The Zeppelin Destroyer/Chapter I
CHAPTER I
OVER A 'GASPER'
'To-morrow? To-morrow, my dear Claude! Why, there may not be a to-morrow for you—or for me, when it comes to that—eh?'
'Yes. You're quite right, old son,' was my cheerful reply. 'I'm quite aware that these experiments are confoundedly dangerous—and, besides, there are nasty wind-pockets about just now. I got into a deadly one yesterday afternoon, just across the line at Mill Hill.'
'I saw you,' replied my friend Teddy Ashton, a fellow-aviator and chum at Hendon. 'It gave me a nasty moment. You had engine-trouble at the same time.'
'Yes,' I replied. 'I was up over eight thousand feet when, without a second's warning, I found myself in a pocket spinning over. Phew! If ever I nearly came to grief, it was at that moment!'
'I was on the lawn, having tea with Betty, and we were watching you. I quite expected to see you come plumb down,' Teddy said. 'You righted your old bus splendidly.'
'She'll have to have a new dope, I think,' was my reply, endeavouring to turn the conversation into another channel, for I did not care to discuss my narrow escape from death over the mishap which was certainly my own fault.
I was standing with Teddy in one of the long worksheds of the Barwick Aeroplane Factory at Hendon on that bright morning early in October, 1915. The wind was light, the barometer high, and both of us had been up, as we had been testing our monoplanes.
As he stood leaning against a half-finished machine idly smoking a 'gasper'—a cigarette in the airman jargon—he presented a fine picture of the clean-limbed young Englishman in his wind-proof aviation suit, with leather cap and ear-pieces, while his goggles had been pushed upon his brow.
Both of us, 'as quirks,' had learned to fly at the same school at Brooklands before the outbreak of war, and both of us were enthusiastic airmen.
In introducing myself to the reader of this chronicle of fact I suppose I ought—at the risk of using the first person singular a little too much—to explain that I, Claude Munro, aged twenty-five, am son of Sir Reginald Munro, a man well known as a physician, a prominent prescriber of pills and powders in Wimpole Street.
On coming down from Cambridge I had read for the bar a short time, but finding that my inclination was more in the direction of electricity and mechanics, my indulgent father allowed me to take a course of study at a Wireless School, where I was not long in learning most of the recent discoveries in the field of radiotelegraphy.
One Saturday afternoon, about two years before, my father had taken me in his car to Hendon to see the passenger-flights at two guineas a head, and the excellent Verrier had taken me up with him. Immediately I became 'bitten' with aviation, and instantly decided to adopt it as a profession.
At first the governor—as all governors do—set his face firmly against such a risky business, but at last I persuaded him to plank down the fees, and thereupon I began a course of tuition in flying, with the result that I now owned my own big monoplane upon which I was conducting certain important experiments, in association with Teddy Ashton.
'See that in the paper this morning about the new German Fokker monoplane?' I asked him as we both smoked and rested, our machines standing side by side outside.
'Of course, my dear old Claude,' was his reply. 'It would be one of the jokes of the war if it wasn't such a grim jest. Remember what they said recently in Parliament—that we held the supremacy of the air, and that it is maintained.'
'All humbug,' I declared bluntly. 'Sad though it is to admit it.'
'Of course it is!' cried Teddy very emphatically. 'The fact is that the public haven't yet realized that the joke is against our Government "experts" who now see all their science set at nought by a rule-of-the-thumb Dutchman who, by the simple process of putting a big engine into a copy of an obsolete French monoplane, has given his own country's chief enemy the freedom of the air.'
I agreed with him; and his words, I confess, set me thinking. The papers had been full of the Fokker aeroplane, of its great superiority over anything we possessed, and of it as a real peril to our pilots in Flanders.
'The real fact is,' declared Teddy, in the intervals of a deal of hammering, 'that there's nothing extraordinary about the Fokker except that it is built sensibly for a definite job and does it, while our own "experts" have tangled themselves and the British aircraft industry in a web of pseudo-science and political scheming which has resulted in our lack of the proper machines and engines to fight the Zeppelins.'
'Yes,' I answered with a sigh. 'You're quite right, Teddy. But something must be done. We must find some means by which to fight the enemy's dirigibles. We have a few good aeroplanes, I admit, but, as you say, those are not the product of the Government factories, but have been produced by private firms. Why? Because air-men have been so badly let down by their experts.'
At that moment a shadow was cast before the door of the shed, and a bright musical feminine voice cried:
'Hulloa, Claude! I followed you hard, right from Hertford.'
It was Roseye—'Rosie' of the aerodrome! Roseye Lethmere, daughter of Sir Herbert Lethmere, was my own well-beloved, whom I had taught to fly, and who was at that moment perhaps the most notable airwoman in England.
'Really,' I exclaimed, as I advanced to meet her. 'Why, I hadn't any idea you were here. Nobody told me.'
'Miss Lethmere is always elusive,' Teddy laughed, bowing to her. 'Have you been up on your own bus, or on Eastwell's?'
'On Mr. Eastwell's. My engine did not run well, so Barnes, his mechanic, lent me his machine,' was her reply. Then, turning to me, she said: 'I went up only five minutes after you. I wonder you didn't look back when you banked over the railway line at Wheathampstead. I was just behind you then, though I could not overtake you, as my engine seemed a little sluggish.'
'That doesn't occur very often in Eastwell's bus,' remarked Teddy. 'I flew it last Thursday, and found the 150 Gnome ran perfectly.'
'Well, Claude, you outdistanced me altogether,' declared my well-beloved. 'From Hertford, with the wind behind you, you absolutely shot back. I thought that Mr. Eastwell's machine would outmatch yours, but, though I put every ounce into the engine, I was hopelessly out of it. It hadn't been tuned up well.'
