WHITE MOTLEY (continued 4)

"It's the most amazing get-back I ever heard of," he ran on, delighted to interest her so much. "Benny's the last man in Switzerland we should have looked to for this, and here he is, cock-a-whoop in the papers, and as famous as a prize-fighter. In London they're talking of nothing else. He's invented a new kind of aeroplane, and one which must be the machine of the future, so they say. That's why he didn't come into the hotel. We thought him a secret kind of bird, and all the time he was just working away to bag the £10,000 offered by the London editor. If he gets it, it will be an eye-opener; but old Gordon Snagg, who has been hanging about the chalet, declares he will get it, and that he deserves to. Don't you see, Lady Delayne, that Benny has been the ghost? It was his machine over the Zaat which scared the people so. Fancy, old Benny—mustn't he have a head, and didn't he think a lot when he heard us talking about him?"

Dick took a more serious view of it.

"Benny is a genius," was his testimony. "He's just one of those born strong men you can't keep back. If we had more of him in England, there wouldn't be all this talk about decadence. We're just falling behind as pioneers, and that's the whole truth. If you speak to the manufacturers about it, they say it doesn't matter, because we can always imitate the foreigners when they have invented things. I'm sure that's all nonsense. The same brains which lead the way will hold it in the long run. Look how long it took us to overtake the French in the motor-car business; have we done it even now? Benny is one of our national assets, and if he succeeds, no honour is too big for him."

"Then you think he will succeed, Mr. Fenton?"

Dick shook his head.

"Bob knows more about machinery—he'll tell you. If it depends on the man and not on a bag of tricks, I'm sure he will succeed. That remains to be seen: we shall know to-morrow, anyway."

"And make a night of it if our man wins," Bob added with conviction. More than that he was reticent to say. Whatever were the secrets of Benny's aeroplane, they had been guarded closely.

"He must be the cleverest chap alive," he continued. "Not a soul at Andana had an idea of it. He's been flying about here for weeks, and all the time we thought him a good-natured crank, to be chaffed and rotted as much as we pleased. Now he looks like becoming one of the most famous men in the world. Sir Gordon says he will, and he's had his eye to the keyhole. Perhaps he wants to float Benny as a company; I shouldn't be surprised. If his machine is what he claims it to be, there'll not be a rival in the market in a month. Sir Gordon is sure of it."

"Then it is a very wonderful machine, Mr. Otway?"

"So wonderful that you could pack it up in a hair-trunk, they tell me. The engine's a gem—just like a toy. The frame looks like a torpedo—it's as light as feathers. We shall see something to-morrow, Lady Delayne, and I'm jolly glad I'm at Andana, anyway. They start from the slope before the Park at nine o'clock. Benny has to fly right over Mont Blanc, then to Zermatt, and back across the Weisshorn. He should be here before dark to win. If he does it—well, I hope the Palace will not catch fire; but I shouldn't wonder if it did. You'll be coming, of course. We shall see you there in the morning?"

She answered, "Certainly." She would not miss it on any account. The news had surprised her very much; she did not add that, although she had seen Benny every day, he had said no word to her. This was for her own thoughts, which now engrossed her so that she was very glad when they came down to her chalet and she could say "Good-bye." Even there it was possible to remark the number of the sleighs now driving up the valley from Sierre. And the flags and the bunting! She had been blind to them hitherto. But now they spoke eloquently of a man who had befriended her beyond any she had known. And to his hopes and ambitions she had hardly given a thought during that long week of watching and waiting! This was the truth, and it was not unaccompanied by regret. She remembered her promise to Brother Jack and wondered that she could have broken it.

To be sure, there had been excuse enough. Long days of a terrible doubt had left her at the last almost beyond the influence of fear or hope. Luton himself had not written to her—she was glad of his silence. All the tidings that Benny had was a brief note from him in which he described his arrival at Locarno, and his occupation of the shanty. The threatened inquisition upon the part of the Swiss police had not become a reality. The crime at Vermala appeared to be already forgotten by the authorities, as it had ceased to interest the visitors. Probably most people now believed that it had been an accident. Lily could almost persuade herself that this view was right. Luton would remain a little while at the lakeside, and then go South. The accusing hours, when the truth would not be hidden, were to be combatted with new courage in the face of this unexpected respite.

It was a quarter to two when she entered the chalet and nearly half an hour later when the post arrived from Sierre; to her great surprise there was a letter from Italy—the only letter that day—and she perceived immediately that it was in Luton's handwriting. Letters from him during recent years had been rare events and coincided with his pecuniary needs; but she had not read many lines of this particular epistle before she detected a new note. Here was an apologia pro vita sua; she knew not at first whether to believe it serious or a jest.

He spoke of his departure from Andana, and of the terrible circumstance of it. Like all men who fall foul of the world, he was eloquent in self-defence and could make out a pretty case.

What he seemed to feel acutely was the degradation of the tragedy. Had it been different, an affair in which honour had been compromised, it would have been defensible; but this poor devil of a soldier, against whom he had no possible grudge, that was humiliation enough. From which he passed on to deplore his heritage of character, naming himself as a man predestined to the enmity of his fellows, and without that power of will which alone could have saved him.

Did not Lily understand this? Had she never taken it into account upon a day of reckoning? He saw himself as the sport of the Almighty—mocked by his inheritance. All that he had done he must do again if he began life anew under the same set of circumstances. He had been without a friend, misunderstood always, even by her who had been at no pains to understand him. Did she think she had done her duty toward him—had she stood by him as a true wife should have done? Then came incoherent rhapsodies of love from which she shrank. He swore to God that there had never been but one woman in the story of his life. She knew it to be true. And here he was, an outcast among men and alone, while she had money enough and to spare. His poverty had brought him to this. Did she think upon reflection that none of the responsibility was hers?

As to the actual position at the moment, he confessed himself in some danger. He thought it possible that the Swiss police would trace him, but he declared that he would face the matter lightly enough if she were with him. Would she come to Locarno and help him? He wanted courage, the power to understand the meaning of his own life, some hope for the future which she might inspire. She was a clever woman, but had never used her cleverness on his behalf. He implored her to hear him and have pity.

Such an idea, recurring again and again, betrayed a mind which had lost stability and a physical condition which was ominous. And yet Lily read a deeper meaning into the screed, and her early contempt was chastened. Just as she had asked herself a week ago if she had done her duty by this man, so could she repeat the question with insistence. Phrases of his letter appealed to her pity, despite a lack of faith; perhaps she was less influenced by them than by the judgment pronounced at the tribunal of her own conscience. She would go to him; but having gone, what then? Must the old way of life be taken once more? Could she contemplate a future as his wife, living out the long days of sacrifice without complaint?

The afternoon passed and found her unable to come to a decision. Sitting at her window she could see the stir and bustle before the Palace Hotel, the arrival of sleighs, and the coming and going of strangers. Her hope that she might receive a visit from the object of all this interest was not to be gratified. Benny did not come to the chalet; he contented himself with a pencilled note brought down by a lad during the afternoon, and containing just three words, "All goes well." She saw him for a moment walking with Dr. Orange and Sir Gordon Snagg toward the Park at about four o'clock, but after that the dark fell and her day was over.

Was it to be her last night in Switzerland? she wondered, as she sat by the window with Luton's letter still in her hand.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE EVE OF THE GREAT ATTEMPT

The reporters, who arrived from London shortly after midday, were astonished to hear that Benny knew little of the excitement which his entry for the great prize had occasioned in London.

Some of them had written very pleasantly of this unknown aspirant; others had been severely derisive, a fact they overlooked when they called at the chalet later on and took out their note-books as a matter of course.

He, good man, had but a dim understanding of later-day journalism, and these attentions overwhelmed him. Some of his replies were quite unconventional. They asked him where he was educated, and he answered "anywhere." An interrogation concerning his favourite pursuits obtained the response "doing nothing." Generally, he said that if the engine kept going, he would win the money; but that if the engine stopped, he would not win it, and this was written down as an item of great importance, and cabled to London for the next day's issue.

Now all this had carried the man into a new world, and so swiftly that it seemed but yesterday he was a plodder in a dull workshop, without prospects and unknown. He had dreamed of fame, but not of this kind of fame, which came to him, note-book in hand, and desired to hear whether he flew on whisky or cold water. The world he would conquer was a shadow world; the great vague universe, wherein so many ambitions are interred. To be a newspaper hero was well enough, but he reflected a little sadly that even an acrobat may be that. He wondered already if he would find the fruits of success to be bitter; and this speculation set him thinking of Lily Delayne. Did he owe it to her indifference that flight to-morrow was possible? In truth, he believed that he did.

