Read Ebook: The Air Pirate by Thorne Guy

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Ebook has 1040 lines and 54283 words, and 21 pages

"I do. And as an ounce of proof is worth a ton of talk--allow me to introduce you to Mr. Danjuro!"

He turned round as he spoke and I with him. Then I gave a cry of astonishment, which I could not have kept back to save my life.

Standing some yard or so away was a little Japanese gentleman, not much more than five feet high. He wore gold pince-nez, a neat blue lounge suit and brown boots. There was nothing noticeable about him in any way, except an unusually fine cranial development--a massive forehead and a great space between the corners of the dark eyes and the ears.

"Good heavens, how did he get here?" I said.

Van Adams laughed. "I daresay he'll tell you; I don't know," he answered. "I just told him to be here. I wanted to give you an object lesson, in fact. Now, Mr. Danjuro knows all that I know. You can trust him absolutely. He knows what is in front of him, and he knows where to find me when I'm wanted. Now I'll leave you together and say good-afternoon."

He was gone almost before I could thank him.

MR. DANJURO, THINKING MACHINE, EXPLAINS HIMSELF

"Won't you sit down?" I said foolishly. The little Japanese bowed politely and did so.

I was at a loss what to say. My mind was in a whirl. I wanted to laugh, to call Van Adams back, but my dominating sensation was one of supreme annoyance. So this natty, commonplace little Asiatic was the millionaire's "familiar spirit"! He was unique, was he! I cursed myself for several kinds of fool to have saddled myself with this amazing stranger at the beginning of my work. At any rate, I reflected irritably, as I sat down opposite, I could easily send him off on some wild-goose chase or another....

Yes! I was never more annoyed in my life, and my annoyance lasted for exactly sixty seconds. Without the slightest embarrassment of any sort, and with no preliminaries at all, Mr. Danjuro plunged into business. His voice was clear and low. He had no accent of any kind, though his English was a trifle pedantic and scholarly. He spoke as impersonally as a gramophone.

"... I am entirely with you, Sir John, in your opinion that it is not in the United States of America, but here--in England--that we shall solve the mystery surrounding this dark business."

"But I never said ..."

He smiled faintly, almost wearily. "And since I have the great honour to be associated with you, I trust you will allow me to suggest a plan of campaign."

"I was going to try and think one out to-night."

"It is a privilege to assist. I have come in contact with many crafty and malignant criminals during the last thirty years, but here one detects a master. It will be a pleasure indeed to hunt him down. Have I your honourable permission to smoke?"

With one hand he produced a square of rice paper and a pinch of tobacco from his pocket, and rolled a cigarette on his knee like a conjuring trick. He had not raised his voice, but a sudden gleam came into the oblique black eyes which suggested the deep but hidden ferocity of his race.

I followed him completely and said so. From what we already knew these deductions were perfectly fair ones.

"I thank you. Now we come to the man himself. I believe him to be a person of education, and one who has held a good social position. He is also desperate in his circumstances, and a person to whom material pleasure is the highest good."

"Yes. Our field of search already begins to grow narrower. Am I right in saying that every aviator in this country must pass an examination and be licensed before he is allowed to fly?"

"It is so. All aviators, professional or amateur, must have a licence from the Air Police. This is registered. I have already had the records for the past ten years searched at Whitehall. But this has yielded no result. There is no one who could possibly be our man."

"It was well thought of, Sir John, if I may say so. But in my opinion we shall have to go back a good deal further than ten years. We now come to the question of the pirate airship itself and its peculiar qualities. Let us fix upon one--the silence of its engines. I am aware that the constructors of motor engines have been busy upon this problem for years."

"And with little result. The problem has not been solved."

"Except by our unknown friends. I have already examined all the recent patents of silencing devices at your patent office here. I spent yesterday morning there, and found nothing. The significance of that is obvious. Any ordinary inventor who had discovered something of such importance would protect it at once. We can therefore make up our minds that in no regular motor-engineering works throughout this country has the complete silencer been evolved. It would be impossible for the most brilliant inventor to keep such a thing entirely to himself."

"Again the field shrinks?"

"Yes, Sir John. We now have a man of the character already indicated, who, as he has undoubtedly constructed silent engines, must have done so in secret. He must have had private engineering works in order to make an important part of his machines. The point is, where? On the Continent? I think not. He would be watched far more carefully than in this country. America is still more unlikely. Let us assume England. Having done so, we can, I think, safely deduce that for obvious reasons this man and his confederates--for we know he has them--would endeavour to build his pirate ship as near as possible to the place he intended to use as the base of his operations. And that base--if your experience bears me out--is certainly somewhere or other on the coast?"

