” And with a good many flourishes and bows on both sides the scientist, to our profound disgust, was hoisted on to a seat next to Casteno and myself, thus cutting off for good all chance of our carrying on any private conversation or of giving each other any confidential hints.A few minutes later Doris and the hunchback entered the adjacent car. Captain Sparhawk shook hands warmly with some of his more prominent supporters and friends on the committee and followed them, and the next moment he blew a shrill call on a small whistle attached to the motor, close to which he had taken up his position, ready to set all the machinery at work.There was a loud crash of cannon, an ear-splitting salvo of cheers as one by one the guide-ropes slipped out of their blocks, and finally the air-ship “Doris” rose free from her moorings and went sailing like a bird across the river Severn in the direction of Welshpool.At first the sensation was delightful. The earth and its people and features dropped away from us, until we seemed to have risen out of the hollow of a basin. There was no sense of ascent at all. The world slipped away from us, and not we away from the world. One by one the sounds died out, until at last we could only catch the hoarse barking of some sheep-dogs which must have seen us with those keen eyes of theirs and thought mischief was astir. Clouds, too, began to rush swiftly towards us, and soon we found ourselves enveloped in a soft, clinging, whitish mist, which blotted out all sight of the earth we had left behind us.We were now being carried upward with a terrific force, and insensibly all of us turned our eyes towards Captain Sparhawk to see how he was going to acquit himself and his machine now the time of real trial had come. After all, any balloon could rise like this had done. Indeed, all balloons had been able to accomplish as much since the days of the Brothers Montgolfier. It was on the steering—directing—descent that the fame of the “Doris” and all modern flying machines had to rest. How would the vessel behave in a wild upward dash like ours?Alas! we had not long to wait for an answer.All at once we saw Captain Sparhawk stagger and throw up his arms. The wind had blown his coat, which he had carelessly left unfastened, against the motor, and the petroleum ignition had set the dry woollen material on fire. In vain he tried to extinguish the flames. They spread with hideous rapidity, and at last, frantic with pain, he scrambled on to the framework, and dashed headlong to the earth, a seething mass of fire.For a moment, I believe, all our hearts stood still with terror.Freed, too, from the burden of Captain Sparhawk’s weight, the air-ship shot upward at a most amazing rate of speed. At first it gave two great violent lurches, as though the loss of that twelve or fourteen stone of ballast would send it heeling over, with its cars at a crazy angle ’twixt earth and heaven, but, luckily, in our consternation we all made various movements that served to right the vessel, and later we found ourselves safe, at all events for the moment, but perfectly helpless. By this time, too, there was not a trace of the world to be seen. We were simply surrounded with clouds, which seethed about us in white, clinging vapour and wrapped themselves about our clothes and faces as though we had been overtaken in a mist on some Scottish moor.“Something will have to be done,” said the professor sternly, turning suddenly to Casteno and myself, his sole travelling companions in that car. “We can expect no assistance from that old hunchback or that girl, Miss Napier, in the other compartment. Do either of you gentlemen understand anything about air-ships?” And he gave a quick, scrutinising gaze at our uniforms, as though he could find thereon some badge which showed we belonged to the ballooning section of the Royal Engineers.“We know nothing whatever,” replied José quietly, stamping up and down to keep his feet warm. “We have come, for pleasure we thought it, and here is the result.”“Besides, professor,” I cut in, “are not you really the one to take charge of operations at this juncture? I understand that you come from the Meteorological Office and that ventures like this fall under your review in your department. Surely you know enough of ballooning by which, even if you couldn’t make the machine perform like the inventor intended it should, you could at least take us back to the earth.”“I am not so sure about that,” said the man quickly, and then all at once he stopped and bit his lip. It was obvious that he had said a little more than he intended, and a new suspicion about him gathered shape and force in my mind. Suppose he were not the Professor Stephen Leopardi that Doris had pretended but some other spy sent by Cuthbertson to keep an eye on the hunchback?“Well, at all events, we can’t go blindly to death like this,” I snapped. “Look, there is Miss Napier making signals to us with her handkerchief? Where, though, is the hunchback? Ah! I see. The fright has been too much for him. He has collapsed, fainted, and dropped like a log to the seat on the side of the car. We must do something or she will grow frantic.” And waving a hand to her I, half unconscious of what I had myself resolved upon, scrambled on to the stays of the machine and began to crawl like a monkey towards the tiny platform from which poor Captain Sparhawk had fallen, and on which stood the motor and the different cords and levers that controlled the machine.“Come back! Come back!” Casteno shouted. “Are you mad, man? Don’t you understand that in a cold, rarefied atmosphere like this the gas in the balloon is bound to condense, and that, as surely as an apple drops from a tree to the earth instead of the sky, by the law of gravitation, we must land on terra firma again?”But his appeal fell on ears that were deaf to all save one voice. Above the swirl and the wind I had heard Doris call to us, and nought else mattered. Doris was frightened. Doris wanted somebody near to her besides that senseless Spaniard. Doris dreaded what might happen. That must not be, and so, with eyes fixed resolutely on her graceful figure standing silhouetted against the clouds, I shut my lips tightly and crept along that dizzy path that separated me from her. What if she did not know me in that disguise? I, at least, knew her, and, should the need come, I would, I swore to myself, cheerfully lay down my life to save her from harm.That passage from the car to the platform could not have occupied more than seven or eight seconds. To me it seemed as though hours had passed before I got to that platform and stood up by that complicated series of levers, with hands firmly gripped to the steel rails that ran round on three sides, the bulky outline of the motor shutting in the fourth. At length, however, I stood there, and realised I had not reached it one instant too soon, for just at that moment the air-ship struck a warmer strata of atmosphere and began to move on a dizzy and bewildering course, now shooting upward like a rocket, then striking a cold wind, and collapsing like a stricken bird.“Pull some of those levers, man. Get the rudder at work,” shouted the professor through his hands as the machine commenced to career sideways through the air like a torpedo. “These cars will be flattened out if you don’t accomplish something soon.”But my blood was up after my dizzy crawl through space, and I felt I could not brook interference. “Throw that idiot out if he says another word,” I shouted to Casteno. Then I turned to Doris. “Don’t be frightened, Miss Napier,” I cried, “just trust me, and, if all goes well, we shall before five minutes are over be safe on land again.” And then I bent down and studied the machinery by which I was surrounded.A ship’s compass warned me of the position of the levers that controlled the rudder, and after three or four experimental turns of the latter I got the great monster in hand. Indeed, so queerly constituted are we men who love adventure that, no sooner did I find the air-ship obey my movements, than I promptly forgot all the dangers of my position, and, almost with boyish joy, I began to manoeuvre the vessel, first in one direction and then in another, until in the end I found I could make it head on whatever course I wished.Unfortunately, none of those movements brought the machine any nearer to the earth, and I had to turn to try other levers, the objects of which were not quite so apparent. My first experiment shut off the control of the motor. My second extinguished the electrical ignition altogether, and I found that as the screw ceased to revolve we began to fall to the earth at a tremendous pace.What was I to do? For a second, I confess, I had the wildest thoughts of throwing everything portable overboard and trusting to luck to get everything started again. Then, all at once, something seemed to whisper to me: “The motor has stopped. Now the thing is no longer a flying machine but a balloon; treat it as a balloon. Find the cord that controls the valves in the top of the bag and pull those, and let all the gas escape, and come down to earth like a bird that is spent and tired.”Like a man dazed I threw out my hands and gripped what ropes I could that looked at all like guide-ropes. The first I seized sent my platform heeling over sideways, and it was nothing less than a miracle that I did not fall off its inclined surface so sudden was the change of balance. Happily, the second I snatched controlled the valves in the top of the balloon. It answered to a touch, and the gas went roaring through the aperture like a typhoon.“Throw yourselves into the bottom of the cars,” I shouted to the occupants of the two compartments. “We are racing towards the earth at a terrific pace. In a few seconds we shall reach it. We shall strike it gently enough because of the law of gravity and of the compensating ballonet we carry above the propeller, but I don’t want one of you to get frightened and to leap out of the ship before all the gas is exhausted, otherwise we shall go careering up again, and the entire ship then will fall and dash itself and us into pieces. Trust to its steady collapse.” And seizing an anchor that was fastened to the guide-rails of the platform I flung this over the side, and then crouched myself on a kind of huge buoy that hung just above the platform, through which all the different ropes of the machine seemed to pass.Fortunately, everybody was too impressed by the way in which I had guided the ship in the first instance to have noticed how badly I had managed in the second in stopping the use of the motor, and so at my words they dropped down amongst the ballast in the bottom of the cars, and with teeth clenched and hands gripping the framework they awaited the inevitable crash.Down—down—down we went—down into space!The clouds shot past us as though they were driven out of our path by some tornado. The wind roared in our ears.We caught sight of the earth, and it rushed up to meet us as if it would there and then pulverise us into a million atoms.Next instant everything appeared to change like magic. Instead of one wild, dizzy, headlong flight to the ground we seemed to be upborne on some mighty pinions that were moving with great force but steadiness as we dropped, tired and glad, into our native sphere.Slowly, steadily, like a bird coming to rest, we touched the earth again on a wide expanse of grassland. Then women and children started up about us, and, before we knew what had happened, we heard about us the thunders of British cheers, and found ourselves caught up in the arms of eager and excited admirers; whilst once again the good ship “Doris” lay on its side on the ground, slowly panting out from its shrunken ribs the gas that had lifted us to such dizzy dangers and heights.For myself, I own, I should have been strongly tempted to yield to that joyous sensation of peace and safety again, and have done like Doris, the hunchback, and Professor Leopardi, and dropped promptly into blissful unconsciousness, had not Casteno fought his way towards me as soon as the excitement and the mob permitted and caught me tightly by the arm.“Look here,” he whispered. “This, remember, is the real time of our trial, not up there above the clouds. Make one false move here and you’ll ruin everything.”“How? What do you mean?” I muttered, blinking my eyes.“Why, Leopardi is a spy, and so is Miss Napier. They are following the hunchback, and with good reason. They are keeping watch on those three manuscripts which he probably carries on his person. Neither Lord Cyril nor they intend that he shall keep them.”“Well, what of that?” I murmured, for the fall through space had dulled the edge of my brain.“Well, they will steal them at the first opportunity. The deeds no longer belong to my father, remember, but to the British Government, who have purchased them, and who are only letting him retain them now so that he may not give the fact of their existence away until they have got their other diplomatic arrangements complete. The pretence that they want him to translate them or to decipher them is all fudge. They have two or three experts in cipher at the Foreign Office whose business it is to decode all secret messages, plans, documents, and treaties of which the Secret Service obtains possession. Now, those are the men whom they will trust to handle them, not the keeper of a curiosity shop in Westminster.”“Admitted,” I said testily; “but what’s that to do with us at this precise moment, when none of us know whether we are quite dead or alive? Let the Government try to get them first, then we can act. We can either side with your father, the hunchback, or with the authorities; but, for heaven’s sake, don’t worry about it now, here amongst all this crowd who want to treat us like conquering heroes or half-dead voyagers, and who won’t be put off with a bow, but will want to hear all about us, and all about our adventures, and how the deuce we managed to arrive in safety at this point at all.”“They must be tricked,” whispered Casteno, with a savage oath. “Tricked, do you see? You and I have too big a job on just now to pose as popular heroes. We must take those manuscripts from the hunchback whilst he is unconscious, and we must get away with them before he or Miss Napier can have any idea that they or we have gone.”“But that would be a theft,” I gasped.“Not a bit of it,” returned Casteno. “Those documents never really belonged to the hunchback at all, for the dead priest in whose possession they were found had no title to them.”“Then to whom do they belong?” I questioned.“Why, to the Order in Mexico, of course,” replied the Spaniard. “Now you are warned, be ready, and keep close to me.” And he turned a smiling face to the crowd who had drawn back from us in respectful sympathy, thinking, doubtless, that we wished to condole with each other on the unfortunate state of our companions. In an instant, too, he seized on this last pretext and acted on it. “Will some of you gentlemen,” he cried in those clear, ringing tones of his, “carry our three senseless friends here to some place where they can be left in perfect safety and quietness? We have come on this flying machine trip from the floral fête at Shrewsbury, but, unfortunately, our leader got burned to death, and we have all had a terrible shock.”“Poor things! Poor things!” murmured some of the bystanders nearest to us, and instantly the demeanour of the crowd changed, for they realised something of the horror of poor Captain Sparhawk’s end.In silence an avenue was opened out for us, a waggonette with a pair of horses was driven up to the side of the fallen machine, and, tenderly and carefully, Doris, the hunchback, and the professor were lifted on to the sides and borne to a farm outbuilding about two hundred yards distant. Here the five of us were left alone, whilst the two or three strangers who had constituted themselves our chief helpers closed the place upon us as they sallied forth to find us doctors and some suitable refreshments.“Now,” cried Casteno to me immediately I had seen that Doris was safe and was comfortably placed on a great heap of hay, “understand, we have not a moment to lose. Any second they may return, or some daring and inquisitive journalist may force his way in to interview us or to describe our battered condition. You pretend to be holding your flask to my father’s lips, whilst I search his clothes. Then if one of them comes to their senses or one of our newly-made friends return it won’t look at all suspicious.” And, as half mechanically I did as he had directed, he flung himself on his knees beside the prostrate hunchback and passed his hands rapidly over his clothes.Evidently he knew a good deal of Peter Zouche’s methods, for I don’t think his search lasted ten seconds. All at once his fingers closed over a tiny bag, something like a Catholic scapular, that had been slung around the hunchback’s neck. With trembling fingers he tore this open, and disclosed to view the three precious manuscripts, which he instantly seized and packed away in his pocket.Then he made the bag look as natural as he could, and restored it to its position under the old man’s singlet. As he rose to his feet again I saw that his face was ghastly white, and his teeth chattered like a man stricken with ague.“My God,” he muttered, wiping the great beads of perspiration that had gathered about his temples, “isn’t this chase stern—awful? I doubt if even I should have dared to have tried a terrible move like this had I not known that there, at St. Bruno’s at Hampstead, was the key to these documents awaiting me. But I felt I could not falter now when Camille Velasquon had braved so much in bringing it from Mexico to London for me. But, bah! what cowards we are all of us sometimes.” And he reeled, and I am sure he would have fainted had I not instantly caught him myself and pressed the flask to his lips.“Now to be off—to be off,” he said wildly a moment later, pushing me aside and staggering towards the exit from the tent. “I feel I can’t breathe here now that I have got these documents. Every nerve I have seems standing on end urging me to be off.”I turned to look at Doris lying so peacefully in that corner, and then, half distracted, turned to follow him, but as I did so somebody started up and confronted us. It was the Professor Stephen Leopardi! His aspect now was wild and threatening, but we thought merely that the terrible experiences he had been through above the clouds had temporarily disturbed the balance of his senses and that we could soothe him like a child.“You must not go,” he panted, his eyes rolling and his fingers clawing the empty air. “You must stay with me, I want you. I have seen you. There is much to explain.”“Quite so,” I returned lightly, “but just now we are not in a mood for conversation, are we? Wait until our companions recover themselves and my friend and I have had a little fresh air, will you? Then we can all meet and discuss things, but at present—”“At present you would steal from that poor man the most precious things he has,” thundered the old fellow, and to our horror he sprang between us and the exit and then pointed to the prostrate form of the hunchback. “Oh! never, never shall you escape like that.” And before we realised what he was up to he raised his voice and shrieked: “Help! help! help!”

