The Zeppelin Destroyer/Chapter V

by William Le Queux

 

CHAPTER V

THE RAID ON LONDON

It was the night of the fourteenth of October, in the year 1915.

Sir Herbert and Lady Lethmere, with Roseye—who looked charming in pink—were dining en famille in Cadogan Gardens. The only two guests were Lionel Eastwell and myself.

'Terrible—is it not?' Lady Lethmere remarked to me, as I sat on her right. 'We were at the Lyric Theatre when the Zeppelins came last night. We heard the guns firing. It was most alarming. They must have caused damage in London somewhere. Isn't it too awful?'

'And at other places, I fear,' remarked Sir Herbert, a fine outspoken, grey-haired, rather portly man, who had crowned his career as a Sheffield steel manufacturer by receiving a knighthood. He spoke with the pleasant burr of the north country.

'Well, the noise of the guns was terrific,' his wife went on. 'Fortunately there was no panic whatever in the theatre. The people were splendid. The manager at once came on the stage and urged us all to keep our seats—and most people did so. But it was most alarming—wasn't it, Herbert?'

'Yes, dear, it really was,' replied her husband, who, turning to me, asked: 'What were you doing at that time, Munro?'

'Well, Sir Herbert, to tell the truth I happened to be out at Hendon with my friend Ashton, preparing for a flight this morning. I got hold of a military biplane which had just been finished and had only had its last tests that afternoon, but as I had no bombs, and not even a rifle, I was unable to go up.'

'And if you had gone?' Eastwell chimed in. 'I fear, Claude, that you would never have reached them in time. They flew far too high, and were, I understand, moving off before our men could get up. Our Flying Corps fellows were splendid, but the airships were at too great an altitude. They rose very high as they approached London—according to all reports.'

'And the reports are pretty meagre,' I remarked. 'I only know that I was anxious and eager to go up, but as I had not the necessary defensive missiles it was utterly useless to make the attempt.'

'Nevertheless, I believe our anti-aircraft guns drove them off very quickly, didn't they?' Lionel asked.

'Not before they'd done quite enough damage and killed innocent old persons and non-combatants. Then they went away, and bombed other defenceless towns as they passed—the brutes!' said Lady Lethmere.

'And writers in to-day's papers declare that all this is really of no military significance,' remarked Sir Herbert, glancing fiercely across the table, a stout, red-faced man, full of fiery fight.

'Military significance is an extremely wide term,' I ventured to remark. 'London heard the bombs last night. To-day we are no longer outside the war-zone. We used, in the good old Victorian days, to sing confidently of our "tight little island." But it is no longer tight. It seems to me that it is very leaky—and its leakage is towards those across the North Sea who have for so long declared themselves our friends. Friends! I remember, and not so very long ago, standing on the Embankment and watching the All-Highest Kaiser coming from the Mansion House with a huge London crowd cheering him as their friend.'

'Friend!' snorted Sir Herbert. 'He has been far too clever for us. He has tricked us in every department of the State. Good King Edward knew; and Lord Roberts knew, but alas! our people were lulled to sleep by the Kaiser's pretty speeches to his brave Brandenburgers and all the rest, and his pious protests that his only weapon was the olive branch of peace.'

'Yet Krupp's and Erhardt's worked on night and day,' I said. 'Food, metals, money and war-materials were being collected each month and stored in order to prepare for the big blow for which the Emperor had been so long scheming and plotting.'

'Yes, truly the menace of the Zeppelin is most sinister,' said Roseye across the table. 'How can we possibly fight it? We seem to be powerless! Our lawyers are busy making laws and fining people for not creeping about in the darkness at night, and asking us to save so as to pay ex-ministers their big pensions, but what can we do?'

'Rather ask whom can we trust?' I suggested.

'But, surely, Claude, there must arise very soon some real live man who will show us the way to win the war?' asked Roseye.

I drew a long breath. She knew our secret—the secret of that long dark shed out at Gunnersbury which was watched over at night by the sturdy old Theed, father of my mechanic, he being armed with a short length of solid rubber tyre from the wheel of an old disused brougham—about the best weapon of personal defence that could ever be adopted. A blow from that bit of flexible rubber would lay out a man senseless, far better than any iron bar.

'Well,' said Sir Herbert, re-entering our discussion. 'The Zeppelin peril must be grappled with—but who can enter the lists? You airmen don't seem to be able to combat it at all! Are aeroplanes too slow—or what?'

'No, Sir Herbert,' I replied. 'That's not the point. There are many weaknesses in the aeroplane, which do not exist in the big airship—the cruiser of the air. We are only the butterflies—or perhaps hornets, as the Cabinet Minister once termed us—but I fear we have not yet shown much sting.'

'We may, Claude!' interrupted Roseye with a gay laugh.

'Let's hope we can,' I said. 'But all these new by-laws are, surely, useless. Let's hit the Hun in his home. That's my point of view. We can do it—if only we are allowed.'

'I'm quite sure of that, Claude,' Roseye declared. 'There are lots of flying-men who, if given bombs to-morrow, would go up and cross to the enemy aircraft centres in Belgium or Schleswig and drop them—even at risk of being shot down.'

