As I went, the warmth and colour, the riot of Nature all round, seemed as unreal as a dream. It brought no ease or healing to my soul. Deep, deep down, though controlled and prisoned by the will, an unending agony was lying. I'm not going to insist upon this, or often obtrude it in my story. But you must not think that, until the very end, I knew a moment's peace. My dear love and her awful fate were ever before me, and all the sights and sounds of Nature in this western paradise breathed nothing but her name.
… At last the habitations of man grew fewer. Gardens gave place to sloping fields enclosed by "hedges" of stone, and at length a long, level sky-line above and in front showed me that the moors were close.
I reached the top at last, and took in a great breath of the sweetest, most exhilarating air that I have ever known. The unfenced road stretched away ahead of me for miles, a long, white ribbon laid upon the heath and yellow gorse. I was on a vast plateau of gold and brown and purple. To the left great hills crowned with rock granite tors cut into the sky, and to the right was the jagged summit of Carne Zerran, three miles away as the crow flies. At its foot, on the edge of mighty cliffs that fell away a sheer three hundred feet to the ocean, I knew lay the little village that I sought.
I looked at my map for a moment, took out my pocket compass, and then plunged into the heather. Already I had a good idea of the lie of the country – it is an instinct with your flying man – and I realized that an accurate knowledge of it would prove invaluable in the task before me.
I met no living soul during that first walk over the moor. Larks were singing high above in the blue; a pair of the rare Cornish choughs, with their scarlet bills, flew screeching from the summit of a lichen-covered rock as big as a house; but until I got to Carne Zerran, and looked down to the narrow strip of pasture lands and cornfields that lie along the cliffs, there was no sign of human habitation.
Far down below I saw a church tower and a little cluster of grey houses. Beyond was the coast-line, with a creamy froth of breakers at the foot of the jagged cliffs, and the Atlantic, "Mother of Oceans," beyond. There was no land between me and New York! I suppose that in all the glory of sun and colour, superb spaces of sea and sky, I stood alone, and looked upon a scene as fair as any on this earth. But as I focussed my binoculars, and swept the coast, my only thought was that here – if anywhere at all – was the heart of the mystery I had come to solve.
Well! It was a fitting setting, in its lonely vastness. Anything might happen here among these Druid-haunted hills. A crafty fiend, a man with a great intellect and Satan in his soul, might well find this his proper theatre!
About a mile from the village, and just below me, I saw the cliffs bent inwards between two projecting headlands. This must be the Zerran Cove of the map, and – yes, seemingly upon the very edge of the precipice was a long, grey building, which could be none other than "The Miners' Arms."
I began the descent, leaping from rock to rock, where the adders lay basking in the sun. After a few hundred yards, I struck a gorge, through which a stream fell towards the sea. Here I found a well-defined path, which looped downwards to the ruins of a deserted tin-mine. I saw, as I passed it, the windowless engine-house, and the gaunt timbers of the winding gear still in place. The gibbet-like erection and the dumps of useless stuff covered with rank dock leaves made a forlorn and ugly picture in that narrow gorge where the sun hardly penetrated.
I passed it soon, and came out upon the main coach road from St. Ives to Land's End, and, crossing this, found a side lane, which took me direct to the remote hostelry I had seen from the heights above.
It was a large place, covered with ivy, and no doubt did a considerable trade eighty years before, when the innumerable tin-mines on the moor were all at work. Now it seemed forgotten by the world, and all asleep in the sun. "An ideal base for our operations!" I thought, as I strode through an open door into a long, low room, with a stone floor and heavily timbered roof.
It was cool, and so dark after the blazing sunshine that, for a moment, I could see nothing, though I heard a sound of stertorous breathing. When my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I saw that there was a man asleep by the little counter. He sat on a bench which ran along the wall, and his head was buried in his arms, which rested on a beer-stained table. By his side stood a bottle half full of whisky.
Supposing him to be the landlord – and no engaging figure at that – I touched him on the shoulder. It was like springing a trap! Instantly he snatched away his arms and sat up. For a second sleep held him. Then it passed away like a breath on glass, and if ever I saw fear on a man's face I saw it then.
