Thorne Guy
The Air Pirate

"I have the Government behind me, and I myself am not poor, thank you."

"It is as I thought. In England I myself can do nothing personally that others cannot do as well. In America I have every sort of influence…"

I looked him in the face. "I am not going to trouble about America in the very least."

"Quite! I see what you mean. And I am absolutely of your opinion. Now I'll come to what I can do for you."

He rose slowly from his chair and came up to me. When he spoke he had dropped his voice a full tone.

"I must let you into one or two little secrets about myself," he said. "In the first place, a man so rich as I am does not become so without making powerful and unscrupulous enemies. Also, American methods are direct. It will probably surprise you to hear that my life has been attempted twelve or fifteen times, but that is the case. Some of the methods were diabolically ingenious, too! However, I stand here to-day, quite unharmed and quite safe. Why? I'll tell you.

"Quite early in my successful career I saw what would happen. I watched other men assassinated, and was determined that it shouldn't happen to me. How was it to be avoided? I thought that point out very carefully, and came to a conclusion. I must find, and then attach to my person, someone of extraordinary intelligence, cunning, skill and personal prowess. My ambitions ran high. I wanted someone who would devote his whole life to my service, a familiar spirit, no less! It took me three years of steady work to find that familiar spirit – to discover the exact combination of qualities I required. But a multi-millionaire is the Magician of to-day, and I have a Genie as clever and infallible as any out of the old 'Arabian Nights.' I pay him the salary of a cinema star, and I say, meaning every word of it, that there isn't another like him in the world. Do you think this tall talk, Sir John?"

It was certainly amazing, but I could not but believe him.

"You startle and you interest me deeply," I replied. "You are to be congratulated."

"I am – on a unique human possession. Well, you can't have failed to see what I'm driving at. I will lend you this man, place his services entirely at your disposal, for a month!"

For a moment or two I was silent. I believed every word that Van Adams said, and I was not hesitating – only just letting the offer, and what it meant, sink into my mind. It became plain. It was like the offer of a rope-ladder to a man in prison, a light and a pickaxe to an entombed miner.

"It is the most generous offer I've ever heard of, Mr. Van Adams. I can't express my thanks. You really mean this?"

"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.

CHAPTER VI 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.

He resumed. "From all I have gathered, and I have talked much with Captain Pring, Mr. Rickaby and the passengers of the Albatros, we have to look for a man who is (1) an aviator in the first rank; (2) an inventor and mechanical genius, or able to command the services of such; (3) a person of some wealth or able to procure money."

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."

"Rickaby said that the men who came aboard the Albatros spoke like educated people."

"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.

"That young lady was kidnapped by the unknown airman. From among all the passengers she and her maid were singled out. Now that fact – upon which you must have already pondered considerably – is a key fact. Was it done for the purpose of holding this lady up to ransom? I see the suggestion has been made in the Press. I answer no. In the first place, it would be altogether too dangerous a game, and the attempt would certainly lead to discovery. Secondly, there were other people on board who would have been more profitable prey. The Duke of Perth, for instance, or the cinema actor who receives sixty thousand pounds a year. Now it is extremely improbable that in the rush and excitement of the attack and robbery of the Atlantis, the pirate leader was suddenly struck by a pretty face. Indeed, we know from accounts of the passengers that Miss Shepherd was deliberately searched for. That indicates with certainty that the pirate knew she was on board, and had a design of capturing her. In its turn, this predicates a former acquaintance, and, undoubtedly, a repulse in the past. Hence my inquiries and my interview with the theatre dresser this morning."

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.

"There was a man," I gasped, "a scoundrel who had been annoying Miss Shepherd for a long time. He wanted to marry her. She told me of it. And he was once a celebrated flying man!"

"Long ago, in the Great War," said Danjuro calmly. "Major Helzephron, V.C. I was aware of it."

"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!"

I stared at them, trembling with excitement. And then reality, like a cold douche of water, brought me to my senses. Of course, it was impossible. The thing was a mere coincidence. Why, while the first ship – the Albatros– had been attacked, this man, Helzephron, was in London! He had travelled west in the same train with me and Connie.

"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.

"That is the surface," Danjuro replied. "I cross-examined a woman who was in constant attendance on Miss Shepherd. From her I learnt just what your servant has discovered. But I went a little deeper. It is a case of genuine overmastering passion on the part of this man. Nothing less. He is of a dangerous age for that to come to him, certainly over forty-five years. A woman knows. But that is not all."

