The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  NEWS AND BAD NEWS.

  THE building from which Lea, clothed from head to foot in costly furs, came to meet them, was a small wooden house of the bungalow type, which can be purchased in sections and put together with very little trouble. Most of the dwelling-houses in the camp were of this kind, and had been taken out to sea in the Pilgrim, transferred from her to the Voyageur, and then carried through the air to the gorge.

  "Welcome, my lord! You come in victory, as usual, I suppose?" said Lea, as she came forward to meet Max with her gloved hands outstretched.

  "Yes," said Max. "In victory, as usual, if you can call it victory where all the destruction is on one side; but as far as amusement has gone, we have done very well indeed. We have rescued friend Franz here with his crew from the clutches of British law, set Newcastle on fire, watched the British, Russian, and German fleets do each other mortal damage in the Baltic, and then finished the work for them; and after that, as we came home, we left our cards on the good bourgeois of Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp, Paris, and Bordeaux, and gave them the wherewithal to illuminate their cities in honour of our visit. Altogether, we have had a fairly busy and most enjoyable four days of it."

  "Bravo!" said Lea, slipping her hand through his arm as she turned back towards the house. "What a pleasant state of excitement Europe must be in now! But I suppose you must be as hungry as the usual hunter, so you won't be sorry to hear that supper is ready."

  "Not at all," said Max. "Franz here compares his hunger to that of a wolf, and mine would do credit to an Indian after a four days' fast. I suppose you've got enough for both of us?"

  "Oh, yes, plenty; and the Voyageur has brought back some very nice champagne, you will be glad to hear. I believe it originally came from the Duke of Downshire's yacht, which met with an accident the other day on a cruise to the North Cape."

  "Oh, so the Voyageur's back, is she?" said Max, as they entered the house. "I am glad of that, because it's quite time that we had some definite information as to the movements of the enemy. We had better ask Maurin to supper, and then he can give us the news."

  "While we're about it," said Lea, "we may as well have a party, so I'll ask the Rollands and your engineer Raoul to come too, for I know Sophie is dying to see him. Those two will be going into partnership before long, I fancy."

  "Dey would make a very goot match if dey did," observed Hartog. "Taxil is a fine young fellow, and a goot anarchist, and Sophie Vronsky is a goot girl, and very clever mit her pen, as dose Russian passports she vonce did for me clearly proved. Ja, dey will do very well for each oder, I should tink."

  "Very well, then," laughed Lea, "we will make a match of it. Now, if you two want a wash, you had better go and get one. I'll have supper ready in half an hour, and then we can make an interesting night of it. Sophie and I had a good nap this afternoon, so we don't care how long we sit up."

  Unpretentious as the bungalow looked from outside, its interior was a marvel of warmth and luxury. Between purchase and plunder, Lea had fitted it up with a dainty magnificence that made its interior at least no bad exchange for her boudoir in the Rue Vernet. The little dining-room in which the party sat down to supper about one o'clock, lighted by a couple of silken-shaded lamps on high standards of solid silver, and warmed by a fire of blazing pine logs, was as cosy an apartment as ever a conspiracy was hatched in, and the supper to which these epicurean anarchists sat down would not have disgraced the Hotel Bristol or the Cafe de l'Opera.

  Lea and Sophie had cooked it with their own hands, for domestic service was as yet unknown in the anarchist camp, and the company waited upon themselves and each other with a free-and-easiness which was of the essence of true Bohemianism. In fact, no more well-bred, pleasant-mannered supper-party could have been found in Europe than this little company of murderous conspirators, whose names, so far as they were known, were execrated throughout the Continent, which was just then shuddering in a frenzy of panic under their last assault.

  Until the meal itself was over, the conversation was general, but as soon as the two girls had cleared the table of the remains of the eatables, and replaced them with a variety of liquids, cigars and cigarettes were lighted, and Max called upon Maurin, the captain of the Voyageur, for such news as he had to tell of the outside world.

  "You will be able to get most of it pretty fully from the newspapers I have brought with me," he said in reply. "But I can give you an epitome of it now, and also some particulars which have not found their way into print. In the first place, nothing has been heard of the air-ship War-Hawk, commanded by Sir Harry Milton, which captured M. Franz here. After leaving Newcastle, she vanished with the Vengeur, and we have not been able to pick up a trace of her since.

  "It is rumoured that the Syndicate has another vessel ready to take the air, if not actually afloat, and also that before long a large fleet will be ready for service; but in what part of the world the ships are being built, or when they will actually get afloat, we have not been able to learn."

  "That doesn't seem to say much for the intelligence of our agents," said Max, with a frown.

  Maurin shrugged his shoulders and replied apologetically, "It would seem so, but unhappily the Syndicate appears to have unlimited command of money, and so can pay any price for secrecy. Added to that, the terrorism which you have inspired both in Europe and America has led to the most extraordinary precautions being taken at all the dockyards and arsenals, ship-building yards and manufactories, and it is practically impossible to obtain reliable information.