"Of course, one would say that it must be so, Mr. Danjuro. And yet it seems impossible. The whole coast of England is patrolled by the coastguards. For all practical purposes England is no bigger than a pocket-handkerchief. I thought of Scotland and the Northern Isles. I thought of wild places on the Irish coast. I have had a fleet of airships surveying and photographing these places for the last two days. No hangar bigger than a motor-shed could have escaped their notice. All the land police of the villages round the coasts have been interrogated by Scotland Yard. Nothing, nothing whatever has been seen."

I spoke with some passion, for I felt it. The sense of impotence was maddening.

The Japanese rolled another cigarette. As he did so the door opened and Thumbwood came in.

"I delivered your note, Sir John, and the editor's compliments and thanks."

"Charles," I said, "this gentleman here is Mr. Danjuro. He is going to help us. Mr. Danjuro is "--I hesitated for a moment, really it was difficult to describe him!--"is one of the foremost detectives in the world!"

Thumbwood's hand went up to his forehead in the stable boy's salute. Then, as he saw my guest full-face, he started. "I saw you this morning, sir," he said. "You were talking to old Mrs. Jessop, the dresser at the Parthenon Theatre. It was in the 'Blue Dragon,' just round the corner by the stage-door."

"And you were with the stage-door keeper. A curious coincidence," Mr. Danjuro replied, with his weary smile, and at a look from me Thumbwood, very puzzled indeed, left the room.

"I spent part of this morning at the Parthenon Theatre, Sir John. Your servant apparently thought of doing the same thing. A man of considerable acumen?--I imagined so. To proceed. Now that we have cleared away a few preliminary obstructions, we arrive at a point which I regard as of great significance. You are engaged--I speak of intimate matters, but purely in my character of a consultant--to Miss Constance Shepherd, a young lady of beauty and celebrity."

... Confound the fellow, he spoke of Connie as if she were a fish!

"That is so," I told him.

I astonished that little man. It was the first and last time. Leaping up in my chair, I believe I shouted like a madman. At any rate, Thumbwood was inside the room before I could find words to speak.

Something had flashed upon me, white-hot and sudden, as an electric advertisement flashes out upon one at night. It was something that I had entirely and utterly forgotten until now.

"And one of the boys if ever there was one, sir!" Thumbwood broke in. "Warned off the course everywhere. I've got a bit of information too!"

"May I ask exactly what you know, Sir John?"

... I told Danjuro precisely what had happened at Paddington and how Connie herself had explained it.

He listened to me in attentive silence. When I had finished, I saw that a small leather pocket-book had appeared in his hands--everything that the fellow did had the uncanny effect of a clever trick--and he was turning over the leaves.

"So far," he began, "in the consideration of this problem we have been eliminating impossibilities, or improbabilities so strong that they amount to that. This has left us with a small residuum of fact, unproved fact, but sufficient to work from. One thing emerges clearly. It is the nature and personality of our unknown friend. It is not too much to say that he MUST be very like what we have imagined him to be. A certain person appears dimly on the scene--this Major Helzephron. Let us see how his personality squares with the personality we have been deducing. Mr. Thumbwood has apparently collected some information. I have done so, too. Let us pool results!" He looked at Charles, who blushed.

"Out with it, Charles; you've done splendidly," I said.

"Well, Sir John, I found out that this gentleman is a pretty bad wrong-'un, judging by the company he keeps. And he used to annoy Miss Shepherd something chronic. He'd wait at the stage-door and try and speak to her when she got into the car after the performance, and he was always leaving notes and flowers with the stage-door keeper. Miss Shepherd would never take them. She always sent them back from her room. It got so bad at last that she complained to the stage manager, and he had a plain clothes man from Vine Street there one night. Major Helzephron was told off pretty plainly, I hear. He used to come very nasty sometimes, and once or twice he was fair blotto! And Mr. Meggit, the commission agent, knows him well. He's done a lot of racing in his time, and no open scandal. But he knows how to work the market, and the best men won't lay him the odds no more."

I shrugged my shoulders. It was only what one expected. The man was one of the fast blackguards who infest the West End of London; that was all. There were dozens like him. The facts only seemed to prove that he could not possibly be connected with the Atlantic outrages.

"You see?" I said to the Japanese, sure that he would follow my thought. Then I thanked good little Charles and he left the room.

... He read my thoughts like a book, confound him!

"I understand your feelings, believe me, Sir John," he said, "but I must go my own way. We have not been talking for an hour yet! And if it is any consolation for you to know, let me say that it is imperative that we leave London to-night."

"My nerves are strained. Please go on," I answered. "I can hardly tell you what a godsend your appearance on the scene really is to me."

"In my business as agent and guard to my patron, Mr. Van Adams, it is always necessary that I keep more or less in touch with a certain circle of what I may describe as the aristocracy, the brains of International Crime. It has proved useful. After my visit to the Parthenon this morning I called upon an old acquaintance, the Honourable James Brookfield."

"Lord Slidon's son? The man who got five years ..."

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