Brother Jack, upon the other hand, welcomed the reporters with real cordiality. He delighted to talk of his clever brother; to tell them impossible anecdotes of Benny's youth, and to insist that he himself had always known he was a genius. Jack spent a long afternoon in this employment, and when he varied it, his activities carried him up to the plateau whence the start was to be made, and back again to the shed wherein the machine was housed. What hours of strenuous labour it stood for; how they had worked to get everything ready! And now their work was done. Not a wire that had not been overhauled; not a stay which had not been tested.

Of those who had come from England to witness the great attempt, Sir John Perinder, the proprietor of the Daily Recorder, was the most eminent. A well-built, clear-eyed man, his manner was volatile to a ridiculous extent, and had earned for him the title of the greatest hustler in the universe. Naturally he asked Benny to dinner at the Palace, and with him Brother Jack and the Abbé Villari, of whom he heard with much interest. These had been but a little while at the table when they discovered that their host knew a great deal about aviation, and had the clearest perceptions as to the future of flying. At the same time he did not deceive himself by any of those futile prophecies in which unthinking men delight.

"You fellows are about to give us a new sport," he said bluntly, "young men will fly because they are tired of motoring. There will be a fine trade with the war-offices of Europe, but the rest I don't see. None of us now living will take aeroplanes where we now take cabs. That's foolish talk; the world will prefer terra firma to the air, just as it prefers terra firma to the sea. Do you think I would go to America on a ship if I could travel in a train? You know that I wouldn't. And so with your airships, good enough for their own purposes, but limited by the factor of personal courage. Why, I wouldn't go up in one for a thousand, and I'll warrant Monsieur l'Abbé here wouldn't go up for two."

Here, however, he met a tough adversary. The abbé had followed the movement with interest from the beginning. He had even built a machine of his own, and purposed to show it at Rome in the spring of the year. His optimism baffled the blunt baronet, who brushed it aside with a jest, and went on to speak of to-morrow's flight.

"If you win," he said to Benny, "you'll do the greatest thing ever done by man. I've been a climber for twenty years, and never did I think that a man would look down on what I've looked up to with awe. You'll do that to-morrow if you succeed. You're going to see the Alps as no man has ever seen them since the world dropped out of the sun. That's something to sleep on, Mr. Benson; it's something to take with you on your journey. I'd give ten thousand pounds to see it myself—twenty thousand for the courage which would let me do what you are going to do. It's a safe offer. There isn't a greater coward living where a height is concerned, and yet I climb mountains. Explain that if you can."

Benny would have explained it if he had been given half a chance, but he had hardly opened his mouth when the baronet was off again, saying how the affair must be "boomed" in this or the other way; the reports which must be given of it; the particular points which the aviator must note during his voyage. He declared that the public liked sensation, but must have it first hand nowadays. The man who has seen another man eaten by a lion in Africa is of no use—he must be eaten himself. Few mechanical minds were capable of conveying mechanical sensations, and that was the difficulty. He hoped that Benny would prove the exception to the rule, and give them a story for their money. Commercialism intruded when he added that no other paper in Europe would have put up such a sum, and that he relied upon Benny not to let him down. This the inventor modestly offered not to do if he could help it. "We ride in the same boat," he explained, and added, in imitation of Douglas Jerrold, "but we use different sculls."

The party was gay enough, and broke up early. The bright light which beat suddenly upon this quite modest throne somewhat alarmed Benny, and set him hungering for the solitude of the chalet. He had left gendarmes in charge of his machine, but he was anxious none the less; and upon that was all the fulsome adulation now lavished upon him by good-natured folk who had just discovered his existence.

He could detect a change everywhere, a new respect paid to him, and a desire to be seen in his company. Even such athletic aristocrats as Keith Rivers patronised him no longer; while it began to be plain that he had lighted a candle which failure alone would put out. That was the rub which must be present in his reckoning. It would be a mighty humiliation to fail before the thousands who were coming to Andana to see him start. He knew that there would be thousands, for the hotel people said as much; and when he managed to escape his host and to steal as a fugitive from the Palace, the night bore witness to the truth of such prophecies.

Surely such a spectacle had never been seen in this place before. Scores of great arc lamps illuminated the scene. Workmen from Sierre, from Martigny, and from Lausanne were busy erecting shelters for the people and building barriers. Sleighs came up the mountain-side, so many that he wondered whence they had been conjured up. Averse to all such trappings of spectacle himself, he guessed that Sir John Perinder had contrived this aspect of tournament, and had set the lists that the Daily Recorder might be glorified. He imagined that the affair had been largely advertised both in Switzerland and in Italy, and this was the case. All joined willingly in such an emprise; the hotel-keepers to begin with, then the railway companies. Excursions were to be run from Milan, from Geneva, even from Paris. The flight across the Alps appealed to the imagination of all.

Benny had a great deal of courage, but this new aspect of life filled him with dread. At the same time it was not unattended by a certain pride which spoke of many emotions. He realised that he had yet to earn the homage now paid to him. After all, he was but a tyro in achievement, and the world had taken him at his own estimate. If he failed to succeed, he would be forgotten in three days, and no one would listen to him afterwards. This he remembered as he took his way up the mountain-side toward his own chalet. He might be leaving Switzerland a broken man to-morrow, and the contempt of the multitude would attend him. Vain to accomplish in secret that which he had promised to do in public. The world is credulous where the inventor is concerned and seldom gives him a second chance.

He wondered if all were really as well as Brother Jack and the abbé believed it to be. They had done wonders during those long days, worked heroically, and with true devotion. He himself had set them no mean example when he had discovered a woman's indifference and the true meaning of her lightly-spoken words. Why should he think of her? What part had she to play in the story of his life? His very friendship might be misconstrued, and he resolved to terminate it so soon as his self-invited obligation had been fulfilled. For the moment she was alone and without a friend—this great lady who was of a world apart, whom he had worshipped in secret as his own type of true womanhood. He remembered the day when he had first seen her at Holmswell, her gentle bearing, her sweet courtesy. What right had he to expect her interest? Reason answered, none.

He was approaching her chalet at this time, and perceived that a light shone from the window of her sitting-room. When he drew a little nearer, he discerned Lily herself, dressed in a gown of white lace, and seated at the writing-table by the window. She was not writing, however, and her profound reverie appeared to be unbroken by any knowledge of the stir without. In such an attitude there were aspects of her beauty he had yet to mark, a grace of pose and bearing as inimitable by the divinities of his own world as they were inherent in hers. Benny stood a long while, as though a single step would warn her and shut the vision from his sight. He would have wanted words to convey his impressions, and would have contented himself, perhaps, by the one word "queenly." She was born to reign, this mistress of a heritage of woe; life had dealt hardly with her when it shut her from her kingdom.

Men rarely confess to their most secret thought, even in the confessional of the intimate hours. Benny would have been ashamed to tell his oldest friend that he had dwelt for an instant there, at the gate of the chalet, in a shadowland of dreams, and that it had shown him this gracious lady as his wife. His destiny linked to hers, imagination led him to the high places of the world. He shared her kingdom in his thoughts, and wore the armour of a chivalry as true as any in the human story. Recreated by the dream, he struck off the shackles of birth and obliterated the scars of a mean heritage. For such a woman, a man could give life itself, he thought; for her there would be no sacrifice from which the mind would shrink. Nor could calamity cast down this idol from its pedestal. He worshipped more surely because she no longer commanded worship as a right. The world's contempt would dower her anew in his eyes, would give him a title which otherwise he had not possessed.

For a little while these vain thoughts afflicted him, to give place to others of a very different order. So many strangers were at Andana that he was not surprised to discover an intruder even here upon the mountain path, but when that intruder emerged suddenly from the shadows, and Benny saw that it was the little gendarme, Philip, his interest was awakened while his false gods were shattered. The gendarme, on his part, recognised him immediately, and with hardly a gesture of apology set out to follow him to his house.

"I wish you success for to-morrow, sir," he said, and then, as simply, "I may not be here, unfortunately, to offer my compliments then."

Benny looked at him with curiosity.

"You are going away, Monsieur Philip?"

"Yes, sir, into Italy; the man who killed my brother is there."

Benny walked a little faster, but he did not turn his head.

"How do you know that he is in Italy, Monsieur Philip?"

"Because I have discovered that he left the hotel at Brigue on the night of the murder. I have a friend here, and he knows. The man did not go to Paris; then he has gone to Milan, and I shall find him."

"Do you know who he is?"

The lad stood still and repeated the words very slowly.

"He is an Englishman. They call him Sir Luton Delayne, and his wife is at the chalet down yonder."

Benny stopped also. They stood together, looking down to the window whence the light shone out upon the snow.

"Oh, but that is nonsense. Sir Luton Delayne is a great man in his own country. What do your superiors say to it?"

