You must not land at Lympne, Yvette declared positively. You will have to get in unobserved and land somewhere away from any aerodrome. You can abandon the aeroplane; that wont matter if you get through safely.
And leave it to be identified in a few hours time by the engine marks? asked Dick. No, Yvette, that wont do. And besides, he went on, there wouldnt be the slightest chance of getting through. The new wireless direction-finders would give me away long before I could even reach the coast, and the Air Police would do the rest. I should simply be shadowed till I landed or even shot down if I refused to land! Four smuggling planes were picked up last week by the new wireless-detectors, and every one was captured.
Then I dont know what I shall do, Yvette replied blankly. I thought you would surely be able to slip over at night.
Then Dick, even against his better judgment, which warned him he was taking on a foolhardy enterprise, sprang his great surprise.
Well, he said, perhaps I can help you, after all. You know, in Fenways Im supposed to be only a motor-dealer. Really, I have been working for over two years quite secretly on a combination of aeroplane and motor-car, and now I think I have got it about perfect. You can change the motor-car to a little monoplane in less than half an hour. The wing struts telescope back into the body, so does the propeller-shaft, and the blades fold back along the shaft.
Have you really? she gasped eagerly.
Yes. Best of all, Ive got an absolute silencer on the exhaust; Ive run the engine at top speed on the ground and found I could not hear it a hundred yards away. So far I have only made one or two flights, but they were quite successful. It seats two in little cockpits placed one on each side of the centre line where the propeller shaft runs. Why shouldnt we try to fly her over tonight? I feel pretty sure we could do it at ten thousand feet without the direction-finders knowing anything about us.
Excellent! cried the girl.
The great disadvantage is that I cant get any speed to speak of on the ground. I have had to make everything very light, of course, and I fancy about twenty miles an hour, unless the roads were exceptionally good, would be our limit. We should have no chance of getting away if we were chased on the ground or in the air, for that matter if we were spotted. We might fly over to-night and chance getting caught. Of course, I have my pilots certificate, and if we were caught I could easily explain that I was making a night flight and my compass had gone wrong. It wouldnt be a very serious matter the first time as, of course, we should have nothing contraband. If we got over safely we could take the chance of coming back loaded.
Yvette had become suddenly radiant.
Why, Dick! she cried, thats the very thing. We simply cant be caught. And when we land anywhere we can be ordinary motorists. Its wonderful wonderful!
Dont be too sure, replied Dick grimly. The Air Police are pretty wide awake. However, its worth trying. Now, shall we go to-night? Theres a train from Liverpool Street at six-twenty. We shall get down to Fenways by nine. We shall have five miles to walk to the shed where I keep the machine of course, we darent drive out and we must manage to reach Paris about dawn. If we are too early I cannot land in the dark, and if we are late people will be about and we shall run the risk of being spotted.
Yvette promptly produced a small but beautifully clear contour map.
Theres your landing-place, she said, pointing to a large clearing surrounded by thick woods. Its about fifteen miles from Paris, and my own aeroplane is pushed in under the edge of the trees. It is quite a lonely spot in the forest a little to the north of Triel. Of late years the forest has been very much neglected and very few people go there. An old farmer, who lives quite alone, grazes a few sheep in the clearing, and I have, of course, had to arrange with him about my machine. He thinks I am an amateur flyer, and I have told him I am making some secret experiments and paid him to keep quiet. I flew the machine there myself when I bought it from the François Frères, of Bordeaux. Of course, I had my papers all in order when I bought it.
All right; that will do well enough, said Dick. We will go over to-night. Jules can go by the boat train.
A few hours later Dick and Yvette were standing in the shed beside the strange motor-car, Dick rapidly explaining the system of converting the machine into a monoplane.
We must get off the ground as quickly as possible, he said. People go to bed early in these parts, but there is always a chance of some one being about, and I dont want to be caught while we are making the change.
At a suitable spot on the road, the change was made. It occupied Dick, with Yvettes skilful help, just twenty minutes.
We can do it in fifteen, he declared, when you are thoroughly accustomed to it.
As a matter of fact they did it in less on one memorable occasion some weeks later when their pursuers were hot on their heels.