He was dressed in a blue jersey and an alpaca coat, oil-stained and dirty. His hands were the hands of a mechanic, with grimy nails. But it was his face that held me. It was sleek and cunning. There was a curious mixture of refinement and wickedness. He seemed like a naturally sensitive man, whom circumstances, indulgence, or some special temptation, had led very deeply astray.
I noted all this while he stared at me with a drooping jaw and bloodshot eyes. His skin had turned dead-white, like the belly of a fish, and whatever he was thinking I felt that I would not have that man's conscience for a million.
"I want you," I said – they were the first words that came.
He made an inarticulate noise.
"You are the landlord, aren't you?"
At that he gave a long breath and his rigidity relaxed. He snatched at the whisky bottle, poured some into a glass and drank it off neat.
"Lord, how you startled me!" he said glibly. "I was far away – dreaming – and you frightened me out of my life!"
It was my turn to be amazed, though I showed nothing. The fellow spoke with a cultivated voice and accent which were impossible to mistake. He was not what I had thought him.
"I am very sorry," I said; "you must please excuse me. But I naturally thought …"
"Of course you did!" he said, and a civil but ugly smile came on his clever, unpleasant face. "As a matter of fact, Trewhella, the landlord, has just gone to the village for a few minutes. He asked me to keep house for him. He's almost due back now."
Thanking him urbanely, I sat down, my mind working very quickly. He offered me some whisky, and though it was the last thing I wanted, I accepted after a show of reluctance. He was watching me out of the corners of his eyes the whole time.
"Can you tell me," I said, with great openness of manner, "if I can get rooms here, or in Zerran village?"
He became alert at once. "Rooms, to stay in, do you mean?"
"Yes. I am an Oxford tutor, and I have a young foreign gentleman in my charge whom I am coaching. I want a quiet place for three or four weeks, and this seems ideal for the purpose."
His face cleared. "I should imagine so," he replied. "I know Trewhella does let sometimes."
"You live here?" I remarked, with polite indifference.
"I have been here for a year," he answered. "I am, as a matter of fact, a mining engineer – hence these clothes! I belong to a little private syndicate of friends who are opening up a disused tin-mine, on the moor not far away. Ah, here is the landlord! Trewhella, this gentleman wishes to speak to you." And then to me: "Good-morning, sir. No doubt, if you come here, I and my friends will see something of you. We are mostly public-school and University men ourselves, and we often look in here of an evening after our day's work."
He waved his hand and went out into the sunshine.
CHAPTER X SIR JOHN CUSTANCE COMES UPON THE HOUSE OF HELZEPHRON
Mr. Trewhella was an elderly Cornishman, with welcoming manners, the native shrewdness of his race, but without guile. We got on famously from the word "go." He had three bedrooms and a large sitting-room to let. His wife, who had driven into St. Ives, was, he asserted, a good cook. As for Thumbwood, he could wait on us and live with the landlord and his wife. Finally, there was an empty barn which would hold our car very comfortably.
"And what would you be thinking of paying, zur?" asked Mr. Trewhella.
"I shall leave that to you. I may tell you that the gentleman I am preparing for his Oxford examination is wealthy. He is a Japanese nobleman, and as long as you make us comfortable …"
This had the desired effect. The landlord became expansive in his slow way, and showed me all over the premises of his quaint and rambling dwelling. It was a wild and fantastic spot, an ancient haunt of smugglers and wreckers, I learnt. The back-yard opened straight into the short pneumatic turf above the cliffs, the brink of which was not more than two hundred yards away. Here the stream, which flowed past the inn, descended in a series of miniature cataracts to a tiny cove of deep-green water, almost enclosed by two towering precipices, crowned with jagged spires and pinnacles of rock. There was a little scimitar of golden sand far down at the water's edge, and the scene was one of savage grandeur that I have rarely known surpassed in all my travels.
As he stood on the height and looked down, I saw something which seemed strangely out of place. A line of street rails, with wooden rollers at intervals between them, fell at a dizzy angle from a spot some ten yards away on the turf, ending abruptly on the level, and in front of a smallish hut of corrugated iron.
"What is the rail for?" I asked. "Surely you don't haul the boats" – there were two of them lying on the beach – "right up to the top of the cliff! It must be two hundred and fifty feet!"