At last everything seemed in readiness.

The beautiful grounds of the Quarry were black with thousands upon thousands of anxious spectators, and at a signal from the aeronaut Casteno and I, amidst loud cheers from the mob in the enclosure, took our places first in the car. There was room for a third passenger, and for a few seconds the Spaniard and I debated eagerly whether we should have Doris or the hunchback as the last party in the trio, and, if so, what line we ought to take with them lest they should suspect we were not those harmless members of a curious section of the public which we had given ourselves out to be. Unfortunately, as it happened, we were destined to have as travelling companion a total stranger to both of us. All at once we saw Doris beckon to the captain, and when he approached she introduced him to a tall venerable-looking figure with a long white beard.

“This is the Professor Stephen Leopardi of the Meteorological Office, whom I mentioned to you,” she said in her clear, ringing tones. “He is an old friend of my father and myself from London, but just now he happens to be staying near the Wrekin, and he is very anxious, if you will take him, to make the ascent with you. He is a man of science too, of considerable reputation, and any testimony he can bear to the uses of your invention must, in the natural course of things, be very valuable to you.”

“Quite so! Quite so!” rejoined both Captain Sparhawk and the hunchback, whose eyes gleamed with avarice at the prospect of getting so famous an expert to go with them and to speak up for them without a fee. “We shall really be only too delighted if the professor will make the sixth in our party—if he will consent to do so. There is a very nice seat vacant in the car we have reserved for independent passengers. Will he honour us by occupying that?” And with a good many flourishes and bows on both sides the scientist, to our profound disgust, was hoisted on to a seat next to Casteno and myself, thus cutting off for good all chance of our carrying on any private conversation or of giving each other any confidential hints.