Monsieur Philip answered without emotion.

"They will give me leave of absence, sir. I am to go to Milan."

"And if you do not find him at Milan?"

"Then the Italian police will help me. I have their promise. It is impossible now that he will escape arrest, sir. I thought you would be glad to know that."

He saluted respectfully and went down toward the valley.

Benny, however, did not move from the place. The light shone upon the glistening snow as a beacon which must guide him, even if it were to the house of his illusions.

CHAPTER XIX

THE THIEF

Lily closed her day upon a resolution to set off to Maggiore early on the following morning. She arrived at a decision reluctantly, and each hour made the self-appointed task more difficult. It had seemed heroic when first contemplated—a tribute to duty, and a very real sacrifice; but as the hours sped, she shrank from it and sought the old excuses. What claim had Luton upon her generosity? She knew that he had none.

As a further obstacle there was the chalet, and the restful days she would abandon so reluctantly.

How pleasant the life might have been in the sunshine of the beautiful valley! Everyone had been so kind to her here. These simple folk, seeking simple pleasures, had shown her a new world and taught her elementary truths of which her own philosophy made no account. She thought that she knew them all as friends already; the admirable doctor; little Bess, who was the good fairy of the Palace; the boys, with their tales of woe; the girls, who devoted the interludes to the measurement of imaginary carpets. And then, to be remembered before them all, was there not Benny, the incomparable Benny, a creature so unlike any she had ever known that he came to her as a very apostle of a new revelation?

Here was a prophet, who had been without honour yesterday, but who stood to-night upon the brink of that kingdom of success which few may enter. A woman of the world, she understood what all this might mean to the honest fellow who had befriended her so staunchly. She saw him fêted and honoured, grown rich in an hour, a leader among men. Her perception discovered the soul of the man, that soul which a woman—perhaps but one woman in all the world—might fathom.

What ironical destiny had brought these two together? She reflected upon it, contrasting him with others she had known, the ornaments of her world and the drones. Many of these would hardly enter a room which harboured Benny to-night, but she knew that they would fawn upon him to-morrow, for such are the concessions of sycophants to success. He in turn would come to despise the humbler circles in which he had moved and to lose some of those rare qualities which were his strength. Of one thing, however, she had no doubt, and it was this—that a woman's love would be necessary to such a career as his, and that without it mere material success might carry him but a little way.

She had not answered Luton's letter, and it was still unanswered when she went to bed at half-past eleven. The plateau of Andana, usually so still after ten o'clock, then echoed the music of the sleigh bells with a persistence almost intolerable. She heard the cries of workmen, the lumbering of heavy vehicles, the muffled sounds of hammering. And all this contrasted so strangely with the great mountains across the valley, where the moon shone clear upon the giant Weisshorn, and the lesser peaks paid to the greater the homage of a glorious iridescence. A white and silent world it was, mocking the ambitions of men—yet not of all men, for would not one conquer them to-morrow? Such ambition appealed to her womanly instincts unerringly. She trembled when she made the silent confession that this man loved her, but that his love would remain unspoken to the end.

It would have been about one o'clock when the last of the sleighs arrived at the Palace Hotel, and a little later when the workmen had finished their labours. She sank to a dreamless sleep about this time, but awoke almost immediately with the conviction that someone had entered the chalet. A vague intuition of unwonted sounds set her heart beating and held her almost breathless. Someone had entered the little sitting-room, and was not twenty paces from the bed in which she lay. She could hear the man's footsteps as he crossed the room, and believing that he was at her own door she began to tremble violently. A realisation of her lonely situation afflicted her with a sense of inevitability which robbed her of every shred of her courage. She lay quite still, afraid to move a hand. The silence of the night without surpassed belief.

The man had crossed the room and was now at her writing-table. She could hear the rustle of papers and the click as of a lock. In a sense this was a relief, and gave her the necessary respite. She began to remember how unlikely it was that any thief would visit so poor a house as this chalet, or, if he did visit it, would trouble himself about letters. The excellent reputation well earned by the people of Andana occurred to her, and would have reassured her but for the alternative. For if this man were not a common thief, what then? Instantly she recalled the affair at Vermala, and a new fear came upon her. Yes, she understood it all in an instant and, creeping from her bed, she dressed herself with tremulous fingers.

Surely the man must hear her and take alarm. This was her idea as her clothes rustled in her hand, and her tiny feet shuffled upon the polished boards. The man would hear her and burst through the folding doors presently. When, however, he made no sign, she became a little emboldened, and being now quite dressed, she went to the interstice of the doors and looked through. Then she perceived her husband's valet, Paul Lacroix, who was searching her writing-table by the aid of an electric torch, whose aureole fell weirdly upon the scattered papers.

Paul Lacroix! That it should be he! She remembered that she had last seen him at Holmswell on the eve of the debacle. He had always been a silent, civil fellow whom it was a pleasure to have in the house. Luton, she knew, trusted him entirely, and the others gave a very good account of him. When the crash came, he had followed his master without complaint, to Africa and then to the East. She believed him staunch, and would have named him as one of the few in her own house who had done his duty loyally both to master and to mistress. And here he was at Andana, prying among her papers! The very fact robbed her of all fear and, opening the door immediately, she asked him what he was doing.

He was a man of the middle height, clean-shaven, and with crisp black hair, which contrasted sharply with a very pale face. It may be that he was not unprepared for interruption; for he merely looked up as Lily entered, and then, shutting down the desk with a click, he held his hand upon it while he answered her.

"Madame," he said, "I am seeking Sir Luton's address."

The effrontery of it astonished her. She switched on the electric light and came a little further into the room.

"You are seeking my husband's address, but why did you not come to me?"

He smiled a little contemptuously.

"I did not come, Madame, because you would not have given me what I wanted."

There was a threat here, and she could not mistake it. The peril of her situation occurred to her immediately. He had offered no opposition when she switched on the light; he knew, then, that she dare not summon assistance, and was content with the knowledge for his security.

"I do not understand you," she said with wonder. "Why are you not with Sir Luton?"

He laughed openly.

"You know that, Madame—you and the other. Why do you ask me the question?"

She thought upon it, trying to recall the account of the flight as it had been given to her.

"You were to go to Paris," she said presently, "you were to await Sir Luton there?"

He did not deny it. His shoulders were lifted in a characteristic gesture, his hands outspread when he rejoined:

"But, Madame, my master will never go to Paris—not while the police of Switzerland are looking for him."

She began to breathe as one distressed. Little had been said, but that was sufficient. She knew the character of this man now; there was no need to ask another question.

"Be plain," she said, after an interval of hesitation, "what is your object, what do you mean by this intrusion?"

He bowed his head.

"I wish to go to London. I have an offer of employment from an American there. Sir Luton must give me a character—and one hundred pounds. If I cannot have the character, I must have one hundred pounds. Then I shall be ready to say that my master has gone away, and that I am unable to apply to him. Madame, if you can help me in this?"

She reflected, trembling a little in the night air, and greatly afraid now both for herself and for her husband. Certainly she must not give Luton's address—that would be a madness surpassing belief. And if she paid the hundred pounds—why, she had not such a sum in her possession at the moment.

"How can I give you the money here in Switzerland?" she asked. "You know that it is impossible."

He was prepared for such an answer.

"Madame, no doubt, would have her jewellery with her—there would be something she could offer me. It would be very unfortunate if there were not, for then I must go to Martigny to the police. Will not Madame think of it?"

He advanced a step and stood quite close to her. She could see his clear eyes looking her through and through, and she quailed before their scrutiny. A call for help would bring those white hands to her throat—she was quite sure of it.

"I will give you what you want," she said, "if you will wait here."

He bowed again, and she returned to her bedroom. She had little jewellery with her; but a basket brooch of rubies and diamonds was worth far more than the sum he demanded, and for the sacrifice of that she was not quite prepared. Trembling hands unlocked her jewel case, and trembling fingers searched it. Then she heard a step behind her, and turning about swiftly, she discovered the valet at her elbow. The expression upon his face had changed altogether. It had become that of a wolf seeking prey.

Lily knew that this was the most dangerous moment she had lived. The man's quick breathing, his crouching gesture, the strange light in his eyes, betrayed him beyond recall. He was about to spring upon her, to crush out her life with iron fingers. He would have done so but for an intervention which one night, and perhaps one only in the story of Andana, made possible. A sleigh was coming up the mountainside; the bells rang out musically; the voices of men were to be heard. They brought the valet to his senses instantly. He did not reason that the sleigh would pass and that his opportunity would recur. Crime had not been in his thoughts when he entered the chalet; he shivered at its near approach, and, drawing back, he waited for her to speak.