"Nigher three hundred, zur. No. Them rails belong to bring up machinery and stores for Tregeraint Mine by Carne Zerran. They do come by sea in a lil' steamboat. 'Tes more convenient so. There be a lil' oil engine in that shed to haul 'em up in trucks. I let the land, for 'tes all mine down-along, and they do pay me ten pound a year."
We strolled back to the house, Mr. Trewhella proposing a Cornish pasty and beer for lunch.
"Now you mention it, that gentleman who was keeping house for you just now said that he was a mining engineer."
The landlord's big, weather-beaten face wrinkled like a stained window. He began to heave and chuckle, finally exploding in a bellow of laughter.
"Mr. Vargus!" he spluttered, "Mr. Vargus! He thinks he be a mining engineer, but a knows no more about it than my pig! He be a clever gentleman, sure 'nuf. He do have some braäve knowledge to machinery, I'll allow. But mining, and tin-mining!"
Mr. Trewhella could find no further words to express his contempt for the mining attainments of my friend with the refined and evil face.
"You see," the landlord continued, as we ate our pasties, "I'm an old mine-captain myself, bred and born to it. 'Tedn't likely as I could be deceived. When I heered that a gentleman had come into Tregeraint Manor and the old mine, and proposed to work it, I laughed, I did. I know every inch of Wheal Tregeraint, and fifty years ago it was a fine property. To-day them amatoors up along'll never get enough tin out to oxidize, let alone smelt."
"Who are they, then, Mr. Trewhella?"
"That's what lots of folk asked when they first come here in twos and threes. They're gentlemen, zur, like yourself, that's what they are. Never was such a thing known in these parts, though folk are used to 'em now. There's Mr. Helzephron, a Cornishman himself, and should know better, Mr. Vargus, you seed, Mr. Gascoigne, a mad young devil if you like, and near a dozen more. They all live together in the greät house on the cliff and work the mine theyselves. Never no one else allowed. They cooks and does for themselves, just as if they was in a mining camp in California."
"No women, servants or anything?"
"Never an apron. My missus belong to say they lives like Popish monks, which she see when travelling with a lady among the Eyetalians. 'Not so, my tender dear,' says I. 'I never heered that Popish monks spent most of their evenings in the village inn with a bottle of Scotch whisky afore each man, and precious little left by closing time!'"
"A hard-drinking lot then?"
"Wonderful at their liquor. I tell you, zur, it's good for me! Now I've got used to them and their funny ways, I wish they'd stay for ever. Speaking from a strictly business point of view, that is. But soon they'll find out they've lost their money and they'll jack it up. 'Tes not in reason as they can go on, though they do seem so full of hope and certainty, as you mind to up! But I know."
He was obviously pleased with my interest in his talk. I wondered what he would have said if he had known who I was and why I was there? Under a calm exterior, a professor munching potato pasty! I was filled with a furious excitement. The man's gossip was worth a sovereign a word. Here was, moment by moment, what looked like complete confirmation of our suspicions. And yet, even as I realized this, I realized also how infernally clever the scheme was. Without the clue which Danjuro and myself alone possessed, there was nothing in the world to connect Helzephron and Tregeraint with the business that was ruffling the calm of two continents.
It was not my game to ask more direct questions than I could help. It was better to let the racy stream flow on, with a word of comment now and then. I ventured a calculated one now.
"Fools and their money are soon parted," said I.
"You may say that, zur! And they've poured out money like water. Electric light, oal sorts o' cases full of new-fangled machinery, and that mystery made about the silly old mine you'd think it was a seam of diamonds."
"It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, Mr. Trewhella!" I rose from the table as I spoke. "But what you say about a dozen or more gentlemen drinking nearly a bottle of whisky each rather surprises me. I'm no foe to honest enjoyment, but …"
I put on a slight primness of manner, as became the character I sustained.
The landlord nodded vigorously. "'Tes so!" he agreed, "and most onusual. They be gentlefolk, sure 'nuff, but shall I tell 'ee what I think?"
"What's that?"