A few minutes later Doris and the hunchback entered the adjacent car. Captain Sparhawk shook hands warmly with some of his more prominent supporters and friends on the committee and followed them, and the next moment he blew a shrill call on a small whistle attached to the motor, close to which he had taken up his position, ready to set all the machinery at work.

There was a loud crash of cannon, an ear-splitting salvo of cheers as one by one the guide-ropes slipped out of their blocks, and finally the air-ship “Doris” rose free from her moorings and went sailing like a bird across the river Severn in the direction of Welshpool.

At first the sensation was delightful. The earth and its people and features dropped away from us, until we seemed to have risen out of the hollow of a basin. There was no sense of ascent at all. The world slipped away from us, and not we away from the world. One by one the sounds died out, until at last we could only catch the hoarse barking of some sheep-dogs which must have seen us with those keen eyes of theirs and thought mischief was astir. Clouds, too, began to rush swiftly towards us, and soon we found ourselves enveloped in a soft, clinging, whitish mist, which blotted out all sight of the earth we had left behind us.

We were now being carried upward with a terrific force, and insensibly all of us turned our eyes towards Captain Sparhawk to see how he was going to acquit himself and his machine now the time of real trial had come. After all, any balloon could rise like this had done. Indeed, all balloons had been able to accomplish as much since the days of the Brothers Montgolfier. It was on the steering—directing—descent that the fame of the “Doris” and all modern flying machines had to rest. How would the vessel behave in a wild upward dash like ours?

Alas! we had not long to wait for an answer.

All at once we saw Captain Sparhawk stagger and throw up his arms. The wind had blown his coat, which he had carelessly left unfastened, against the motor, and the petroleum ignition had set the dry woollen material on fire. In vain he tried to extinguish the flames. They spread with hideous rapidity, and at last, frantic with pain, he scrambled on to the framework, and dashed headlong to the earth, a seething mass of fire.

For a moment, I believe, all our hearts stood still with terror.

Freed, too, from the burden of Captain Sparhawk’s weight, the air-ship shot upward at a most amazing rate of speed. At first it gave two great violent lurches, as though the loss of that twelve or fourteen stone of ballast would send it heeling over, with its cars at a crazy angle ’twixt earth and heaven, but, luckily, in our consternation we all made various movements that served to right the vessel, and later we found ourselves safe, at all events for the moment, but perfectly helpless. By this time, too, there was not a trace of the world to be seen. We were simply surrounded with clouds, which seethed about us in white, clinging vapour and wrapped themselves about our clothes and faces as though we had been overtaken in a mist on some Scottish moor.

“Something will have to be done,” said the professor sternly, turning suddenly to Casteno and myself, his sole travelling companions in that car. “We can expect no assistance from that old hunchback or that girl, Miss Napier, in the other compartment. Do either of you gentlemen understand anything about air-ships?” And he gave a quick, scrutinising gaze at our uniforms, as though he could find thereon some badge which showed we belonged to the ballooning section of the Royal Engineers.

“We know nothing whatever,” replied José quietly, stamping up and down to keep his feet warm. “We have come, for pleasure we thought it, and here is the result.”

“Besides, professor,” I cut in, “are not you really the one to take charge of operations at this juncture? I understand that you come from the Meteorological Office and that ventures like this fall under your review in your department. Surely you know enough of ballooning by which, even if you couldn’t make the machine perform like the inventor intended it should, you could at least take us back to the earth.”

“I am not so sure about that,” said the man quickly, and then all at once he stopped and bit his lip. It was obvious that he had said a little more than he intended, and a new suspicion about him gathered shape and force in my mind. Suppose he were not the Professor Stephen Leopardi that Doris had pretended but some other spy sent by Cuthbertson to keep an eye on the hunchback?

“Well, at all events, we can’t go blindly to death like this,” I snapped. “Look, there is Miss Napier making signals to us with her handkerchief? Where, though, is the hunchback? Ah! I see. The fright has been too much for him. He has collapsed, fainted, and dropped like a log to the seat on the side of the car. We must do something or she will grow frantic.” And waving a hand to her I, half unconscious of what I had myself resolved upon, scrambled on to the stays of the machine and began to crawl like a monkey towards the tiny platform from which poor Captain Sparhawk had fallen, and on which stood the motor and the different cords and levers that controlled the machine.

“Come back! Come back!” Casteno shouted. “Are you mad, man? Don’t you understand that in a cold, rarefied atmosphere like this the gas in the balloon is bound to condense, and that, as surely as an apple drops from a tree to the earth instead of the sky, by the law of gravitation, we must land on terra firma again?”

But his appeal fell on ears that were deaf to all save one voice. Above the swirl and the wind I had heard Doris call to us, and nought else mattered. Doris was frightened. Doris wanted somebody near to her besides that senseless Spaniard. Doris dreaded what might happen. That must not be, and so, with eyes fixed resolutely on her graceful figure standing silhouetted against the clouds, I shut my lips tightly and crept along that dizzy path that separated me from her. What if she did not know me in that disguise? I, at least, knew her, and, should the need come, I would, I swore to myself, cheerfully lay down my life to save her from harm.

That passage from the car to the platform could not have occupied more than seven or eight seconds. To me it seemed as though hours had passed before I got to that platform and stood up by that complicated series of levers, with hands firmly gripped to the steel rails that ran round on three sides, the bulky outline of the motor shutting in the fourth. At length, however, I stood there, and realised I had not reached it one instant too soon, for just at that moment the air-ship struck a warmer strata of atmosphere and began to move on a dizzy and bewildering course, now shooting upward like a rocket, then striking a cold wind, and collapsing like a stricken bird.

“Pull some of those levers, man. Get the rudder at work,” shouted the professor through his hands as the machine commenced to career sideways through the air like a torpedo. “These cars will be flattened out if you don’t accomplish something soon.”

But my blood was up after my dizzy crawl through space, and I felt I could not brook interference. “Throw that idiot out if he says another word,” I shouted to Casteno. Then I turned to Doris. “Don’t be frightened, Miss Napier,” I cried, “just trust me, and, if all goes well, we shall before five minutes are over be safe on land again.” And then I bent down and studied the machinery by which I was surrounded.

A ship’s compass warned me of the position of the levers that controlled the rudder, and after three or four experimental turns of the latter I got the great monster in hand. Indeed, so queerly constituted are we men who love adventure that, no sooner did I find the air-ship obey my movements, than I promptly forgot all the dangers of my position, and, almost with boyish joy, I began to manoeuvre the vessel, first in one direction and then in another, until in the end I found I could make it head on whatever course I wished.

Unfortunately, none of those movements brought the machine any nearer to the earth, and I had to turn to try other levers, the objects of which were not quite so apparent. My first experiment shut off the control of the motor. My second extinguished the electrical ignition altogether, and I found that as the screw ceased to revolve we began to fall to the earth at a tremendous pace.

What was I to do? For a second, I confess, I had the wildest thoughts of throwing everything portable overboard and trusting to luck to get everything started again. Then, all at once, something seemed to whisper to me: “The motor has stopped. Now the thing is no longer a flying machine but a balloon; treat it as a balloon. Find the cord that controls the valves in the top of the bag and pull those, and let all the gas escape, and come down to earth like a bird that is spent and tired.”

Like a man dazed I threw out my hands and gripped what ropes I could that looked at all like guide-ropes. The first I seized sent my platform heeling over sideways, and it was nothing less than a miracle that I did not fall off its inclined surface so sudden was the change of balance. Happily, the second I snatched controlled the valves in the top of the balloon. It answered to a touch, and the gas went roaring through the aperture like a typhoon.

“Throw yourselves into the bottom of the cars,” I shouted to the occupants of the two compartments. “We are racing towards the earth at a terrific pace. In a few seconds we shall reach it. We shall strike it gently enough because of the law of gravity and of the compensating ballonet we carry above the propeller, but I don’t want one of you to get frightened and to leap out of the ship before all the gas is exhausted, otherwise we shall go careering up again, and the entire ship then will fall and dash itself and us into pieces. Trust to its steady collapse.” And seizing an anchor that was fastened to the guide-rails of the platform I flung this over the side, and then crouched myself on a kind of huge buoy that hung just above the platform, through which all the different ropes of the machine seemed to pass.

Fortunately, everybody was too impressed by the way in which I had guided the ship in the first instance to have noticed how badly I had managed in the second in stopping the use of the motor, and so at my words they dropped down amongst the ballast in the bottom of the cars, and with teeth clenched and hands gripping the framework they awaited the inevitable crash.

Down—down—down we went—down into space!