Soon they were speeding swiftly southwards. Dick had set the monoplane on a steep, upward slant, aiming to reach ten thousand feet before he drew abreast of London. Thanks to the clinging mist, they were soon utterly out of sight from below, and Dick had to steer by compass until they sighted thirty miles ahead, and slightly to their right, the great twin beams of light which marked the huge aerodrome at Croydon.
Then Dick veered to the south-east, flying straight for Lympne and the French coast. After all, he argued, the bold course was the best. No one would expect an aeroplane on an illicit errand to venture right above the head-quarters of the Air Police, and should any machine be about on lawful business the noise of their engines would prevent the detectors picking up the throbbing whirr of the propeller, which, of course, could not be absolutely silenced.
Fortune favoured them. As they drew nearer to Lympne, swinging in from the slightly easterly course he had set, Dick caught sight of the navigation lights of the big mail aeroplane heading from London to Paris. His own machine, bearing, of course, no lights, was far above the stranger, the thunder of whose big engines came clearly up to them. A couple of red flares from the big plane signalled her code to the aerodrome, the searchlight blinked an acknowledgment, and the mail plane tore swiftly onward. Dick could not match its hurtling speed, but he followed along its track, confident that he would now be undetected.
They swept silently above the brilliantly lighted aerodrome, then across the Channel, and just as dawn was breaking detected the Triel forest, and dropped lightly to earth almost alongside Yvettes machine. By eight oclock the machine, now a motor-car, was safely locked up in a disused stable in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, and Dick, Jules, and Yvette were soon in deep consultation.
That evening, just as dusk was falling, a half-drunken coachman sprawled lazily on a bench set against a wall in the deep courtyard of the Baton dOr, a quiet hotel located in aback street in the market quarter of Paris. By his side was a bottle of vin blanc. Before him, harnessed to a dilapidated carriage, stood his horse, a dejected-looking animal enough.
Directly over his head, at a window of a room on the third floor, two men stood talking. One of them was Otto Kranzler.
Two rooms away, on the same floor, a curious little drama was being enacted.
Lounging on a sofa near the door was Dick Manton. Yvette, on a chair drawn near the window, faced him.
Yvette rang the bell, and the two were talking when a chambermaid appeared.
Coffee and cognac for two, Yvette ordered.
A few minutes later the girl reappeared. She crossed the room with a tray and set it on the table in front of Yvette.
As the maid turned Dicks arm was slipped round her, and a chloroformed pad was pressed swiftly over her face. Taken utterly by surprise, the girl was too firmly held to do more than struggle convulsively, and in a few moments, as the drug took effect, she lay a limp heap in Dicks arms.
Snatching from a valise a chambermaids costume and cap, Yvette swiftly transformed herself into a replica of the unconscious girl. Then picking up the tray and its contents she silently left the room, having poured a few drops of colourless liquid into each of the glasses of brandy.
Kranzler was evidently in a bad temper.
I tell you, he said to his companion, there must be a way out. That infernal
There was a knock at the door, and a chambermaid entered with coffee and liqueurs. It was Yvette!
Would the messieurs require anything further? she asked as she set down the tray.
No, thats all for to-night, said Kranzler in a surly tone, as he picked up the brandy and drained it with obvious relish. His companion followed suit.
Dick was sitting beside the unconscious girl as Yvette re-entered the room.
Shes quite all right, he said, as he watched her narrowly for signs of returning consciousness, but I must give her a little more just as we are leaving. How did you get on?
Splendidly, said Yvette; they noticed nothing, and I saw them both drink the brandy as I left the room.
Ten minutes later Yvette re-entered Kranzlers room. The two men had collapsed into chairs. Both were sleeping heavily.
Without losing a second Yvette tore open Kranzlers waistcoat and passed her hand rapidly over his body. A moment later she had slit open the unconscious mans shirt, and from a belt of webbing which ran round his shoulders cut away a flat leather pouch.
From her pocket she took a reel of strong black thread. To one end of this she fastened the pouch, and, crouching by the open window, pushed the pouch over the sill and swiftly lowered it into the darkness.
A moment later came a sort of tug at the line, the thread snapped, and Yvette let the end fall. Then, with a glance at her drugged victims, she snatched up the tray and returned with it to her own room.
