"I--daresay not," the Chief's dry smile commented.
Sherbrand went on:
"I developed muscle in persuading him to let it go in the observer's cockpit for fear of it fouling the warping-controls. No wonder he stuck to it. War Secrets!"
"It is plain you haven't glanced at the _Evening Wire_. It tells the story rather pithily, beginning with an outbreak of fire on Tuesday night at Gwyll Castle, Denbigh, caused by a short-circuit in the electric-lighting apparatus of the North Tower."
He went on:
"I waste no time telling you, for all that's possible has been done now in setting our agents on the track of the flying thief! The North Tower at Gwyll holds the priceless Clanronald library, and the Muniment Chamber, where they bottle up the original MSS. detailing the War Plan of the old Earl. The short-circuit that set up the blaze was--the kind that any amateur can arrange for with rubber gloves, a pair of pliers and a bit of soda-water wire."
"Is it known who the amateur was?"
"There is reason to suspect one Heir Rassing, an under-librarian of German nationality, who behaved like a hero, according to the local Fire Brigade! He it was, who suggested--Clanronald being absent on a yachting-cruise in the Fjords of Norway--that the contents of the Muniment Chamber should be transferred to the strong-room in the basement of the East Wing. He superintended the removal, armed with knowledge, enthusiasm, and a large-sized Webley Scott revolver, with which he volunteered to keep solitary guard till morning, outside the strong-room door!"
"And when daylight came--" hinted Sherbrand.
"It discovered the zealous Herr Rassing to be missing, and a corresponding hiatus in the treasures of the Muniment Chamber. Item, a sharkskin case inlaid with ivory figures, Japanese, antique and valuable,--containing the original diagrams--chemical _formulae_ and so on--embodying the famous Plan."
Sherbrand asked.
"Was it as tremendous as they tell one?"
The crisp voice answered:
"Tremendous it not only was, but Is. The most terrible and effective method of annihilating an enemy, that has ever been conceived by the brain of man."
Sherbrand said, drawing a deep breath:
"And that is what von Herrnung carried in the brown leather valise-thing that he took away with my machine! Not that I trouble about the Bird. She was old, and I've got the stuff to build a new one. But my patent--the hawk-hoverer--that's another pair of shoes!"
"The hawk--! Phee-eew!"
The Chief whistled a rueful note and his keen eyes softened in sympathy:
"I had forgotten your invention. So von Herrnung has scooped for Germany the gyroscopic hovering-apparatus that the French War Ministry were proposing to buy. Now I understand the something about you that has puzzled me. You wear the look of a father, Sherbrand, bereaved of an uncommonly promising son."
Saxham's stern face rose up in Sherbrand's thought, stamped with that look, and his throat contracted chokingly. The Chief asked:
"What sort of man is the mechanic von Herrnung has commandeered? A fellow easy to bribe, or intimidate? It would be worth while to know?"
"It's a boy--not a man!" broke from Sherbrand, hurriedly and hoarsely. "General, no more unlucky thing could have happened! ... Dr. Saxham's twelve-year-old nipper took a tremendous shine to von Herrnung, and--and--he's gone with him! That's the news the Doctor's got to hear by and by!"
There was a silence. The Chief's face was turned away. Then he said quietly:
"There was no question of 'a shine.' My Scout was obeying an order. His Chief Scout had said, 'Keep this man under observation; and if he leaves the Flying Ground--follow him, if you can!"
Sherbrand could not speak for pity of the small white face that had grinned at him out of the clumsy woollen helmet. He understood now, that when he had bent to strap the safety-belt about the little body swathed in the flannel-lined pneumatic jacket, he had felt a terrified child-heart bumpity-bumping under his hand. And he struggled with his grief and rage in silence, broken by an utterance from the other man.
"So he followed him into the air, seeing no other course before him. My old friend Saxham has good reason to chortle over such a son. I said to-day, 'I am proud of my Scouts!' Well, to-night I am ten times prouder. I shall tell the Doctor this--when I get a private word with him--and wind up with: 'Thanks to Bawne!'"
