The Air Pirate

For answer the thing below spat in his face.

I expected to see Danjuro leap upon him and strangle him where he sat. I shouldn't have raised a finger to stop it. But it was not so. The little man stepped aside and carefully wiped his face with a silk handkerchief that seemed to come from nowhere. Then he went behind Mr. Vargus and began to feel his head all over, with quick, delicate movements of his fingers.

"How can you touch him?" I cried, hardly knowing what I said, for the thing was ugly and uncanny beyond belief. Danjuro was like some sinister phrenologist in a nightmare, feeling the bumps of a devil.

"I know now what I wanted to know about him," Danjuro purred after a moment. "I never doubted the intelligence, Sir John. It is very marked. And there is great energy and courage of a sort. But our friend who spits has one little failing. He is afraid of physical pain."

"You're not going to …?"

Danjuro looked me full in the eyes, and in his I saw a stony resolution that I was in no state to combat.

"I will go and see Miss Shepherd," I said, and turning on my heel, walked quickly to the inner end of the cavern. As I went I heard Danjuro ask Thumbwood for a box of matches…

I am quite aware that there are lots of softhearted people who will say I ought never to have allowed Danjuro to do what he did. Well, they must have their own opinion, that's all. I believe it was nothing like so bad as the cat-o'-nine-tails which is constantly administered in our prisons, and under the circumstances I think it was justifiable. Call me what names you like as you read this – you have not seen Mr. Vargus and his dogs, nor spent a small eternity in the pirates' cave.

… Constance was wonderfully recovered. I spent a minute or two with her, and then returned to the scene of action.

Mr. Vargus was speaking in a quick, panting voice, and these were the words I heard:

"Gascoigne, Mr. Gascoigne; he has it. He was our second pilot. It was always in his charge."

Danjuro gave his little weary smile. Then he put his hand gently upon my arm and drew me away to the other side of the cave.

"We will now summon honourable Gascoigne," he said. "He is the young gentleman we saw with late honourable Helzephron at the 'Mille Colonnes.' The little necessary piece of the mechanism in his possession is, I have just learnt, generally referred to as 'the link.'"

"But how …?" I was beginning, when he pointed to a telephone instrument upon a screen of tongue-and-groove boarding. "This communicates with the house," he whispered. "Mr. Vargus nearly got through recently, you will remember, just before the good Thumbwood caught him."

He raised the instrument to his mouth and ear.

In a second or two a bell rang and Danjuro began to speak. I nearly jumped out of my boots. The words were simple enough, but the voice with its oily refinement was the voice of Mr. Vargus!

"Is that you, Gascoigne? Yes, Vargus speaking. The Chief says you are to come down at once and bring the control link with you. What? No, the others are to wait till they're sent for. What? Oh, yes, quite dead. I wish you could have seen it!"

It was a triumph of mimicry that I shall never forget, the more so as it was the only occasion on which I heard this marvellous man attempt anything of the sort. Heaven knows what other talents he must have possessed!

"The young gentleman was asking about you, Sir John. He seemed quite curious about your end!"

I smiled grimly. "What are you going to do?" I asked.

In answer he hurried back to the open door and crouched down in the shadow by its side. I motioned to Thumbwood to lie down behind the barrier which was exactly facing the passage, and drawing my automatic pistol, which I had regained from Helzephron's room, I retired to the opposite side of the door and outside the line of direct vision.

There was silence for a minute or so, and then, far away in the rock, I heard a hollow rumble and the clank of a gate. The lift had descended and Gascoigne was on his way. A few seconds afterwards I heard a merry whistle, fresh and sweet, as if the performer had not a care in the world. He was whistling the lilting tune of a popular song which all the street boys were singing at that time:

"Merry Maudie met her fate at Margate!"

Callous young dog! In a moment he would not be so cheerful…

I had left it to that concentrated muscle, Danjuro, though I stood ready to help if necessary. But I knew that he was a supreme exponent of jiu-jitsu —teste the hideous death Helzephron died – and I had little fear. Indeed, I found myself looking on with a detached and interested curiosity as one might at a prize-fight. I wondered if Danjuro would kill him or not. And if you had supped so full of horrors as I had in that awful cave, you'd have felt like that, too!

