The Air Pirate

I leapt out of bed and began to bellow orders for pursuit – until I saw Johnson's terrified face again, and knew that I had not heard all.

"… They got down to the water somehow, sir. They must have climbed down the lift rails. And they swam to the ship…"

"Good God! What ship?"

"Their own ship, Sir John. Somehow or other they managed to get on board; we've just heard…"

"Where are they?"

"They did for the two men on board, and must have managed to start the engines —the ship's gone. The searchlights are all over the pool, and there's no trace of her. They were seen, Sir John, I …"

He broke off short, the words drying up in his mouth. All the other men shrank together in a frightened group as Danjuro came slowly into the room.

I have never seen a figure so awe-inspiring, or terrible.

In moments of supreme emotion a European grows chalk-white, an Asiatic grey.

The Japanese was livid grey now, and his face seemed carved with fantastic gashes – grey rubber slashed with a knife. He was like a man who had slept a thousand years and wakened to find himself old, and in hell.

He came slowly up to me, moving like a thing on wheels drawn by a cord, and when he was close, he spoke.

I can never recall his voice without an almost physical state of fear. Suppose that you could go with Dante to that gate over which is written, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." And suppose, as you stood there and listened, you heard a well-known voice far down, saying, "I am tormented in this flame…"

Well, Danjuro's voice was like that.

"During a lull in the storm," he said, as if repeating a lesson, "I went up on the deck of the May Flower for a breath of air. Mr. Van Adams accompanied me. We were looking over the water to the Pirate Ship, when I saw lights flashing up and down through the portholes of the fuselage. It struck me as strange. We wondered what the two men in charge could be doing. As we watched, we were just able to distinguish two men coming up on deck. Then there came a vivid flash of lightning, and I saw everything plainly. The two men were Vargus and Gascoigne, and they were carrying the body of a man in uniform, which they lowered into the water."

Inspector Johnson gave a quick gasp. Danjuro continued:

"Without a moment's delay I got a couple of pistols, and Mr. Van Adams and I jumped into the electric launch, which was moored alongside the May Flower, though on the other side to that which faced the Pirate. There was no time to summon help. We shot out into the pool just as the storm began again with thunder-claps and a deluge of water. We were within a few yards of the ship and making ready to board her, when Mr. Van Adams flashed a powerful electric torch, and I saw Vargus with a knife in his hand hacking at the mooring ropes. At the same time I noticed that the lights in the pilot's cabin had been turned on.

"I took a snap-shot at Vargus and missed him. Almost simultaneously he fired directly at the light of the torch which Mr. Van Adams held. The bullet went through Mr. Van Adams' heart, and he fell back dead in my arms – I was steering the launch. I fired off all the cartridges in my pistol, but the thunder drowned the noise. The Pirate Ship began to move. I saw the lights in her side moving along – and then she lifted and disappeared."

The awful voice ceased, and all of us in that room stood like waxen figures in a show.

* * * * * *

For three days the Press and public were kept in entire ignorance of what had happened during the storm.

Upon the fourth, just as I was beginning to think that all my measures were in vain and that the Pirate Ship had vanished utterly, the Head Office in Whitehall received two long telegrams from the Prefect of Finistère in France and the Chief of Police of Quimper, the old cathedral city in Brittany.

On one of the wild and lonely Breton moors a goat-herd had discovered the wreckage of a large airship. By it was the body of a young man, but only one body. The telegrams urgently asked me to come over at once.

I did so, in my fastest patrol boat. Lying in a wild wilderness of gorse and heather were the remains of the Pirate Ship. It had been destroyed beyond possibility of reconstruction, and destroyed methodically and deliberately while at rest upon the ground. There was no doubt about that. The body I afterwards saw in the Morgue at Quimper was that of Gascoigne. He had not met his death by any accidental means, but had been stabbed in the back.

He must have been dead for quite two days before the goat-herd made his discovery, and of Vargus, living or dead, there was not a trace.

