"Being some Chapters of Secret History" (continued 2)

“True, Germany told us fables—pretty land, sea and air fables—and we were childish enough to believe them. If peace had been the Kaiser’s object, why did Krupp’s and Ehrhardt’s work night and day and Count Zeppelin carry on his frantic work of building giant airships?” I queried. “The greatest block head in a village school, with the true facts before him, could have done nothing else than suspect. But we are such a smug and unsuspicious people. We never like to hear an unpleasant truth.”

“True, we’re aroused now. This Zeppelin raid on London has inflamed the public mind. The people are clamouring loudly for something to be done. What can be done?” he asked. “How can we possibly fight those enemy airships—eh?” And he looked me straight in the face with those calm blue-grey eyes of his.

I paused.

I would have greatly liked to tell him of our secret discovery, for, after all, he was our most intimate friend. Yet I had given a promise to Roseye and to Teddy and, therefore, could not break it.

That Lionel Eastwell was a real stolid John Bull patriot had been proved times without number. We all liked him, for he was ever courteous to Roseye, and always wholehearted and easy-going with both Teddy and myself.

“You ask a question which I can’t answer, Lionel,” I replied at last.

“I thought, perhaps, you had some scheme,” he laughed airily. “You’re always so very inventive.”

Those words, when I remembered them in the light of after events, sounded somewhat curious.

“Inventive!” I laughed. “How can I put forward any scheme by which to fight an airship, except that of fast aeroplanes capable of mounting above the airship and dropping bombs? And, surely, that’s one which our Aircraft Factory have considered long ago.”

Lionel shook his head in reply.

“No. There must be some other mode than that—if we could only discover it. That poor women and children are being blown to pieces while in their beds is too terrible to contemplate,” he declared. “To-day Great Britain seems inadequately defended. But somebody will, of course, devise something. We can’t remain defenceless much longer. Whenever an arm of war has been invented, ever since the dark ages, somebody has always invented something to combat it. It will be so in the case of the Zeppelin—never fear,” he added confidently.

“Let’s hope so,” I replied, yet, truth to tell, it seemed to me very much as though he were trying to pump me regarding the secrets of that brown deal box which was reposing in a locked cupboard in the adjoining room. Perhaps, of course, mine was an entirely ungrounded suspicion. But there it was. I hesitated—and wondered.

At that moment Theed—who acted as my mechanic, valet, and man-of-all-work—rapped at the door and, entering, announced:

“Miss Lethmere, sir.”

Next instant Roseye, merry and radiant in a new fur motor-coat and close-fitting black hat, burst into the room.

She drew back on seeing Lionel, and then, recovering herself in an instant, exclaimed:

“Oh, Claude, I—thought you were alone! How are you to-day? I’ve brought you some flowers.”

“Thanks, dear,” I replied. “I’m feeling much better to-day. Teddy was in this morning, and he told me that you’d made a flight soon after breakfast. How far did you go? I thought you intended to rest for a bit?”

“I went to Chelmsford,” she replied. “I had a little engine-trouble before I got back, and had to come down in somebody’s park. I think it was somewhere near Watford. But I was able to put it right and get home, if a trifle lamely.”

“So Bertie Maynard told me,” remarked Lionel. “I saw him in the club just before lunch, and he said that you’d had engine-trouble.”

“Oh, it wasn’t very much really. Only, after Claude’s smash, I’m rather careful,” she said.

“One should always take every precaution,” declared Lionel seriously, as he rose and gave her his chair opposite me. “A lot of the boys are far too daring nowadays. They’ve followed Pegoud, and take needless risks long before they are qualified to do so. It’s easy enough to make the sensational loop if you are a practised hand. But when half-trained pupils try and attempt it—well, they’re bound to make a mess of it.”

Roseye glanced at me for a moment, and I knew that she was annoyed at Lionel’s presence. He was a good enough fellow in his place as a friend of her family, and a gossip who entertained her father so constantly, but she had no desire that he should be present at what she had intended should be a cosy tête-à-tête over our tea and muffins.

“Well. Have you seen the papers to-day?” I asked, in order to change the subject. “They are still full of the want of an efficient air-defence.”

“That will come all right, my dear Claude, I’m sure,” replied Lionel who, leaning back against the corner of my writing-table, had lit a fresh cigarette.

“I sincerely hope so,” returned Roseye. “What we sadly need is a Man who will be really responsible for air-defence—and air-defence alone—one who can make the most of the weapons that are now in our hands, and who has the wit, courage and initiative to use our own splendid airmen as they themselves desire to be employed—namely, to fight the enemy.”

“Quite so,” I agreed. “We also want arrangements for warning the towns and cities that air-raids are probable, so that people may take cover against both bombs and splinters of shell from anti-aircraft guns.”

“All that will come in due course,” Lionel assured us.

“No doubt,” I hastened to say. “Please understand that I’m not criticising any department of our defences. On the contrary, I only argue from the point of the man who may be desirous of protecting his home. Perhaps, as you say, some efficient means will at last be found by which to deal successfully with the enemy aircraft. If so, the whole country will eagerly welcome it.”

“What we don’t like is attacks without any timely warning,” said Roseye.

Lionel smiled—with a touch of sarcasm I thought.

“There won’t be any more raids for a bit, I feel positive, Miss Lethmere,” was his assurance. “Our friends across the North Sea are not yet fully prepared with their machinery. The raid on the thirteenth was but a mere rehearsal of what they hope to do. And, as you argue, we should certainly be prepared.”

“You speak almost as though you know,” I remarked, not without some surprise at his words.

“I only speak after surveying the matter calmly and logically,” was his slow reply. “The German newspapers have—ever since the early days of the war—threatened to bombard London from the air. This last raid has shown that they are capable of doing so.”

“They’re capable of anything!” I cried. “Remember Scarborough!”

“And Belgium,” chimed in Roseye.

“Well,” said Lionel to me. “You make all sorts of experiments on your new propellers and things down at Gunnersbury. Why don’t you try and devise some plan by which we can destroy Zeppelins? You’re always so intensely ingenious, Claude.”

“So you’ve just said. But far better men than myself have tried—and failed,” was my diplomatic response.

“But surely some means can be devised!” he cried. “Our flying-boys are splendid, as you know—and—”

“Except when they come to grief, as I did the other day,” I interrupted with a hard laugh.

“Well, you surely can’t complain,” was his answer.

“You’ve had the very devil’s luck ever since you took your certificate.”

“Admitted. But that doesn’t help me to fight Zeppelins,” I replied.

“It only wants somebody to do something, to find out some new invention or other, and the boys will tumble over each other in their eagerness to go up after enemy airships. Of that, I’m positive,” declared Eastwell. “You’ve got a lot of plant down at Gunnersbury, haven’t you? If so, you ought to turn your serious attention to this matter which is at the present moment of the very highest importance to the country.”

Roseye glanced at me, and I saw that my visitor’s words and bearing puzzled her.

“What do you make of Lionel’s questions?” I asked her ten minutes later, when Eastwell had risen and left, having taken the gentle hint that I wished to be alone with Roseye over the tea and muffins.

“I don’t know what to make of them, dear,” replied the girl, seating herself again in the big chair.

“Well, I’ve been watching him for some days,” I said slowly. “And, do you know that, strictly between ourselves, I believe that he has some suspicion of the direction of our experiments, and is pumping us to see what he can glean!”

“How can he possibly know? He is, of course, well aware that you’ve been devising new propellers, but he can know nothing of our real work. Neither Teddy nor Theed would ever let drop a single word, and, as you know, I’ve never breathed a sentence at home.”

“He spoke as though he knew that the enemy intended more raids—but not just at present.”

Roseye suddenly stirred herself and stared at me in amazement with those big expressive eyes of hers.

“What? do you think—do you really suspect that Lionel Eastwell is our enemy, Claude?” she asked, suddenly pale and breathless.

“Well—perhaps not exactly that,” I replied hesitatingly. “Only his queer questions, naturally make one think. We know we have enemies, clever, unscrupulous ones who have not hesitated to attempt to take my life. Therefore we must both be wary—extremely wary—for we never know where the next pitfall may be concealed.”

“I quite agree with all that, dear,” answered Roseye, looking at me earnestly. “But I really can’t think that Lionel is anything else than one of our best friends. At least he’s been a really good chum to me, ever since we first met. No,” she added decisively, “I’m convinced that no suspicion can attach to him. Such an idea, Claude, is to me, too utterly absurd.”

“Yes. Well, I suppose you’re right, dearest,” I replied with a sigh. “Women always see so very much farther than men in matters of this sort.”

And I rose and, crossing to her chair, kissed her fondly upon the lips.

“I’m sorry—very sorry indeed, dearest, that I’ve cast any reflection upon your friend,” I said in deep apology. “Do please forgive me, and we’ll never mention the subject again.”

Chapter Nine.

Contains More Curious Facts.

One afternoon a week later, when out at Hendon, I heard accidentally from a man I knew—one of the instructors at the Grahame-White Aviation School—that Eastwell was very queer, and in bed.

The weather proved bad for flying, therefore I sent Theed off and returned to town. Teddy had gone down to the naval air-station at Yarmouth to see the test of a new seaplane, so I went along to look up Lionel at his rooms in Albemarle Street.

His man, a thin-faced, dark-haired fellow named Edwards, who admitted me, said that his master had had a bad attack of something, the true import of which the doctor had failed to diagnose.

I found him lying in bed in his narrow but artistic bachelor bedroom, looking very wan and pale.

“Hulloa, Claude!” he cried with sudden joy, as I entered. “Awfully good of you to come in, old chap! I’ve been horribly queer these last three days, but I’ll be fit again in a day or two, the doctor says. Well—what’s the news? How are the boys out at Hendon?”

“All right. I was there this morning. Harrington had rather a bad smash yesterday afternoon, I hear. Came down outside Ruislip, and made an unholy mess.”

