Jim Baen’s Universe
Page 61
As is so often the case, I was totally baffled as to how the clues could be rearranged to solve the puzzle they posed. Helmesham spent some little time reading the papers, then went for a walk to compose his thoughts. Our client sent a hundred men to search the area where we had found the bottle. They returned with a large collection of junk, which Helmesham honored with his usual polite curiosity.
Tea was an early and stiff event. Our client was in a considerable state of alarm. The state of the French cabinet was sinking by the hour. Thus far the popular press had no inkling of the matter, but such a disaster could only be a matter of time. Oglethorpe's car, moving at precisely thirty miles an hour through the English night, had somehow been swept from the face of the earth.
Helmesham would rarely speak about a case until he had found the solution. Having no professional reputation in criminology to hazard, I was more willing to chat with the client about different possibilities, though I did little beyond repeating Helmesham's remarks of earlier in the day, closing with 'after all, it could not have sprouted wings and flown away.'"
I caught a twinkle in Helmesham's eyes. "Surely not?" I asked.
"Oh, no, the largest aeroplane in the world could never lift the six tons of Oglethorpe's vehicle. Even one of Sikorsky's Russian brutes could never handle the weight," Helmesham assured me.
The local papers revealed no clues, at least to my eyes. Helmesham had busied himself with a set of maps and a slide rule. Seeing naught else to do, I scanned the accounts of the Druids and their flying monster. To judge from the creases in the paper, these were also the reports which Helmesham had been reading. My favorite note, from a town a little way east of here, came from the local who averred that the beast must have been a devil because it "approached toward the church tower, but fled straightaway when the clock struck half-past-three." With nonsense like this spoken and believed by the masses, it is no wonder that sensible men regret the extension of suffrage to men of limited means. Now, if enough damage has not already been done, there are those who would further extend suffrage to the distaff half of the population. This is an utter absurdity, as no woman-I suppose I must except Mrs. Helmesham, but that is a different tale-could possibly have the firmness and good sense needed to play even the least role in governing our great Empire.
Helmesham looked up, visibly excited. "Quick, Sir John. There's no time to waste. The Royal Flying Corps has an aerodrome not ten minutes from here." Our client was told in no uncertain terms that not one but two aeroplanes were to be readied at once, and that other aerodromes-Helmesham rattled off a list of names-were to stand by, so that we might refuel if need be. Then we were off.
The aerodrome at West Overshaw was virtually unpopulated. It was a Sunday, after all, so that we were fortunate to have even a single pilot and his mechanic in attendance. The pilot, a Captain O'Rourke, was fully cooperative. His mechanic, a Finnish emigr who had come to England to avoid Russian conscription, was something of an enigma. Still, our aircraft were waiting. Without delay, we flew off into a cloudless afternoon sky.
I still had no knowledge of our destination. My pilot, a skilled aviator who perished in the next war, kept scanning the ground, searching for an unnamed objective. We landed some hours later near the coast of the North Sea. From a map, I learned that we had followed a careful compass course, though how it had been set evaded me. Helmesham and the mechanic swiftly refueled their aircraft. Bidding us remain on the ground, they decamped. Captain O'Rourke went off to the armory, leaving me with my thoughts.
The name of the local village was eerily familiar. Finally I remembered the aerial monster in the newspapers. We had followed precisely the course implied by the newspaper reports. I knew that Helmesham had always had an interest in the supernatural, but our present circumstances were beyond me. Surely no one could believe that some creature of the nether reaches would attempt to swallow a railway coach, let alone a vehicle transporting Englishmen! What effrontery would be necessary! After all, Surrey is not a land of the Ottomans. It was unthinkable!
I was roused from my thoughts by a motor. Helmesham returned and winged swiftly back to earth. He pulled from one pocket a local map on which various details had been sketched. "Now," he announced, "The coach is here," he pointed to a small island, "so the prisoners must be held in one of these buildings. The shores are rocky. There's little wind, but the surf is too high to land easily. I believe it will be best to climb here," Helmesham indicated a spot well over the mainland, "cut our engines, and glide in to this field. Though we'd best wait to nightfall if we want surprise."
"Sir," said O'Rourke, "I've been told we're looking for three men, and 'some valuable papers,' and that I am to give you assistance. But did you say 'rail way coach'? On an island with neither bridge nor dockyard crane?"
Helmesham was momentarily taken aback. He had quite forgotten that our pilot and his man had only the most limited notion of our client's needs. I used the pause to explain the situation, taking care not to reveal the actual nature of the missing documents, nor my ignorance as to how the victims might have reached this isolated spot. Our objective was to rescue General Oglethorpe and a French courier, and to bring the villains to justice.