"So far we have learnt nothing of importance." I was getting restive, I wanted to be doing something. And yet, what was there to do? If I had thought all night by myself I could not have mapped out the situation more clearly. And as I looked at the little man, half lost in a big saddlebag chair, I felt ashamed of my irritation. A brain packed in ice was there, a logical machine of the first order. I could not expect humanity, sympathy, from such a one. Still, it would have helped! Hadn't I lost the one thing that made life worth living? What might not be happening to Connie even now?

… 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 …"

"Yes. Of course, everyone knows his name. He made one little slip. Mr. Brookfield is very acute, and a great student of character. Entirely incapable of understanding a man or woman of decent morals and normal instincts, he is infallible in his judgment of the criminal type. Mr. Brookfield owes me any little service he can render, and I supplemented my request for information with a note for fifty pounds."

"And you learnt …?"

"That Major Helzephron is all we have just heard, but a far more sinister and formidable person than anyone suspects. He is a man of marked intellectual powers. Below the veneer of coarse pleasures and fast life in London and Paris, there is something that glows like a hot coal. His appearances in town are irregular and fitful. His real life, Brookfield is certain of this, is lived far away from cities. And it is a life with a purpose."

Quite suddenly and unexpectedly Mr. Danjuro began to reveal himself.

The last words were spoken in a changed voice. The flatness and monotony had vanished. The words vibrated in the room, and I felt the thrill of them. It was the power of personality, and from then onwards I was hand in glove with this bizarre thinking machine that Fate had sent me.

I tried to emulate Danjuro's dispassionate and scientific method.

"It is curious," I said, "that a real intellect should care to spend part of its time in rake-helling round the low clubs, the gambling-rooms and stage-doors of London. Such a thing is known, but it is rare."

"You put your finger instantly upon what seems a weak spot in my character sketch. But let us assume that it has been done with a deep motive."

"Ah!" He knew, or suspected, something more. He referred to his notebook.

"Two years ago a certain Mr. Herbert Gascoigne was expelled from Christ Church College, Oxford."

"Sent down, we call it; but go on."

"The case was a bad one. The young man had established a sort of gambling club and ruined several of his contemporaries. It was discovered that he was using a roulette wheel that had been tampered with. He came to London and drifted into the worst gang of swindlers. Major Helzephron met him. They became very friendly. The younger man was obviously under the influence of the elder. Finally Gascoigne deserted his old haunts and has disappeared."

I began to see light.

"On several occasions my astute friend, Mr. Brookfield, has witnessed precisely the same phenomenon. Some young man of the upper classes has been ruined socially, and our enigmatic friend has taken him up, been seen about with him, and so forth. Finally the young man vanishes."

"It is not philanthropy, Mr. Danjuro."

"It is not, and it gives rise to curious speculations. Where could a Napoleonic criminal, patiently planning and meditating a stupendous coup, find a better recruiting ground than among the desperate and ruined young men of his own class? The plan is in itself evidence of genius. They speak his language, he understands their way of thought; there are a thousand bonds between them. I can conceive no more solid and formidable combination than just this. The one last virtue remaining to these desperate and outcast young men will be loyalty to their leader. Society has cast them out, therefore they will make war on Society. Given that attitude of mind, a leader like Major Helzephron, and a plan so daring, and the thing becomes plain as daylight. And if this man had not fallen into an overmastering passion for Miss Shepherd there would have been no means of getting on his trail at all."

It was only with great difficulty that I could control my thoughts. We seemed miles nearer the truth than I had been an hour ago. Then one idea emerged clearly.

"Quite so. And isn't it all in our favour that we, and we alone, are in a position to connect Helzephron with the piracy? He will think himself perfectly secure?"

"I do not for a moment believe," Danjuro replied with emphasis, "that a single soul besides ourselves has the least suspicion. The man will have taken supreme care to cover his tracks. My inquiries could have suggested nothing to the people I interviewed. Mr. Brookfield thinks I required my information for quite another reason. Yes, Sir John, we have a task of immense difficulty and danger before us. You must recognize that to the full. My sincere belief is that it would be somewhat safer to venture into a cage of cobras than where we have to go. But" – he took out his watch – "it is five o'clock. Let us say that the game begins at this moment! Very well. We, and not the enemy, have scored the first point!"

He suddenly glided from his chair with a single sinuous movement. As he stood up he was transformed. The bland modern look faded from his face. It grew terrible. The eyes narrowed to slits of light, the square jaw protruded, the grey lips were caught up in a tiger-grin, and the slim body seemed to swell out with iron muscle like a wrestler stripped in the arena.

You have seen some of the real old Japanese colour-prints, pictures of the ancient Samurai or the frightful Akudogi shouting at you – yes? The flat, awful stolidity, the incarnate hate…

Then you have seen something of what I saw then.

Wow! Millionaire Van Adams was well served!