"Take this," she said; "if you have any sense of honour, leave Andana immediately. I have friends here, and I shall acquaint them with what has occurred. Now go."

He went without a word, striding through the sitting-room and turning into the little hall. She heard the front door shut after him, then the echo of light steps upon the snow. Her first thought was to wake the maid, Louise, and to send her for help, but she corrected that immediately, and set to work to bolt and bar the place to the limit of its resources. When that was done, she returned to the desk which the man had been about to rifle and examined its contents closely. Luton's letter was untouched. It lay at the bottom of the drawer, and it was unlikely that the man had seen it.

But granting that he had not, what then? She knew something of the story of blackmail as society has written it, and she perceived her danger. This man would return; or, if he did not return, he would send his agents.

The false step, if it were a false step, could never be retrieved. Upon the other side stood the hard truth that, had she not refused him, the whole story would have been made public to-morrow. She was sure of it. The Swiss police would have been told that Sir Luton Delayne had murdered Eugène Gaillarde and had not gone to Paris. All her hope lay in the belief that Paul Lacroix knew nothing more than this. If he did know more, the end was at hand.

She slept no more that night, for now an ordered imagination could tell her just what would happen in case the worst should befall. They would arrest Luton and bring him across the pass. Every paper in Europe would tell the sordid story of his life. Tried by an alien jury, he would be convicted, and the extreme penalty might follow conviction. For herself, there would be the contemptuous sympathy of the world. Her life would have been lived, and what a life! Had she known one hour of true happiness since her childhood? Even her wedding trip had been a story of disillusion. A lover's kisses were still warm upon her lips when she had awakened to the truth that she could never love him. Thereafter her existence had been that almost of a recluse. The magnificent gifts with which her father dowered her had been squandered with the mad profligacy of the born gambler. She had descended the ladder of humiliation step by step—to this!

What would Paul Lacroix do? This was a question engrossing above any other. If he held his tongue, how long would it be before he returned to Andana?

She perceived that she must go away—must not delay an hour. She resolved to set out for Sierre as soon as she could make her arrangements and travel thence to Milan. It would be time enough afterwards to decide whether she should or should not go on to Locarno.

Paul Lacroix, meanwhile, had left the chalet and returned to the village of Andana, where he shared a room in the little café with the gendarme Philip. The influx of visitors kept this rude cabaret open all night upon the eve of the flight, and Lacroix came and went without observation. He found the lad Philip in bed, but not asleep; and when he had shut the door of their room carefully he blurted out his tidings.

"It is well, my friend; I have done what you wished."

Philip sat up and stared at him with dreamy eyes.

"You know where he is, Monsieur Paul?"

The valet seated himself upon the edge of the bed, and regarded the young man's face closely.

"For what will this reward be paid?" he asked without premise. Philip opened his eyes.

"For intelligence which will lead to the arrest of the Englishman," he said.

Paul thought upon it.

"It would make no difference whether he were arrested by the Swiss police or the Italian?"

Philip agreed.

"A reward of two thousand francs is offered by the Government—another two thousand will be paid by the English soldier, the Captain Barton, who is now at Grindelwald. That would make four thousand francs altogether."

"Which will be earned by the man who gives the information. Very well, Monsieur Philip, we understand each other. I am going to Paris to-morrow—you will go to this address. You will find Sir Luton Delayne in the house which is named."

He searched out a piece of paper from many scraps in his pocket, and wrote down the address carefully. Then he stuck a pin through it, and affixed it to the bare wooden dressing-table where all could see it.

"You will claim the reward, and will pay me one-half, Monsieur Philip? I am generous, for I could go myself to Martigny and get the money. But I have some business in Paris, so I leave it to you. This is between men of honour—you will pay me my share?"

Philip merely nodded his head. He was staring at the paper as though afraid of it. But Paul Lacroix undressed himself quickly and got into bed.

There would not be much more to be got out of Lady Delayne, he thought. He knew women well enough to foresee that she would tell her friends to-morrow—most probably the black-haired engineer about whom the people were making such a fuss. And he was a man to be avoided. Paul Lacroix was already resolved to remove himself as soon as might be from any possibility of a reckoning with this fellow.

CHAPTER XX

THE FLIGHT IS BEGUN

Benny had dreamed that he fell in the Val d'Hérens after an ignoble start from the plateau of Andana. He woke upon this to find it was but a dream, and that the little abbé stood by his bedside with a steaming bowl of coffee in his hand. Here was a man who had been up all night, and who would not sleep until the issue were known. Never was there such an enthusiast.

"It is nothing," he said apologetically. "I have often watched for thirty hours at the Hospice when there has been a storm. We make little difference between night and day up there. The poor people who fall in the snow would not thank us if we did."

Benny laughed, and sitting up in bed, he drank his coffee willingly.

"What time is it, Abbé?"

"It is half-past six o'clock; you have two hours yet. Your brother is already dressed; you will find him in the shed."

Benny put on his engineer's overalls and went down. He felt a little excited; perhaps he was actually nervous, but no one would have guessed as much. Whistling a few bars of an ancient waltz almost in as many keys as there were notes, he went out to the shed and set to work to help his brother. It was still black dark, and the great arc lamp shone out weirdly at such an hour of the morning.

Jack Benson carried an electric torch in one hand and an oil-can in the other. He said that all was well. He had been over the "ship" from stem to stern—there was not a nut which a spanner could tighten a hair's-breadth, not a wire that was not taut. The machine itself seemed to bear witness to the truth of this. Benny himself admitted that she was a picture, while a stranger would have likened her to a great steel bird, with the head of a snout-faced whale and the fins of a ravening shark. Another image would have made of her a shining torpedo, with great wings thrust out on either side and a monster propeller large enough to have moved a steamship at her stern. It seemed ridiculous that those slight stays, those ridiculous bicycle wheels supported her as she stood. Yet that was the truth, for she was light to the point of miracle.

"Shall we run the engine now, Jack?"

Jack thought that they might.

"I'm not too sure of that union we made yesterday, Benny. You'd look handsome if the petrol gave out. Let's run her, and see if it's leaking. You've a good hour yet before you need go up. There's breakfast, too—you'll have to let the Abbé fill you up, for he's cook this morning. Are you ready, old boy? Then let her rip."

He switched off the magnet, gave a few sharp turns to the propeller, and the engine started. Had not the machine been anchored, she would have glided off at once, but, being anchored, she heaved and tossed as a ship at sea. Jack was satisfied with the union, and declared that it was not leaking, upon which Benny announced his intention to take a short flight as a final precaution.

They ran the machine out of the shed, and he climbed into his seat, to which a light steel door in the side of the torpedo-like body admitted him. Once again Jack started the engine. Benny glided swiftly over the snow for some thirty yards, then rose swiftly and circled the Park Hotel. There was no wind and it was bitter cold. Of all the visitors, he did not espy a single one upon the slopes beneath him. An intense silence prevailed—a silence that was almost ominous.

They sat to breakfast upon his return, and the abbé served an excellent omelet and some eggs which he had captured in the village last night. If their talk was a little constrained and nervous, the circumstances more than justified it. Here they were, with their eyes upon a goal so distant that its attainment seemed impossible. All the dangers, the risks, the difficulties of such an emprise stared them in the face, and would be remembered. A man's life might be the price of success. Secretly in his heart, Jack wondered if he were speaking to his beloved brother for the last time. It might be that.

Benny, upon his part, said very little. He had a map of the Pennine Alps on the white cloth before him and he studied it closely. His questions concerned the arrangements and the names of the committee of the Aero Club of England, who would be present. He understood that his flight was to be checked at Chamonix and again in the Val d'Anniviers as he returned. There were to be watchers at Zermatt and at the Weisshorn hut, if it could be reached. Twice he was permitted to land for petrol. He made it out that they were sixty-three miles from Mont Blanc as the crow flies, and that would be his first halting-place.

"Marfan and Collot from Paris are to be there," he said, "I had a letter from them. I hope there will be good landing somewhere near the hotel—it wouldn't do to mow down the crowd. I've got a spot in my mind, but they may not have in theirs. The petrol, of course, will be all right. Émile is seeing to that, and he's a man to trust."

Jack agreed to it. Émile was the cleverest airman he knew.

"If you want anything at all, Benny, it may be a couple of plugs. Mind you see they don't blow. The oil's gone through from London, and I had an advice from Chamonix yesterday saying they had stored it. Mind you keep alive in the valley from the Matterhorn, and remember to come up pretty far before you swing and drop. The wind looks like being an easter; you'll have to take care in the last hour."

