The Air Pirate

by Guy Thorne

  Chapter 10

  Mr. Trewhella was an elderly Cornishman, with welcoming manners, the native shrewdness of his race, but without guile. We got on famously from the word go. He had three bedrooms and a large sitting room to let. His wife, who had driven into St. Ives, was, he asserted, a good cook. As for Thumbwood, he could wait on us and live with the landlord and his wife. Finally, there was an empty barn which would hold our car very comfortably.

  "And what would you be thinking of paying, zur?" asked Mr. Trewhella.

  "I leave that to you. I may tell you that the gentleman I am preparing for his Oxford examination is wealthy. He's a Japanese nobleman, and as long as you make us comfortable...."

  This had the desired effect. The landlord became expansive in his slow way, and showed me all over the premises of his quaint and rambling dwelling. It was a wild and fantastic spot, that I learnt was an ancient haunt of smugglers and wreckers. The backyard opened straight into the short springy turf above the cliffs, the edge of which was not more than two hundred yards away. Here the stream, which flowed past the inn, descended in a series of miniature cataracts to a tiny cove of deep-green water, almost enclosed by two towering precipices, crowned with jagged spires and pinnacles of rock. There was a little scimitar of golden sand far down at the water's edge, and the scene was one of savage grandeur that I have rarely seen surpassed in all my travels.

  As he stood on the height and looked down, I saw something which seemed strangely out of place. A line of metal rails, with wooden rollers at intervals between them, fell at a dizzy angle from a spot some ten yards away on the turf, ending abruptly on the level, in front of a smallish hut of corrugated iron.

  "What is the rail for?" I asked. "Surely you don't haul the small boats" -- there were two of them lying on the beach -- "right up to the top of the cliff! It must be two hundred and fifty feet!"

  "Nigher three hundred, zur. No, them rails belong to bring up machinery and stores for Tregeraint Mine by Carne Zerran. They do come by sea in a lil' steamboat. 'Tes more convenient so. There be a lil' oil engine in that shed to haul 'em up in trucks. I let the land, for 'tes all mine down-along, and they do pay me ten pound a year."

  We strolled back to the house, Mr. Trewhella proposing a Cornish pasty and beer for lunch.

  "Now you mention it, that gentleman who was keeping house for you just now said that he was a mining engineer."

  The landlord's big, weather-beaten face wrinkled like a stained window. He began to heave and chuckle, finally exploding in a bellow of laughter.

  "Mr. Vargus!" he spluttered, "Mr. Vargus! He thinks he be a mining engineer, but he knows no more about it than my pig! He be a clever gentleman, sure 'nuf. He do have some knowledge to machinery, I'll allow. But mining, and tin mining!"

  Mr. Trewhella could find no further words to express his contempt for the mining attainments of my friend with the refined and evil face.

  "You see," the landlord continued, as we ate our pasties, "I'm an old mine captain myself, bred and born to it. 'Tedn't likely as I could be deceived. When I heered that a gentleman had come into Tregeraint Manor and the old mine, and proposed to work it, I laughed, I did. I know every inch of Wheal Tregeraint, and fifty years ago it was a fine property. Today them amatoors up along'll never get enough tin out to oxidize, let alone smelt."

  "Who are they, then, Mr. Trewhella?"

  "That's what lots of folk asked when they first come here in twos and threes. They're gentlemen, zur, like yourself, that's what they are. Never was such a thing known in these parts, though folk are used to 'em now. There's Mr. Helzephron, a Cornishman himself, and should know better, Mr. Vargus, you seed just now. Then there's Mr. Gascoigne, a mad young devil if you like, and near a dozen more. They live together in the great house on the cliff and work the mine theyselves. Never no one else allowed. They cooks and does for themselves, just as if they was in a mining camp in California."

  "No women, servants, or anything?"

  "Never an apron. My missus belong to say they lives like Popish monks, which she see once when travelling with a lady among the Eyetalians. 'Not so, my tender dear,' says I. 'I never heered that Popish monks spent most of their evenings in the village inn with a bottle of Scotch whisky afore each man, and precious little left by closing time!'"

  "A hard-drinking lot then?"

