The Zeppelin Destroyer: Being Some Chapters of Secret History

Therefore we were faced by a very difficult problem, that of weight.

The next day was Sunday, and Teddy having returned from Yarmouth, we spent the whole afternoon and evening down at the workshop, making further experiments. I had not seen Roseye since Friday evening, which I had spent at Lady Lethmere’s, Sir Herbert being absent in Liverpool. Therefore, as we had carried out an alteration of the apparatus and intended to try sparking upon the pole again after dark, I rang Roseye up on the telephone shortly after five o’clock.

Mulliner, Lady Lethmere’s maid, replied, and a few minutes later Lady Lethmere herself spoke to me.

“Oh, I’ve rung you up at your rooms half a dozen times to-day, Mr Munro – but could get no answer!” she said.

“Being Sunday, my man is out,” I exclaimed. “I’m down here at Gunnersbury.”

“Can you take a taxi at once, and come over and see me?” she urged. “I want to speak to you immediately.”

“What about?” I asked anxiously.

“I can’t say anything over the telephone,” she answered in a distressed voice. “Do come at once, Mr Munro. I am in such trouble.”

I promised. And after briefly relating the curious conversation to Teddy, I found a taxi, and at once drove to Cadogan Gardens.

“Mr Munro!” exclaimed Lady Lethmere, looking at me with a pale, anxious expression as I entered the morning-room. “Something has happened!”

“Happened – what?” I gasped.

“Roseye! She went out yesterday morning to go over to Hendon to meet you – she told me —and she’s not come back!”

“Not back!” I cried, staring at her. “Where can she be?”

“Ah! That’s exactly what I want to know,” replied the mother of my well-beloved. “I thought perhaps she might have flown somewhere and had a breakdown, and was therefore unable to return, or to let me know last night. That happened, you recollect, when she came to grief while flying over the Norfolk Broads.”

“But she never arrived at Hendon yesterday,” I exclaimed. “I was there all the morning.”

“So I understand from Mr Carrington of the Grahame-White School, to whom I telephoned this morning. It was after learning this curious fact that I began to try and get into communication with you.”

“Well – where can she possibly be?” I asked in blank dismay.

“The only thing I can think of is that she altered her mind at the last moment, and went to see some friends. She may have given a servant a telegram to send to me, and the servant forgot to dispatch it. Such things have happened, you know.”

I shook my head dubiously. Knowing Roseye as I did, I knew that she always sent important messages herself.

“One thing is certain, that she has not met with an accident while flying, for her machine is still locked up in the hangar.”

“Yes. It is a consolation to know that she has not gone up and disappeared.”

“No,” I said. “She seems to have intended to meet me. But we had no appointment to meet. My intention yesterday morning was to go over to Gunnersbury, and I only changed my mind five minutes before I left my rooms. I spent part of the afternoon with Eastwell, who is queer in bed.”

“I heard that he was not well. Roseye told me so yesterday morning before she went out.”

“I wonder how she knew?” I exclaimed.

“I believe he spoke to her on the telephone on Friday night.”

“You overheard some of their conversation, I suppose?”

“None. She was shut up in the telephone-box, and when she came out I asked her who had rung up. She replied, ‘Oh! only Lionel!’ Next morning, while we were at breakfast, she remarked that Mr Eastwell was ill and in bed. He must have told her so on the previous night.”

I remained silent. This disappearance of Roseye, following so closely upon the dastardly attempt upon my life, caused me to pause. It was more than curious. It was distinctly suspicious.

Was the Invisible Hand – the claw-grip of which had laid such a heavy grasp upon Great Britain ever since August 1914 – again at work? Was the clutch of that hand, which had so cunningly protected the enemy alien and fed the Germans, again upon myself and the woman I loved?

“Lady Lethmere, this is all too amazing. I had no idea that Roseye was missing,” I said. “Sir Herbert has not returned, I suppose?”

“No. I expect him to-morrow. I have not yet sent him word. But I must say I am now getting most anxious.”

“Of course,” I said. “We have to remember that to-day is Sunday, and that few telegraph offices are open.”

“Yet there is always the telephone,” Lady Lethmere said.

I argued that, in many country places, the telephone service was not available on Sundays and, though I felt intensely anxious, I endeavoured to regard the matter with cheerful optimism. I saw, however, that Lady Lethmere, a good, kindly and most charming woman, who had ever been genuinely friendly towards me, was greatly perturbed regarding her daughter’s whereabouts.

And surely not without cause. Roseye had left that house at eleven o’clock on the previous morning – dressed as usual in a navy-blue gaberdine coat and skirt, with her skunk boa and muff, intending to change later on into her Burberry flying-suit which she kept at Hendon. From the moment when she had closed the front door behind her, she had vanished into space.

Such was the enigma with which I – her lover – was at that moment faced.

I ask you, my reader, to place yourself for a moment in my position, and to put to yourself the problem.

How would you have acted?

Would you have suspected, as I suspected, the sinister and deadly touch of the Invisible Hand?

Chapter Ten

The Tunnel Mystery

I went back to my rooms in Shaftesbury Avenue and, in consequence of my telephone message, Teddy came and threw himself in the chair opposite me half an hour later, to discuss the curious disappearance of my well-beloved.

Teddy suggested that we should report the occurrence to the police, and give them Roseye’s photograph, but I was averse to this course. I pointed out that, in all probability, she was with friends somewhere, and that Monday morning would bring me a letter from her.

Well – Monday morning came. Eagerly I went through my correspondence, but there was no word from her, either to her mother or to myself. It was only then that I began to be really anxious, and at noon I went down to Scotland Yard and there, in the cold waiting-room, stated exactly what had occurred.

The inspector, when he looked at the photograph I produced, exclaimed:

“Ah, sir. I’ve often seen Miss Lethmere’s picture in the papers. Why, she’s the famous flying-lady – isn’t she?”

I replied in the affirmative, and explained how she had left her home in Cadogan Gardens to go to Hendon to meet me.

“I see. She was lost sight of between Cadogan Gardens and Hendon,” he exclaimed, adding a memorandum to what he had already written down. “Well, sir,” he said. “We’ll do our best, of course. But – you don’t think Miss Lethmere has disappeared intentionally – eh?”

And he looked at me inquiringly with his dark, serious eyes.

“Intentionally! No – why?”