  "It is believed that the ships are being built on islands in remote parts of the sea, and that no one is allowed to put foot on these islands who is not personally known to the directors or their friends. We have found that the Syndicate holds no meetings, but Maxim, the chairman, goes to his offices in Victoria Street, Westminster, quite in the ordinary way, and as though nothing had ever happened."

  "Then we must pay him a visit," said Max. "What is the number? Thirty-two, isn't it?"

  "Ja, dat's it," chimed in Hartog. "I vent to see him dere vonce about an engine for his aeroplane, and der old fellow insulted me by telling me dat he tought he knew more about engines as I did, so I came avay; but I should like to see him again- at der oder end of von of his own guns."

  "All right; we'll go and leave cards on the Maxim-Nordenfeldt Company in a day or two. And now, Maurin, can you tell us anything about the Nautilus, and that Lieutenant Wyndham, who ought to have been dead long ago?"

  "Ah, yes. Lieutenant Wyndham is by this time almost as famous a man as you are yourself, and that Nautilus has proved herself to be a really marvellous craft. She's been cutting up the French and Russian fleets in fine style.

  "But the British have been very badly beaten in the Mediterranean. They had neither ships nor men there to give them anything like a chance against the Toulon fleet and the Russian Black Sea fleet which had forced the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. What force she had in the Mediterranean was caught between the French and Russians and almost annihilated."

  "So," said Renault, "between what they've done and we've done, the French and Russian fleets are about destroyed, and the British have lost their Mediterranean Squadron and the one that was blockading the Sound. That, with the two German squadrons that we destroyed, makes a total of, say, six fleets smashed up within as many days. That's pretty good work, even for modern warfare."

  "Even mit de valuable assistance of an anarchist airfleet," chimed in Hartog, with a chuckle, rubbing his hands with pleasure at the idea of such fearful slaughter and destruction as this meant.

  "Yes," said Lea, sending a little cloud of scented smoke from her pretty lips. "I should think a few more experiences like that ought to give even the most civilised nations of Europe enough of fighting for some time to come. What a pity you couldn't get hold of the Nautilus, Max! She'd have been very useful as a toll-collector along the steamship routes. Wouldn't it be possible to capture her in some way?"

&n
bsp; "I'm afraid not," said Max, shaking his head. "Of course, I've no doubt we could destroy her, but I don't see much good even in doing that yet, for all the damage she does helps on the cause of anarchy in general. By the way, Maurin, is there any fresh news about the fighting on land?"

  "Not much," replied Maurin. "You remember, of course, that the ten thousand men which the British were able to throw into Antwerp, thanks also to the assistance of the Nautilus, frustrated the designs on Belgium, and enabled England to form a junction with Germany in the Low Countries, and to make the Quadrilateral practically impregnable.

  "That was checkmate to France on the north. The Germans are massing on their eastern frontier, and the Russians on their western frontier, so that there will be some pretty heavy fighting in the next few days; that is, if what has happened at sea, and the general terror that we have spread pretty well all over Europe, doesn't put a different aspect on the face of affairs. Now I think that's about all I've got to tell. We've brought a lot of English, French, and German papers with us, and you'll be able to read the accounts in full in the morning."

  "All right," said Max, with a half-stifled yawn. "And now, I think it's about time to get to bed, for a good many of us haven't slept for two nights. We'll have a council of war in the morning, and decide what is to be done next."

  The party broke up very soon after this, and as soon as Max and Lea found themselves alone, all the careless gaiety that she had worn while the others were present suddenly vanished from Lea's manner, and going up to Max, who was standing on the hearth-rug by the fire, she put her hands on his shoulders and said very seriously-

  "Max, I've got bad news for you, and you ought to hear it at once, so that you can decide what to do before the morning."

  "You have bad news, Lea?" he said, in a voice whose gentleness would have astonished anyone who had heard him giving an order on board his ship, or laughing at the slaughter of the helpless crowd in London. "You? Well, if I'm to hear bad news, I would rather hear it from those pretty lips of yours than anyone's else. Now, what is it?"

  As he spoke, he took her face between his hands, and, holding it there, kissed her two or three times upon the lips before he would let her speak, saying, when he at last released her-

  "There, that will sweeten the bad news, whatever it is. Now, out with it."

  "It's this," she said. "At the council of war you are going to hold to-morrow, the captains of the air-ships are going to make a united demand that you shall appoint a committee of five of them, and tell them the secret of the motor-fuel. It has been talked about quite openly while you have been away. They say that it is dangerous for it to remain in the keeping of one man, because if you were to be killed or captured, the fleet would soon be useless."

  Max's brows had been gradually coming together while she was speaking, until they formed an almost straight black line across his eyes. He was silent for a moment, and then he said slowly-

  "Yes, that's bad news indeed; it means conspiracy, and probably treachery. I wonder who's at the bottom of it? However, I'm too sleepy to think very clearly to-night. Let's go to bed now; I daresay I shall either dream or think of a way out of it by the time I meet them in the morning."

  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  VENDETTA.