He agreed, and consented under compulsion to eat his breakfast. Day had broken now at the far end of the Rhone Valley, and the higher peaks were shaping above the mists to pinnacles of rose and silver and many shades of purple. Clouds drifted toward Sion and the west; the great chasm below them was so filled by the rolling white vapour that it might have been a sea of downy billows; but the day promised warm sunshine and little wind despite Jack's prophecy. Benny liked the look of it altogether; and when, without warning, strains of ridiculous music were to be heard on the path below the chalet, he pushed on his hat and went out.

All the world about him was astir now and eager for the day. Hatless men had emerged from the Palace Hotel, and were darting hither and thither on skis, or crying the news to girls hidden at their bedroom windows. Caterers for an expected multitude flocked towards the booths they had erected on the mountain-side, and prepared to set out their wares. A perpetual going and coming, the jangling of sleigh bells and the neighing of horses spoke of unusual activity at the stables.

Higher up on the slope whence the actual start was to be made, a little throng had already gathered. It surveyed the ground, and looked wonderingly toward distant Mont Blanc veiled in the mists. Was it possible that this mad Englishman would attempt to fly as far as that? Incredible! A thing undreamed of—perhaps an affront to the Almighty, who had created the mountains to speak of His power and dominion.

Benny saw these people as he wheeled his aeroplane out of the shed at eight o'clock, and began to push it up toward the plateau. He thought very little of them, and remembered few of his friends at Andana. A certain pleasure at the interest he had awakened was mingled already with the desire to hear if Lily Delayne would be present at the start. He knew not quite why it was, but his desire that she should be there became rather a superstition than a sentiment. He blamed her no longer for the indifference she had displayed during the week, for that was natural to the circumstance; but he associated her presence with the success of his attempt, and was almost ready to say that it would not succeed if she failed him.

Of Lily, however, there was no sign at present. He had to be content with the gossip of Bess Bethune, who was early on the scene, and ready with a thousand questions. Bess promised to tell her uncle, the Cabinet Minister, all about the wonderful machine; and, as she said, "Of course, the Government will buy thousands, especially if you don't do it, because Governments always buy things which fall down." When this offer failed to excite the stolid engineer as much as it might have done, she turned to Dr. Orange, and asked him if he were not going to lend Mr. Benson his surgical instruments? Her chatter was not unmusical, and her presence welcome amid the gloom which now fell upon the company. Perhaps many shared the child's fears. This Englishman was going to his death—there could hardly be a doubt about it.

Benny moved in and out among the people, exchanging a word here, bestowing a nod there. He was wrapped up like an Arctic explorer, and resembled a shaggy bear more than a man; but his black eyes were very bright, and his pale cheeks carried a flush of colour foreign to them. Chiefly, perhaps, his attention centred upon the narrow path by which Lily Delayne must come up from her chalet, if she came at all; and he searched it at brief intervals, even pushing his way through the press of the people that he might inspect it more surely, but always to his disappointment. Of Lily herself there was not a sign, the very blinds of her sitting-room were drawn down. He fell to wondering if she had left Andana altogether, and he might have rested upon his opinion but for a message brought to him from the chalet just five minutes before the signal to start was given. This was nothing less than a little horse-shoe carved out of wood and set with silver nails. To it was attached a card with the simple words, "Good Luck," and then the initials, "L. C." Benny resolved immediately to make it his "mascot," and he affixed it to the prow of his machine without a word to anyone.

Such an offering at the altar of superstition set other friends busy, and mascots were offered by many hands. Teddy-bears, brought in haste from the bazaar, squatted upon the aluminium shell of the aeroplane; pigs and elephants from the same merchant were tied by willing hands wherever a lodgment could be found. The occupation found the company in better mood, and as the moment drew near many who had been silent became eloquent enough and forgot their apprehensions. It was almost with impatience that the people heard the long-winded speech of the president for the day. Words would not help Benjamin Benson across the Pennine Alps, they remembered, and some of them did not hesitate to say so aloud. Fortunately, the address came to an end just when the patience of the malcontents was quite exhausted; and then, with a last salute and a word of good cheer to Brother Jack and the Abbé, Benny climbed to his seat and roared to them to let go.

In a sense, it was an undramatic start, and pleased the excitable Frenchmen but little. Their tastes would have dictated a flourish of trumpets or a salute of twenty-one guns; whereas, in fact, there was no music whatever at this particular moment, and the solitary gun which denoted the start boomed heavily and almost with menace. Its echoes had hardly died away in the heights above Vermala when the roar of Benny's engine was to be heard, and immediately upon that the machine, flashing silver in the sunshine, soared above the plateau, and was gone in an instant straight across the mighty chasm of the Rhone Valley. Five minutes later the same machine was but a speck against the azure of the sky.

Benny had made a good ascent, and was pleased enough with the way his engine ran. The exhaust was firm and regular; he knew the firing to be even; while, as for the lifting power, he was off the ground in twenty yards and had mounted five hundred feet the very first time he circled above the spectators. This gave him confidence, and sent him straight across the valley without further preliminary. To be sure, he cast down one quick glance at the black ring of spectators upon the plateau before the Palace Hotel, searched out for an instant Lily's chalet and tried to believe that the figure in the garden was that of a woman who had inspired him to this day's work; but his reward was a vague impression of a blurred scene, and it gave place almost immediately to the wonder and ecstasy of the flight itself, and to that desire of a goal which burned him as a fever.

His course lay almost directly to the southwest. Upon his left hand were the tremendous precipices of the Janus-faced Weisshorn, the gentler arrête of the Rothhorn, and, behind that again, the black rocks of the Matterhorn. More directly before him were the Becs de Bossons, and the black defile of the lower Valley; while the Aiguilles Rouges, clear and sharp, stood to his right at the moment of departure. Heading for a while down the Valley of the Rhone, he saw the range of the Pennine Alps opening away to the south to disclose Mont Blanc and the triple domes, now lightly veiled by cloud, but plainly to be discerned at the altitude he had chosen. Here Nature seemed a little kinder, showing him low, rounded mountains upon either side of the valley and great woods of the pines which were but black scars upon the sheer rock. Deeper down lay the heart of the chasm, the towns, which were but so many dots upon a sepia ground, the silver thread of the Rhone itself, and Sion with its puny heights whereon proud bishops had built their palaces. Over these he passed at a tremendous speed, watched from below by thousands who were invisible to him. He felt already that he was the master even of this majesty—that man had conquered, and to him henceforth must be the dominion.

The day had broken fine, and the sun shone gloriously when he crossed the actual valley and began to fly high above the mountains upon the other side. Warned that height would be his salvation, he now soared to a great altitude that he might be sure of stable currents and not be drawn down by any of those eddies in which aeroplanes founder so quickly. Of the latter he had a momentary experience at the mouth of the Black Valley, where the cross winds caught him and turned him completely about before he could recover control, so that he was facing Brigue again and looking toward Italy and not toward France. This salutary warning found him more watchful afterwards; and when he had put the machine straight he mounted still higher, and found a dead calm, wherein he ignored the bitter cold and quickly left the valley behind him.

Now for the first time Lake Leman was visible to the northwest. He could see its waters shining in the sun and thought he could locate the heights of Caux; but of this he was not sure, and his knowledge of the Alps being very limited, he but guessed at his precise environment. Of Mont Blanc, however, he never lost a clear vision, and heading his ship for that, had eyes for little else.

There were glaciers shaping at this point of the journey, and the sun showed him desolate fields of snow slashed with the jagged bands of ice and often cut by the black rocks of some fearsome arrête. The loneliness of his situation was emphasised by this vision of a world apart; of ravines which the foot of man had never trodden; of heights which the foot of man had never conquered. Descending a little, he searched out the dark places with curious eyes, tried to make villages of the tracery below him; said that the zig-zags stood for vines upon the hillside and the black lines for railways. When he heard quite distinctly the whistle of a locomotive upon its way to Martigny, the message appeared to come out of the unknown, a voice from a house of his dreams. It recalled him to a sense of his own situation, to the possibilities of failure and of death. He remembered that he was very cold, and wondered if he would have the physical strength to continue.

It was an unhappy foreboding, and he shook it off as well as he could and tried to remember the speed at which he was flying and the hour at which it would bring him to the Valley of Chamonix. The mighty shape of Mont Blanc had begun to emerge more plainly from the mists at this time, and to show its sloping summit, with the attendant needles very distinctly to be seen. He knew that he must pass right across the great mountain, and then find what landing he could in the valley, and the desire to do this with credit put other thoughts from his head. The Val d'Hauderes was behind him at this time, and the head of his ship pointed almost directly to the Aiguilles Rouges, beyond which lay the Valley of Chamonix. When he looked at the chronometer, fixed upon the right-hand side of the frame, he learned that he had already been flying for one hour and twenty minutes; but of his actual direction he could glean nothing by the compass, which swung to every point as the ship sagged and recovered in the varying currents. This mattered little while the weather remained clear; and when, almost with the swiftness of a vision, the valley came into view he believed his object to be already attained.