… For a second I saw Gascoigne in the full light from the roof and framed by the archway, like a picture. It was the same young fellow, with the dissipated face, that I had seen at the restaurant, though he had not been among the singing pirates at the inn. He was extremely handsome still, with the face of a lost angel. As a boy at school he must have been beautiful.

Then the squat shadow that crouched by the lintel of the door, like a monstrous toad, expanded swiftly. Danjuro caught Gascoigne by the right hand with the speed of lightning, and pulled the arm out straight with a jerk. Then, as the young man was falling forward, the left arm of the Japanese shot out under his captive's rigid right and the hand seized the lapel of Gascoigne's coat. He was powerless. If he made the slightest movement Danjuro would have broken his arm like a pipe-stem. He could not swing round and hit with his left, and I saw his mouth open with foolish amazement like the mouth of a fish, as his legs were kicked from under him, and he fell back with his assailant on the top of him.

I tied his ankles together with neatness and dispatch, while I listened to a sickening flood of blasphemous profanity that flowed from the clear-cut lips of this ci-devant gentleman in a ceaseless stream. More and more I realized what a crew of utter devils Helzephron had got round him.

At last he was bound, and Danjuro took from him a leather box, which he wore suspended round his shoulders by a strap. He handed it to me, and, opening it, I found it was the control link that we sought.

"You can fit that in all right, Sir John?"

"Oh, yes, I don't think it presents any difficulty."

"Very well, then, in a few minutes we will start; that is, if you think you can take the ship out of this place?"

I had already considered that and decided that I could. It was a ticklish job enough, and would require the most delicate care, especially with an untried ship. But in the past I had landed on the deck of a moving battleship, and there were few stunts that were not familiar to me. I felt I could do it.

"I don't think I shall let you down," I said, and hurried to the ship.

Five minutes showed me that I had got the hang of the apparatus and that electrical connection was restored, and I spent a further ten in thoroughly examining and getting accustomed to the controls. Moreover, I made one new and startling discovery.

There was no need, in this marvellous ship, for mechanics to swing the propeller at the start. Again electricity from the ship's dynamo was employed, and the starting device was a miracle of ingenuity, worked from the pilot's cabin.

Mr. Vargus, though I offered to loosen his bonds at the feet, absolutely refused to walk, and Danjuro carried him up the ladder and threw him upon the floor of the cabin like a sack of corn. Gascoigne, now very white and silent, was more amenable. It seems that Vargus had acquainted him with everything that had passed as they lay together on the ground.

"I'll go all right, sir," he said to me, as I helped him to his feet.

As I had the muzzle of my pistol in the small of his back, he couldn't well do anything else, but he lost nothing by being civil.

"I can't believe that the Chief's dead and everything's finished," he said, with a curious sort of sob. I realized that all sense of right and wrong had left this youth early. He was the true stuff of which criminals are made, incapable of putting himself in the place of his victims, and while bitterly conscious of defeat and punishment to come, incapable of remorse.

Without a trace of pose this man behaved just as if he were an officer captured by the enemy in war-time, and I dare swear he felt just like that. There is only one thing to do with these abnormals that get themselves born now and then – destroy them.

Morally I felt sure that Gascoigne was not a hundredth part so responsible as Vargus. But one was born a criminal, and, from that point of view, insane. The other had had the capabilities of sainthood, but had opened his soul to the Dweller on the Threshold and was doubly lost.

We went slowly towards the ship. "Good old bird!" he said, as any public schoolboy might have said it. "I expect this'll be the last cruise I ever take in her."

"Or in any ship at all," I answered. "I suppose you've no illusions as to what's in store for you?"

"No, I suppose it's a hanging job," he replied, and I assented, though, as you will learn, both his anticipations were to prove wrong.

Danjuro and I shifted Vargus out of the main cabin into the small one where the tools and spare parts were stored. We didn't want Constance to see him, and he was so well secured that he couldn't possibly do any harm.

Gascoigne we left for the present on one of the seats, and I hurried to fetch the two women, passing Thumbwood, still at his post.

"Everything is arranged," I called out, as I ran through Helzephron's room. "We are going to fly to Plymouth at once in the Pirate Ship."

The maid Wilson shrieked.

"Oh, Sir John, that awful ship! I couldn't go in 'er again, not for my life. Let's go in a taxi, Miss, please 'ave a taxi; I couldn't face the ship."