The clouds shot past us as though they were driven out of our path by some tornado. The wind roared in our ears.

We caught sight of the earth, and it rushed up to meet us as if it would there and then pulverise us into a million atoms.

Next instant everything appeared to change like magic. Instead of one wild, dizzy, headlong flight to the ground we seemed to be upborne on some mighty pinions that were moving with great force but steadiness as we dropped, tired and glad, into our native sphere.

Slowly, steadily, like a bird coming to rest, we touched the earth again on a wide expanse of grassland. Then women and children started up about us, and, before we knew what had happened, we heard about us the thunders of British cheers, and found ourselves caught up in the arms of eager and excited admirers; whilst once again the good ship “Doris” lay on its side on the ground, slowly panting out from its shrunken ribs the gas that had lifted us to such dizzy dangers and heights.

For myself, I own, I should have been strongly tempted to yield to that joyous sensation of peace and safety again, and have done like Doris, the hunchback, and Professor Leopardi, and dropped promptly into blissful unconsciousness, had not Casteno fought his way towards me as soon as the excitement and the mob permitted and caught me tightly by the arm.

“Look here,” he whispered. “This, remember, is the real time of our trial, not up there above the clouds. Make one false move here and you’ll ruin everything.”

“How? What do you mean?” I muttered, blinking my eyes.

“Why, Leopardi is a spy, and so is Miss Napier. They are following the hunchback, and with good reason. They are keeping watch on those three manuscripts which he probably carries on his person. Neither Lord Cyril nor they intend that he shall keep them.”

“Well, what of that?” I murmured, for the fall through space had dulled the edge of my brain.

“Well, they will steal them at the first opportunity. The deeds no longer belong to my father, remember, but to the British Government, who have purchased them, and who are only letting him retain them now so that he may not give the fact of their existence away until they have got their other diplomatic arrangements complete. The pretence that they want him to translate them or to decipher them is all fudge. They have two or three experts in cipher at the Foreign Office whose business it is to decode all secret messages, plans, documents, and treaties of which the Secret Service obtains possession. Now, those are the men whom they will trust to handle them, not the keeper of a curiosity shop in Westminster.”

“Admitted,” I said testily; “but what’s that to do with us at this precise moment, when none of us know whether we are quite dead or alive? Let the Government try to get them first, then we can act. We can either side with your father, the hunchback, or with the authorities; but, for heaven’s sake, don’t worry about it now, here amongst all this crowd who want to treat us like conquering heroes or half-dead voyagers, and who won’t be put off with a bow, but will want to hear all about us, and all about our adventures, and how the deuce we managed to arrive in safety at this point at all.”

“They must be tricked,” whispered Casteno, with a savage oath. “Tricked, do you see? You and I have too big a job on just now to pose as popular heroes. We must take those manuscripts from the hunchback whilst he is unconscious, and we must get away with them before he or Miss Napier can have any idea that they or we have gone.”

“But that would be a theft,” I gasped.

“Not a bit of it,” returned Casteno. “Those documents never really belonged to the hunchback at all, for the dead priest in whose possession they were found had no title to them.”

“Then to whom do they belong?” I questioned.

“Why, to the Order in Mexico, of course,” replied the Spaniard. “Now you are warned, be ready, and keep close to me.” And he turned a smiling face to the crowd who had drawn back from us in respectful sympathy, thinking, doubtless, that we wished to condole with each other on the unfortunate state of our companions. In an instant, too, he seized on this last pretext and acted on it. “Will some of you gentlemen,” he cried in those clear, ringing tones of his, “carry our three senseless friends here to some place where they can be left in perfect safety and quietness? We have come on this flying machine trip from the floral fête at Shrewsbury, but, unfortunately, our leader got burned to death, and we have all had a terrible shock.”

“Poor things! Poor things!” murmured some of the bystanders nearest to us, and instantly the demeanour of the crowd changed, for they realised something of the horror of poor Captain Sparhawk’s end.

In silence an avenue was opened out for us, a waggonette with a pair of horses was driven up to the side of the fallen machine, and, tenderly and carefully, Doris, the hunchback, and the professor were lifted on to the sides and borne to a farm outbuilding about two hundred yards distant. Here the five of us were left alone, whilst the two or three strangers who had constituted themselves our chief helpers closed the place upon us as they sallied forth to find us doctors and some suitable refreshments.

“Now,” cried Casteno to me immediately I had seen that Doris was safe and was comfortably placed on a great heap of hay, “understand, we have not a moment to lose. Any second they may return, or some daring and inquisitive journalist may force his way in to interview us or to describe our battered condition. You pretend to be holding your flask to my father’s lips, whilst I search his clothes. Then if one of them comes to their senses or one of our newly-made friends return it won’t look at all suspicious.” And, as half mechanically I did as he had directed, he flung himself on his knees beside the prostrate hunchback and passed his hands rapidly over his clothes.

Evidently he knew a good deal of Peter Zouche’s methods, for I don’t think his search lasted ten seconds. All at once his fingers closed over a tiny bag, something like a Catholic scapular, that had been slung around the hunchback’s neck. With trembling fingers he tore this open, and disclosed to view the three precious manuscripts, which he instantly seized and packed away in his pocket.

Then he made the bag look as natural as he could, and restored it to its position under the old man’s singlet. As he rose to his feet again I saw that his face was ghastly white, and his teeth chattered like a man stricken with ague.

“My God,” he muttered, wiping the great beads of perspiration that had gathered about his temples, “isn’t this chase stern—awful? I doubt if even I should have dared to have tried a terrible move like this had I not known that there, at St. Bruno’s at Hampstead, was the key to these documents awaiting me. But I felt I could not falter now when Camille Velasquon had braved so much in bringing it from Mexico to London for me. But, bah! what cowards we are all of us sometimes.” And he reeled, and I am sure he would have fainted had I not instantly caught him myself and pressed the flask to his lips.

“Now to be off—to be off,” he said wildly a moment later, pushing me aside and staggering towards the exit from the tent. “I feel I can’t breathe here now that I have got these documents. Every nerve I have seems standing on end urging me to be off.”

I turned to look at Doris lying so peacefully in that corner, and then, half distracted, turned to follow him, but as I did so somebody started up and confronted us. It was the Professor Stephen Leopardi! His aspect now was wild and threatening, but we thought merely that the terrible experiences he had been through above the clouds had temporarily disturbed the balance of his senses and that we could soothe him like a child.

“You must not go,” he panted, his eyes rolling and his fingers clawing the empty air. “You must stay with me, I want you. I have seen you. There is much to explain.”

“Quite so,” I returned lightly, “but just now we are not in a mood for conversation, are we? Wait until our companions recover themselves and my friend and I have had a little fresh air, will you? Then we can all meet and discuss things, but at present—”

“At present you would steal from that poor man the most precious things he has,” thundered the old fellow, and to our horror he sprang between us and the exit and then pointed to the prostrate form of the hunchback. “Oh! never, never shall you escape like that.” And before we realised what he was up to he raised his voice and shrieked: “Help! help! help!”