What a glorious revelation was that—the revelation of countless spires and needles of rock, all dwarfed by his altitude, and seeming but a magic forest rising from the eternal snows. Had he been a mountaineer, he would have named many of them, and before all others the Aiguille du Géant, with its numberless satellites. But he had no knowledge of the valley, and all his interest centred upon Mont Blanc. Viewed at such a height, the mighty monarch appeared rather a great mound of snow above diverging rivers of ice than the proud mountain of the school-day fables; but such was the truth; and when he looked down upon the grand plateau, that spreading field of snow where so many have perished, it reminded him of nothing so much as the plateau at Andana, where his friends awaited him. Benny thought of them with a smile as he headed the ship right over the mountain. It seemed impossible to believe that he had left them just an hour and a half ago.

He flew very close to the summit of Mont Blanc and dropped upon it three weighted bags, each containing his message to the Aero Club of Switzerland. A sense of humour reminded him that those bags would hardly be sought by any climber at this season of the year, and that their very fabric might be rotted when the great thaw came; but he liked the idea of a message, and would scatter others before the flight was done. When they were delivered, he wheeled his machine right-about, and espying the white buildings of the valley, he began to go down toward them. Now, for the first time that day, he could realise the immensity of the precipices he had defied and their danger. Vast walls of rock appeared to engulf him as he descended; he could feel a bitter cold wind rising up from the monster glaciers which had become lakes of the clearest blue ice; pine-woods shaped and declared the contours of trees. He became aware of the presence of people in the valley—thousands of them, moving in great throngs, now this way, now that, as they attempted to follow his movements. In the end he heard a roar of voices swelling upward, and this magnified in notes of a falsetto often ridiculous, but unmistakable. Called as by a messenger, he sought out a landing-place, and his eyes searched the snow-fields ceaselessly. Where was Émile—the faithful Émile? Ah, he stood yonder where the flags were waving. And thither the willing machine swept downward, gliding at last with wings outstretched and touching the snow as caressingly as a young girl may kiss her lover.

The chosen ground was about a mile from the village itself, near Les Pres, on the banks of the Arve. Here a fine spread of snow made descent comparatively safe, and here Benny found his allies, those clever workmen from the French shops whom he had engaged especially for his venture. Immediately they swarmed about him, driving the strangers back and appealing to the breathless gendarmes. As for little Émile, he threw himself into the Englishman's arms and kissed him on both cheeks, which resounding thwacks would not have disgraced a pantomime. He was followed by normally sane members of the Aero Clubs of France and London, who, forgetting their sanity, capered like goats upon the mountain, and uttered incoherent witticisms in unknown tongues. Behind them lay the spectators whose "bravos" echoed far up in the mountains—the honest acclamations of those who had seen miracles and would never forget the day. Indeed, it was said that some of the peasants had fled to the churches when the aeroplane first appeared over Mont Blanc. The priests themselves, taught to know better by the Abbé Villari, sent them forth with ridicule. Was there not a lunch to be eaten? And why should they delay?

Benny was frozen to the marrow when he rolled out of the shell, and his first request was for a hot drink. When Monsieur Collot of the Swiss Club shrugged his shoulders in pitiful desperation, Benny mumbled something about a Thermos under the driving seat, and Émile understanding, the flask was brought out and the hot draught proffered. Then the bluff engineer, striding to and fro upon the snow, tried to answer all their questions at a breath, while a photographer from the Daily Recorder made frantic efforts to snapshot him, and almost cried when he could not.

Yes, Benny admitted it had been a great day. He found the air currents very sure, but had suffered a good deal from the scorching sun. There would be no skin on his face for a month, but that did not matter. He could hardly tell them how the big mountains looked from above—his eyes had been too much on his engine; but he thought very little of Mont Blanc as a show when seen up aloft, and he was astonished how flat a country an aeroplane could make even of this Switzerland. As to his prospects, he would finish if the engine held out and the cold was not too much for him. He had his doubts on the latter score, not upon the former. Pressed to say if his sensations had not been quite abnormal, he admitted that they might have been, and that he had known moments of fear, especially when he came down into the valley. The ether, he said, was a good friend to man when it was warm enough. He quite understood why parsons told them to look upward, for there was nothing like the peace of the heights in all the human story. But for the danger, no man who had known what it was to fly would ever wish to get back to the earth again. Sometimes at great heights he thought he had lost the earth altogether, and might drift away to another planet—which our great great grandchildren may be doing, he added, with a laugh. This Valley of Chamonix was just like a prison for the time being; he felt cabined and confined, wanted to be off and into the blue again; but he would take some food first if they didn't mind, and he hoped the police would keep all hands off his machine. To which Émile responded that he would shoot anyone who touched it, and with this amiable sentiment, continued his feverish task of replenishment and overhaul.

Benny, meanwhile, was led away to the Hotel Londres, where a luncheon had been prepared. His appearance, when he had discarded his furs, was droll enough; and, surely, this was the first time that high officials of Switzerland had sat down to banquet a man in engineer's overalls! But they did so with pride, and the speech in which the Mayor of Lausanne proposed the aviator's health did credit alike to his discernment and to his generosity.

It was nearly mid-day when the meal was done, and a quarter-past twelve when Benny pushed his way through the crowds of people and took his seat once more at the tiller of his ship. A hot sun then blazed in the sky, but a murmur of winds stirred ever and anon in the valley and warned him that the Rubicon had yet to be crossed. There would be dangerous moments above the Zermatt glaciers, and still graver dangers when he re-entered the Simplon. But he was in better heart to face them, and with a few honest words to the people he arose swiftly, amid a storm of wild cheering, straight up above the River Arve to the west, and the goal.

CHAPTER XXI

THE FLIGHT IS FINISHED

There is no more impressive fact of aviation than the speed at which the airman loses touch with terra firma.

At one moment the subject of congratulations amid a press of people, a familiar landscape about him, hills for his horizon, a great plain for his environment; at the next, he is high above the earth, the familiar landmarks are almost blotted out, the people have disappeared from his sight.

Benny had shaken hands perhaps with five hundred worthy souls at Chamonix, had written his name in fifty books, posed for his picture to excited acrobats who held quaking cameras, addressed blunt little speeches to the deputies, quaffed a stirrup-cup of hot spiced wine, been conscious of an environment of mighty mountains and majestic peaks, and then, in a flash, the picture was changed, the people had disappeared, the voices were lost to him, the very scene transformed.

He rose a little to the north of the forbidding Aiguille du Géant and experienced just for an instant the sensation that he had not attained a sufficient altitude and must strike the dread pinnacles of the rock. This was an unnecessary alarm, for the ship responded quickly to a touch of the elevating plane, and he cleared the mountain by three hundred feet or more. Then he headed almost due east, as he had been told to do. The wind, capricious ever in the Valley of Chamonix, here became almost boisterous; and for the first time that day he discovered a vacuum, as it were a whirlpool of the ether, into which he was drawn, and for a few moments whirled about with a velocity which appalled him. One less skilful might have wrecked all at such a moment, and had it been so he would have gone down headlong amid the pinnacles of rock which stand attendant to the famous peak. Benny, however, was always prepared for such a happening as this, and despite that crude sensation of the swift descent he covered his balance almost immediately and put the ship due east again.

He had saved himself, but for how long? The dread mountains, above which he must sail henceforth, would be fertile in such perils as this; the valleys he must cross would be death-traps to any but the most vigilant. Pride in his swift flight to Mont Blanc had seduced him to this easy confidence, which might undo all if uncorrected. He resolved to apply all the mental concentration of which he was capable to the one purpose of success, and taking the wheel firmly in his hands, he set his eyes toward the great mountains about Zermatt and would heed no other spectacle.

It has been said that he was quite ignorant of the Alps, and, truly, a man more familiar with the scene would have better understood the wonder of the deed.

Here below him were the steeps and slopes, the dread arrêtes, the gleaming precipices which climbers had dared since Switzerland first called them to her wonders. Observed from that immense altitude he had now attained, the precipices had become but slabs of snow, steps in a puny wall above which the pinnacles soared; the steeps were but mild hills whereon children should have played; the glaciers but silver threads in whitened moraines which pierced the woods. Hotels and huts—he could hardly distinguish one from the other; the valleys were flattened out until they resembled the plateaus, and all with such a grotesque effect that sometimes the very earth would appear to be turned inside out as it were, the valleys made heights and the heights pressed down to valleys. Going on a little way, a cloud would shut the whole scene from his view, and he would imagine himself in the boundless ether, a wanderer apart from all worlds and voyaging toward the Eternal.