“Not hurt, I hope?”

“Tore his face and hands a bit—that’s all. But his biplane is in scraps, they say.”

He pointed to the box of cigarettes, and I took one. Then, when I had seated myself at his bedside, I saw that he had newspapers scattered everywhere, including the Paris Matin, the Journal, and the Rome Tribuna. That was the first time I had known that our friend was a linguist.

“Well,” he asked. “What about the Zeppelin raids? Any more news?”

He had returned to the subject by which he seemed obsessed. Yet, after all, this was not surprising, for many people talked air-raids incessantly. One section of the public, as usual, blamed the authorities, while the other supported them.

“Well,” I said cheerily, “there’s a new invention they are all talking of at Hendon to-day. Somebody has claimed to be able to construct a biplane which will rise from the ground without running, and can attain any speed from ten to two hundred miles an hour.”

“Phew! That’s interesting,” exclaimed Lionel, raising himself upon his elbow, and taking a sip of a glass of barley-water at his side. “And who is this wonderful man who has such a wonderful scheme?”

“Oh, I forget his name,” I said. “But the theory, as far as I can gather, is rather a good one. He can rise so quickly.”

“How?”

“Well,” I replied. “From what I can hear, there is a kind of rotary wing—not a propeller and not a thing which can be classed as a helicoptic.”

Lionel Eastwell grew intensely interested in the new invention which everybody at the aerodrome was discussing.

“Yes,” he said. “I follow. Go on, Claude. Tell me all you’ve heard about it. The whole thing sounds most weird and wonderful.”

“Well,” I said, “from what I can find out, the machine is not designed to screw itself through the air in the direction of its axis, or, by pushing the air downwards, to impart upward motion to the structure, as a screw propeller in water imparts a forward motion to the vessel by pushing the water backwards. The biplane is designed to obtain by a rotary motion the same upward thrust in opposition to the downward pull of gravity as the flapping wings, and the passive outspread wings of birds, and to obtain it by the blades being projected through the air in such a manner as to extract and utilise the practically constant energy of the expansive force of the air.”

“By Jove!” my friend exclaimed, stirring himself in his bed. “That theory is very sound indeed—the soundest I’ve ever heard. Who’s invented it?”

“As I’ve told you, I’ve forgotten,” I replied. “But what does it matter? There are hosts of new inventions every month, and the poor misguided public who put their money into them generally lose it. But I quite agree that the general idea of this is splendid. The war-inventions authorities ought at once to take it up hot and strong. The inventor is, no doubt, an ingenious man of thought and knowledge—whoever he may be. But alas! nobody ever meets with very much encouragement in aeronautics.”

“No,” he said, pillowing his head comfortably. “It is all so mysterious. We take on a wild-cat idea one day and manufacture machines that are declared to work miracles. Then, next week, we abandon the type altogether, and woo some other smooth-tongued inventor.”

“That’s just it,” I laughed. “If the authorities could only adopt some really reliable type to fight Zeppelins. But alas! it seems that they can’t,” I added.

For a few seconds he remained silent. I saw that he was reflecting deeply.

“Well,” he said. “We’ve established listening-posts all round London for its protection.”

“A real benefit they are!” I laughed. “We have officers and men listening all night, it is true. Of course as a picturesque fiction in order to allay public curiosity they publish photographs of men listening to things like gramophone-trumpets.”

“Exactly. The theory of that new invention is extremely sound. That’s my opinion.”

“And mine also,” I said. “I hear that the inventor has told the authorities that if they will assist him to complete his machine—which I expect is a costly affair—he will be able to carry out daily raids on Cuxhaven, Essen, Düsseldorf, and even as far as Berlin; carrying several tons of explosives.”

“How many?” asked my friend.

“Oh! four or five it is said.”

“Phew!” remarked Lionel, again stirring in his bed. “That sounds really healthy—doesn’t it?”

“Yes—the realisation of the dream of every flying-man to-day,” I said.

Then our conversation drifted into another channel, and, half an hour later, I left him.

During the past few days Teddy and I had been very busy with our own invention, and had made a number of further experiments down at Gunnersbury.

We could easily direct the electric current upon those insulated steel guys around our distant wireless-pole, but our difficulty was how to increase our power without increasing the bulk of the apparatus which we should be compelled to take up in the monoplane for purposes of attacking a Zeppelin.

There was a limit to the weight which my Breguet with its 200 horse-power engines would carry, and though, of course, we believed it would be unnecessary to use bombs, yet some should be carried for purposes of defence, as well as a Lewis gun.

Therefore we were faced by a very difficult problem, that of weight.

The next day was Sunday, and Teddy having returned from Yarmouth, we spent the whole afternoon and evening down at the workshop, making further experiments. I had not seen Roseye since Friday evening, which I had spent at Lady Lethmere’s, Sir Herbert being absent in Liverpool. Therefore, as we had carried out an alteration of the apparatus and intended to try sparking upon the pole again after dark, I rang Roseye up on the telephone shortly after five o’clock.

Mulliner, Lady Lethmere’s maid, replied, and a few minutes later Lady Lethmere herself spoke to me.

“Oh, I’ve rung you up at your rooms half a dozen times to-day, Mr Munro—but could get no answer!” she said.

“Being Sunday, my man is out,” I exclaimed. “I’m down here at Gunnersbury.”

“Can you take a taxi at once, and come over and see me?” she urged. “I want to speak to you immediately.”

“What about?” I asked anxiously.

“I can’t say anything over the telephone,” she answered in a distressed voice. “Do come at once, Mr Munro. I am in such trouble.”

I promised. And after briefly relating the curious conversation to Teddy, I found a taxi, and at once drove to Cadogan Gardens.

“Mr Munro!” exclaimed Lady Lethmere, looking at me with a pale, anxious expression as I entered the morning-room. “Something has happened!”

“Happened—what?” I gasped.

“Roseye! She went out yesterday morning to go over to Hendon to meet you—she told me—and she’s not come back!”

“Not back!” I cried, staring at her. “Where can she be?”

“Ah! That’s exactly what I want to know,” replied the mother of my well-beloved. “I thought perhaps she might have flown somewhere and had a breakdown, and was therefore unable to return, or to let me know last night. That happened, you recollect, when she came to grief while flying over the Norfolk Broads.”

“But she never arrived at Hendon yesterday,” I exclaimed. “I was there all the morning.”

“So I understand from Mr Carrington of the Grahame-White School, to whom I telephoned this morning. It was after learning this curious fact that I began to try and get into communication with you.”

“Well—where can she possibly be?” I asked in blank dismay.

“The only thing I can think of is that she altered her mind at the last moment, and went to see some friends. She may have given a servant a telegram to send to me, and the servant forgot to dispatch it. Such things have happened, you know.”

I shook my head dubiously. Knowing Roseye as I did, I knew that she always sent important messages herself.

“One thing is certain, that she has not met with an accident while flying, for her machine is still locked up in the hangar.”

“Yes. It is a consolation to know that she has not gone up and disappeared.”

“No,” I said. “She seems to have intended to meet me. But we had no appointment to meet. My intention yesterday morning was to go over to Gunnersbury, and I only changed my mind five minutes before I left my rooms. I spent part of the afternoon with Eastwell, who is queer in bed.”

“I heard that he was not well. Roseye told me so yesterday morning before she went out.”

“I wonder how she knew?” I exclaimed.

“I believe he spoke to her on the telephone on Friday night.”

“You overheard some of their conversation, I suppose?”

“None. She was shut up in the telephone-box, and when she came out I asked her who had rung up. She replied, ‘Oh! only Lionel!’ Next morning, while we were at breakfast, she remarked that Mr Eastwell was ill and in bed. He must have told her so on the previous night.”

I remained silent. This disappearance of Roseye, following so closely upon the dastardly attempt upon my life, caused me to pause. It was more than curious. It was distinctly suspicious.

Was the Invisible Hand—the claw-grip of which had laid such a heavy grasp upon Great Britain ever since August 1914—again at work? Was the clutch of that hand, which had so cunningly protected the enemy alien and fed the Germans, again upon myself and the woman I loved?

“Lady Lethmere, this is all too amazing. I had no idea that Roseye was missing,” I said. “Sir Herbert has not returned, I suppose?”

“No. I expect him to-morrow. I have not yet sent him word. But I must say I am now getting most anxious.”

“Of course,” I said. “We have to remember that to-day is Sunday, and that few telegraph offices are open.”

“Yet there is always the telephone,” Lady Lethmere said.

I argued that, in many country places, the telephone service was not available on Sundays and, though I felt intensely anxious, I endeavoured to regard the matter with cheerful optimism. I saw, however, that Lady Lethmere, a good, kindly and most charming woman, who had ever been genuinely friendly towards me, was greatly perturbed regarding her daughter’s whereabouts.

And surely not without cause. Roseye had left that house at eleven o’clock on the previous morning—dressed as usual in a navy-blue gaberdine coat and skirt, with her skunk boa and muff, intending to change later on into her Burberry flying-suit which she kept at Hendon. From the moment when she had closed the front door behind her, she had vanished into space.

Such was the enigma with which I—her lover—was at that moment faced.

I ask you, my reader, to place yourself for a moment in my position, and to put to yourself the problem.

How would you have acted?

Would you have suspected, as I suspected, the sinister and deadly touch of the Invisible Hand?

Chapter Ten.

The Tunnel Mystery.

I went back to my rooms in Shaftesbury Avenue and, in consequence of my telephone message, Teddy came and threw himself in the chair opposite me half an hour later, to discuss the curious disappearance of my well-beloved.

Teddy suggested that we should report the occurrence to the police, and give them Roseye’s photograph, but I was averse to this course. I pointed out that, in all probability, she was with friends somewhere, and that Monday morning would bring me a letter from her.