Chapter Seventeen.The Mysteries of St. Bruno’s.There was not a second to spare. Casteno shot at me a look of mingled entreaty and command to leave the frenzied professor to do his worst. The persons we had to fear were not, he motioned, in that tent at all but outside, scouring the grounds for medical assistance, and spreading everywhere news of our wonderful appearance out of the rain-clouds. Only let them hear this maniac’s wild cries for assistance and they would hasten back to us, and then all hope, all chance of escape, for either of us would be cut off.Nevertheless, I thought of Doris lying there so weak, helpless, and friendless; and I hesitated. I felt I had already stifled Love so often for Duty that I could repress it no longer. Indeed, I took a step in her direction to make myself known to her, but, misconceiving my object, thinking I had no idea but one—to flee—Leopardi seized me in a grip of iron. “You shall not go,” he panted—“never! You are a thief, and you shall pay for your crime.”His touch, however, was quite enough. What Casteno had failed to accomplish it brought about in a flash. All the hot, strenuous instincts of my manhood rose in rebellion at this degradation.“You are mad,” I hissed, and with one huge effort I sprang on the scientist and, catching him by the middle, whirled him over my head and sent him crashing a moment later on to some grain bags that stood piled up in a corner.As I did so his wig fell off and with it his beard, and I staggered backward in amazement. The so-called expert from the Meteorological Office was, as the Spaniard had contended, a spy—perhaps sent by the Foreign Office, for it was a man we instantly recognised—no other than Colonel Napier himself.Personally, I would have stood my ground then and defied him; but Casteno was too quick for me. As I reeled back breathless from the impact he caught me by the shoulder and with a quick turn twisted me through the narrow door of the barn.“This is no time for heroics, Glynn,” he whispered. “We have won. Now let us be off.” And he doubled behind some other buildings and then dived headlong into a clump of bushes, through which he wriggled his way on hands and knees like a snake.Almost instinctively I followed him, for on the still summer breeze I could hear Colonel Napier’s voice raised in angry shouts, the thunder of hurrying feet, and all the mysterious sounds and movements which betokened that at last the crowd had taken alarm, and that an organised pursuit of us could, at the most now, be only a matter of a few seconds.The branches tore our clothes and made sad havoc of our disguises, but this last accident proved a blessing in disguise, for it made us stop at a pond and restore to our faces their natural resemblance.“But we must not be caught,” I returned, deftly rolling up the wigs and secreting them in the branch of a tree, where they looked like a new kind of bird’s nest. “Look through that opening there between those willows. Don’t you see the molten gleam of water under the summer sun?”“Yes,” replied Casteno joyously, rising on his knees and stretching his neck. “It’s a stream sure enough—perhaps a river—with plenty of water space, for I am sure I distinguish a current in it running steady and strong.”“Now let us make for that, then,” I urged, “and hail the first boat that passes. Let us pretend we are soldiers, and have overstayed our leave, and that we shall get fined if we don’t hasten pell-mell back to the town.”“What town?” queried Casteno ruefully; whereat we both laughed. It certainly did seem preposterous for us not to know the name of the country we were in. Yet, truthfully enough, we didn’t—we hadn’t the ghost of an idea.As luck would have it, however, we found several boats moored close to the trees by the side of the water, and in charge of them was a sharp-looking lad about fourteen years of age.“Got any tubs for hire, sonny,” said Casteno cheerfully, walking up to the youngster and tapping him familiarly on the shoulder.“What does your mother want to wash?” promptly returned the lad, and in a moment the three of us were on the best of terms.Acting on an impulse of my own I took charge of the conversation, and pretended that we were soldiers who had got sick of barrack life, and had deserted from some important depot, and were anxious to get into hiding in the nearest town. Now in most lads there exists a very genuine sympathy with the hunted of all descriptions, and a loyalty, too, which no ordinary bribe or threat would cause them to break. As a consequence, he promised to take us off in one of the boats and to hide us under some cushions and sail sheets as he punted us down stream to “a capital nest I know,” he explained, “behind the kilns of the porcelain works.”“But the town—what is its name?” I queried, with a grimace.“Why, Worcester, of course,” the lad replied. “Didn’t you see it on the milestones?”“We were in too great a hurry to look,” chimed in the Spaniard at once. “Why, we don’t even know what all those thousands of people are doing here in these grounds. We have simply bolted as hard as we could through the streets.”“Then you didn’t even see the flying machine fall?” cried the lad, his eyes wide with excitement.“Not a bit of it,” returned I, with more truth than the boy possibly could have expected.“Then I’m sorry for you,” observed the lad slowly, “for it was the most lovely thing I ever saw in my life. Four men and one girl were dashed to pieces, and they’ve had to stop the race meeting—for this is Worcester Races on the Pitchcroft—whilst they look for the remains of the poor victims who are supposed to have come all the way from the Crystal Palace with Mr Santos-Dumont, who, luckily, made his escape in the parachute before the thing fell.”Neither Casteno nor I, however, troubled to enlighten the lad as to the true facts. For one thing, it amused us slightly to discover for ourselves how strangely the news of our arrival had travelled, and in what a small degree the good citizens of Worcester were wont to mix the naked truth with their carefully-compounded stories of breathless adventure. For another, we were desperately anxious to get away from the neighbourhood of that racecourse. Any second the hue-and-cry might spread to the point at which we were. Indeed, it seemed little short of madness to loiter, and we sprang into the punt immediately we could get the lad to cast her off, and almost before he quite understood how quickly we had acted we had got ourselves concealed and the boy hard at work punting us down the stream.Happily, the Severn covers but a few hundred yards in its passage from the racecourse to the city of Worcester itself, and so excited were the crowd over the fall and appearance of our air-ship that we contrived to slip away quite unobserved, to glide under the bridge that cut off Worcester from its suburbs, and to float past the cathedral, close to which stand the grey, old monastic ruins. Here we insisted on disembarking, because we found these remains were walled in and really furnished an ideal place of concealment, but we did not dismiss our guide.“Go, sonny, and buy us two suits of rough blue serge,” I said, handing the lad four glittering sovereigns. “If they ask you any inconvenient questions say they are for your father, who is employed on a coal barge, and has had his duds stolen, a thing that often happens, I’m told. If there is any change remaining over, keep it, but whatever you do, hurry—hurry like mad.”The boy, who had now quite entered into the humour of the adventure, and thought what a fine thing it was to be outwitting the police under their very noses as it were, tore off, leaving us in charge of the punt. And such good use did he make of his time, his opportunities, and the shopping facilities of the immediate district that, in less than half-an-hour, he returned with the things we had ordered. Very soon we bade him good-bye and gave him half-a-sovereign for his trouble; and, waiting until he had disappeared round a bend of the river, we scaled the wall that shut off the cathedral school ground from the ruins, and then plunged into an ancient recess in the wall where, in the half darkness, we threw off our uniforms and put on our serge suits.Nobody who has not stood in some deadly peril of this sort can guess the relief we felt as we got back once again into fairly decent clothes, that did not make us appear much different to what we really were, and gave us the advantage of our own speech and looks. One takes up a disguise glibly enough, even if at first it presents an arduous strain to the nerves; but after a time the thing becomes a veritable Frankenstein to one, and seems to absorb every ounce of one’s brain and strength. Casteno literally danced with joy as he flung his uniform into a corner as far as he could.“Thank goodness, now we can walk and talk like other folk,” he cried. “For my own part, I don’t care who we meet or what is said to us. I feel powerful enough to deny anything.”“But surely,” I gasped, “you don’t mean to show yourself in public until night is fallen? Think—think of the risks!”“I have, and I mean to take them. Nobody in Worcester can identify us now with the two soldiers who took passages in the air-ship at Shrewsbury. Remember, even if Colonel Napier could be quite sure it was us who had played him such a scurvy trick, he dare not say so. In the first place, people will think the fall and the shock have given him softening of the brain if we stick up to him and deny him with all the lung violence we are capable of. Secondly, you forget he is Professor Stephen Leopardi, the expert of the Meteorological Office, to the world just at present. He is the fraud, not us, and we have only got to unmask him to the hunchback, or to get inquiries made about him in London, where the police want him for his mysterious disappearance from Whitehall Court, and where the Meteorological people would have him instantly arrested for his impersonation, to put him utterly to confusion. Hence we have no cause to fear him or anyone here. We are free—free as air.” And again he capered about the ruins, overcome with glee.“Then you mean actually to walk off to the railway station with all the Worcester police on the alert and to take the next express up to town?” I questioned. “You think we shall escape without any trouble!”“Of course I do. Is it not race time, and is not the city full of strangers? Besides, you seem to have forgotten the most important thing of all. I have these manuscripts in my possession, and Camille Velasquon has brought the key to them all the way from Mexico. Now all we have got to do is to compare the two—and then?”He stopped and looked straight at me, as we stood with the ruins silhouetted against the old cathedral chapter-house. My gaze met his.“And then?” I repeated; and I stopped, and instinctively my hands clenched.“I will do what is right to England, Glynn,” he cried in tones of intense emotion, stretching out his hands to me. “Good heavens, man! don’t stare at me like that! I’m a creature of flesh and blood like yourself. I have feelings and a sense of honour just as you have. I have not gone into this business simply to feather my own nest. I have not fought my father—Fotheringay—Cuthbertson—I have not besought powerful assistance, such as Cooper-Nassington’s, to sell this country to some Continental enemies—no.”