Engineers seldom lack imagination, and he of them all had a soul above the mechanics of things material. Despite his desire to accomplish the task he had set himself, this phantasy of the cloud inspired him to wonderful thoughts of life and death and the transit of the soul. Let this new science of flight continue, and who could name its limitations? He laughed at the folly of the notion, and then remembered that he must breast Zermatt according to the conditions.

Had he lost count of the Matterhorn? He peered down anxiously through the mist, descended a little and received the first real fright since the beginning. For a mountain loomed suddenly before him; he swung instantly to the left, and was then almost abreast of a fearsome precipice which suggested the whole measure of that height. The terror of it set him shuddering. He soared again desperately, and listened to the beat of his engine as to a message of life or death. Would it fail him? If it did, death must be the end of it. He laughed at his own cowardice when the rattle of the exhaust made music for his ears again, and the drifting vapour showed him all the wonders of the Riffelberg, as no living man but he had seen it.

Here for the first time he could look down upon the smiling face of Italy, and discern the gentler country between the chain of the Pennines and Biella. Despite the altitude, a warmer breath was breathed upon him from the southern valleys. The vast bulk of Monte Rosa, approached as he swung about to regain the Simplon, warned him that the respite was but brief, and that all the rigour of the northern range must be faced anew if he would reach Andana. But he was cheered by this break in the vista of eternal snows; and bringing his machine about, he searched the wilderness of ice below for any sign of those who must observe his passing.

He had crossed the sloping peak of the Matterhorn by this time, and could espy the precipices of the Weisshorn once more. The Valley of Zermatt running down to the pass was but a trench in a desolation from which the eyes must shrink. Knowing little of the place, he had few landmarks; but the Gorner Glacier was one of them, and he traced it with precision. There he perceived great tendrils of pure ice, bent and gnarled as the trunks of trees; black rocks upon which no snow could rest; fathomless depths of ice so blue that a magic river should lie beneath them. And there, as elsewhere, the stillness appalled him. He was glad that it was so, for wind was the enemy. Let the weather change, and he might still be defeated. He knew it, and his heart sank at the remembrance.

A great endeavour is chiefly a story of great hopes. This man had dreamed of such an opportunity as this—he knew not in what phase of his calling—but he had dreamed that some day the world would hail him as a victor, and that his name would be known to men. Now it seemed that the moment was at hand. The immensity of his achievement was hardly present to his mind. Sometimes he was almost afraid for himself, saying, "I am jesting with my fellow-men; it is the machine and not the man which counts in the story of the sciences." At other times a great pride in what he had done ran like fire through his veins. The whole world must know his name to-morrow. If he fell dead then and there upon the black rocks of the Matterhorn, they must still say that he of all living men had first crossed the summit of Mont Blanc. He knew it, and flushed at the knowledge. He had not lived in vain; perchance, should the supreme prize be his, he was about to enter upon a new life whose rewards he would not dwell upon. Others had told him so; he was content to believe them.

And so great hopes went with him, and the smallest check upon them could set his heart beating. Of these the most considerable came at the moment when he headed his machine for the twin-peaked Weisshorn. His brother and the abbé had warned him against the currents of the Valley of Zermatt; but so triumphant had been his progression to this time that he had forgotten the warnings or derided them. Now they returned as an echo to which he must listen. Suddenly, and without any warning at all, he felt himself sinking toward the valley. It was just as though the whole machine dropped rapidly, had lost stability, and would go hurtling down to the abyss as a bird that is shot. In vain he raised his elevating plane to its full capacity. The shell continued its headlong flight, its nose dipped downwards, its engine raced wildly. Then, as suddenly, he regained his balance, went a little way upon an even keel, and discovered that his engine had almost ceased to run. It ebbed away as a life that gasps for air—sobbed out a requiem. And that drove him almost mad with terror; for a spell his wit failed him altogether; he sat back in his chair and looked death in the face.

But it was for an instant, no more. There is this in the instinct of a true mechanic, that whatever the emergency, his mind will grasp the meaning of it before the minds of others, and he will be the first to act. Even as death looked him in the face, Benny could say that the engine had ceased to run because the petrol supply had failed. Turning in his seat he lifted the needles valve, and then struck the side of his tank a fierce blow. As swiftly as the engine had failed, as swiftly it took up the drive again. He heard the hum of it; watched the great propeller racing, and then looked ahead of him to regain his course. There had been a margin of ten seconds perhaps between salvation and the ultimate calamity. He was as white as the snow beneath him when he understood the truth.

A vast black precipice of rock loomed up the third of a mile away. Unable to see more than its jagged face, Benny swung his machine to port, then soared without a break until he had lost all sense of locality, and the air was so bitterly cold that his very breath turned to ice. Now a great white cloud enveloped him. He looked vainly to his compass for help, but the needle oscillated so violently that north and south had no meaning. Descending a little way, he discovered that he was circling about Monte Rosa, and that the plains of Italy called him once more. Then despair seized upon him—the despair of a man who wanders by night, lost to all sense of direction, and vainly seeking lights upon a strange horizon.

In a measure this dread had been inspired by the fall. He waited with ear intent for any sound that the engine would fail a second time, and shuddered at any variation of its rhythm. When the vista became clear again he was astonished to find that the scene was just as it had been when first he crossed the summit of the Matterhorn. All the great peaks—the Dent Blanche, the Rothhorn, the Grand Gorner, the Weissthor—stood in the same relation to his course as when he had set it at the beginning. And at this he took new courage, and with a counsel of prudence which sent him eastward across the mouth of the valley. He would not enter that trap for the second time; he knew that in altitude lay his salvation.

His flight now lay in some part along the Italian frontier. He skirted Monte Rosa and flew straight across the Gorner Grat, kept to the right of the Horner, and henceforth found a kindlier country. Had he persisted he would have come to the lesser peaks which fend the Simplon Pass; but he swung again before he reached them, and so, with the wind at his back, he headed at last straight for Andana and the goal. Half an hour, he thought, would bring the end, if the weather held and the mists were but local.

The latter was now his only doubt, and he could not shake it off despite the magnitude of his attainment. He had reached a point where he should have been able to look right up the Valley of the Rhone; but the view was obscured by those banks of white cloud which had drifted in the valley since dawn, and were still to be reckoned with. He entered the first of them, and was subject once more to all the dread and despair which had afflicted him at Zermatt. A sense of direction was lost as heretofore; vast shadows appeared to pursue him; he raced his engine that he might escape them, but they pressed on the more. Then, in an instant, the way would be clear, the sun shining brightly, the valley below him a smiling scene to summon him to victory.

It was but such a little way, and victory stood so near. When the cloud enveloped him for the third time that day, he tried to soar above it, and succeeded for a little while; but the vapour was mounting also and it would interpose a curtain between him and the earth, so that direction was alternately lost and found, while he himself became soaked to the skin and began to lose the use of his hands. Now, surely, he thought that he was done for; but still he headed for Andana and the slopes, and said that all must be risked in that final descent. Henceforth, it was a race between the endurance of the man and the machine, and the magnitude of the cloud. He heard an ominous misfire in his engine, and shivered as though a cold hand had touched him. The great white sea of vapour below forbade him to see whether he were then above Visp or Sierre; nor did the contour of the valley shape as he had expected. So a woful sense of defeat took possession of him anew; his numbed hands permitted the ship to rock horribly; he went down a hundred feet, but feared the walls of the valley; rose again, and reeled in his seat. He was a beaten man by now, hardly able to raise a hand to a lever; the great white sea had done for him, and he knew it.

Here irony stepped in, and with a weird interposition which would have delighted a cynic. While his machine rolled and sagged in the mists a sound of human voices came up to him from below. He thought that he heard cheers, the hooting of horns, and the crack of a revolver shot. As swiftly as the sounds arose they died away, and the stillness became supreme. He felt that he must come down whatever the cost. The great prize was lost, and with it the hope of the years. And at this tears of a bitter sorrow welled to the man's eyes. Defeated! Yes, that was the truth, and the world would know the story to-morrow, and forget him in a week. What mattered it that he had done so much? Was not victory his all in all? And he was beat—dead beat—by the cloud which mocked him. Almost with a sob he made a last effort and began to come down. The ground below him, emerging suddenly, showed a steep bank of snow with pinewoods above it. There he ran his ship, and as she came to rest he buried his face in his hands and wept aloud.

CHAPTER XXII

THE EMPTY HOUSE

The fit of weakness passed swiftly to give place to a finer measure of courage than any which had inspired him hitherto.

The prize was lost. What then? He had been robbed of it, not by any failure of the machine he had created, but by the caprice of nature, against which he was powerless. Those who criticised him would be compelled to admit as much. And, all said and done, he had been the first man to cross Mont Blanc in an aeroplane, and no tongue could rob him of the credit.

