The Air Pirate

"I saw the whole thing, and it was most amusing, Mr. Helzephron. I was sitting in the smaller arm of the gallery at the 'Mille Colonnes,' behind a centre-piece of flowers. I, and my companion, had concealed a periscope in the flowers, and got the whole thing framed, as it were. It gave a zest to the Burgundy. But I thought you'd have made a better fight of it!"

The man leapt from his chair with a savage curse and took two steps towards me, with clenched fist and lifted arm.

I looked up in that convulsed and purple face.

"Quite so!" I said quietly. "I'm tied up. It's quite safe to hit me."

If he was going to torture me, and I had few illusions on the matter, I was having my innings now. He had been a gentleman once, he had been a brave soldier. It was because I knew this that I could stab him.

He didn't strike. He began to walk up and down the room, swallowing his rage with an almost superhuman effort – being what he was. Perhaps shame helped him, perhaps it was cunning, but he sat down again, and though he trembled, his voice was calm.

"So you think me a coward, do you?" he said. "I'll do you the justice to say that you're none."

My mind was working with an insight that it has never possessed before or since. The key to the man's psychology was in my hand at last.

All criminals are vain. In great criminals vanity assumes colossal proportions until it becomes a real madness. Criminologists call it megalomania. It is egotism fostered and indulged to the point of monstrosity, when all moral considerations are swept away, and the subject thinks himself superior to all law, and glories in his greatness.

Lord of himself, that heritage of woe! I think Byron said that.

"You've correctly expressed me," I told him.

"Perhaps your detective work has not gone so far as to inform you that I hold the Victoria Cross?" Yes! he was mad! No sane man of his extraction would have said that.

"It is a distinction above all others, Mr. Helzephron. And you'll have another very soon. Indeed, you'll never be forgotten. You'll be historic as the one V.C. who was degraded. They'll do it the day before they hang you at Pentonville, and it will be in the Gazette."

He grew quite white, whether from anger or shame I do not know. But I went on. Something inside me that was not myself seemed to be speaking.

"You've been living quite an artificial life, you see, surrounded by your amicable young friends and the artistic Mr. Vargus. You, no doubt, think of yourself as of a very glorious order. Making war on society, Ajax defying the thunder, King of the air, and all that sort of thing. I'll bet anything you've compared yourself to Napoleon a thousand times! It's the way the late Kaiser of Germany fell. It's called megalomania. But you aren't anything of the sort, you know. You are a cowardly thief, who steals and murders for the sake of his pocket. You asked me a question and I've answered it."

He heard each word. His eyes became glassy and his jaw dropped. For all the world he was like an evil child who hears the truth about itself, and all the power was wiped out of his face as chalk marks are wiped off a blackboard.

He got up abruptly, and left the room by the curtained door. He was away for ten minutes. When he returned he was his old self, but with an addition – he had been drinking back his devilishness. There was a strong odour of brandy as he entered. His eyes were full and liquid, and he was amazingly vital. I knew that I could hurt him no longer. He wore impenetrable armour. He sat down and lit a cigarette. He smiled with an evil good-humour. It was his hour now.

"Well, we've got acquainted at last," he began in an easy conversational tone. "You've been excessively clever in hunting me down, and your powers of insult are exceptional. I admit again that you have smoked me out here, but as to putting an end to my activities, that's a very different story. Your people can't get at me once I'm out of this snug retreat, and they can't force an entry here until I'm gone. So much as between the Commissioner of Police and the Pirate. You've had your say and I've had mine."

"Then there is nothing more to be said."

"Excuse me, as man to man, there's a good deal. I purchased an evening paper on the afternoon of the evening when I was attacked by your hired bully."

At last the conversation was growing interesting.

"With stolen money?" I asked impudently. But it fell dead flat. I don't think he even heard me.

"The paper made public some news that I had already gathered from another source. The news of your engagement, Sir John Custance."

We stared at each other in dead silence for half a minute.

"To Miss Constance Shepherd," he went on.

I said nothing.

"… Who at this moment is not twenty yards away from you, and who will fly with me to-night to where all your police boats will never find us."

"By force."

"Well, up to the present I admit that I have had to take the law into my own hands. I am a man who believes in getting what he wants. Your arrival, the fact that you're my guest for a short time, has given my thoughts quite a new direction."

I saw that there was a deep and sinister meaning in what he said, but not an inkling of the abominable truth came to me. He understood that from my face, and he laughed out loud.

"Oh, this is going to be enormously refreshing!" he cried. "This is going to make everything worth while!"

My heart turned to stone as I watched that unholy merriment.

When he had finished laughing, he said: "Miss Shepherd does not know as yet that I have the honour of entertaining you. I am about to inform her. And then, if she wishes it, as no doubt she will, you must really meet. Journeys end in lovers' meetings, they say."

He was about to add something when there was a knock at the door. Mr. Vargus came in.

"All loaded," he said, looking nervously at me, as if wondering what had passed during his absence. "All loaded and everything ready for a start. The others have gone up to the house."

"Well, there's nothing to report, or they would have telephoned down. There is no hurry for an hour yet…"

Helzephron took the short man by the arm and drew him into a corner of the room. They whispered together for nearly ten minutes. I could not catch a word.

Then Vargus nodded with an air of triumphant comprehension, and left the room.

"On second thoughts," said Helzephron, "I am not going to prepare Miss Shepherd. We will let it be in the nature of a pleasant surprise."

He disappeared through the green-curtained door.

CHAPTER XV LED OUT TO DIE

In relating what is immediately to follow I shall do so with as plain and unvarnished a narrative as my pen can command. You will read of what Constance and I endured, but do not ask me to do more than hint at the anger of my soul. It is impossible to describe, at least it would require the pen of a Dante or a Milton, nor would I describe it if I could. It is bad enough to live that hour again even faintly and in imagination. To call it up into full memory – soul memory – is a task for which I have not the least inclination. You shall, therefore, have the facts with very little comment upon them.

I think it's about all you'll need.

Helzephron was away for a considerable time. During his absence Vargus peeped in once and looked at me. I won't describe his face.

When the hawk-faced man returned, he dragged my chair to the far end of the room, and pushed the writing-table in front of it to form a barrier. There was a deliberation in all he did that was inexpressibly alarming. His lips were drawn in a tight smile, so that I could see the teeth…

He set a chair over against the wall opposite, and then he went again through the curtained door. A moment afterwards he entered, followed by Connie.

The room grew whirlingly dark and cleared. I could not speak, for my throat seemed to be closing up, but I saw my girl very distinctly.

She was, as I had never seen her, deadly pale, with large, dark rings under her eyes and all the joy of life ironed out of her sweet face. Yet she was not thinner and there were no lines. The colour had gone from her cheeks and the lustre from her hair, but I somehow thought that her physical health had not suffered alarmingly.

When she spoke I knew that this was true, and I knew why. Her indomitable spirit remained. The sunny courage of the past had condensed within her soul and turned to unconquerable purpose. Her voice was so full of scorn that it cut even me like the lash of a whip. It was a marvel that the tall man could have borne it for a moment.

But his eyes had a red light in them, like the eyes of a hound – mad.