The Air Pirate

by Guy Thorne

  Chapter 12

  The moon was in its last quarter, and shed a faint spectral light over the moor as I came quietly up to the first of the barbed wire fences that surrounded Tregeraint. I lay down in the heath, certain I was invisible, and waited.

  An hour had hardly elapsed since the group had left The Miners' Arms. Were they still here, or had they set out for their unknown destination? I could not hear a sound of any kind.

  From where I lay, the high wall hid the house, but among the mine buildings higher up there was neither light nor movement. Tregeraint might have been deserted for a hundred years, and the roaring company of the inn had vanished into thin air. And strain my eyes as I would, there was no sign of the great Tibetan dogs.

  I remained motionless for a quarter of an hour, by the illuminated dial of my watch. Then, as nothing happened, I began operations. The wire was tough and intricate, but ten minutes' work with Danjuro's powerful cutters disposed of it sufficiently for me to crawl through both the first and second fence without a scratch. I stood now in the lower portion of a large, oblong paddock of short grass, all grey in the moon. The surrounding wall of the Manor was about a hundred yards up the slope, and with the gas rifle on my arm I glided over the intervening space like a ghost. My boots were soled with india rubber and I made no sound at all.

  I found the wall to be ten or eleven feet high. It was crowned with iron spikes, and owing to its height and smooth surface was insurmountable. But I knew there must be an entrance somewhere, and never expected to climb the barrier. I began a cautious circuit. About halfway round the extent I came to a wooden door set in the wall. It was not more than five feet high, and had a barred grille in the centre of about a foot square. I reflected that this must be a side or garden exit, and that the main gate was probably on the other side, facing the mine head. But it was all the better for my purpose if this was so, and I took out my steel jemmy and prepared to tackle it.

  My intention was to prise it open, for I'm a powerful man, but suddenly another idea occurred to me. The bars of the grille were old and rusted. As there was no keyhole in the door, it was obviously secured on the inside by bolts. I inserted my lever, and without using my full strength, and with little more sound than is made by the striking of a match, I soon had three of the bars out of the wood and lying on the grass.

  I pushed my right arm through. My fingers, after a little groping, caught the handle of the bolt which slid back easily enough. It had been oiled and showed that the door, which swung back at once, was in constant use.

  I stepped in, treading like a cat, and closed the door behind me. I stood in a large and neglected garden through which I could see the dark façade of the house, now quite close. I listened with strained attention for several minutes. As I crept up a moss-grown path towards the building every nerve was on the alert, a chill on my soul.

  This old house, with its atmosphere of robbery and murder, its singular and formidable inhabitants, the unknown dangers of the approach, and, above all, the thought that Connie might be within it, all combined to wrap me in a terrible gloom of the spirit.

  All the lower windows were shuttered. There was not a gleam of light anywhere as I followed the path and came to the front, where there was a gravel sweep and iron gates in the wall. I gently tried the heavy front door, which, as I expected, was locked. If I could climb up and get onto the roof of the porch, it might be possible to force the central bedroom window, which I could see was unshuttered.

  The ivy was of ancient growth, the stems thick and tough. Any schoolboy could have mounted to the top of the porch. And any boy could have pushed back the catch of the window with the blade of his pocket-knife, opened it and stepped inside.

  I stood in a bedroom, dark, except for a little pool of moonlight by the window. I felt curtains, and I drew them before I switched on my torch. I opened the door inch by inch, and felt for the powerful pistol in my pocket. My heart hung poised for an instant as I stepped out into a dark corridor, and then I gave a gasp, and my heart almost stopped beating.

  I stood at the head of broad, shallow stairs. Below was a large hall, dimly lit, and pouring up to me in a volume of sound came the melodious thunder of a piano played by a master hand.

  At first my knees grew weak, and I clutched the shadowy banisters to save me from falling. Constance! Who could be playing in this evil house but she! I can never forget the agonized pang of mingled joy and horror I felt. But as I crouched and listened, the fierce emotion passed away. Whoever was playing, it was not my girl. A lost soul made that music.

  I glided down the stairs. Certainly the wolves had left their lair. The house was inhabited by one or two people at most. All the doors along the corridor stood open, as if the rooms had been left in a hurry. The building felt deserted, empty of its usual inhabitants.