Well—Monday morning came. Eagerly I went through my correspondence, but there was no word from her, either to her mother or to myself. It was only then that I began to be really anxious, and at noon I went down to Scotland Yard and there, in the cold waiting-room, stated exactly what had occurred.

The inspector, when he looked at the photograph I produced, exclaimed:

“Ah, sir. I’ve often seen Miss Lethmere’s picture in the papers. Why, she’s the famous flying-lady—isn’t she?”

I replied in the affirmative, and explained how she had left her home in Cadogan Gardens to go to Hendon to meet me.

“I see. She was lost sight of between Cadogan Gardens and Hendon,” he exclaimed, adding a memorandum to what he had already written down. “Well, sir,” he said. “We’ll do our best, of course. But—you don’t think Miss Lethmere has disappeared intentionally—eh?”

And he looked at me inquiringly with his dark, serious eyes.

“Intentionally! No—why?”

“Well, because we get many young ladies reported missing in the course of a year, and many of them we find, on inquiry, have hidden themselves purposely, for their own private reasons, quarrels, run-away matches, hiding from angry parents, and such-like causes. I tell you,” he added, “some of the cases give us quite a lot of trouble and annoyance.”

“I’m quite sure that Miss Lethmere is not hiding herself purposely,” I declared quickly. “There can be no object in her doing so.”

“No. Not as far as you are aware, sir,” the inspector replied very politely. “But neither you nor I can always follow the trend of the feminine mind,” he added with a faint smile. “You, of course, do not suspect the existence of any motive which would lead her to disappear intentionally. Nobody in such circumstances as yours, ever does. Do you happen to know whether she took any money with her when she left home?”

“Mulliner, Lady Lethmere’s maid, says that just before going out Miss Lethmere glanced in her purse, found that she only had a few shillings, and took four Treasury-notes from her jewel-box.”

“Was that all the money in the jewel-box?” he asked.

“No. About eighteen pounds remains there now.”

“H’m. She evidently did not make any preparation for a journey—or any long absence.”

“Well,” replied the inspector after a brief pause, “we will certainly circulate her description, and see what we can gather. The young lady may have met with a street accident, and be in one of the hospitals. Though I hope she hasn’t, of course!”

So with that rather poor assurance I had to be content, and took my leave.

That afternoon I again went out to Hendon, making inquiry everywhere of the men who were Roseye’s friends, but she certainly never went there on the Saturday, and I found her machine still in the hangar. Her mechanic knew nothing, for he had received no orders from her since Friday.

Three days—three breathless anxious days passed. Ah! shall I ever forget the awful tension of those terrible hours!

Sir Herbert had returned, and, with his wife, was naturally distracted. He was making inquiries in every quarter of friends and acquaintances, and of anyone who might have been likely to see his missing daughter. In this, both Teddy and I actively assisted him.

On the third evening I returned to my rooms to wash, intending to go along to the Automobile Club to dine with the flying-boys who assembled there every night, when Theed told me that the police had, an hour before, rung me up from Scotland Yard, and requested me to go down there at once.

This I did without delay and, having been shown into that big, bare waiting-room, the same dark-haired inspector came to see me.

“Well, Mr Munro,” he exclaimed, “we’ve met with no very great result, though the description of the missing young lady has been circulated right through the country. But the affair is certainly a mystery.”

“Then you don’t suspect that she has purposely disappeared—eh?” I asked quickly.

“Well—after all—I don’t know,” was his hesitating reply. “Something belonging to her has been found which rather leads to that supposition.”

“What has been found?” I gasped eagerly.

“This,” he answered, and he placed upon the table a gold chatelaine which I at once recognised as belonging to Roseye—for. I had given it to her. It formed a jingling bunch. There was a chain-purse, a combined match-box and cigarette-case, a powder-box with its little mirror in the cover, and a card-case all strung upon thin gold chains which, in turn, were attached to a ring—so that it could be carried upon the finger.

“Wherever was that found?” I asked, turning pale at sight of it.

“It was discovered this morning by a platelayer engaged in examining the rails in the long tunnel just beyond Welwyn Station on the Great Northern Railway.”

“In a tunnel!”

“Yes. The two tunnels which are quite near to each other have, at our request, been thoroughly searched by the local police and the platelayers, but nothing else has been found. My first fear was,” added the inspector, “that there might have been a tragedy in the tunnel. Happily, however, there is no ground for any such suspicion.”

“But there may have been a struggle in the train!” I suggested.

“Possibly,” answered the inspector. “It’s fortunate that the cards were in the case, for when the chatelaine was handed to the sergeant of constabulary at Welwyn, he at once recognised Lethmere as the name of the lady whose description had been circulated by us. Therefore the constabulary sent it up here at once.”

I took it and found that in the purse were the four Treasury-notes, as the maid Mulliner had described, together with some silver. Three of my own particular brand of Russian cigarettes remained in the case, while among the cards which I opened upon the table was one of my own upon which I had, only a few days previously, written down the address of the makers of a new enamel which I had advised her to try upon her machine.

The tiny powder-puff and the small bevelled mirror were there, though the latter had been cracked across in its fall in the tunnel.

“Seven years bad luck!” I remarked to the inspector, whose name I had learned to be Barton.

I was turning over with curiosity that bunch of jingling feminine impedimenta which I knew so well, when the door suddenly opened, and a red-tabbed captain in khaki entered.

“This is Captain Pollock,” Barton said, introducing him. “He wished, I believe, to ask you a question, Mr Munro.”

I looked at the new-comer with some surprise, as he bowed and, in rather an authoritative manner, took a chair at the big leather-covered table at which I was seated with the inspector.

“The facts of your friend Miss Lethmere’s disappearance have been communicated to us, Mr Munro,” he commenced, “and we find that the lady’s disappearance is much complicated by certain rather curious facts.”

“Well?” I asked, rather resentful that another department of the State should enter upon what, after all, was a purely personal investigation. Besides, I could see no motive. The War Office had enough to do without making inquiries regarding missing persons.

“Well,” said the captain politely, “I of course know you, Mr Munro, to be a well-known aviator, and have often read of the long and sensational flights undertaken by Miss Lethmere and yourself. I hope you will not think that I am personally inquisitive regarding your lady friend. But,” he went on apologetically, “I am only performing my duty in inquiring in the interests of the State. You are, I know, an intensely patriotic man. I hope that I, as a British officer, am equally patriotic. Therefore we stand upon the same ground—don’t we?”

“Most certainly,” was my reply, though, much puzzled as to the drift of his argument, I looked straight into his face, a round, rather florid countenance, with a small sandy moustache.

“Good,” he said. “Now I want you to answer me, in confidence, the questions I will put to you. Your replies I shall treat as absolutely secret.”

“Captain Pollock is from the Intelligence Department,” remarked the inspector, interrupting in explanation.

“I will answer, of course, to the best of my ability,” I said. “But with one reservation—I will say nothing that might reflect upon a woman’s honour.”

He pursed his lips ever so slightly. But that very slight movement did not pass me unnoticed.

Was a woman’s honour concerned in this?

The two men exchanged glances, and in an instant a fierce resentment arose within me. Between us, upon the bare table, lay the gold chatelaine that I had bought at Bouet’s, in the Gallerie at Monte Carlo a year and a half ago.

It had been found in that tunnel on the main line of the Great Northern. Something tragic had occurred. Was there any further room for doubt?

“The matter does not concern a woman’s honour—er—not exactly so,” the man in khaki said slowly.

“I want to know—” And he paused, as though hesitating to explain his motive for coming along to see me.

“What do you want to know about?” I asked boldly. “Come, Captain Pollock, let us face each other. There is a mystery here in Miss Lethmere’s disappearance, and in the finding of this bunch of feminine fripperies in the tunnel. I intend to elucidate it.”

“And I will assist you, Mr Munro—if you will only be frank with me.”

“Frank!” I echoed. “Of course I’ll be frank!” Again he looked me straight in the face with those funny, half-closed little eyes of his. Then, after a few moments’ pause, he asked:

“Now—tell me. Is it a fact that you, with a friend of yours named Ashton, have made some very remarkable electrical discovery?”

I looked at him, stunned by surprise. He noticed my abject astonishment.

“I’ll go farther,” he went on. “Does this discovery of yours concern aircraft; is it designed to bring disaster upon Zeppelins; and are you engaged in perfecting a secret invention in which you have the most entire confidence? In other words, have you nearly perfected a method by which you will be able to successfully combat enemy airships in the air? Tell me the truth, Mr Munro—in strictest secrecy, remember.”

His words staggered me. How could he know the secret that we had so closely guarded?

I did not reply for several moments.

“Well?” he asked, repeating his question.

“I don’t see why I should reveal to anyone—even to you—what I have been doing in the interests of the defence of our country,” I protested.

“Except that by doing so we should both be able to carry our investigations farther—and, I hope, to a satisfactory issue.”

I had given my word to Teddy and to Roseye, and they had given their words to me, to disclose nothing. This I recollected and, therefore, I hesitated.

The captain, seeing my reluctance, said:

“In this inquiry we ought, surely, to assist each other, Mr Munro! Miss Lethmere is missing, and it is for us to unite in our efforts to elucidate the mystery.”

“But how can answers to the questions you have put to me serve, in any way whatever, to bring us nearer to the truth of what has happened to Miss Lethmere?” I queried.

“They do. I merely ask you, yes or no. Your reply will at once place us in a far better position to conduct this most important inquiry,” he said. “I may tell you that at present the gravest suspicion rests upon Miss Lethmere.”

“Suspicion!” I echoed angrily. “Of what, pray?”

The captain drew a long breath and, once more looking me straight in the face, replied:

“Well, of being a secret agent of the German Government—or to put it very bluntly, of being a spy!”

“Roseye a spy!” I shouted, starting up from my chair. “A most foul and abominable lie! How dare you cast any such imputation upon her?”