Lying on the sofa, the chambermaid stirred uneasily. She was evidently recovering. While Yvette swiftly discarded her disguise Dick again pressed the chloroform to the girls face.
A few moments later Mr and Mrs Wilson, of London, were being escorted by the hotel porter to a waiting taxi-cab.
They never returned.
In the semi-darkness of the courtyard the drunken coachman had stiffened and leant back against the wall as a small, dark object lightly touched his shoulder. His arm, twisted behind him, felt for and found a slender thread. Held against the wall behind him was the flat leather pouch which Yvette had lowered. A moment later it was transferred to a capacious pocket, and the coachman, staggering uncertainly to his horse, mounted the carriage and drove noisily out of the yard. No one paid the slightest attention to him; no one realised that that uncouth exterior concealed the slim form of Jules Pasquet, his nerves quivering with excitement at the success of the Gay Triangles first daring coup.
An hour later the Paris police took charge of an old horse found aimlessly dragging an empty carriage along one of the boulevards. About the same time, from a forest clearing fifteen miles away from Paris, a tiny monoplane rose silently into the air and sped away in the direction of the French coast.
Kranzler left Paris the following day and returned to Germany. He was strictly searched at the frontier, of course without result, and the puzzled French police never solved the problem of how, as they thought, he had beaten them. He had not dared to complain. Mr and Mrs Wilson were never even suspected, for by a strange coincidence some articles of jewellery were stolen from another room that same night, and when the drugged chambermaid told her story it was assumed that the Wilsons were hotel thieves of the ordinary type.
A month later the Petit Parisien announced in black type with a flaring headline:
An anonymous gift of one million francs has been received by the French Government, to be devoted to the relief of the devastated regions of France.
Chapter Two
A Race for a Throne
Paris, keenly sensitive to political vibrations which left less emotional centres relatively unmoved, was rippling with excitement.
The death of the aged King John of Galdavia had been followed by the sudden appearance of a second claimant to the stormy throne of the latter principality in the Middle East, and the stormy petrels of politics, to whom international political complications are as the breath of life, had scented trouble from afar, and were flocking to the gay city. For the moment, however, the rest of the world seemed to take but little interest in the new problem. It was generally felt that the succession to the Throne of Galdavia was a matter for the Galdavians alone, and only a few long-sighted individuals perceived the small cloud, no bigger than a mans hand, which threatened to darken the entire political firmament.
Back in his quiet Norfolk home, Dick Manton had dropped into a state of profound dejection. The adventure of the Russian Jewels, with its wild plunge into the thrills of the old life, had awakened an irrepressible desire for action and movement which had lain dormant while his shattered health was being slowly re-established.
Now, fully recovered, and in the perfection of physical condition, he could only contemplate with distaste and aversion continued existence in the humdrum surroundings of East Anglia.
But what was he to do? Like thousands of others he felt that the ordered life of civilisation, with every daily action laid out according to plan, was for him impossible. His was essentially one of the restless spirits, stirred into life by the war, which craved action, difficulty, and even danger. Moreover his growing affection for Yvette troubled him.
Yvette had been delicately brought up. She was accustomed to luxury, and Dick could only realise that his present prospects were such that, even if he were sure she cared for him, a marriage between them must entail such sacrifice on her part as he could not contemplate with equanimity.
But, though dull, he had not been idle. The brilliant initial test of the new motor-plane, which he had fancifully christened The Mohawk had stirred his ambition, and every moment he could snatch from business had been devoted to thinking out and applying improvements. Some of these had been of real importance, and the machine had gained substantially in strength and lifting power, as well as in speed both on the ground and in the air. He was also making experiments in gliding.
For some months he had heard little of Yvette. A few brief notes had told him she was well. But that was all, and he felt a little hurt. He never dreamed that Yvettes feelings were singularly like his own; that she, too, was the prey of emotions which sometimes alarmed her. They were, in fact, kept apart by Dicks shyness and poverty, and by the French girls profound pride and reserve.
Matters were in this stage when Dick, to his great surprise, received a brief telegram from Yvette.
Can you come to Paris? very urgent Yvette, the message ran.