"I think as most of 'em's dropped out, so to speak. I shouldn't be frightened if as their families didn't have anything to say to 'em, and they've nowhere much else to go. Mr. Helzephron knows what he's about, he do. I judge by a kind o' reckless way they have, 'specially the younger gentlemen. They don't seem to mind about ordinary things same as most. Well, I suppose this fool tin-mining keeps 'em out of mischief."
I wondered.
When I set out upon the return journey I took another route. I found from the landlord that by skirting the coast for a mile in the direction of St. Ives I could come upon a moorland path that would take me to the little railway-station of St. Erth. I could then catch a train for Penzance. My ostensible reason was to vary my walk, my real one that by this change of plan I should pass by and have a view of Tregeraint Mine and the Manor House.
"Not that you'll see much or get close," said Mr. Trewhella.
"How is that?" I asked.
"I told you that Mr. Helzephron" – apparently the hawk-faced man had dropped his military title in Cornwall – "do make a mystery of his peddling mine. He goes further than that. The mine buildings and the house are surrounded by two fences of barbed-wire and the Manor by a high wall. 'Trespassers,' notice boards belong to say, 'will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law'!"
"Well, I shan't attempt to trespass, Mr. Trewhella!"
The landlord laughed. "Mine prospectin's not in the way of a larned gentleman like yourself. Maybe it's as well. Mr. Helzephron has got two dogs he turns out at night, and terrible ugly customers they be. Mr. Vargus do tell me that they be Tibetan mastiffs, which am the largest dogs in the world. They look like a sour-faced Newfoundland with heavy ears, only bigger."
I tramped away from "The Miners' Arms." Although I recognized the fact that we were only at the fringe of discovery, my mind was made up. Thick darkness surrounded me, but I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Major Helzephron, and no other, was the man for whom the whole world was hunting.
And as I thought of him and the crew of lost and reckless men who did his will, the fair landscape seemed to darken, the sweet airs to be tainted…
The path I traversed was the coastguard's path, as I could see by the white-washed boulders to serve as a guide by night. It was never more than two or three yards away from the brink of the savage precipices that fell for two hundred and fifty feet sheer to the water. The ocean was on my left; on the right the great hill, known as Carne Zerran, towered up, and the edge of the high moors cut the sky. On that side it was as though one were walking at the bottom of a cup.
After about half a mile of the path, it suddenly left the cliff edge, and turned inland. For several hundred yards the brink was guarded by a semicircle of barbed-wire fence, which made it impossible to approach. A notice board informed the wayfarer that here, owing to old mining operations, the cliff was extremely dangerous.
It looked so, indeed. The edge was broken and irregular. I saw that it ran out in a curious headland for a considerable way, a mere wall of rock with a razor-back path on the top, which curved round again and ran parallel to the cliff on which I was, making a mighty chasm from which rose the cries of innumerable sea-birds. There was a narrow mouth seawards, and another headland jutted out to make a cove like the one at the inn, though that, of course, had no winding cañon at the end.
I crept up to the brink, where the wire fence began, and, lying down, with one arm round the first post, peered over.
It was a terrible place. The rock overhung so for hundreds of yards that I could not see the bottom. But the other side of the cañon was clear to view, a great wall of black rock, where sea-hawks nested, and inaccessible to the boldest climber. To the right the cove seemed to be of fair size from horn to horn, but it was no tranquil spot like the one at the back of the inn. Even on a calm day like the present, the Atlantic ground swell poured in with tremendous force, and was broken with ferocious whirlpools and spray-fountains by toothed rock-ledges a foot or two below the surface. The smallest boat could not have entered Tregeraint Cove and lived there for a moment.
For some reason or other the place affected me most unpleasantly, and it was with a little shudder that I retreated and skirted the fence which guarded the dangerous part of the cliff. When I had passed by this, the path turned at right angles and went inland.
As I turned I saw, perhaps a furlong away, the house of Helzephron.
It lay upon the eastern slope of Carne Zerran, an ancient, grim-looking house of granite, long, low, and of considerable size. A few stunted trees grew round about, and a fairly extensive domain of gardens, as I supposed, surrounded by a high wall. Using my prism glasses, I could see that this wall was topped by iron spikes. Of course, I was considerably below Tregeraint as on the sloping hill-side, and it lay quite open to view. Higher up, and beyond the house, was the derrick, engine-house and sheds of the mine, with here and there dumps of débris and various sheds.