“It is, unfortunately, no imputation, Mr Munro,” replied the captain. “You naturally doubt the truth, but we have documentary evidence that the missing lady is not exactly the purely patriotic young person whom you have so long believed her to be. Since the war lots of men who have trusted pretty women have had many rude awakenings, I assure you.”

“I’ll believe nothing against Roseye!”

“Well,” answered Pollock, taking from his pocket an official envelope, “perhaps you will look at this!” and from the envelope he took a half sheet of dark-blue notepaper of a type and size used by ladies, and handed it across to me, saying:

“This was found in her card-case here. From Scotland Yard they sent it over to us this afternoon, and its real import we very quickly discovered.”

My eyes fell upon the paper, and I saw that it was covered with lines of puzzling figures in groups of seven, all written neatly in a distinctly feminine hand.

“Well,” I asked in surprise, “what does all this mean?”

“Only one thing,” was the hard reply. “This paper, folded small and secreted, was found in this card-case. Those figures you see convey a message in the secret code of the Intelligence Department of the German Naval War Staff—a seven-figure code. A couple of hours ago we succeeded in deciphering the message, which is to the effect that you and Ashton have made an astounding discovery and have succeeded in directing a powerful electric wave by which you can charge metals at a distance, and cause sparking across any intervening spaces of those metals. By this means you are hoping to defeat Zeppelins by exploding the gas inside their ballonets, and as you are both highly dangerous to the success of the enemy’s plans for the wholesale destruction of life and property by airships, it is here suggested that you should both meet sudden ends at the hands of certain paid hired assassins of the Berlin secret police.”

Then, after a pause, the captain again looked at me, and said very slowly:

“Mr Munro. This document found in Miss Lethmere’s purse is nothing else but your own death-warrant! Miss Lethmere is a spy and, though she may be your friend, she is plotting your death!”

Chapter Eleven.

The Signalman’s Story.

I sat, staggered by that damning evidence placed before me!

Proof indisputable lay there that Roseye—my own dear well-beloved, she whose ready lips met mine so often in those fierce, trustful caresses—the intrepid girl who had been as “a pal” to Teddy and myself in our secret experiments, and who knew all the innermost secrets of our invention and our power to fight Zeppelins—was a traitor to her country!

It was incredible!

Was it by her connivance that the steel bolt in my machine had been withdrawn, and one of wood substituted?

In this terrible war men laughed, and women wept. The men went out to the front in Flanders with all the fine patriotic sentiment of Britons, singing gaily the various patriotic songs of war. But alas! how many went to their death, and the women wept in silence in the back streets of our dear old London, and of every town in the work-a-day kingdom.

In official circles it was known—known indeed to the public at large—that the Zeppelin menace was a real and serious one. Teddy and I had, in secret, striven our best to discover a means by which to combat these sinister attacks upon our non-combatants.

Yet upon that leather-covered table before me lay that puzzling cryptic message found among the belongings of my missing beloved.

The whole affair was, indeed, a mystery. After a few moments of silence I raised my head and, looking again at Pollock, said:

“All this is, of course, very interesting from the point of view of a police problem, but the hard, real fact remains.”

“What fact?” he asked.

“That I, with my friend Ashton, am in possession of certain discoveries by which we can, under given conditions, bring Zeppelins to the ground.”

The red-tabbed captain curled his lip in a rather supercilious smile.

He was evidently one of those persons imported into the Department after the outbreak of war and, in comparison with Barton as an investigator, was a nonentity.

True, a piece of paper bearing a message in the enemy’s cipher had been found secreted in Roseye’s card-case.

But I argued that before the owner of the card-case could be condemned, she must be found, and an explanation demanded of her.

“You surely cannot condemn an accused person in her absence!” I argued.

Barton agreed with me. It was against all principles of justice to condemn an accused person unheard.

“Well,” explained the red-tabbed captain, “upon the face of it, there can be no real defence. Here we have the missing lady’s belongings found in a tunnel, and in them—fortunately, for ourselves—we discover a message intended for transmission to the enemy. That message, Mr Munro, is quite plain, and speaks for itself. You have made an interesting scientific discovery. Possibly they have ferreted out your secret. It interests them: they fear you and, therefore, they have plotted your death.”

“I won’t believe that!” I cried in angry resentment. “Ask yourself! Would you yourself believe it of the woman whom you loved?”

“My dear Mr Munro,” replied the captain coldly, “we are at war now. We cannot gauge either our feelings, or our beliefs, by the standard of pre-war days.”

“Well,” I declared bluntly, “I don’t believe it. Miss Lethmere would never hold any communication with the enemy. Of that I’m quite positive.”

“But we have it written down here—in black and white!”

“True. But before we take this as authentic we must discover her, and question her. To you mysterious people of the Secret Service the task will, surely, not be so very difficult. You know the mystery of Miss Lethmere’s sudden and unaccountable disappearance. Therefore I leave all to you—to investigate, and to elucidate the puzzle. I don’t pretend to account for it. You, both of you, of the War Intelligence Department and the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, have the facts before you—plain facts—the disappearance of Lady Lethmere’s daughter. When her whereabouts is ascertained then the remainder of the inquiry is surely quite easy. I am not an investigator,” I added with biting sarcasm. “I’m only an inventor, and I leave it to you both to discover why Miss Lethmere disappeared.”

“You apparently have invented something of which the enemy is determined, at all hazards, to learn the truth,” remarked Inspector Barton.

I laughed, and slowly took a cigarette from my case.

“They will never know that,” I declared with entire confidence. “I can tell you both that the secret experiments of Ashton and myself have been crowned with success. We have, however, been most wary and watchful. We are well aware that at our works out at Gunnersbury there have been intruders, but those who have dared to enter at night to try and discover our plans have been entirely misled and, up to the present, no single person beyond ourselves has ever seen, or has ever gained any knowledge whatsoever of that electrical arrangement which constitutes our discovery.”

“Then you really can fight Zeppelins?” asked Barton, much interested.

I nodded in the affirmative, and smiled.

“So what is written here in cipher is perfectly correct?” asked Pollock.

“Perfectly. The missing lady has actively assisted Mr Ashton and myself in our experiments.”

“And apparently the lady wrote down this message giving you away,” remarked Barton.

“Somebody wrote it—but it certainly is not her handwriting.”

“Quite so. Spies frequently get other persons to copy their messages in order that they can disclaim them,” replied the Intelligence officer. “We’ve had several such cases before us of late.”

His words aroused my anger bitterly. That Roseye had held any communication with the enemy I absolutely refused to believe. Such suggestion was perfectly monstrous!

Yet how was it possible that anyone should know of the success of our experiments at Gunnersbury?

Recollection of that well-remembered night when Teddy had declared there had been strangers prowling about, flashed across my mind.

I knew, too well, that the evil that had befallen me, as well as the disappearance of my well-beloved, had been the work of the Invisible Hand—that dastardly, baneful influence that had wrecked my machine and nearly hurled me to the grave.

“Well,” I said at last, “I would much like a copy of this remarkable document.”

“I fear that I cannot give it to you, Mr Munro,” was the captain’s slow reply. “At present it is a confidential matter, concerning only the Department, and the person in whose possession it was.”

“We must find that person,” I said resolutely.

“What is your theory regarding Miss Lethmere?” I asked, turning to Barton.

“Well, Mr Munro, it would appear that either the lady herself, or some thief, threw the chatelaine from a train passing north through the tunnel.”

“There may have been a struggle,” I remarked, “and in trying to raise the alarm it might have dropped from her hand.”

“That certainly might have been the case,” the inspector admitted.

An hour later, accompanied by Teddy and Barton, I set out from King’s Cross station and, on arrival at Welwyn—a journey a little over twenty miles—we spent the evening in searching inquiry.

The station-master knew nothing, except that both tunnels had been searched without result.

The story told by the platelayer who found the chatelaine was to the effect that he noticed a paper bag lying in the centre of the up-express line and, on picking it up, found the jingling bunch of gold impedimenta. The paper bag had probably been blown along there by a passing train and had somehow become entangled among the short lengths of chain composing the chatelaine.

“Of course it might ha’ been there a couple o’ days,” the stout, sooty-faced man replied to a question of Barton’s. “I work in the tunnels all the time, but I didn’t see it before to-day. We often finds things thrown out o’ trains—things people want to get rid of. They must ’ave quite a fine collection o’ things up at King’s Cross—things what I and my mates have found while we’ve been a goin’ along with our flares.”

“You can form no idea when it might have been thrown out?” I asked.

“Probably late last night, or early this mornin’,” was the man’s reply. “I started to examine all the rails just after eleven o’clock last night, and had not quite finished when the 11:30 express out o’ King’s Cross for Edinburgh came through.”

“It might have been thrown from that,” I remarked. “Where was the first stop made by that express?”

“Grantham, sir—at 1:33 in the morning—then York,” he replied, in a hard, rough voice. His face was deeply furrowed, and his eyes were screwed up, for he spent more than half his life in the darkness, choking smoke and wild racket of those two cavernous tunnels through which trains roared constantly, both night and day. “Of course, sir,” he added, “there were lots o’ trains a passing on the up-line during the night, mails, goods, and passengers. Therefore it’s quite impossible to say from which the gold stuff was thrown. My idea is that a thief wanted to get rid of it.”

“No,” I replied. “If that were so he’d most certainly have taken the money from the purse. The Treasury-notes and silver could not have been identified.”

“Then your theory is that it was dropped out by accident?” asked Teddy, who had been listening to the man’s story with keenest interest.

“Well—it certainly was not got rid of purposely by any thief,” was my answer, and with this Barton agreed.

Of other railwaymen we made inquiry. To each I showed Roseye’s photograph, but none of the porters had any recollection of seeing her.

