The Zeppelin Destroyer: Being Some Chapters of Secret History

His words staggered me. How could he know the secret that we had so closely guarded?

I did not reply for several moments.

“Well?” he asked, repeating his question.

“I don’t see why I should reveal to anyone – even to you – what I have been doing in the interests of the defence of our country,” I protested.

“Except that by doing so we should both be able to carry our investigations farther – and, I hope, to a satisfactory issue.”

I had given my word to Teddy and to Roseye, and they had given their words to me, to disclose nothing. This I recollected and, therefore, I hesitated.

The captain, seeing my reluctance, said:

“In this inquiry we ought, surely, to assist each other, Mr Munro! Miss Lethmere is missing, and it is for us to unite in our efforts to elucidate the mystery.”

“But how can answers to the questions you have put to me serve, in any way whatever, to bring us nearer to the truth of what has happened to Miss Lethmere?” I queried.

“They do. I merely ask you, yes or no. Your reply will at once place us in a far better position to conduct this most important inquiry,” he said. “I may tell you that at present the gravest suspicion rests upon Miss Lethmere.”

“Suspicion!” I echoed angrily. “Of what, pray?”

The captain drew a long breath and, once more looking me straight in the face, replied:

“Well, of being a secret agent of the German Government – or to put it very bluntly, of being a spy!”

“Roseye a spy!” I shouted, starting up from my chair. “A most foul and abominable lie! How dare you cast any such imputation upon her?”

“It is, unfortunately, no imputation, Mr Munro,” replied the captain. “You naturally doubt the truth, but we have documentary evidence that the missing lady is not exactly the purely patriotic young person whom you have so long believed her to be. Since the war lots of men who have trusted pretty women have had many rude awakenings, I assure you.”

“I’ll believe nothing against Roseye!”

“Well,” answered Pollock, taking from his pocket an official envelope, “perhaps you will look at this!” and from the envelope he took a half sheet of dark-blue notepaper of a type and size used by ladies, and handed it across to me, saying:

“This was found in her card-case here. From Scotland Yard they sent it over to us this afternoon, and its real import we very quickly discovered.”

My eyes fell upon the paper, and I saw that it was covered with lines of puzzling figures in groups of seven, all written neatly in a distinctly feminine hand.

“Well,” I asked in surprise, “what does all this mean?”

“Only one thing,” was the hard reply. “This paper, folded small and secreted, was found in this card-case. Those figures you see convey a message in the secret code of the Intelligence Department of the German Naval War Staff – a seven-figure code. A couple of hours ago we succeeded in deciphering the message, which is to the effect that you and Ashton have made an astounding discovery and have succeeded in directing a powerful electric wave by which you can charge metals at a distance, and cause sparking across any intervening spaces of those metals. By this means you are hoping to defeat Zeppelins by exploding the gas inside their ballonets, and as you are both highly dangerous to the success of the enemy’s plans for the wholesale destruction of life and property by airships, it is here suggested that you should both meet sudden ends at the hands of certain paid hired assassins of the Berlin secret police.”

Then, after a pause, the captain again looked at me, and said very slowly:

“Mr Munro. This document found in Miss Lethmere’s purse is nothing else but your own death-warrant! Miss Lethmere is a spy and, though she may be your friend, she is plotting your death!”

Chapter Eleven

The Signalman’s Story

I sat, staggered by that damning evidence placed before me!

Proof indisputable lay there that Roseye – my own dear well-beloved, she whose ready lips met mine so often in those fierce, trustful caresses – the intrepid girl who had been as “a pal” to Teddy and myself in our secret experiments, and who knew all the innermost secrets of our invention and our power to fight Zeppelins – was a traitor to her country!

It was incredible!

Was it by her connivance that the steel bolt in my machine had been withdrawn, and one of wood substituted?

In this terrible war men laughed, and women wept. The men went out to the front in Flanders with all the fine patriotic sentiment of Britons, singing gaily the various patriotic songs of war. But alas! how many went to their death, and the women wept in silence in the back streets of our dear old London, and of every town in the work-a-day kingdom.

In official circles it was known – known indeed to the public at large – that the Zeppelin menace was a real and serious one. Teddy and I had, in secret, striven our best to discover a means by which to combat these sinister attacks upon our non-combatants.

Yet upon that leather-covered table before me lay that puzzling cryptic message found among the belongings of my missing beloved.

The whole affair was, indeed, a mystery. After a few moments of silence I raised my head and, looking again at Pollock, said:

“All this is, of course, very interesting from the point of view of a police problem, but the hard, real fact remains.”

“What fact?” he asked.

“That I, with my friend Ashton, am in possession of certain discoveries by which we can, under given conditions, bring Zeppelins to the ground.”

The red-tabbed captain curled his lip in a rather supercilious smile.

He was evidently one of those persons imported into the Department after the outbreak of war and, in comparison with Barton as an investigator, was a nonentity.

True, a piece of paper bearing a message in the enemy’s cipher had been found secreted in Roseye’s card-case.

But I argued that before the owner of the card-case could be condemned, she must be found, and an explanation demanded of her.

“You surely cannot condemn an accused person in her absence!” I argued.

Barton agreed with me. It was against all principles of justice to condemn an accused person unheard.

“Well,” explained the red-tabbed captain, “upon the face of it, there can be no real defence. Here we have the missing lady’s belongings found in a tunnel, and in them – fortunately, for ourselves – we discover a message intended for transmission to the enemy. That message, Mr Munro, is quite plain, and speaks for itself. You have made an interesting scientific discovery. Possibly they have ferreted out your secret. It interests them: they fear you and, therefore, they have plotted your death.”

“I won’t believe that!” I cried in angry resentment. “Ask yourself! Would you yourself believe it of the woman whom you loved?”

“My dear Mr Munro,” replied the captain coldly, “we are at war now. We cannot gauge either our feelings, or our beliefs, by the standard of pre-war days.”

“Well,” I declared bluntly, “I don’t believe it. Miss Lethmere would never hold any communication with the enemy. Of that I’m quite positive.”

“But we have it written down here – in black and white!”

“True. But before we take this as authentic we must discover her, and question her. To you mysterious people of the Secret Service the task will, surely, not be so very difficult. You know the mystery of Miss Lethmere’s sudden and unaccountable disappearance. Therefore I leave all to you – to investigate, and to elucidate the puzzle. I don’t pretend to account for it. You, both of you, of the War Intelligence Department and the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, have the facts before you – plain facts – the disappearance of Lady Lethmere’s daughter. When her whereabouts is ascertained then the remainder of the inquiry is surely quite easy. I am not an investigator,” I added with biting sarcasm. “I’m only an inventor, and I leave it to you both to discover why Miss Lethmere disappeared.”

“You apparently have invented something of which the enemy is determined, at all hazards, to learn the truth,” remarked Inspector Barton.

I laughed, and slowly took a cigarette from my case.