  IT will be necessary now, in order to preserve the continuity of the narrative, to leave Max Renault, and the followers who, in his estimation, were bidding fair to become conspirators, to await the development of events, which might, perhaps, be pregnant with the future fate of civilised society, and rejoin the War-Hawk and her crew, as she left Newcastle with the partially disabled Vengeur in tow.

  Three of her men were sent on board the captured vessel to get the engines into order as far as possible, and to keep up the supply of power to the lifting fans, so that the War-Hawk might not have any downward drag upon her, and could so tow her through the air at the highest possible speed. She was able to travel a little over seventy-five miles an hour under these conditions, and an hour or two before dawn on the following morning, she and her prize of war dropped through the darkness upon Lundy Island, and found that the Volante was still there waiting, although she was quite twelve hours late for the appointed rendezvous.

  This is altogether unexpected good luck," said Sir Harry, as he shook hands with Adams. "We were afraid you would have got tired of waiting for us, and thought that something had happened to us, and so have gone off on a relief expedition to find us. In fact, as matters turned out, we did almost want a relief, because we'd hardly got into the air--"

  "0h yes," said Adams, interrupting him with a laugh. "I know all about that. We haven't learned to fly quite as fast as the telegraph yet. You forget that the Syndicate has had a private wire laid from Bull Point to the island, so that we could get the latest intelligence, as the evening papers say. We know all about the attack on you at Farne Island, and your brilliant capture of the Vengeur and her crew.

  "That's why we waited. I felt pretty sure you could take care of yourselves, because I know the War-Hawk is a good deal better ship than any the anarchists have, so I thought it better to wait here till you came, than go off after you on a wild-goose chase,- I don't mean anything rude, you know,- and perhaps miss you after all, and then make you miss us here at the rendezvous."

  "Oh, but we've done more than that," said Sir Harry. "We sent one of the anarchists' ships into perdition with a well-aimed shell, and terrible things those shells are, I can tell you, when they hit squarely. It was like a charge of shot from a choke-bore gun under the wing of a partridge. She stopped dead and went down like a stone, and when she struck the ground, she went off like a shell full of dynamite. But I am sorry to say we let the other one go. We had to, and what made it all the more exasperating was the fact that we learnt from the prisoners we took that that blackguard Renault was in command of her."

  "Oh yes, we know all about that too," laughed Adams, again interrupting him. "By to-morrow morning that news will be all over England, and, perhaps, Europe, and if the anarchists have got anything like a fleet together, I'm afraid there'll be something like disaster come of that. However, that's not our business. If the authorities are silly enough to make this sort of thing public property, they must, of course, run the risk of telling the anarchists what has happened. You did all you could without taking the law into your own hands. For my own part, I think I should have shot the brutes on sight, but then I haven't got quite orthodox ideas about law and order, and the authority and dignity of the powers that be."

  "It's quite possible that that might have been the wisest course," said Mr. Austen, who had joined the pair just at this moment. "But somehow we couldn't bring ourselves to send the wretches into eternity in cold blood, although it might have been wiser from the point of view of public safety."

  "Oh, well, that doesn't matter now," said Adams. "If the authorities can't take care of their prisoners when they have them delivered into their hands, that's their business. But there was another reason why I waited for you- something a good deal more important I fancy, than even the capture of the Vengeur and her crew."

  "Oh, indeed?" said Sir Harry, lifting his eyebrows. "And what might that be?"

  "Well, come into the farmhouse and have a drop of whisky and a smoke in comfort, and I'll tell you all about it," said Adams, leading the way to the homestead which the Syndicate had purchased with the island.

  Sir Harry and Mr. Austen followed him, after sending a messenger back to the War-Hawk; to tell Violet and Dora not to expect them for the present, and when they had established themselves in the sitting-room of the farmhouse, Adams went on with his story.

  "About an hour before sunset last night the steam-launch came off from Ilfracombe flying our private signal, and landed at the jetty, and Markham, who has been running her since we came down here, brought up a man who had a letter for me from Mr. Maxim. This letter introduced him as a Corsican, named René Berthauld, who had satisfied him that he had important information to give us, a
nd asked me to cross-examine him about it.

  "He also told me that the man had been given distinctly to understand that if I was not satisfied with what he had to say, he would not be allowed to leave the island alive. So you see the man, as it were, brought his life in his hand - about the best pledge that a mail could bring; so I heard his story, and I was satisfied with it. At the same time, guessing that you would be here soon, I didn't care to do anything definite on my own responsibility, so I kept him here, and telegraphed back to the office that I would do nothing until you arrived. Now the man's here yet, and if you would like, he shall come down and tell his story in extenso before us all; perhaps it will sound more interesting from his lips than from mine."

  "Oh, by all means!" said Mr. Austen. "You have whetted our curiosity quite far enough to show that there is something interesting behind this."

  "Yes, and something very interesting, I can tell you," said Adams, "not only as regards the actual information, but also as showing how a man, doing what certainly appears to be exactly the right thing to do at a given juncture, makes the one fatal mistake of his life."

  "Now you have sent our curiosity up to boiling point," said Sir Harry. "Let us have him in at once, and get our suspense relieved."