With the crackle and sputter of oil on hot metal, we were on our way again. Each of us was provided with a service revolver, hand torch, and extra ammunition. The scoundrels who perpetrated this crime were clearly desperate men, who might not hesitate to perform the most dastardly of deeds in order to escape. I continued to wonder how the coach might have reached the island, let alone how Helmesham had managed to locate it.
From the air the English seacoast took the aspect of utter tranquility. Great swells rolled ever so slowly across the North Sea, glinting with the hidden gold they trapped from the last rays of the setting sun. Our pilot waved to Helmesham. In unison we cut our engines and began our descent. The wind whistled through the stays. At our altitude, we heard no other sound.
The landing was uneventful. Helmesham and the mechanic went to search one of the two outbuildings, while O'Rourke and I took the other. The hut we examined was quite empty. Cobwebs hung in every corner. The floor beneath a broken window was water-stained, as though the rain had for some time been allowed to blow into the vacant room. Dust covered everything, with no hint that anyone had walked or sat or touched the walls in recent times.
Shots rang out in the distance! O'Rourke and I burst out of the house. Without thought to our personal safety, we dashed toward the disturbance. Darkness was by now total,
only the rays of the full moon and the flicker of hand-torches providing the least bit of light. We could see ahead of us two clusters of men, largely hidden in shadow, firing occasional rounds at each other. "Helmesham," I cried out, "Helmesham! Reinforcements are on the way."
"Over here, Sir John!" Helmesham's group was slowly backing away from the barn. "Have your men spread out to the right."
What men? Helmesham's wits once again escaped me. Our pilot, however, saw the intended ruse. "Flankers right!" he barked. "Master Sergeant York! Take your men about that barn!" Captain O'Rourke, dashing from tree to tree and firing rapidly, gave an excellent imitation of a dozen men. His performance proved what I had long maintained, namely that not Ghurkhas nor Pathans but Irish make the finest light troops in all the world, even when they are not provided with white officers.
My hope of early victory was rudely interrupted by a burst of Maxim gun [MM1] fire. I threw myself to the ground, crouching behind a low hillock. Clods of turf, torn viciously from their mother soil by the cruel clamor of the machine gun, rained down from overhead. I was well and truly pinned by opposing fire.
"We saw you land," came an evilly-accented voice in the distance. "Surrender, and you will be well treated."
This was an obvious lie. The madmen we faced could have no intent to leave witnesses behind them. As Helmesham had left no word of our planned destination, we had no hope of reinforcement. While darkness was on our side, the isolation of the spot and the foe's clear superiority in numbers and weapons suggested that our situation was desperate.
An exchange of threats and shots continued for perhaps an hour. The barn was on clear ground, with no nearby trees. Gentle swales protected us from direct fire, but neither party had a ready path to follow. If they exited the barn, they would be easy targets. If we stood to retreat to the nearby woods, we would be silhouetted by the moonlight and cut down. The knaves might have pinned us with their Maxim gun, and then taken us in a rush, but they did not. Doubtless they lacked English courage. Once I thought I saw two men running from the rear of the barn, but I took them for cowardly Prussian knaves fleeing the heat of battle while their companions fired at their backs.
There came from the heavens a distant droning sound. "Sir John," called Helmesham, "We have no cover against guns firing from above. Hold your fire, or you are surely dead." I did as I was told.
Out from the moonlit blackness swam a ghostly torpedo, scarcely less dark than the sky itself. It was a dirigible, and-unless my senses deceived me-one far larger than any Count Zeppelin has exhibited to the public. There was a clatter of metal and machinery, followed by the shout of orders. The airship drifted to a position above the barn. Its gas bags were a malevolent darkling cloud, against which a single pistol would bark in vain. Only then did I recognize the peculiar rod which rose above the silo. It was a mooring mast. For some time, the dirigible hovered. We waited, scarcely daring to breathe.
An enormous splash was a great volume of water, dumped from above onto the waiting fields below. Slowly, majestically, the airship rose into the heavens. Close beneath, attached in some way I could not distinguish, floated General Oglethorpe's private tram, borne to the zenith not by some eldritch monster but by an equally devilish Bavarian flying-machine. We waited while the airship faded into the East, fearful that any movement would reveal our hiding-places to the snipers who no doubt stood watchfully in the airship's fuselage.