“I take your word—I believe you have not,” I replied slowly. “The point is whether the Order of St. Bruno has, for it seems to me that they are the principals in this treasure hunt and not yourself.”“Well, come with me and see,” replied Casteno, averting his eyes. “I have pledged myself, but you will not take my word. You doubt—you hint—you mistrust me.”“I do,” I gasped. “I can’t help it.”“Then, come.” And without another word he turned away, and, seizing the ivy that grew in rich profusion on both sides of the wall, he climbed up by this support, closely followed by myself. The drop on the far side was only a matter of some ten feet, and, aided by similar branches, we passed into the playground again, and soon found ourselves heading for the chief station in Worcester—Shrub Hill.As Casteno, however, had predicted, we found the streets thronged with all manner of queer characters hastening to or from the races, and we managed to secure places in a “race special,” which was timed to run to Paddington with only four stops on the road. There were, we saw for ourselves, plenty of detectives in the station, and they had evidently got wind of us and our flight, for every wretched soldier who swaggered into the building was stopped and cross-examined, and we actually saw two poor privates in the engineer uniform, who had had a little beer, and were inclined to be cheeky and not to answer questions, bundled into a cab and driven off to the city police station.Punctually, however, at the time appointed the train left with us. As it happened, by judicious tips we secured not only a first-class carriage to ourselves but copies of the London papers, which we had failed to get in Shrewsbury before we had to hurry off to the fête to look after our seats in the air-ship.José, plainly, was fagged out, and no sooner did the train move off than he stretched himself across the seat and composed himself for a nap. I, however, was strung up to the highest pitch of excitement, not by the perils we had just passed through, but by the prospect of getting to the heart of the mysteries of that most mysterious Order of St. Bruno, which had all the ways and uniforms of regular monks without their recognised symbolism. Indeed, I had not forgotten what my guide said when I had walked across the courtyard of their house at Chantry Road, Hampstead—“We are neither Roman Catholics nor Anglicans”—and yet if they did not belong to one or other of these two persuasions to which sect did they belong, and what was the object of their banding together, with houses in Delhi, Sydney, London, and Mexico? And why, as José pretended, should they have any patriotic notions for England in preference to Spain—or France, or Russia, or Mexico for that matter? If the manuscripts really belonged to them, as the Spaniard declared, why didn’t they desire to get them, to keep them, and to recover the Lake of Sacred Treasure for themselves?Try as I would, I could not, as the train rattled through the fragrant orchards and hopfields of Worcestershire, bring myself to believe that my companion had told me the whole of the truth about this mysterious Order and the part it played in the life of our times. Like most private investigators I had grown to realise that “’tis not the habit that bespeaks the monk,” and that often under the most simple and impressive guises there lurked secret forces that meant treachery and villainy of the worst description.“One thing I do promise myself,” I thought to myself rather firmly, “I will not rest whilst I am at St. Bruno’s until I have got to know all about these mysterious people—all. Señor Casteno may try as he will to put me off with explanations that only leave things more difficult and puzzling and hard to understand, but this time I will stand my ground. I will be the spy on this occasion, and if I find the Spaniard or his friends in the Order up to any mischief I will not hesitate a second—I will strike for England, cost what it will.”Sinking back, I took up one of the papers I had purchased, and began to glance carelessly down its columns. I had not forgotten that these news sheets might contain some further news about that discovery of a murdered man in the Napiers’ flat, but seeing that I had had a Sunday special edition of a London paper I was not expecting to learn anything really new just then about the tragedy that had stricken the West End with a sense of painful impotence and danger; I felt the police and the press had not had sufficient time.Nevertheless, something fresh had been discovered by one of the most enterprising of the younger papers—theDaily Graphic—which, unlike its contemporaries, did not reprint the old story about a man unknown being found stabbed to the heart in the colonel’s bed, but boldly ventured forth into big type with this extraordinary statement:THE MYSTERY AT WHITEHALLIDENTITY OF THE DEAD MAN“The man who was found murdered in Colonel Napier’s flat in Embankment Mansions has been identified by an official of the Foreign Office from a description and photograph that were hurriedly circulated by Scotland Yard last night. The victim is no other than a gentleman occupying a responsible position in the Treaty Department of the Foreign Office, and the papers found in his desk tend to show that the crime was the work of some secret society which has its headquarters in London, and which had decreed his end because he, as a member, was supposed to have communicated some of its secrets to Lord Cyril Cuthbertson, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. How he came to be in Colonel Napier’s flat—and bed—remains, however, to be explained. He certainly bears an extraordinary resemblance to the missing colonel.”By this time the day had begun to close in. The sun had sunk, leaving, as it sometimes does, even in the height of an English summer, the sky grey with mystery and suggestion of on-coming disaster. The paper itself slipped from my fingers as I dropped back into my seat and let my eyes wander over the landscape that, all of a sudden, seemed to have taken on itself the colour of my own thoughts, which were now troubled and perplexed with a dozen doubts and emotions which ever evaded me but none the less filled me with unrest and pain.With an effort I recovered myself and looked curiously at José Casteno. He had curled himself up in an attitude that struck me as being too strained and unnatural to be comfortable, but, to all appearances, he was sleeping gently like an over-tired child. Strangely enough, it was the first time that I had seen his features in such absolute repose, and I caught myself examining each one of them with that careful minuteness and patience a geologist may bestow on a half-identified specimen—the lines at the corners of his mouth, the shape and setting of his chin, the high yet thin cheek-bones, the curl of the nostrils, and those hollow jaws of his, that seemed to be accentuated by curves of baleful but elusive significance. I had lived quite long enough, and had suffered disillusion sufficient, not to make the error into which fall so many earnest amateur disciples of Lavater, to pin my faith on any one of these features. In imagination I tried to add each point of elucidation to another, so that I might arrive at a just estimate of the true balance of his vices and virtues, for, believe me, no man is without some vice held in abeyance or left to flourish in riotous luxuriance.On the whole, I realised that the head, large and powerful as it was, had qualities that might make for the highest intelligence and ambition, but now the face seemed weighed down with anxiety and grief of mind, and in its present expression there was just a touch of remorse, or was it some hidden consciousness of guilt? Keen observers who have lived much in solitude, and have not been perplexed by the sight of too many strange, eager, and passionate faces, say that every human being’s countenance resembles in some degree some animal’s. I tried to apply this rough-and-ready method of mental measurement to the Spaniard, fettered as I was by the fact that those two great glowing eyes of his, like twin black lamps that flashed so often with suppressed fire, were closed, and could not, therefore, give me any clue. Somehow I caught the impression of a panther, forest bred, highly strung, but held in leash by some strong sentiment: was it love for Camille Velasquon?All the warnings I had had against this man, the impassioned appeal Doris had made to me when she released me from the hunchback’s, the hot scorn poured on my championship by old Zouche himself—the man’s father, be it remembered—even Fotheringay’s appeal to me to cease my association with him, lest worse befall me—all these things started up to bear witness against him. These had no reference to the tragic sequence of events—concrete things that had followed my engagement to him and had culminated in this mystery in Whitehall Court with the cruel slaying of an unnamed official of the Foreign Office by some secret brotherhood, which, as likely as not, might be the very order of St. Bruno, to whose headquarters I was hastening without a thought of my own safety or freedom.Could I, therefore, trust him? Was I discreet to rely on him when great stakes, not only mine but England’s, hung in the balance?On and on sped the train through hamlet, village and township. The twilight faded slowly into night, and as the gas lamps above my head flamed coarsely upward a terrible temptation assailed me and kept knocking on the doors of my brain in form something like this:1. Why be a merely passive instrument in this great struggle between nations and persons for this Lake of Sacred Treasure?2. Casteno stole the documents from the hunchback as he lay in the tent at Worcester senseless; why don’t you take them from Casteno now he is senseless? Then you would be quite certain England would get her just rights.3. You need not fear what the Spaniard might say or do to you if he caught you in the act. After all, you have got those clever imitations of the real thing which the hunchback and Paul Zouche prepared, and at a pinch you could substitute for the true manuscripts the false, and get clear away from St. Bruno’s to the protection of the Foreign Office before the fraud were discovered.Everybody is a potential scoundrel in some great crisis of his career. “Opportunity makes the thief,” says one old school of cynics; and I was, I admit, sore beset to do this deed, with some excuse for my own conscience that after all it was but the doing of a patriot and that it had the sanction of a sacred national need.But as I toyed with the temptation compromise came and sat beside me and told me that, if I didn’t do the trick then, I could do it some other moment, when I was the more convinced of Casteno’smala fides. Fate also took a hand in the struggle between conscience and duty and a sense of honour.