"Then the Doctor--" Sherbrand began, a weight lifting with the hope that the news might not have to be broken:
"The Doctor knew. I had said to him, doggily: 'I'll give your pup a fighting chance to prove his Saxham breed.' It's a stark breed--hard as granite, supple as incandescent lava,--with a strain of Berserk madness, and a dash of Oriental fatalism. They can hate magnificently and forgive grandly, and love to the very verge of death."
Could _she_, Sherbrand wondered, letting his eyes travel to the tall white woman standing by the Doctor, as the Chief went over to them and grasped his old friend's hand. Then both men moved away across the dusky ground together. Those words of thanks and praise were being spoken. Coming from such a source they must be heartening to listen to. But presently when their glow had paled and faded, and the boy did not come back...
Presently, when the empty chair and the vacant bed, and the little garments hanging in the wardrobe should be filled and occupied and worn only by a shadow-child wrought of lovely memories. By and by, when the silence in the house should clamour in the tortured ears of the woman and the man...
Then, Sherbrand knew no praise of their lost darling would console Bawne's parents.... Dry-eyed they might smile until their lips cracked, but their hidden hearts would weep. Their tongues might be silent, but their hearts would cry always; Did we wish our child to be heroic? Had he been a craven we would have had him now beside us! Give us our living boy again! O! keep your empty words!
A cry from Patrine prodded Sherbrand to active sympathy. So at last they had told her. She knew all. And true to her type she was raging at the Doctor and the Chief like a very termagant; upbraiding them with a spate of words rushing over her writhing lips and lioness-frenzy in her blazing eyes.
"I begged you not to let him go!" This was to the Doctor. "Faint! Do you take me for a bally idiot--to faint when there's something to be done! Follow that man and get him back! If he takes him away to Germany--don't you know we shall never see Bawne again! Oh! why--why can't I make you understand!"
The raging voice grew hoarse with sobs, though her furious eyes were dry as enamel. She added with an inflection that made Sherbrand blink and gulp:
"Don't you know--don't you _know_ it will kill Aunt Lynette? And I shall be guilty--I who love them so! Oh, God, I must do something or die raving mad!"
The Doctor's great arm held her firmly round the body. Saxham was strong as an oak-tree, but who can control a woman in the frenzy of hysteria, standing six feet tall in high-heeled No. 7 shoes? She wrestled and fought, and her tawdry hat of silver spangles tumbled off, and her superb hair shed its pins of tortoiseshell, and rolled, yellow-tawny as a South African torrent in flood-time, down over her heaving shoulders, over the supple back and writhing loins, reaching nearly to her knees. Then her strength went from her, and her tears came. She dropped into a chair Sherbrand had got her, and crumpled up there, crying bitterly.
*CHAPTER XXXVII*
*PATRINE CONFESSES*
With her hat off and her hairpins out, and her tawny-coloured mane tumbling over her heaving shoulders, the superb illusion of maturity vanished. The three men viewed Patrine with clear, unprejudiced eyes. Stripped of the magic cloak of Circe, here was no transformer of Man into the hoofed and rooting mammal, but a great galumphing schoolgirl, pouring out a heartful of trouble, without the least concern for her complexion; mopping her streaming eyes with a little sopping handkerchief; temporarily ending its brief career of usefulness with a dismal blast upon the nose.
"Take mine!" said Saxham, thrusting the large-sized square of cambric upon her.
"Th--thank you, Uncle Owen!"
She said it in the voice of a child. The torrent of tears, so different from those shed earlier, had washed her heart clean. Something hard and cynical and evil had passed out of her. She was Bawne's dear Pat again.
A lean brown hand that wore a chipped and ancient signet was next held out to her. She grasped it and was straightway hauled upon her feet.
"Are you better?" said a friendly voice, in a crisp way.
"I--think so. Thank you, Sir Roland!" She added in a tone as tear-soaked as her handkerchief, while Saxham offered her her hat, and Sherbrand tendered tortoiseshell hairpins:
"I'm awfully afraid I have behaved like a fool!"
"Like a woman!" said the friendly voice even more crisply.
"Do you think women are fools?" she was beginning, when she caught his eye and broke off. For she had met Sir Roland's mother and she knew his young wife quite well, and her Aunt Lynette, the one living being whom she worshipped, was one of his closest friends. No! To this man women were sacred. Why had she uttered such a banality? For the life of her she did not know.