The signalman who was on night duty in the box north of the second tunnel was somewhat dubious. When I showed him the photograph he said:

“Well, sir, Saturday night was a bright calm night—and when the Scotch express was put through to me from Welwyn box I was wondering if there were any Zeppelins about, for it was just such another night as that on which they recently attacked London. They always seem to look for the railway lines for guidance up to town. After I had attended to my signals, and accepted the express, I went to the window of my cabin to look out. As I was standing there the express came out of the tunnel and flew by. The driver was a little late and was, I saw, making up time. As it went past nearly all the windows had drawn blinds—all but about three, I think. At one of them I caught a glimpse of two women who, standing up near the door, seemed to be struggling with each other.”

“You saw them distinctly?” I asked eagerly. “Two women?”

“Yes. I saw them quite plainly,” he replied, and I realised that he was a man of some intelligence. “When trains go by, especially the expresses, the glimpse we get is only for a fraction of a second. But in that we can often see inside the carriages at night, if the regulations are broken and the blinds are up. A good many people disregard the danger—even in these days of Zeppelins.”

“They do,” I said. “But please describe, as far as you are able, exactly what you saw.”

“Well, sir, the Scotch express tore past just as I was standing at the window star-gazing. My mate at Stevenage had just put through an up-goods, and all was clear, so I stood wondering if the Zepps would dare to venture out. Then I heard the low roar of the Edinburgh night-express approaching up the tunnel, and a moment later it ran past me. As it did so I saw in one of the carriages the two women standing there. Both had their hats off. One, a fine big strong person I should take her to be, seized the other, whose hair had fallen about her shoulders, and she seemed to be helplessly in her grip.”

“Did you report it?” Barton asked quickly.

“I rang up Stevenage and told my mate that something was going on in the express. But he replied later on to say that he had watched, and seen nothing. Later on in the night he spoke to me again, and said that the man in the Hitchin box, who had kept a look out, had reported back that all blinds of the express had then been drawn.”

“So the assumption seems to be that Roseye was attacked by some strange woman,” I said, turning to Teddy. “She struggled at the door, and in the struggle the chatelaine which she had in her hand fell out upon the line.”

Barton drew a long breath.

“It’s all a profound mystery, Mr Munro,” he said.

“If your theory is correct, then we must go a step further and assume that the stout woman overpowered Miss Lethmere, and afterwards drew down the blinds before the express reached Hitchin, where there is a junction and the train would, I suppose, slow down.”

“Yes, sir,” exclaimed the signalman. “Drivers have orders to go slow through Hitchin because of the points there.”

“But why should Miss Lethmere be attacked by a woman?” I queried in dismay.

“Why should she have disappeared from home at all, Mr Munro?” asked Barton. “Yes. I quite agree with you, sir, the more we probe this mystery, the more and more complicated it becomes.”

“Well, Mr Barton?” I exclaimed. “Now, tell me frankly, what’s your theory. Why has Miss Lethmere disappeared?”

The inspector, one of the best and shrewdest officials attached to the Criminal Investigation Department, paused for a few moments and, looking me full in the face, replied:

“To tell you the truth, Mr Munro, I’m still absolutely puzzled. The whole affair seems to grow more involved, and more astounding.”

Chapter Twelve.

Reveals an Astounding Fact.

Weeks passed, but alas! the problem remained unsolved. I became plunged in the darkest depths of despair.

The hue-and-cry had been raised all over the kingdom. Sir Herbert Lethmere had offered a reward for any information concerning his daughter, but nobody came forward with any really tangible declaration.

The hard indisputable fact was that she had gone down those front-door steps in Cadogan Gardens and disappeared as completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed her.

For me, those weeks were weeks of keen, hourly anxiety, weeks of grief and breathless forebodings.

The woman I loved so dearly had been snatched from me, and now I felt that I had no further object in life. Indeed, I had no heart to make any further experiments to perfect my Zeppelin-destroyer, and though Teddy, in his old cheery way, tried to console me and endeavoured to get me down to Gunnersbury, I always firmly refused to go. The place was now hateful to me. My keenness had vanished. Now and then I went out to Hendon and looked at Roseye’s machine still there. Her mechanic, whom Sir Herbert still kept on—he being unfit for military service—hung about the aerodrome and smoked “yellow perils” awaiting his mistress’s return.

Once or twice, on bright days, I made a short flight just to keep fit. Otherwise I generally remained at home in my rooms pondering, or else out trying to follow some imaginary clue to which my theory led me.

Lionel Eastwell always expressed himself full of sympathy. Many times we met at the club and elsewhere, and he always expressed his belief that Roseye was somewhere with friends. Indeed, he seemed full of optimism.

“My firm opinion is that Miss Lethmere has met with an accident, and is in some hospital or other—some cottage hospital perhaps. Maybe she has lost her memory as result of her unfortunate mishap,” he suggested one day. “There are lots of such cases recorded in the papers.”

Truth to tell, my suspicion of Lionel Eastwell had daily increased. First, he had always appeared far too inquisitive regarding our experimental work. Secondly, he had been ever polite and affable towards Roseye with a view, it seemed, of preserving an extremely close friendship. Why, I wondered? I knew that she had liked him for his courtesy and pleasant demeanour ever since they had first met. And the point that they had first met in Germany I had never forgotten. It had increased my suspicion—and pointedly so.

The most puzzling fact concerning him, however, was that I had discovered during my eager and constant investigations, from one of the boys at Hendon—Dick Ferguson, who was flying a new REP “Parasol,” that on the very evening of the day that I had called at Albemarle Street to find him ill in bed, he had met him in Hatchett’s in Piccadilly, and had actually dined with him there in the grill-room.

When I had sat at Eastwell’s bedside, three hours before, he had then declared himself unable to move without pain, and had told me that the doctor had strictly forbidden him to get up. Yet, on that very same night, he had dined down below in the cheerful grill-room and, according to Dick, was as merry as ever.

These were facts which certainly required explanation.

Why had he not gone along to the Piccadilly Hotel, or to the Club, as was his habit? Was it because, fearing to be seen, he had chosen the smaller and quieter resort?

Most probably he feared to meet either Teddy or myself at the Piccadilly, for we both frequently went there as a change from the Automobile Club. We flying-men are a small circle, and we have our own particular haunts—just as every other profession has.

Three times I had questioned Dick Ferguson regarding Lionel’s presence at that small, but popular restaurant on that particular night. At first I believed that he had probably mistaken the date—which was so easy. But he had fixed it absolutely by telling me that it was the night when the Admiralty had admitted that Zeppelins had again been over Essex and Norfolk and been driven back by our anti-aircraft guns.

Certainly I had no reason to doubt Dick’s story. He was a pal of Teddy’s, and I had been up with him twice on his new “Parasol”—that machine which Hendon men will remember as having caused such a sensation.

How flying has changed since the war! In the pre-war days those Sunday meetings out at Hendon, with their passenger-flights, were quite smart frivolous gatherings. In the enclosure stood rows of fine cars with many young “bloods”—who afterwards gallantly put on khaki—with many of their best girls, some of them of the bluest blood of the land, while others were revue actresses, with a few women aged, apeing and adipose, with of course a good sprinkling of girls on the keen look out for husbands.

There are some men who went regularly to “exhibitions of flying” before the war who could tell strange tales—of pretty women held in the clutches of blackguards, and of good, innocent boys who fell, were blackmailed, and were “squeezed” to their death.

But it is ever so in sport. The racecourse and the tapis vert have both been the cause of the downfall of a good many excellent fellows, therefore the organisers of the aerodromes are not to be blamed for the exploits of those pestilent undesirables who as at Epsom, Newmarket or Sandown, having paid the admission fee, passed through its gates.

Ah! I recall—and many will recall with me—those summer afternoons upon the lawn where the little tea-tables were set, and where some of the worst girls in the smartest and most daring of costumes sat with some of the best girls in the neatest to sip the innocuous beverage and to nibble cakes with the best and bravest young fellows in all England.

That strange, daring little world of flying-men—knew it, but they were level-headed and, keeping themselves to themselves, gave the cold shoulder to the unknown ones who drifted in from nowhere to display their brilliant raiment, and to watch, in a bored way, such feats as looping the loop, and other exercises which have proved such splendid training for our flying-boys to-day.

I did not trust Eastwell. Both his actions and his attitude puzzled me. An intimate friend of Sir Herbert, he was often at Cadogan Gardens, telling his host and Lady Lethmere that he firmly believed that Roseye was still ill, and still unidentified.

Purposely I avoided him. Teddy and I were in full agreement over this. A man who had been ill in bed and in pain, with no prospect of getting about for some days, and yet could go and dine merrily at Hatchett’s that same evening, was, I argued, not to be trusted further.

All that Captain Pollock and Inspector Barton had told me served to increase the amazing puzzle.

They said that Roseye was a spy of Germany, but I defied them. I declared that they had lied.

“My own opinion, Munro, is that my poor girl is dead,” Sir Herbert declared one afternoon when I called. “I know,” he went on sympathetically. “I know how deeply devoted you were to her. But alas! we must be brave and face facts in this critical situation in which we all find ourselves to-day.”

For a moment I did not reply. I had frankly told him of that mysterious message found in Roseye’s card-case, and he had followed every channel of my inquiries with eager interest, paying most of the out-of-pocket expenses and having one or two confidential interviews with Inspector Barton.

Like myself, and like Teddy also, he would not hear of any allegation against his daughter. That cryptic message he regarded as the work of the Invisible Hand which, since August 1914, had been raised against our dear beloved country.

Once or twice Lionel Eastwell had called upon me in Shaftesbury Avenue and sat beside my fire, discussing the war, the Zeppelin menace and the apparent apathy in certain quarters to deal firmly with it. At that moment the popular Press were loud in their parrot-cries that we had no adequate defence. In a sense, they voiced the public demand. But those papers which were now loudest in the denunciation of the Government were the selfsame which, before the war, had jeered at any suggested progress in aviation, and had laughed to scorn any prizes offered to aviators as encouragement in designing machines, or in flying them.