  "Wonderful at their liquor. I tell you, zur, it's good for me. Now I've got used to them and their funny ways, I wish they'd stay for ever. Speaking from a strictly business point of view, that is. But soon they'll find out they've lost their money and they'll jack it up. 'Tes not in reason as they can go on, though they do seem so full of hope and certainty. But I know."

  He was obviously pleased with my interest in his talk. I wondered what he would have said if he had known who I was and why I was there? Under a calm exterior, I was a professor munching potato pasty! I was filled with a furious excitement. The man's gossip was worth a sovereign a word. Here was, moment by moment, what looked like complete confirmation of our suspicions. And yet, even as I realized this, I could see how infernally clever the scheme was. Without the clue Danjuro and I alone possessed, there was nothing in the world to connect Helzephron and Tregeraint with the business that was ruffling the calm of two continents.

  It was not my game to ask more direct questions than I could help. It was better to let the racy stream flow on, with a word of comment now and then. I ventured a calculated one now.

  "Fools and their money are soon parted," I said.

  "You may say that, zur! And they've poured out money like water. Electric light, all sorts o' cases full of new-fangled machinery, and that mystery made about the silly old mine you'd think it was a seam of diamonds."

  "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, Mr. Trewhella!" I rose from the table as I spoke. "But what you say about a dozen or more gentlemen drinking nearly a bottle of whisky each rather surprises me. I'm no foe to honest enjoyment, but...."

  I put on a slight primness of manner, as became the character I now took on.

  The landlord nodded vigorously. "'Tes so!" he agreed, "and most onusual. They be gentlefolk, sure 'nuff, but shall I tell 'ee what I think?"

  "What's that?"

  "I think as most of 'em's dropped out, so to speak. I shouldn't be frightened if as their families didn't have anything to say to 'em, and they've nowhere much else to go. Mr. Helzephron knows what he's about, he do. I judge by a kind o' reckless way they have, 'specially the younger gentlemen. They don't seem to mind about ordinary things same as most. Well, I suppose this fool tin mining keeps 'em out of mischief."

  I wondered.

  When I set out on the return journey I took another route. I found from the landlord that by skirting the coast for a mile in the direction of St. Ives I could come upon a moorland path that would take me to the little railway station of St. Erth. I could then catch a train for Penzance. My ostensible reason was to vary my walk: my real one that by this change of plan I would pass by and have a view of Tregeraint Mine and the Manor House.

  "Not that you'll see much or get close," said Mr. Trewhella.

  "How's that?" I asked.

  "I told you that Mr. Helzephron" -- apparently the hawk-faced man had dropped his military title in Cornwall -- "do make a mystery of his peddling mine. He goes further than that. The mine buildings and the house are surrounded by two fences of barbed wire, and the Manor by a high wall. 'Trespassers,' notice boards say, 'will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law'!"

  "Well, I shan't attempt to trespass, Mr. Trewhella!"

  The landlord laughed. "Mine prospectin's not in the way of a larned gentleman like yourself. Maybe it's as well. Mr. Helzephron has got two dogs he turns out at night, and terrible ugly customers they be. Mr. Vargus do tell me that they be Tibetan mastiffs, which am the largest dogs in the world. They look like a sour-faced Newfoundland with heavy ears, only bigger."

  I tramped away from The Miners' Arms. Although I recognized the fact th
at we were only at the fringe of discovery, my mind was made up. Thick darkness surrounded my mind, but I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Major Helzephron, and no other, was the man for whom the whole world was hunting.

  And as I thought of him and the crew of lost and reckless men who did his will, the fair landscape seemed to darken, the sweet airs to be tainted.

  The path I traversed was the coastguard's path, as I could see by the whitewashed boulders serving as a guide by night. It was never more than two or three yards away from the edge of the savage precipices that fell for two hundred and fifty feet sheer to the water. The ocean was on my left. On the right the great hill, known as Carne Zerran, towered up, and the edge of the high moors cut the sky. On that side it was as though I was walking at the bottom of a cup.

  After about half a mile, the path suddenly left the cliff edge and turned inland. For several hundred yards the cliff edge was guarded by a semicircle of barbed wire fence, which made it impossible to approach. A notice board informed the wayfarer that here, owing to old mining operations, the cliff was extremely dangerous.