I was back in London again that night, and just as I was going to bed in Half Moon Street the bell of the flat rang. Thumbwood went to the door and announced that Mr. Danjuro wished to see me.

He was in evening dress, and quite his old self again to outward appearances, except that his black hair had turned an iron grey.

For a moment or two we discussed details of the inquest that had been held in camera upon poor Van Adams, arrangements made for the trial of the three surviving pirates, and so on. Then I told him what I had seen at Quimper.

"Mr. Muir Lockhart told me of the telegrams from France," he said. "I called at Whitehall, but you had already started for Quimper, Sir John. I must apologize for such a late call, but I was anxious to hear your news. Now I see my way clear."

"I suppose, after your great loss, you will go back to America, or perhaps Japan, and settle down?"

He shook his head.

"You know," I continued, "that if you cared for it, there is a highly-paid and important position open to you with the Air Police? Nothing would give me greater pleasure, as you know, than to have you as a colleague."

"I thank you, Sir John, but I have other work to do. I am a rich man, but that only interests me, inasmuch as it is a means to an end. When that end is reached …"

He made a curious gesture with his arm, which I did not understand.

"May I ask what your work is?"

He looked at me with surprise.

"Vargus is still alive," he said simply.

"He will be caught soon. The police of the world are looking for him, if he is alive."

"I think it will be a long pursuit, Sir John. He has got off with the treasure, and I know one or two things about him which are not generally known. I do not think that Mr. Vargus will fall into the hands of the police."

"Then you …?"

"It is my work. I owe the spirit of my patron this man's blood, and I shall pay the debt. Were he to hide in the depths of the sea, sooner or later I shall find him. There is no power strong enough in life to keep us two apart."

He had dropped his voice. The words hissed like a knife upon a strop.

"I wish you good luck," I said at length, and was about to say more, to express my gratitude again, when he cut me short.

"I am leaving for Paris in half an hour," he said, "and must bid you farewell, Sir John. Convey my humble compliments to Miss Shepherd," and with a low bow and a frigid handshake he was gone.

Six weeks afterwards, on the day before my wedding, I received a magnificent Japanese vase of the old Satsuma enamel, but the card enclosed bore no address.

I did not see this extraordinary being again for nearly two years. Of that meeting I shall write in the following short epilogue.

EPILOGUE

In the winter of 19 – I was at Monte Carlo for three weeks, taking a short holiday alone, and also looking out for a villa at Roquebrune or Mentone for my wife, who was to come out with the baby as soon as the house had been secured.

Now and again I went into the "Rooms" and staked a louis or two upon an even chance or a transversale at roulette; but, speaking generally, the Casino bored me. The cosmopolitan crowd of smart people – like champagne corks floating on a cesspool – the professional gamblers, with their veil of decorous indifference concealing a fierce greed for money which they have not earned – a sprinkling of wood-ash over a glowing fire – presented little interest, and I much preferred long walks and drives in the earthly paradise of Les Alpes Maritimes.

I stayed at the Métropole Hotel, making it the base of my excursions, and one evening, after dinner, I paid one of my rare visits to the Casino. I wandered about the gilded, stuffy saloons, with their illuminations of oil-lamps – so that no enterprising gentleman may cut the electric wires and make off with the money on the tables! – the low voices and almost sanctimonious manner of the players, the over-dressed demi-mondaines who glide about with their hard, evil eyes. The place was very full. All the chairs round the roulette tables were occupied, and people were standing behind the chairs as well. As I am tall, I was able to reach over and place my stakes, and I did so several times. When I had lost four louis with monotonous regularity, I decided that it was not worth while, and thought I would go and smoke, for, contrary to the usual pictures in the magazines, smoking is not allowed in the roulette or trente-et-quarante rooms.

So I went out into the Atrium, the great pillared entrance hall, which looks like an important provincial corn exchange, and lit a cigarette. The place was fairly full of people, walking up and down, or reading the latest telegrams, which are fixed up upon a green-baize screen, and I was watching them idly when, coming round the corner from the cloak-room, I saw – Danjuro!