The Invisible Hand was, even in those days, laid heavily upon the Press, who laughed at Zeppelins, and declared that on that night long ago, when they had been seen hovering over Sheerness, the naval witnesses of their arrival were “pulling the long bow.”

The Invisible Hand indeed stretched far and wide in the pre-war days. From Wick to Walmer, from Cork to Cromer, and from Donegal to Dover, the British public were assured that Zeppelins could never cross the North Sea. They were only very delicate gas-bags—some called them egg-shells—which could perhaps take up passengers in fair weather and, given continued fair weather, deposit them somewhere in safety.

The Invisible Hand wrote screeds of deliberate lies and utterly bamboozled England, just as the Crowned Criminal of Germany carried on his secret and insidious policy of the Great Betrayal.

Curiously enough the very organs of the Press which in 1913, when strange airships were reported over Yorkshire and the North-East coast, received the news with incredulity and amusement, were the very organs which now cried the loudest that something must be done to destroy Zeppelins.

I was chatting with Teddy one afternoon in my room, and had pointed out that fact, whereupon he blew a cloud of cigarette smoke from his lips, and said:

“You’re quite right, my dear Claude. The armchair sceptics of 1913 were the people who have since told us that Zeppelins could kill only an occasional chicken—that Zeppelins could not reach London—that Zeppelins, if they did get to London, would never return—that Zeppelins were useless in bad weather—that Zeppelins could not survive a fall of snow—and so on.”

“Do you recollect how one section of the Press violently attacked another because the latter had dared to warn the country against the danger of attacks from the air?” I asked. “The purblind optimists waxed hilarious, and called it the ‘Scareship Campaign.’”

Teddy laughed, as he stretched himself in his chair.

“Yes,” he said. “I recollect quite well, though I had not yet taken my ‘ticket,’ how the ‘trust-our-dear-German-brother’ propagandists were terribly angry because some newspaper or other had demanded a large provision for dirigibles in the coming Estimates. They accused the paper of ‘staging the performance’ for the sake of a new journalistic scoop. One paper, a copy of which I still have,” Teddy went on, “expressed greatest amusement at the statements of witnesses who had seen and heard Zeppelins on the North-East coast. I was only reading it the other day. One person heard ‘the whirr of engines’; another ‘a faint throbbing noise.’ To one, the airship appeared as ‘a cigar-shaped vessel,’ to another as ‘a small luminous cloud.’ These variations—they are not contradictions—were sufficient, in the opinion of that particular paper, to discredit the whole business. The writer of the article calmly stated that what was alleged to be a Zeppelin ‘turns out to have been merely a farmer working at night in a field on the hilltop, taking manure about in a creaky wheelbarrow, with a light swung on the top of a broomstick attached to it.’”

“I know, Teddy,” I exclaimed. “Our dear old England has been sadly misled by those who intended to send us to our ruin and dominate the world. Yet we have one consolation—you and I—namely, that we have, within our hands, a power of which the enemy knows nothing, and—”

“But the enemy suspects, my dear old fellow,” said my friend seriously. “That’s why you had your unfortunate spill—and why Roseye is to-day missing. Probably I shall be the next to fall beneath the clutch of the Invisible Hand.”

“Yes. For heaven’s sake! do be careful,” I exclaimed anxiously. “You can’t be too wary!”

“Well—we’ve the satisfaction of knowing that they haven’t discovered our secret,” he declared.

“No—and, by Jove! they won’t!” I declared firmly. “Yet, the way in which we have been misled by those infected with the Teuton taint is really pathetic. I remember the wheelbarrow story quite well. Just about that same time a foreign correspondent of one of our London daily papers wrote telling us that Zeppelins were mere toys. They cost fifty thousand pounds apiece to build, and German experts had agreed that in fine weather they might reasonably expect to reach our coast, but that it was doubtful if they could get back. The return voyage, with the petrol running low and the capacity of the ship and crew approaching exhaustion, would probably end in disaster if the wind were contrary. We were also told by this wonderful correspondent that the idea that these ships could drop from one to two tons of explosives on our heads at any time was absurd.”

“Yes, yes,” Teddy sighed. “It is all too awful! That correspondent’s story only serves to show how easily we were fascinated by German friendship, and by the Emperor himself, who raced at Cowes, and who, while bowing his head piously over Queen Victoria’s grave, was already secretly plotting our downfall. But are we not secretly plotting the downfall of the Zeppelins—eh?” he added, with his usual cheery good humour.

“Yes, we are. And, by Gad, we’ll show the world what we can do, ere long,” I said. “But I am full of fierce anger when I recollect how our little aviation circle has been ridiculed by red-taped officialdom, and starved by the public, who thought us airy cranks just because the Invisible Hand was all-powerful in our midst. The German experts deceived the Berlin correspondents of our newspapers; the Emperor uttered his blasphemous prayers for peace, the Teutonic money-bags jingled and their purse-strings were opened. And so our trustful public were lulled to sleep, and we were told to forget all about Zeppelins for they were mere harmless toys, and we were urged, in leading articles of our daily papers, to get on with the Plural Voting Bill, and to investigate the cause in the fall of the output of sandstone—‘including ganister’ as officialdom describes that commodity.”

“True, Claude,” exclaimed my friend, as we smoked together. “The whole thing is a striking example of the blindness of those who would not see; and who, even now, when innocent women and children are being killed, are dismissing the raids as ‘of no military importance.’”

“Since war broke out we’ve learnt one or two things—haven’t we?” I said. “Though the public are still in ignorance of the actual truth, we flying-men who have studied aeronautics as perfected by Germany, know that Zeppelins can now be brought to a standstill and mark time during the observations of their pilots. Aiming is still in a primitive stage, notwithstanding the use of ‘directed’ aerial torpedoes such as we know, by the Press bureau, have been used. Smoke-bombs are effective to cover the rising of the airship to safety heights. Zeppelins can fly at a height of two and a half to three miles, while shots through the fabric can be repaired during the flight.”

“Exactly,” replied Teddy. “But we have also proved that warnings to Britons do not foster panic. Nowadays we see quite plainly that Zeppelin raids have been adopted by the Germans as part of their regular campaign, and it is quite clear that during the coming months they may ‘increase and multiply’—whatever the civilised world may say or think. The enemy is out to damage our cities, and has, indeed, told the neutrals that he will do so, regardless of every law of civilised warfare.”

“I contend that Zeppelin raids are of military importance—of very great importance—and I intend to devote myself to treating them as such, whatever officialdom may say to the contrary,” I declared.

“Bravo! old man!” Teddy said. “And I’ll help you—with every ounce of energy I possess!”

Yet scarcely had he uttered those words, when Theed opened the door and held it back for a visitor to enter.

I started to my feet, pale and speechless! I could not believe my eyes.

There, before us, upon the threshold, dressed cheaply, plain, even shabbily, and utterly unlike her usual self, stood Roseye—my own beloved!

Chapter Thirteen.

The Leopard’s Eyes.

For a few moments I stood dumbfounded.

I could scarcely believe my own eyes.

The figure before me was pale-faced and wan. She wore an old blue felt hat with wide brim which was most unbecoming, a faded jersey that had once been dark mauve, and an old black skirt, while her boots were cracked and bulging, and she was without gloves.

She smiled at me inanely, as she came across the room and Theed closed the door after her.

“Roseye!” I gasped. “Whatever does this mean?”

“Is it really you!” cried Teddy, equally amazed.

“It is,” she replied in a low, very weary voice.

I saw that she appeared exhausted, for she clutched at the edge of the table, so I led her gently to my chair wherein she sank inertly, with a deep sigh.

“Roseye,” I said. “Where have you been?”

She turned her gaze upon the fire. Her face remained hard-set. The expression upon her white countenance was one of tragedy.

Her chest heaved and fell, and I saw that her ungloved hands, grasping the arms of the chair, were trembling.

“You are cold!” I cried. And dashing to the cupboard I got out some brandy and a siphon.

She sipped a few drops from the glass I offered her, smiling in grateful acknowledgment.

Then, as I stood upon the hearthrug facing her, I repeated my question:

“Tell us, Roseye. Where have you been?”

In her great blue eyes I noticed a strange, vacant expression; a look such as I had never seen there before. She only shook her head mournfully.

“What has happened?” I inquired, bending and placing my hand tenderly upon her shoulder.

But, with a sudden movement, she buried her face in her small hands and burst into a torrent of tears.

“Don’t ask me!” she sobbed. “Don’t ask me, Claude!”

“Look here, old chap,” exclaimed Teddy, who was quite as mystified as myself. “I’ll come back later on. That Miss Lethmere is safe is, after all, the one great consolation.”

And, rising, my friend discreetly left the room.

When he had gone I fell upon my knees before my rediscovered love and, taking her cold hands in mine, covered them with hot, fervent kisses, saying:

“Never mind, darling. You are safe again—and with me!”

All my efforts to calm her, however, proved unavailing, for she still sobbed bitterly—the reaction, no doubt, of finding herself again beside me. With women, in circumstances of great strain, it is the feminine privilege to relieve themselves by emotion.

“Speak!” I urged of her. “Tell me where you’ve been, darling?”

But she only shook her head and, still convulsed by sobs, sat there inert and heedless of all about her.

As I knelt in silence, the quiet of my room remained unbroken save for the low ticking of the clock, and the soft sobs of the woman I so dearly loved.

Tenderly I took my own handkerchief and wiped those tears from her white, hard-set face. Then, for the first time, I saw that her left eyebrow showed a dark red scar. It had not been there on the last occasion when we had been together.

That mark upon her brow set me wondering.

Across her forehead she drew her hand wearily, as at last she sat forward in her chair, an action as though to clear her confused and troubled brain.

“Let me take off your hat,” I said and, with a man’s clumsiness, removed the old felt hat from her head.

As I did so her wealth of soft hair, which I saw had been sadly neglected, fell unkempt about her shoulders.