There was not a second to spare. Casteno shot at me a look of mingled entreaty and command to leave the frenzied professor to do his worst. The persons we had to fear were not, he motioned, in that tent at all but outside, scouring the grounds for medical assistance, and spreading everywhere news of our wonderful appearance out of the rain-clouds. Only let them hear this maniac’s wild cries for assistance and they would hasten back to us, and then all hope, all chance of escape, for either of us would be cut off.

Nevertheless, I thought of Doris lying there so weak, helpless, and friendless; and I hesitated. I felt I had already stifled Love so often for Duty that I could repress it no longer. Indeed, I took a step in her direction to make myself known to her, but, misconceiving my object, thinking I had no idea but one—to flee—Leopardi seized me in a grip of iron. “You shall not go,” he panted—“never! You are a thief, and you shall pay for your crime.”

His touch, however, was quite enough. What Casteno had failed to accomplish it brought about in a flash. All the hot, strenuous instincts of my manhood rose in rebellion at this degradation.

“You are mad,” I hissed, and with one huge effort I sprang on the scientist and, catching him by the middle, whirled him over my head and sent him crashing a moment later on to some grain bags that stood piled up in a corner.

As I did so his wig fell off and with it his beard, and I staggered backward in amazement. The so-called expert from the Meteorological Office was, as the Spaniard had contended, a spy—perhaps sent by the Foreign Office, for it was a man we instantly recognised—no other than Colonel Napier himself.

Personally, I would have stood my ground then and defied him; but Casteno was too quick for me. As I reeled back breathless from the impact he caught me by the shoulder and with a quick turn twisted me through the narrow door of the barn.

“This is no time for heroics, Glynn,” he whispered. “We have won. Now let us be off.” And he doubled behind some other buildings and then dived headlong into a clump of bushes, through which he wriggled his way on hands and knees like a snake.

Almost instinctively I followed him, for on the still summer breeze I could hear Colonel Napier’s voice raised in angry shouts, the thunder of hurrying feet, and all the mysterious sounds and movements which betokened that at last the crowd had taken alarm, and that an organised pursuit of us could, at the most now, be only a matter of a few seconds.

The branches tore our clothes and made sad havoc of our disguises, but this last accident proved a blessing in disguise, for it made us stop at a pond and restore to our faces their natural resemblance.

“But we must not be caught,” I returned, deftly rolling up the wigs and secreting them in the branch of a tree, where they looked like a new kind of bird’s nest. “Look through that opening there between those willows. Don’t you see the molten gleam of water under the summer sun?”

“Yes,” replied Casteno joyously, rising on his knees and stretching his neck. “It’s a stream sure enough—perhaps a river—with plenty of water space, for I am sure I distinguish a current in it running steady and strong.”

“Now let us make for that, then,” I urged, “and hail the first boat that passes. Let us pretend we are soldiers, and have overstayed our leave, and that we shall get fined if we don’t hasten pell-mell back to the town.”

“What town?” queried Casteno ruefully; whereat we both laughed. It certainly did seem preposterous for us not to know the name of the country we were in. Yet, truthfully enough, we didn’t—we hadn’t the ghost of an idea.

As luck would have it, however, we found several boats moored close to the trees by the side of the water, and in charge of them was a sharp-looking lad about fourteen years of age.

“Got any tubs for hire, sonny,” said Casteno cheerfully, walking up to the youngster and tapping him familiarly on the shoulder.

“What does your mother want to wash?” promptly returned the lad, and in a moment the three of us were on the best of terms.

Acting on an impulse of my own I took charge of the conversation, and pretended that we were soldiers who had got sick of barrack life, and had deserted from some important depot, and were anxious to get into hiding in the nearest town. Now in most lads there exists a very genuine sympathy with the hunted of all descriptions, and a loyalty, too, which no ordinary bribe or threat would cause them to break. As a consequence, he promised to take us off in one of the boats and to hide us under some cushions and sail sheets as he punted us down stream to “a capital nest I know,” he explained, “behind the kilns of the porcelain works.”

“But the town—what is its name?” I queried, with a grimace.

“Why, Worcester, of course,” the lad replied. “Didn’t you see it on the milestones?”

“We were in too great a hurry to look,” chimed in the Spaniard at once. “Why, we don’t even know what all those thousands of people are doing here in these grounds. We have simply bolted as hard as we could through the streets.”

“Then you didn’t even see the flying machine fall?” cried the lad, his eyes wide with excitement.

“Not a bit of it,” returned I, with more truth than the boy possibly could have expected.

“Then I’m sorry for you,” observed the lad slowly, “for it was the most lovely thing I ever saw in my life. Four men and one girl were dashed to pieces, and they’ve had to stop the race meeting—for this is Worcester Races on the Pitchcroft—whilst they look for the remains of the poor victims who are supposed to have come all the way from the Crystal Palace with Mr Santos-Dumont, who, luckily, made his escape in the parachute before the thing fell.”

Neither Casteno nor I, however, troubled to enlighten the lad as to the true facts. For one thing, it amused us slightly to discover for ourselves how strangely the news of our arrival had travelled, and in what a small degree the good citizens of Worcester were wont to mix the naked truth with their carefully-compounded stories of breathless adventure. For another, we were desperately anxious to get away from the neighbourhood of that racecourse. Any second the hue-and-cry might spread to the point at which we were. Indeed, it seemed little short of madness to loiter, and we sprang into the punt immediately we could get the lad to cast her off, and almost before he quite understood how quickly we had acted we had got ourselves concealed and the boy hard at work punting us down the stream.

Happily, the Severn covers but a few hundred yards in its passage from the racecourse to the city of Worcester itself, and so excited were the crowd over the fall and appearance of our air-ship that we contrived to slip away quite unobserved, to glide under the bridge that cut off Worcester from its suburbs, and to float past the cathedral, close to which stand the grey, old monastic ruins. Here we insisted on disembarking, because we found these remains were walled in and really furnished an ideal place of concealment, but we did not dismiss our guide.

“Go, sonny, and buy us two suits of rough blue serge,” I said, handing the lad four glittering sovereigns. “If they ask you any inconvenient questions say they are for your father, who is employed on a coal barge, and has had his duds stolen, a thing that often happens, I’m told. If there is any change remaining over, keep it, but whatever you do, hurry—hurry like mad.”

The boy, who had now quite entered into the humour of the adventure, and thought what a fine thing it was to be outwitting the police under their very noses as it were, tore off, leaving us in charge of the punt. And such good use did he make of his time, his opportunities, and the shopping facilities of the immediate district that, in less than half-an-hour, he returned with the things we had ordered. Very soon we bade him good-bye and gave him half-a-sovereign for his trouble; and, waiting until he had disappeared round a bend of the river, we scaled the wall that shut off the cathedral school ground from the ruins, and then plunged into an ancient recess in the wall where, in the half darkness, we threw off our uniforms and put on our serge suits.

Nobody who has not stood in some deadly peril of this sort can guess the relief we felt as we got back once again into fairly decent clothes, that did not make us appear much different to what we really were, and gave us the advantage of our own speech and looks. One takes up a disguise glibly enough, even if at first it presents an arduous strain to the nerves; but after a time the thing becomes a veritable Frankenstein to one, and seems to absorb every ounce of one’s brain and strength. Casteno literally danced with joy as he flung his uniform into a corner as far as he could.

“Thank goodness, now we can walk and talk like other folk,” he cried. “For my own part, I don’t care who we meet or what is said to us. I feel powerful enough to deny anything.”

“But surely,” I gasped, “you don’t mean to show yourself in public until night is fallen? Think—think of the risks!”

“I have, and I mean to take them. Nobody in Worcester can identify us now with the two soldiers who took passages in the air-ship at Shrewsbury. Remember, even if Colonel Napier could be quite sure it was us who had played him such a scurvy trick, he dare not say so. In the first place, people will think the fall and the shock have given him softening of the brain if we stick up to him and deny him with all the lung violence we are capable of. Secondly, you forget he is Professor Stephen Leopardi, the expert of the Meteorological Office, to the world just at present. He is the fraud, not us, and we have only got to unmask him to the hunchback, or to get inquiries made about him in London, where the police want him for his mysterious disappearance from Whitehall Court, and where the Meteorological people would have him instantly arrested for his impersonation, to put him utterly to confusion. Hence we have no cause to fear him or anyone here. We are free—free as air.” And again he capered about the ruins, overcome with glee.

“Then you mean actually to walk off to the railway station with all the Worcester police on the alert and to take the next express up to town?” I questioned. “You think we shall escape without any trouble!”

“Of course I do. Is it not race time, and is not the city full of strangers? Besides, you seem to have forgotten the most important thing of all. I have these manuscripts in my possession, and Camille Velasquon has brought the key to them all the way from Mexico. Now all we have got to do is to compare the two—and then?”

He stopped and looked straight at me, as we stood with the ruins silhouetted against the old cathedral chapter-house. My gaze met his.

“And then?” I repeated; and I stopped, and instinctively my hands clenched.

“I will do what is right to England, Glynn,” he cried in tones of intense emotion, stretching out his hands to me. “Good heavens, man! don’t stare at me like that! I’m a creature of flesh and blood like yourself. I have feelings and a sense of honour just as you have. I have not gone into this business simply to feather my own nest. I have not fought my father—Fotheringay—Cuthbertson—I have not besought powerful assistance, such as Cooper-Nassington’s, to sell this country to some Continental enemies—no.”