  It looked so, indeed. The edge was broken and irregular. I saw that it ran out in a curious headland for a considerable way, a mere wall of rock with a razor-back path on the top, which curved round again and ran parallel to the cliff on which I was, making a mighty chasm from which rose the cries of innumerable seabirds. There was a narrow mouth seawards, and another headland jutted out to make a cove like the one at the inn, though that, of course, had no winding canyon at the end.

  I crept up to the brink, where the wire fence began, and, lying down, with one arm round the first post, peered over.

  It was a horrifying place. The rock overhung, so for hundreds of yards I could not see the bottom. But the other side of the canyon was clear to view, a great wall of black rock where sea hawks nested, inaccessible to the boldest climber. To the right, the cove seemed to be of fair size from horn to horn, but it was no tranquil spot like the one at the back of the inn. Even on a calm day like the present, the Atlantic groundswell poured in with tremendous force, broken with ferocious whirlpools and spray-fountains by toothed rock ledges a foot or two below the surface. The smallest flying boat could not have entered Tregeraint Cove and lived there for a moment.

  For some reason the place affected me most unpleasantly, and it was with a little shudder that I retreated and skirted the fence which guarded the dangerous part of the cliff. When I had passed by this, the path turned at right angles and went inland.

  As I turned I saw, perhaps a furlong away, the house of Helzephron.

  It lay on the eastern slope of Carne Zerran, an ancient, grim-looking house of granite, long, low, and of considerable size. A few stunted trees grew round about, and a fairly extensive domain of gardens, as I supposed, surrounded by a high wall. Using my prism glasses, I could see that this wall was topped by iron spikes. Of course, I was considerably below Tregeraint as on the sloping hillside, and it lay quite open to view. Higher up, and beyond the house, was the derrick, engine house and sheds of the mine, with here and there dumps of debris and various small buildings.

  Although the wire fences, which I soon made out, went round the whole property, it lay quite open to the view. And when I had passed it, and climbed to the tableland of the moor beyond, I saw that it would be even more open to the eyes -- spread out like a map, in short.

  One thing was already certain. There was nothing whatever in the nature of a hangar, no building that could possibly shelter even an ordinary four or five seater biplane, to say nothing of an air cruiser.

  I was not disappointed, because I had hardly expected to meet with anything of the kind. The pirate ship, you will remember, was -- like all the big long-distance airships -- a cross between what used to be known in the old days as the "seaplane" and the "flying-boat." True, some of our war aeroplanes of quite large size were fitted with floats that could be raised, and wheels for land work in addition.

  This might be the case with the pirate. But it was not to be thought of for a moment that a man of Helzephron's intelligence would dare house his extraordinary ship where any one of my police could have investigated simply by showing his badge of office. The land policeman and the coastguards of the whole English coastline had already reported on every hangar and aerodrome in the kingdom. If Helzephron was the man I believed him, I was well aware that we were only at the beginning of the duel.

  I mounted up past the wire fences and the tin mine. I did not dare to use my glasses in passing, for I saw in the distance some men strolling about by the engine house and derrick. But when I was at last among the heather at the top, I lay down, and took a long survey of the buildings, drawing a careful map in my pocketbook, which might prove of great use later on.

  I waited half an hour at the little station of St. Erth, and then caught a train to Penzance, arriving at the hotel about teatime. As I came into the lounge, after a wash and brush-up, I saw Danjuro sitting in one corner. He had a pile of newspapers round him, and I observed that the London journals had arrived.

  He handed me one of them as I sat down. A paragraph among the police news was marked in pencil.

  Major Helzephron had been taken to Vine Street Police Station and locked up for the night, charged with an aggravated assault on Mr. Wag Ashton at the Mille Colonnes Restaurant, on the evidence of M. Nicholas and the head-waiter.

  A medical man had attended the Court on behalf of the prosecutor, to say that Mr. Ashton was too unwell to appear until the morrow. Upon his promising to attend the Court the next day, Major Helzephron was admitted to bail.

  "That gives us nearly two clear days," said Danjuro. "When Ashton does appear, he will not press the case, and will own that he gave provocation. Helzephron will be fined, perhaps let off. I see that Honourable Ashton battered him a good deal. And now, your news, Sir John, if you please."