“That—that woman!” she suddenly ejaculated, half starting from her seat. “Ah! that woman!” she cried.

“What woman, dear?” I asked, much mystified at her words.

“That woman—that awful woman!” she shouted.

“Ah! send her away—save me from her—Oh! save me. Look!”

And she pointed straight before her at some phantom which she had conjured up in her imagination.

At once I realised that she was hysterical, and that some hideous ghost of her past adventure had arisen before her.

“Calm yourself, darling,” I urged softly, my arm around her waist. “There is no one here. You are alone—alone with me—Claude!”

“Claude!” she echoed, turning toward me and gazing blankly into my eyes with an expression which lacked recognition. “Oh—yes!” she added in a tone of surprise. “Why—yes—Claude! Is it you—really you?”

“Yes. I am Claude—and you are alone with me,” I said in great apprehension, for I feared lest she might be demented. No doubt she had been through some terrible experiences since last I had clasped her hand.

Again she sighed deeply. For the next few moments she gazed into my eyes in silence. Their stony stare thrilled and awed me. At last a very faint smile played about her lips, and she exclaimed: “Oh, yes! How awfully silly of me, Claude! How very foolish. Forgive me, won’t you?”

“Forgive you, darling! Why, of course,” I said, pressing her closely to me.

“But—but that terrible woman!” she cried, still terrified. “You won’t let her come near me again—will you?”

“No. She shan’t. I’m with you, and will protect you, darling. Trust in me.”

“Ah!” she sighed. “It was awful. How—how I’ve lived through it I don’t know.”

“Through what?” I asked, eager to induce her to tell her story.

“No,” she answered. “You—you would never believe me!—you would never understand! Oh! that woman! Look!” and in terror she raised her finger and pointed again straight before her. “Look! Don’t you see her! She’s fixed her eyes upon me—those awful leopard’s eyes!”

“There’s nobody here, Roseye,” I assured her. “You’re alone with me.”

“Alone! Why, no. She’s there—see straight over there!” cried my love, her face distorted by wild terror. “Ah! she’s coming nearer!” she shrieked, again covering her face with her hands, as though to shut out the imaginary face.

“Ugh!” she shuddered. “Don’t let her touch me! Don’t let her touch me! Don’t, Claude—for Heaven’s sake, I beg of you. That woman—that awful woman with the leopard’s eyes!”

“Come, come,” I said, rather severely. “You must not give way to these hallucinations, Roseye. There’s nobody here, I assure you. It’s all—”

“But she is here!” she shrieked. “You can’t deceive me; she’s here—with us. Perhaps you can’t see her—but I can. Oh! those horrible eyes—the fiend! Ah! what I have suffered!”

I did not reply. I was at a loss how to act. Sight of my beloved betraying such abject terror unnerved me.

Too well did I recollect the story of the railway signalman near Welwyn, how, when the night-express came out of the tunnel tearing north from London, he had distinctly seen two women struggling. One was in the grasp of the other.

Was this the woman whom Roseye believed was present in my room—the mysterious Woman with the Leopard’s Eyes?

I crossed to the window, and standing at the spot where at my love declared she could see the mysterious female by which she seemed haunted, said:

“Now, look, dear! There is nobody here.”

“There is!” she persisted. “She’s there just behind you. Mind! She intends to do you harm! Yes,” she added. “I saw her at Hendon. I remember, most distinctly! She knows you—and she means to do you harm!”

I returned to her side, frantic at my inability to convince her that all was her imagination.

There was no doubt that, deeply impressed upon her memory, was some recollection of terrifying events in which a mysterious woman had played a leading part.

As I looked at that blank, yet horrified expression upon her pale, sweet face I became more than ever convinced that she had been held beneath the thraldom of some woman of evil intent—that woman whom she described as possessing the crafty eyes of a leopard.

For a full half-hour I argued with her, endeavouring to calm her but, unfortunately, to little avail. Presently, however, her expression altered, she grew less agitated, until at last, as I sat holding her in my arms, I kissed her fondly upon the lips, and again begged:

“Do tell me, my darling, where you have been all this long time? I’ve searched for you everywhere.”

“I—I don’t know,” was her blank reply. “I can’t tell you.”

“But surely you recollect something?” I urged eagerly. “Those are not your own clothes that you are wearing. Where did you get them from?”

She looked quickly down at her jersey and at her skirt, and then raised her eyes to me in dismay. Apparently, for the first time, she now realised that she was dressed in some one else’s clothes.

“That’s curious!” she exclaimed, as though speaking to herself. “That’s very curious. That hat is not mine, either!”

“No, it isn’t,” I said, handing it to her to examine, which she did critically.

Then, placing her hands idly upon her knees, she remained for a long time with brows knit in silence, apparently trying to recall the past.

“You lost your chatelaine—the one I gave you,” I said, hoping that the fact might, in some way, stir the chords of her blunted memory.

“My chatelaine!” she repeated, looking at me vacantly.

“Yes. You lost your purse and money, and other things,” I said. “I think you must have lost it from a train.”

Suddenly she raised her face again to mine, and asked in a half-dazed kind of way:

“Are you—are you Claude?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Surely you remember me!”

“Oh—yes! But—oh! my head—my poor head!” and she placed her hands to her temples and drew a long breath.

“Cannot you recollect—do try and tell me something. Try and describe to me what occurred after you left home. What happened to you?”

She shook her head sadly.

“I can’t tell you,” she said at last, speaking quite rationally. “I really can’t.”

“But you must recollect something, dear?” I asked. “Your chatelaine was found dropped from a train on the line near Welwyn station, on the Great Northern Railway.”

“On the railway?” she repeated slowly. “Ah!”

“That brings back something to your memory, dearest, does it not?” I inquired anxiously, for I now felt convinced that she remembered something regarding her loss.

“Yes—but—but—well, I can’t tell you about it, Claude.”

“You can’t, dearest—or do you mean that you decline to tell me! Which?”

For a few moments she was again silent. Her blank white face had become almost as its own self, with that sweet, calm smile I had known so well.

“I must decline to tell you,” she slowly answered at last. “I’m sorry—but I—I only ask your forgiveness, Claude.”

“What is there for me to forgive?” I cried dismayed. “You disappeared. Everybody feared foul play—and—”

“There was foul play!” she interrupted in a hoarse voice.

“By whom?”

“By somebody.”

“You know who were your enemies?” I asked quickly. “You must know, indeed.”

She nodded in the affirmative, her eyes once more downcast, as though fearing to meet my gaze.

“Cannot you name them—cannot you denounce them, darling? It is your duty,” I said in a low, persuasive tone. “Reveal the truth to me, Claude.”

“No, never!” was her plain and instant reply.

“Why not?”

“There are reasons.”

“What reasons?”

“Reasons of my own. Strong reasons.”

“And may I not know them?” I asked with some resentment.

“No, Claude—I can never reveal the truth—not even to you.” She was now quite her old self.

“But I thought we trusted each other blindly and implicitly,” I protested. “You surely know how deeply and fondly I love you, my darling.”

“Exactly,” she exclaimed, with one of those sweet and winning smiles of hers. “That’s just my point. If you love me as you declare—and I believe you do—then you will trust me, and you will, when I assure you that I cannot tell you what has happened, refrain from further questioning me.”

Her argument was, certainly, one to which I could not very well reply. It was a curious argument, and aroused suspicion within me.

She had now grown quite calm, and I could plainly see that she had at last recalled the past, yet she did not intend to make any statement whatever regarding it.

Why? This disinclination to reveal to me the slightest fact was, in itself, most extraordinary. I then found myself reflecting upon the discovery of that secret memorandum in her card-case, and the allegation made against her by the red-tabbed Intelligence officer.

I was on the point of telling her what had been discovered—the purport of the cipher-message and the suspicion which rested upon her. Yet, would that induce her to be frank and tell me the truth? I decided that it would not, therefore I said nothing. Instead, I remarked in a low, sympathetic voice: “I really think, darling, that it is due to me—to your people also—that you should tell us the truth of what happened to you, and of the identity of your enemies.”

“I have already told you, Claude,” was her quiet response. “If you really love me, then you should at least trust me.”

“I do trust you, darling!” I protested quickly. “You surely know that! You are in possession of all the secrets of our invention, and—”

“Ah! the invention—the invention!” she cried and, as she suddenly recollected it, her whole manner instantly changed.

She started from her chair crying: “Yes—yes! Now I remember! I remember! It was awful—terrible—ugh! Ah! my poor brain!” and again she drew her hand across her brow. “My poor head!”

She paused but, next second, she turned to me, exclaiming in a tone quite unusual to her:

“No! I shall tell you nothing—I shall say nothing! I do not want to remember—I pray only to forget—yes, to forget all—everything. It is too horrible! Too cruel!” and I saw that my reference to our secret apparatus had stirred another chord in her memory—one that caused her both fierce anger and bitter remorse.

That fact, in itself, revealed to me quite plainly that her tragic experiences, whatever they might have been, had some curious connexion with our invention for the destruction of Zeppelins. Thus, arguing with myself further, I became more than ever convinced that she, in all her innocence, had fallen defenceless into the unscrupulous grip of the terrible but relentless Invisible Hand.

Why did she so persistently withhold from me the truth? What more natural than, knowing the identity of her enemies, she should seek to denounce and justly punish them? Now she was back at my side she surely could not fear them!

Certainly her demeanour was most mysterious, and I stood there, facing her, utterly bewildered. The expression in her dear face was quite uncanny.

Once again I begged her to tell me something—however slight—regarding what had occurred to her. I told her of our tireless search; of the eager hue and cry; of the publication of her portrait, and of the offered reward for any information.

“Ah!” she replied, with a strange, faint smile, as though of triumph almost. “All that was to no effect. The precautions taken were far too complete. Nobody could have found me—for I was in a living grave.”