"Sir John, we have a wounded man here." I ran to Helmesham. "Colonel Parker, Guards Cavalry, and Captain Marie Langevin." At his side were the two men who had fled the barn. They were not cowardly Prussians. They were courageous prisoners who had used the confusion of battle to effect their escape.
The Colonel's wounds were not serious, merely a crease across the ribcage. While my professional expertise concerns a more important region of the anatomy, a stretch of service on the Northeast Frontier had left me fully acquainted with the expedients of field surgery. "The papers?" I asked. "The General?"
"Oglezorpe, he iz wiss zem," came the Frenchman's answer. "When we escaped, he stayed zair. And zee treaty, it too iz zair…" He gestured skywards. Helmesham and the courier shifted from English to French, a language which the Captain clearly also knew. I myself have long held that the single greatest obstacle to the enlightenment of the Continent is the inability of most Continentals to learn a civilized language, such as the English, a failing substantially encouraged by my countrymen's bad habit of agreeing to speak languages neither their own, nor fit for civilized discourse. I, of course, have never cultivated any bad habits. Indeed, I have long considered standing for Parliament, campaigning on the single issue of a Private Member's Bill outlawing instruction in tax-supported schools in foreign languages other than Latin and Attic Greek.
Helmesham graciously repeated the gist of their vigorous exchange. Oglethorpe was a traitor, whose concealed wireless had alerted the Huns to the moment at which the coach would pass Woking. Oglethorpe's driver had been a double agent. While Oglethorpe had distracted his passengers by playing the bagpipe-perhaps the only musical instrument whose drone would be sufficiently hideous to mask the roar of an approaching airship-trolley and airship had been linked. The trolley was then hoisted into the night sky. Hat and wine bottle were dropped by the courier in what he expected would be a vain effort to leave a clue to his fate. The treaty remained on the tram, and was now well on its way to Prussia. There it would be circulated by covert means to the French press, causing the French Cabinet to fall and ruining Anglo-French detente.
"But, Helmesham, how can the Kaiser hope to get away with this?" I asked. "Kidnapping Englishmen from English soil? It's an act of war!" It appeared, contrary to my prior expectations, that England now faced two equally great continental threats, namely the Prussians and the French.
"Where is the evidence?" Helmesham asked. "If the plot had failed, the airship crashed, they'd say it was disabled, blown over England by a storm of the upper air, and had a freak accident. With success they'd deny the whole thing, and offer the press tours of Count Zeppelin's airship hangars. By a large margin, no machine of his ever seen in public has the range or lifting capacity to accomplish this feat. If nothing were suspected, at some later date Oglethorpe-dead by his own hand-and his tram would be recovered, say from a deserted spur line in northern Scotland, together with Oglethorpe's signed confession of having murdered Parker and Langevin over a woman or some such thing. Entirely rational, with no trace of a Prus�
�sian hand in the affair."
"Devilish, Helmesham, devilish," I said. "But with the papers gone, the plot has succeeded."
"No," Captain Langevin interrupted. "Zee treaty izz not lost. I gave zee fair copy to Oglethorpe for zafekeeping, but zere waz anozair copy, which I hid here, wissin zee lining of ziss coat. If I can reach Paris by only tomorrow morning, all will perhaps be still well."
"Paris we can do," my pilot announced, "If you're not afraid to land by night. We shall fly to Paris, you and I, leaving at once, and you shall deliver your treaty to your government within two hours. The dirigible is another matter. If the Prussians cause news of the treaty to become public, there may still be trouble."
"I, afraid? Of an aeroplane?" Captain Langevin scoffed. "A flying machine that has wings I can see? Aftair a trip in a flying trolley car? Nevair! Let us be on our way! But if zee Prussians talk, zee treaty will fail yet. It will take a day, before all details are settled. Only zenn…" O'Rourke and Langevin were on their way.
Helmesham turned and gibbered at the mechanic, who responded in kind. I have since learned that they conversed in the Finnish language, which I have never previously had the misfortune to hear spoken. Helmesham gave me my orders: "Sir John, I must ask you to stay here to care for the Colonel. I will deal with the Prussian pirates."
I did not inquire as to the details of Helmesham's plans, even when he asked me to pour the Prussians' stock of wine and give him the empty bottles. He carefully drained petrol from his aeroplane's tank into the bottles, stoppered them, then wrapped each bottle in cloth. We had no other store of petrol. Why was Helmesham draining the tanks? I aided Colonel Parker to the farmhouse, and began a search for viands. He was a wounded man, and could not be allowed to suffer for want of proper nourishment. I myself had only eaten lightly this day, and was positively famished.