The Zeppelin Destroyer/Chapter X

by William Le Queux

 

CHAPTER X

THE TUNNEL MYSTERY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Intentionally! No why?'

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

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

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

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

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

'No. About eighteen pounds remains there now.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'What has been found?' I gasped eagerly.

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

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

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

'In a tunnel!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Was a woman's honour concerned in this?

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

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

'The matter does not concern a woman's honour—er—not exactly so,' the man in khaki said slowly. 'I want to know——' And he paused, as though hesitating to explain his motive for coming along to see me.

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

'And I will assist you, Mr. Munro if you will only be frank with me.'

'Frank!' I echoed. 'Of course I'll be frank!'

Again he looked me straight in the face with those funny, half-closed little eyes of his. Then, after a few moments' pause, he asked:

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

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

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

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

I did not reply for several moments.

'Well? ' he asked, repeating his question.

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

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

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

The captain, seeing my reluctance, said:

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

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

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

'Suspicion!' I echoed angrily. 'Of what, pray?'

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

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

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

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

'I'll believe nothing against Roseye!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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