“Yes,” I said, hoping that she would reveal to me something more, however vague. “Tell me about it, darling. Do, Roseye.”

“Tell you!” she echoed with angry resentment, putting me from her firmly and staring at me. “No, never!” Then a second later she turned towards the curtained window and shrieked:

“Ah! look!—that accursed woman again! Why do you allow her to come here—if you love me, Claude!”

“She is not here,” I declared firmly. “It is all your silly imagination!”

“She is!” cried my love wildly. “You are lying to me! She’s there! Over there! Kill her—Claude—or she will kill you—ah! that Woman with the Leopard’s Eyes!”

Chapter Fourteen.

False or True?

One bright crisp afternoon in mid-December, Roseye, wrapped warmly in her furs, sat beside me in the car as we sped through Leatherhead on our way out to Burford Bridge, where we had decided to have tea.

In the grey wintry light the landscape had become gloomy and depressing. Yet my love chatted merrily as we sped along.

Since that well-remembered evening at my rooms when she had made her sudden reappearance on my threshold from nowhere, the days had been very dark and terribly anxious ones.

After her refusal to tell me anything, I had taken her home, where her sudden arrival had been as a thunderbolt to her parents. But alas! her overstrained brain had then given way, and for three weeks she had remained in bed under the care of Sir Charles Needham, one of the greatest mental specialists in Harley Street.

Thanks to his skill, she had slowly recovered—very slowly it seemed to me.

A dozen times I had chatted with Sir Charles, and he had admitted to me that the case was not only most unusual, but almost unique. He could not obtain from her any lucid account of what had occurred after she had left home on that fatal morning. She had contradicted herself so many times.

Any reference to inventions, to electricity, to trains, to Zeppelins, or to women, sent her into fierce paroxysms of anger. Her attitude was most mysterious. In fact her adventures during the time she had been missing were enveloped in a dark cloud of mystery which, even Barton himself, was unable to penetrate.

Captain Pollock, of course, had been informed and had repeated his red-taped suspicions. But, having no reliable or actual evidence upon which to base his assertions, Barton seemed inclined to disregard them.

I noticed this, putting it down to the usual disagreement which exists in officialdom the world over. No one official has ever been known to be in actual accord with another in another Department. That’s why the clock of State creaks on so rustily in every civilised community.

Arrived at that motoring rendezvous, the Burford Bridge Hotel, we took a stroll in its picturesque grounds on the slope of Box Hill, leafless and deserted on that December afternoon.

Having walked some distance along the gravelled paths, we sat together upon a seat, when her sudden silence caused me to ponder. Since we had been walking she had scarcely uttered a word, and had appeared utterly absorbed.

At last she exclaimed:

“I shall be so very glad when they let me fly again, Claude. I feel ever so much better now—quite my old self again.”

“I’m delighted to hear that,” was my reply. “But you must wait another week or two before you take out your machine. Your man is overhauling it thoroughly. When I was at Hendon yesterday I saw that he had taken down the engine.”

“Yes. I’m most anxious to help you, dear, with your great invention. How is it getting on?”

“Famously,” I replied. “Teddy and I have been working hard for the last four days, and have made progress in both lightening the weight of the outfit, and increasing its power. I’ve ordered a big new dynamo to be constructed on such lines that it can be placed on my machine with a second engine. This engine will either run the dynamo, or the propeller.”

“Of course, I quite see,” she exclaimed. “You must have a second engine for night-flying. How long will it be, do you think, before you can make a trial flight?” she asked anxiously.

“Early in January I hope, darling.”

“And you will let me come with you—won’t you? Now promise me. Do,” she urged, placing her gloved hand upon my arm, and looking earnestly into my face.

“Yes. I promise,” I answered laughing. “Teddy will, no doubt, be very anxious to come, but you shall make the first flight, darling. It is your privilege.”

“May I come out to Gunnersbury and help you?” she asked. “I’m quite all right again, I assure you.”

“When Sir Charles gives his consent, then you may come,” I replied.

“I’ll ask him to-morrow,” she cried gladly. “I’m so horribly tired of leading an idle life at home. Lionel lunched with us yesterday, and took me out to a matinée. It was quite jolly to have such a change. We had tea at the Piccadilly afterwards.”

“Lionel!” I exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes. Why? Are you jealous—you dear old thing?”

I drew a deep breath, and she evidently noticed my displeasure.

“Jealous!” I cried with affected nonchalance. “Why should I be?”

“Well—I ought, of course, to have told you before,” she answered. “But he’s such a good friend of ours, you know.”

Good friend. All the suspicions I held regarding him flashed across my mind. Why had he pretended to be an invalid on that day I had sat at his bedside, and yet afterwards had dined at Hatchett’s? Why was he ever inquisitive regarding our secret experiments, and why did he appear to possess such unusual knowledge of coming events?

“Yes,” I remarked after a pause. “He is, no doubt, a good friend.”

I saw that I could learn more by disarming suspicion than by appearing ungenerous.

“You don’t mind me going to a matinée with him, do you, Claude?” she asked frankly. “Of course, if it has annoyed you, I won’t go again. But mother said she thought a theatre would be a pleasant relaxation for me, now that we can’t go out at night on account of the darkened streets and the bad winter weather.”

“The darkened streets seem to make no difference to pleasure-going,” I said bitterly, and purposely disregarding her first question. “Though we are at war—though thousands upon thousands of our poor brave fellows have been killed or maimed in the defence of their homes and their loved ones, yet the London public are still the same. Nothing seems to disturb them. Bond Street, with all its fripperies, is still in full swing: the drapers everywhere are paying big dividends—money is being squandered in luxuries by those who have never previously known such things; jewellers are flourishing, and extravagance runs riot through the land. Men and women go nightly to revues and join in rollicking choruses, even while the death-rattle sounds in the throats of Britain’s bravest sons. Ah! Roseye,” I said. “It is all too awful. What I fear is that we are riding gaily for a fall.”

“No,” she said. “I agree in a sense with all you say. But we are not riding for a fall, so long as we have brave men ready to sacrifice their lives in Britain’s cause. You, Claude, are one of those,” she added, looking straight into my face with an open, frank expression—that love-look which can never be feigned, either by man or by woman.

In that second I realised that at least my suspicion that she had any secret affection for Lionel Eastwell was groundless.

Yet I was, nevertheless, annoyed that he should still mislead her parents by expressions of friendship. True, when I came to examine and to analyse my doubts, I could discover no real and actual foundation for them. Perhaps it was an intuition that possessed me—a strange half-formed belief that Eastwell, though such a cheerful companion, such a real good fellow, and so popular with all the flying-boys, was not exactly of the truly patriotic type which he represented himself to be.

For that reason alone I inwardly objected to Roseye associating with him, yet as he was such a warmly welcomed friend of the family, it was extremely difficult for me to move in any antagonistic spirit.

Within myself I had a fierce and desperate struggle, yet long ago I had realised that if I intended to win I must not show the slightest sign of anger or of suspicion.

So, as we sat there together—gazing across the sloping lawn, so melancholy in that falling December twilight, yet so picturesque and gay on those summer evenings as I had often known it—I crushed down the apprehension that had arisen within me, and laughed gaily with my dainty well-beloved.

Still the facts—the mysterious inexplicable facts—remained. Was it possible that my love desired again to assist in the completion of our experiments in order to know the result of them—and perhaps to betray them?

No. I could not—even in my inward anger at the knowledge that she had spent the previous afternoon with the man I suspected—bring myself to believe that she was really acting in contradiction to the interests of the country.

Somebody has truly said that love is blind. Well, I loved Roseye. And my blindness had been a very pleasant and delightful affliction up to that tragic day of her disappearance.

Through those weeks when her mind had remained unbalanced and unhinged, she had never once made any statement nor had she ever inadvertently admitted anything which might reveal the truth as to where she had been, or the identity of the person whom she held in greatest terror—that Woman with the Leopard’s Eyes.

With all the cunning I possessed I had sought to glean from her some fact, any fact however vague, concerning those weeks when she had been missing, but beyond what I have written in these pages, I could gather no single incident.

I was but an ordinary man—one whose father had risen in the medical profession to grasp one of its plums. From being a ne’er-do-well and idler, I had taken up aviation and, after much perseverance, had learned to fly. I suppose I was gifted with ordinary intelligence, and that intelligence had shown me that, now we were at war, the enemy had placed upon the whole country that secret Hand, eager and clutching, to effect and secure our undoing. Its finger-prints, indelible and unmistakable, remained wherever one sought them.

That Hand had been upon me when I had crashed to earth with a wooden bolt in my machine in place of one of steel.

But whether the Hand had really been placed upon Roseye was a problem which utterly defied solution.

That she had suffered had been vividly apparent, yet her absolute and fixed refusal to say anything, to admit anything, or to make any charge against anyone, was, in itself, an astounding feature of what was an extremely curious situation.

I remained that afternoon at Burford Bridge just as dumbfounded and mystified as I had been at that moment when Theed had opened the door of my sitting-room and she had returned from what, in her own words, had been a living tomb.

Why a living tomb? Who had prepared the trap—if trap there had been? Who was the unknown woman, the very mention of whom terrified her—the Woman with the Leopard’s Eyes?

Though we sat there and laughed together—for I had affected, I hope successfully, an utter disregard of any suspicion or jealousy of Eastwell—I gazed upon her, and I saw that she had grown nervous and anxious.

Why?

It seemed to me that, with her woman’s innate cleverness and cunning—which by the way is never outmatched by that of the mere man—she was reading my own innermost thoughts. She knew my suspicions, and her intention, at all hazards, was to conceal from me some bitter and perhaps disgraceful truth.

This thought aroused within me a relentless hatred of the fellow Eastwell. Nevertheless, once again when I came to examine the actual facts, I could discover really nothing tangible—nothing which ought to lead me, with any degree of right or justice, to an adverse decision.