Although the wire fences, which I soon made out, went round the whole property, it lay quite open to the view. And when I had passed it, and climbed to the table-land of the moor beyond, I saw that it would be even more open to the eyes – spread out like a map, in short.
One thing was already certain. There was nothing whatever in the nature of a hangar, no building that could possibly shelter even an ordinary four or five seater biplane, to say nothing of an air cruiser.
I was not disappointed, because I had hardly expected to meet with anything of the kind. The pirate ship, you will remember, was – like all the big long-distance airships – a cross between what used to be known in the old days as the "seaplane" and the "flying-boat." True, some of our war aeroplanes of quite large size were fitted with floats that could be raised, and wheels for land work in addition.
This might be the case with the pirate. But it was not to be thought of for a moment that a man of Helzephron's intelligence would dare to house his extraordinary ship where any one of my police could have investigated simply by showing his badge of office. The land policeman and the coastguards of the whole English coastline had already reported on every hangar and aerodrome in the kingdom. If Helzephron was the man I believed him, I was well aware that we were only at the beginning of the duel.
I mounted up past the wire fences and the mine. I did not dare to use my glasses in passing, for I saw in the distance one or two figures of men strolling about by the engine-house and derrick. But when I was at last among the heather at the top, I lay down, and took a long survey of the buildings, drawing a careful map in my pocket-book, which might prove of great use later on.
I waited half an hour at the little station of St. Erth, and then caught a train to Penzance, arriving at the hotel about tea-time. As I came into the lounge, after a wash and brush up, I saw Danjuro sitting in one corner. He had a pile of newspapers round him, and I saw that the London journals had arrived.
He handed me one of them as I sat down. A paragraph among the police news was marked in pencil.
Major Helzephron had been taken to Vine Street Police Station, and locked up for the night, charged with an aggravated assault on Mr. Wag Ashton at the Mille Colonnes Restaurant, on the evidence of M. Nicholas and the head-waiter.
A medical man had attended the Court on behalf of the prosecutor, to say that Mr. Ashton was too unwell to appear until the morrow. Upon his promising to attend the Court the next day, Major Helzephron was admitted to bail.
"That gives us nearly two clear days," said Danjuro. "When Ashton does appear, he will not press the case, and will own that he gave provocation; Helzephron will be fined, perhaps let off. I see that Honourable Ashton battered him a good deal! And now, your news, Sir John, if you please."
CHAPTER XI
"THE AIR WOLVES ARE HUNTING TO-NIGHT!"
He made no comment, and did not interrupt me until I had completely finished, nor did his inscrutable face give any indication of what he thought.
"My own investigations," he said, "can be told in a few words. The small steamship which brings supplies to the cove behind the inn is the private property of Helzephron, and she is a great deal faster and much better engined than most people are aware. She lies at the little port of Hayle, which is on the main line from Plymouth to Penzance, in St. Ives Bay. At certain times large quantities of petrol arrive in separate consignments from different parts of the country. The Sea Gull is loaded to her capacity, and then makes the short voyage to Zerran Cove."
"That's the last link!" I said. "No one could doubt now!"
"There is another, still more interesting fact. Hayle was once a place of much greater importance than it is at present. There were large foundries and engineering works there in the past. These have been abandoned, owing to the silting up of the harbour, for many years, as only vessels of small draught can enter easily to-day. But the foundry buildings remain. From time to time a portion of them has been let for this or that small enterprise. Three years ago Helzephron rented a part of the works and installed machinery. He had about twenty labourers, but the real work, whatever it was, took place in a large experimental shed, to which no one was admitted but he and his friends. They were already at Zerran, and used to drive over in motors every day. It was locally known that some new machinery for Wheal Tregeraint was being made. Many shippings took place from Hayle to Zerran Cove."
"But the ship, the Pirate Ship itself?"
"Who can tell? We go step by step in the dark. Many theories have crossed my mind. I have dismissed them all. I want to approach this, the most sinister problem of all, with a blank mind. We can do nothing till we are on the spot. Our preliminary work is over, but the real labour begins."