  A dim light came from an open door at the right of the hall. It led to another room beyond, and it was from here that a bright light streamed, and the sound of music came.

  I placed my gas rifle on the floor by the wall, took out my automatic, unlocking the safety catch, and went to the curtain on tiptoe. There was an alcove at the side, where some shelves had been, and this was perfectly dark. I marked it as a possible hiding-place, and then pulled the curtain aside for half an inch. Just as I did so there was a clash of prelude, and the pianist began the enchanted Third Ballade of Chopin.

  It was the man known to me as Vargus, the man with the smooth voice we had spoken to earlier in the inn. His face was evil and refined. He sat at a magnificent grand piano, swaying a little on his stool.

  A terrible picture rose before my eyes as I stood, but it flashed away, and words of awful significance from the Gospel of Mark took its place in my mind and fitted themselves to the closing chords....

  "Night and day he was among the tombs, and on the mountains, crying out and cutting himself with stones."

  As you may know, the piece ends in a furious welter of sound. It had just concluded, and the player sat motionless as a wax doll, when another figure heaved itself into my line of vision: a burly giant, with red hair and a heavy, sullen face.

  "Now you've finished that row," he growled, "we'd better be moving. We may get signals coming through soon. And I suppose I must feed the canaries!"

  I knew the man at once. There was no possibility of mistake. It was Michael Feddon, the famous Rugby international, and six years ago the idol of the public. It was said that he was the finest back that England had ever seen. In the height of his career he had been mixed up in a criminal scandal, and received five years' penal servitude.

  I swallowed in my throat with loathing, but the next words drove all thought of Feddon's career from my mind.

  "Everything is ready on a tray in the kitchen, and the soup is on the electric stove. It will be hot by now," said Vargus, in his soft, creamy voice.

  "I'll get it, and I wish the damned business was over. I said from the first when the Chief brought those two women here, that we ran more risk than ever before. It'll turn out badly yet. Mark my words, Vargus."

  Vargus took up a bottle which stood on a table by the piano. It was brandy, and he poured out two glasses half full, adding soda from a siphon.

  "Here's luck," he said. "If all goes well tonight, a couple more expeditions will see us finished, with a hundred thousand each, and scattered all over the globe. We all have our fancies. The Chief's is this Shepherd girl. Well, in another fortnight he'll disappear with her. Every man to his own taste."

  Feddon swallowed his brandy at a gulp. "She'll lead him a dance yet," he said. "I never saw such a spitfire. I hate going near her, and I wish it wasn't my turn to stay at home. I'd tame her, though, if she were mine. I wouldn't stand her pretty ways and the things she says, like the Chief does. He's mad about the girl."

  "And what would you do, my beefy friend?" said Vargus, with his abominable smile.

  Feddon touched his middle. He was wearing a leather belt. "Take this to her," he said, "and beat her black a
nd blue."

  Vargus rose, grinning. "Well, get the food," he said. "You'll find me in the wireless cabin."

  Feddon lurched forward. I had just time to press myself into an alcove, when he came through the curtain and strode heavily through the room into the hall.

  Vargus went to a tall mirror by the piano, as I watched him. He did something that I could not see, and it swung open like a door. There was the snap of an electric switch, and I saw him step into a lift, pull a rope, and sink out of sight, leaving the door open.

  He could not have sunk ten feet before I was in the room. It was large and square, furnished with something like luxury, and brilliantly lit with electric globes.

  Something clanked, a soft swishing noise changed to a distant rumble, and the lift came into sight. I had it covered, but it was empty -- waiting for the man who was going to "feed the canaries."

  I waited for him, too. Then I heard him coming through the dining room, his footsteps and the rattle of a tray.

  The half-drawn curtain bellied out and was pushed aside. Feddon stood there with the tray in his hands and the light shining on his ugly red hair.

  He saw me. His mouth opened and his eyes started out. He look unutterably foolish, like a great cod, and I laughed aloud.

  But he was quick, oh, quick and clever like the famous footballer that he was. In a second he had ducked, and the loaded tray was skimming across the room straight at my head as he hurled himself after it, quick as a snake strikes.

  I was ready, though. He was not. My first shot broke his shoulder and stopped him for an instant. Then, with a roar of pain and fury, he came on again, and I shot him through the heart when he was three feet away.

  Mr. Feddon would feed no more canaries.