'Well, Sir Herbert,' I ventured, laughing, 'the situation is not without its humour. I don't know whether it has ever occurred to you that, in order not to unduly alarm the public, we may yet have certain regulations posted upon our hoardings that may prohibit Zeppelin commanders from cruising over England without licences; that they must have red rear-lights; they must put silencers upon their engines, and must not throw orange peel, paper bags, bottles or other refuse within the meaning of the Act into the streets in such a manner as to cause any danger to foot-passengers or create litter such as would come beneath the powers relegated to inspectors of nuisances of Boroughs. Such regulations might, perhaps, make it a penal offence if Zeppelins did not keep to the left in traffic; if bombs were dropped in places other than those properly and purposely illuminated for the purpose, or if they did not travel at a rate faster than the British aircraft.'

'Really, Claude, that's an awfully humorous idea,' remarked Sir Herbert as all at table laughed. 'In addition, it might be suggested that the heads of all dogs, ducks, cats, parrots, and the horns of gramaphones might be encased in cotton-wool to conceal their whereabouts, that no smoking be permitted, and no artificial light between one hour before sunset and one hour after sunrise.'

'Exactly,' I laughed. 'And an inter-departmental committee of the red-tabbed might be charged with the due execution of the regulations—all offenders to be shot at sunrise following the day whereon any breach of the Defence of the Zeppelin Act were committed.'

'Really you're too bad!' declared Eastwell, laughing heartily as he held his glass poised in his hand.

'Well,' I protested. 'Here we've had Zeppelins killing people. Surely something must be done! Either regulate the Zeppelin traffic, or else fight them.'

'I'm all for the latter,' declared Roseye.

'So am I,' was my remark.

'And I also,' declared Eastwell. 'But how?—that's the question!'

Roseye exchanged glances with me, and I wondered whether he noticed them.

Somehow I had just a faint suspicion that he did, for I detected a curious expression upon his lips—a look such as I had never seen there before.

He made no remark, but busied himself with the excellently-cooked snipe before him.

Fortunately Lionel Eastwell was not aware of our secret—the secret of that brown deal box which we were so rapidly perfecting.

Only on the previous day Roseye had been up in the air with me across Hampstead, Highgate, and out as far as Hatfield and home to the aerodrome, making a further test of the potent but unseen power which we had been able to create, and which must, if further developed, be our strong arm by which to strike a very deadly blow against enemy airships.

'Personally,' declared Sir Herbert, in his bluff, matter-of-fact way, 'I think the whole idea of air-defence from below is utterly futile. A gun can never hit with accuracy a moving object so high in the air and in the dark. What target is there?'

'Exactly,' exclaimed Eastwell. 'That has always been my argument. I've been interested in aviation for years, and I know the enormous difficulties which face the efforts of those who man our anti-aircraft guns. Searchlights and guns I contend are inadequate.'

'They've hardly been tried, have they?' queried Lady Lethmere. 'And, moreover, I seem to recollect reading that both have done some excellent work on the French front.'

'But London is not the French front,' Eastwell protested. 'The conditions are so very different.'

'Then what do you suggest as a really reliable air-defence?' Sir Herbert inquired.

'Fight them with fast aeroplanes and bombs,' Eastwell said.

'But you've just told Munro that had he gone up last night from Hendon his flight would have been quite useless, as he would never have been able to mount sufficiently high in the time.'

'Quite so. But we ought to have efficient air-patrols at night,' was his reply.

'Combined with properly illuminated landing-places,' Roseye added. 'Otherwise more than half the airmen and observers must kill themselves through landing in the dark without any knowledge of the direction of the wind.'

'That could all be arranged—as it no doubt will be in due course,' I said. 'The Government are not such fools as some people seem inclined to believe. I'm not one of those who blame the whole Government for a few mistakes of its subordinate departments, and the incompetency of men pitchforked, in the hurry of an unexpected war, into places for which they are entirely unfitted. We all know of glaring cases of that sort. No. Let's take heart, and look on the best side of things. Britain is not vanquished yet, and the heart of the true Briton beats quicker and is fiercer than ever in its patriotism over the base enemy outrage of the kind that was committed upon innocent Londoners last night.'

'Only yesterday I was reading a popular book called Can Germany Win? written by an anonymous American,' remarked Sir Herbert. 'The writer gaily informs the public that even well-directed rifle-fire can bring the vaunted Zeppelins down, and to secure any accuracy of aim themselves, the airships must descend to an altitude which brings them well within the range of modern guns.'

'I know!' I laughed. 'The rubbish written about Zeppelins is simply ludicrous. I've read that book, which has no doubt been read by thousands of patriotic Britons. I remember quite well that, in it, we are gravely informed that as far as Zeppelins were concerned the British public may sleep comfortably in their beds. The great thing is, we are urged, to discount as far as possible, by reason supported by scepticism, the terrorizing tales of the Zeppelin's worth and doughty prowess which are so brilliantly "press-agented" in Germany. The writer has further told us that talk never broke any bones, and the Germans are doing a good deal of talk at the present moment to hide the defects in their monster pets which have been detected as useless by the test of War. The Zeppelins, the writer told us, are comparatively negligible quantities. Last night's raid is the commentary.'

'Yes,' said Roseye, 'something must really be done to prevent such raids.'

'But how?' queried Lionel Eastwell across the table in that slow refined voice of his. 'It's all very well to talk like that—but you must act.'

Roseye and I again exchanged glances. She knew well what was passing in my mind.

And I remained silent.