“I take your word—I believe you have not,” I replied slowly. “The point is whether the Order of St. Bruno has, for it seems to me that they are the principals in this treasure hunt and not yourself.”

“Well, come with me and see,” replied Casteno, averting his eyes. “I have pledged myself, but you will not take my word. You doubt—you hint—you mistrust me.”

“I do,” I gasped. “I can’t help it.”

“Then, come.” And without another word he turned away, and, seizing the ivy that grew in rich profusion on both sides of the wall, he climbed up by this support, closely followed by myself. The drop on the far side was only a matter of some ten feet, and, aided by similar branches, we passed into the playground again, and soon found ourselves heading for the chief station in Worcester—Shrub Hill.

As Casteno, however, had predicted, we found the streets thronged with all manner of queer characters hastening to or from the races, and we managed to secure places in a “race special,” which was timed to run to Paddington with only four stops on the road. There were, we saw for ourselves, plenty of detectives in the station, and they had evidently got wind of us and our flight, for every wretched soldier who swaggered into the building was stopped and cross-examined, and we actually saw two poor privates in the engineer uniform, who had had a little beer, and were inclined to be cheeky and not to answer questions, bundled into a cab and driven off to the city police station.

Punctually, however, at the time appointed the train left with us. As it happened, by judicious tips we secured not only a first-class carriage to ourselves but copies of the London papers, which we had failed to get in Shrewsbury before we had to hurry off to the fête to look after our seats in the air-ship.

José, plainly, was fagged out, and no sooner did the train move off than he stretched himself across the seat and composed himself for a nap. I, however, was strung up to the highest pitch of excitement, not by the perils we had just passed through, but by the prospect of getting to the heart of the mysteries of that most mysterious Order of St. Bruno, which had all the ways and uniforms of regular monks without their recognised symbolism. Indeed, I had not forgotten what my guide said when I had walked across the courtyard of their house at Chantry Road, Hampstead—“We are neither Roman Catholics nor Anglicans”—and yet if they did not belong to one or other of these two persuasions to which sect did they belong, and what was the object of their banding together, with houses in Delhi, Sydney, London, and Mexico? And why, as José pretended, should they have any patriotic notions for England in preference to Spain—or France, or Russia, or Mexico for that matter? If the manuscripts really belonged to them, as the Spaniard declared, why didn’t they desire to get them, to keep them, and to recover the Lake of Sacred Treasure for themselves?

Try as I would, I could not, as the train rattled through the fragrant orchards and hopfields of Worcestershire, bring myself to believe that my companion had told me the whole of the truth about this mysterious Order and the part it played in the life of our times. Like most private investigators I had grown to realise that “’tis not the habit that bespeaks the monk,” and that often under the most simple and impressive guises there lurked secret forces that meant treachery and villainy of the worst description.

“One thing I do promise myself,” I thought to myself rather firmly, “I will not rest whilst I am at St. Bruno’s until I have got to know all about these mysterious people—all. Señor Casteno may try as he will to put me off with explanations that only leave things more difficult and puzzling and hard to understand, but this time I will stand my ground. I will be the spy on this occasion, and if I find the Spaniard or his friends in the Order up to any mischief I will not hesitate a second—I will strike for England, cost what it will.”

Sinking back, I took up one of the papers I had purchased, and began to glance carelessly down its columns. I had not forgotten that these news sheets might contain some further news about that discovery of a murdered man in the Napiers’ flat, but seeing that I had had a Sunday special edition of a London paper I was not expecting to learn anything really new just then about the tragedy that had stricken the West End with a sense of painful impotence and danger; I felt the police and the press had not had sufficient time.

Nevertheless, something fresh had been discovered by one of the most enterprising of the younger papers—theDaily Graphic—which, unlike its contemporaries, did not reprint the old story about a man unknown being found stabbed to the heart in the colonel’s bed, but boldly ventured forth into big type with this extraordinary statement:

THE MYSTERY AT WHITEHALL

IDENTITY OF THE DEAD MAN

“The man who was found murdered in Colonel Napier’s flat in Embankment Mansions has been identified by an official of the Foreign Office from a description and photograph that were hurriedly circulated by Scotland Yard last night. The victim is no other than a gentleman occupying a responsible position in the Treaty Department of the Foreign Office, and the papers found in his desk tend to show that the crime was the work of some secret society which has its headquarters in London, and which had decreed his end because he, as a member, was supposed to have communicated some of its secrets to Lord Cyril Cuthbertson, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. How he came to be in Colonel Napier’s flat—and bed—remains, however, to be explained. He certainly bears an extraordinary resemblance to the missing colonel.”

By this time the day had begun to close in. The sun had sunk, leaving, as it sometimes does, even in the height of an English summer, the sky grey with mystery and suggestion of on-coming disaster. The paper itself slipped from my fingers as I dropped back into my seat and let my eyes wander over the landscape that, all of a sudden, seemed to have taken on itself the colour of my own thoughts, which were now troubled and perplexed with a dozen doubts and emotions which ever evaded me but none the less filled me with unrest and pain.

With an effort I recovered myself and looked curiously at José Casteno. He had curled himself up in an attitude that struck me as being too strained and unnatural to be comfortable, but, to all appearances, he was sleeping gently like an over-tired child. Strangely enough, it was the first time that I had seen his features in such absolute repose, and I caught myself examining each one of them with that careful minuteness and patience a geologist may bestow on a half-identified specimen—the lines at the corners of his mouth, the shape and setting of his chin, the high yet thin cheek-bones, the curl of the nostrils, and those hollow jaws of his, that seemed to be accentuated by curves of baleful but elusive significance. I had lived quite long enough, and had suffered disillusion sufficient, not to make the error into which fall so many earnest amateur disciples of Lavater, to pin my faith on any one of these features. In imagination I tried to add each point of elucidation to another, so that I might arrive at a just estimate of the true balance of his vices and virtues, for, believe me, no man is without some vice held in abeyance or left to flourish in riotous luxuriance.

On the whole, I realised that the head, large and powerful as it was, had qualities that might make for the highest intelligence and ambition, but now the face seemed weighed down with anxiety and grief of mind, and in its present expression there was just a touch of remorse, or was it some hidden consciousness of guilt? Keen observers who have lived much in solitude, and have not been perplexed by the sight of too many strange, eager, and passionate faces, say that every human being’s countenance resembles in some degree some animal’s. I tried to apply this rough-and-ready method of mental measurement to the Spaniard, fettered as I was by the fact that those two great glowing eyes of his, like twin black lamps that flashed so often with suppressed fire, were closed, and could not, therefore, give me any clue. Somehow I caught the impression of a panther, forest bred, highly strung, but held in leash by some strong sentiment: was it love for Camille Velasquon?

All the warnings I had had against this man, the impassioned appeal Doris had made to me when she released me from the hunchback’s, the hot scorn poured on my championship by old Zouche himself—the man’s father, be it remembered—even Fotheringay’s appeal to me to cease my association with him, lest worse befall me—all these things started up to bear witness against him. These had no reference to the tragic sequence of events—concrete things that had followed my engagement to him and had culminated in this mystery in Whitehall Court with the cruel slaying of an unnamed official of the Foreign Office by some secret brotherhood, which, as likely as not, might be the very order of St. Bruno, to whose headquarters I was hastening without a thought of my own safety or freedom.

Could I, therefore, trust him? Was I discreet to rely on him when great stakes, not only mine but England’s, hung in the balance?

On and on sped the train through hamlet, village and township. The twilight faded slowly into night, and as the gas lamps above my head flamed coarsely upward a terrible temptation assailed me and kept knocking on the doors of my brain in form something like this:

1. Why be a merely passive instrument in this great struggle between nations and persons for this Lake of Sacred Treasure?

2. Casteno stole the documents from the hunchback as he lay in the tent at Worcester senseless; why don’t you take them from Casteno now he is senseless? Then you would be quite certain England would get her just rights.

3. You need not fear what the Spaniard might say or do to you if he caught you in the act. After all, you have got those clever imitations of the real thing which the hunchback and Paul Zouche prepared, and at a pinch you could substitute for the true manuscripts the false, and get clear away from St. Bruno’s to the protection of the Foreign Office before the fraud were discovered.

Everybody is a potential scoundrel in some great crisis of his career. “Opportunity makes the thief,” says one old school of cynics; and I was, I admit, sore beset to do this deed, with some excuse for my own conscience that after all it was but the doing of a patriot and that it had the sanction of a sacred national need.

But as I toyed with the temptation compromise came and sat beside me and told me that, if I didn’t do the trick then, I could do it some other moment, when I was the more convinced of Casteno’smala fides. Fate also took a hand in the struggle between conscience and duty and a sense of honour.

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