These were early impressions, and not a little vague. He was bitterly cold and so cramped in every limb that when he rolled out of his seat at last he could not stand upright. Utterly exhausted in mind and body, he held as well as he could to the shell of the ship, and tried to drag himself to his feet. Then he remembered that there was a flask of brandy among his "stores," and finding it with maladroit hand, he took a heavy draught. The potent liquor revived him immediately. Circulation came back at last. He stood upright and looked about him.

He was on a steep slope of the snow, and there were woods above him. When he had searched them a little while with patient eyes, he began to think that they were not unfamiliar. A further scrutiny showed him a gabled building above the woods, and he could have sworn that it was the well-known hotel at Vermala. Turning to the valley below, he perceived a clump of pines emerging from the mists, and they fitted into the picture he had imagined. Yes, they would be the woods standing between Vermala and the plateau of Andana, and if they were, his chalet lay below them. But at that thought he shrugged his shoulders and laughed in an odd way. He would not think about a chance so preposterous.

His machine had escaped all damage in the swift descent, and lay across the bank; one wing just tipping the froth of the snow, the other poised high above the white ground. His difficulty was to reach solid ground, for the drifts were deep hereabouts, and he sank up to his knees at every step he took. It occurred to him that he must carry skis with him in future against such a mishap as this; and resolving to make a note of it, he began to examine the engine and propellers to see if all were well with them. This scrutiny still occupied him when he heard a loud shouting from the woods below, and picked up his ears as a hare that is warned.

There were cries in the wood, incoherent salvos as of a mob whose hearts might be in unison, but whose lungs were out of tune. Listening intently, Benny thought that he could distinguish the raucous voices of boys, the shrill piping of girls, and the deep baying of men excited abnormally. A moment later and a man emerged from the wood, and set out to cross the snow toward him, and this man was up to his waist in the drift immediately, while strong arms were thrust out to help him, and a roar of laughter proffered as his reward.

"Good God!" cried Benny, "it's the little priest!" And, in truth, it was.

The Abbé Villari, with his cassock tucked up to his waist, his arms waving wildly, hatless and with tousled hair, he had been first before them all. No runner at Stamford Bridge could have had much the better of him in that mad striving for the first prize in the race. And, worthy soul, the snow engulfed him immediately, and it remained for the parson, Harry Clavering, to drag him out and set him, sobered, upon his feet. Meanwhile, others had snatched the prize from him, and before them all the Admirable Crichton of Andana, Dr. Orange, the immaculate.

Benny steadied himself by the shell of his ship while he watched this advance; nor could his wit make anything of it. Why were all these people in such a hurry to thrash a dead horse? Had they come to tell what he knew so well, that his endeavour had failed, and that the prize must go to another? He could make nothing of it, and he stood and stared while men and women on skis debouched from the woods by twenty paths and came racing over the snow toward him.

Dr. Orange was quite out of breath when he reached the place, and he stood for a little while holding to the ship and trying to find words. Before he had recovered, Bob Otway, Dick Fenton, and Keith Rivers had joined him, and these were eloquent enough, though they spoke a strange tongue to Benny. In truth, their greeting was an incoherent salvo of wild words among which he distinguished such homely phrases as, "You've got them stiff"; "Bravo old Benny!" and "Perinder pays, by thunder!" An instant later and Bob had suggested that it was a case for "chairing"; and there being no chair handy, he and Rivers laid violent hands upon the astonished victor and lifted him bodily to their shoulders.

His protest went for nothing. He cried out that it was "damned nonsense!" but no one seemed to hear him. Perchance a man has never been carried shoulder-high by other men on skis before. They would establish a precedent, as Bob declared, and calling the parson and Dick Fenton to his aid, set off bravely for the Palace.

"Where is my brother?" Benny asked them in an interlude. The doctor answered that he had fainted when the gun announced the victory; but that was an enigma to the engineer, and kept him quiet awhile. "When the gun announced his victory. Good God! What victory?"

"I lost it," he stammered presently, "because the mist took me. It seems I was nearer than I thought. Another ten minutes and I would have done it."

Nobody listened to this. They were in the woods now, and went on in a triumph characteristic of Andana. If the music were chiefly of horns and bugles, it mattered little. Major Boodle, among others, had devoted a master intellect to the acquisition of the "yoodle" in various keys, and he practised it relentlessly. There was one fellow who had borrowed a drum in the village, and beat a tattoo with real cleverness. A few mild youths, who always carried revolvers when "on the Continent," produced those far from formidable weapons and shot down the branches from the trees. But, in the main, the voice was the instrument, and was to be heard in a stentorian cheer, or the less musical and more joyous chant of victory.

Some hundreds of the spectators had gone up to Vermala, but many thousands remained on the plateau and were discovered suddenly as the odd procession emerged from the woods. The drift of cloud, which had tricked the aviator into the belief that he had failed, was now but a wall of vapour flanking the precipices across the valley, all the scene stood out, revealed in magic glory.

Heaven knew whence all the flags had come. It was said that the bunting erected by the Daily Recorder had been pulled down by excited hands and distributed among the people. Certainly, every other man carried a flag and waved it perpetually. In their turn, the women waved handkerchiefs while the children ran to and fro hardly understanding what it was all about, and caring very little. Meanwhile, the band blared incessantly, and down at the village the church bell tolled as gaily as an ancient bell-ringer could persuade it to do.

The crowd had waited patiently for its hero to come down from the heights, and directly it perceived the outposts of the procession, all bonds were broken and a wild tumult ensued. A hundred hands fought for the burden, and were repulsed with difficulty. A frenzy of cheers succeeded the intermittent salvos. Men, and women too, fell in the snow and were rolled over and over by the heedless feet of other runners. The one desire was to see the man who had done this thing, and, if it might be, to touch his hand. He, in turn, implored those who carried him to make an end of it.

"Take me to the chalet," he said. And the doctor commanding, they carried him there in triumph, and shut and barred the door against the multitude.

* * * * * * *

Brother Jack had been sitting before the fire in their little sitting-room when Benny came tumbling in. His face was very pale and his eyes wide open. It was true that he had fainted when the signal-gun announced his brother's victory, and the reaction of joy could be detected in the quiver of his lips and his restless hands. Had he been a Frenchman he would have kissed Benny on both cheeks prior to a flourish of words in which platitudes of sentiment abounded. But as it was, he just stood up and cried, "Hallo, Benny!" while Benny said, "Hallo, Jack!" and came and slapped him on the shoulder. The others in the room at this time were at the Abbé Villari, Harry Clavering and the doctor, and these three stood apart that the brothers might talk.

"I thought you were done, Benny, old boy. I heard the engine down the valley, and thought you'd miss us. How did you manage it? How did you do it, old fellow?"

"That's what I'm asking myself, Jack. I must have done it, or these people wouldn't be making such a noise. Luck, I suppose. I thought I was a good ten miles from the place when I came down. Well, I suppose I wasn't, and that's all."

Jack laughed. The colour was returning to his cheeks.

"It's not all by a long way, Benny. You flew right over our heads just as though you were making a bee line. Not that it mattered. What you had to do was to get back to the starting-point, and here you are. Come and warm yourself, old boy. You're stiff with the cold."

Benny agreed to that.

"Never was so cold in all my life, Jack. You could cut me up in lengths, if you liked! I've had a hard time, old boy—a d——d hard time! And now it's over, eh? Well, that's something; and if none of you mind, I think I'll go to bed for a spell. Dr. Orange would prescribe that, I know. Just a snooze, doctor, eh, and a drop of something warm!"

He turned and went up the little staircase to his bedroom. Jack and the doctor following. The crowd was still gathered about the house, and from time to time it cheered lustily; but when Dr. Orange went out and said the aviator was resting, the people drew back respectfully, while the gendarmes posted sentries before the chalet, and forbade anyone to approach it. Among them was the little gendarme, Philip, waiting impatiently for his chief's permission to go into Italy.

* * * * * * *

It had been arranged that the cheque for ten thousand pounds should be handed over by Sir John Perinder, the proprietor of the Daily Recorder, at a banquet to be given at the Palace Hotel at seven o'clock that night. Lavish according to his habit, Sir John invited all the residents at the hotel to be his guests, and prepared also a high table at which the victor might meet his intimates.

Aided by the staff of the Palace, the great dining-room was quickly prepared for this novel function. The flags of many nations adorned its whitewashed walls; there were ridiculous streamers and words of welcome both in French and English. Bizarre ornaments from the bazaar decorated the long tables, but the high table itself carried the monster silver cup with which the Aero Club of Switzerland commemorated the achievement, and this was a veritable work of art.