'That's curious, Roseye,' I replied. 'I had no idea that my bus was any match for his! I thought that his Mertonville machine was much faster than mine—or than yours as a matter of fact.'
'To-day mine is out of the running,' she laughed.
To you, my reader, I suppose I ought to describe my own beloved Roseye. Well, I am not good at describing women. As the only son of a blunt, white-haired physician who having made expert study of all the thousand-and-one ailments of the eternal feminine, including that affection called 'nerves'—mostly the result of the drug habit, I had heard, from my youth upwards, many disparaging remarks upon the follies and the unbalance of the mind of the gentler sex.
This, however, did not prevent me from loving Roseye Lethmere, daughter of Sir Herbert, who had come into my life quite unexpectedly a year ago.
As she stood there chatting with us, attired in her airwoman's clothes, her appearance was certainly workwomanlike. She was dressed in a wool-lined leather coat, and overall trousers, with a knitted Balaclava helmet, and over that again a leather skull-cap, the whole tied down tightly beneath the chin. A huge khaki woollen muffler was around her throat, while a pair of unsightly goggles hanging around her neck completed the picture. She had followed my advice, I noted, and tied her muffler very securely around her chin.
How very different she looked at that moment to when I took her—as I so frequently did—to a play, and afterwards to supper at the Carlton, the Savoy, or Ciro's. She was a girl who, on the outbreak of war, had decided to play her part in the national crisis, and she certainly had done so.
Three times had she flown across the Channel with me, and three times had we returned in safety to Hendon.
Indeed, only a week before, she had flown by herself on a British-built Duperdussin with 100 horse-power Anzani engines from Brooklands across to France, descending a mile outside Abbeville. She had had lunch at the old Tête de Bœuf hotel in that town, and returned, landing safely at Hendon—a feat that no woman had ever before accomplished.
Roseye Lethmere certainly possessed a character that was all her own.
In her ordinary costume, as a London girl, she was inexpressibly dainty and extremely well dressed. Her curiously soft blue eyes, almost child-like in their purity of expression, were admired everywhere. Whenever, however, her picture appeared in the papers it was always in her flying costume.
Most women, when they take up any outdoor exercise, be it hunting, golfing, strenuous tennis, or sport of any kind, usually acquire a certain indescribable hardness of feature, a sign by which, when they sit in the stalls of a theatre, the mere man at once knows them.
But the beauty of Miss Rosie—as she was known at Hendon—in spite of her many exciting and perilous exploits in the air, was still soft and sweet, as it should be with any fresh healthy girl of twenty-two.
The workmen started hammering again, fitting a new propeller to a machine in course of hurried completion for the front, so we all three went outside, where our own machines stood close together.
Theed, my mechanic—who had been the governor's chauffeur before I took up flying—was busily testing my engine, and I could hear it missing a little.
'Hulloa!' I cried, looking up at a big monoplane at that moment passing over us. 'Why, Eastwell's up in Thorold's new bus!'
'Yes,' answered Roseye. 'I passed quite close to him behind St Albans.'
The October morning was bright and sunny, with a blue, cloudless sky, just the morning for trial flights and stunts, and, in consequence, two pupils were out on the aerodrome with their instructors, preparing for their lesson.
Roseye noticed this, and smiled across at me. She remembered, probably, how carefully I used to strap her into the seat, and how, more than once, she had gasped when we made a nose dive, or volplaned for an undesired landing. Yet, even in those days, she had betrayed no fear in the air for, apparently, she reposed entire faith in my judgment and my capabilities at the joy-stick.
We stood watching Eastwell as he banked first on one side, then on the other, until at last he made a graceful tour of the aerodrome and, swooping down suddenly, landed quite close to us.
'Morning!' he cried cheerily, as he slowly unstrapped himself and climbed out of his seat. 'Morning, Miss Lethmere,' he added, saluting. 'Well, how does my bus go? You had a little engine trouble, hadn't you?'
'Yes. I couldn't overtake Mr. Munro,' she replied, laughing. 'Were you watching me?'
'Yes. I've just come back from Cambridge. I left here this morning as soon as it was light.'
Eastwell, in his aviator's leather jacket, fur helmet and goggles, presented a tall, gaunt, rather uncouth figure. Yet, in his ordinary clothes, he was something of a dandy, with light brown hair, a carefully-trained moustache, and a pair of shrewd grey eyes.
Roseye had been acquainted with him for over two years, and it was she who had first introduced us.
They had met at Wiesbaden, where her father, Sir Herbert, had been taking his annual 'cure.' Eastwell had been at the Kaiserhof Hotel where they had also been staying and, being a young Englishman of means and leisure, an acquaintanceship had sprung up between them.
Lionel Eastwell was a great lover of music, and for that reason had been at Wiesbaden, where, in the Kursaal, the programme in the pre-war days was always excellent.
On their return to London Eastwell called at Cadogan Gardens, and Sir Herbert had then ascertained that the pleasant young man—who for two years had taken such a great interest in aviation—was possessed of a very comfortable income, was a member of the aero club, and lived in a very snug set of chambers half-way up Albemale Street.
At the Royal Automobile Club he was also a well-known figure in the select circle of rather go-ahead airmen who made that institution their nightly rendezvous.
As a result of hearing Lionel Eastwell speak of the pleasures and exhilration of the air, and after watching his flights at Hendon, Roseye had at last determined to seek the new sensation of aerial navigation, and in taking her lessons she and I had met.
Airmen and airwomen form a very select coterie practically unknown to the world outside the aerodrome. They fly; they risk their lives; they make their daily experiments with their new engines, new wings, new airscrews, new strainers, new magnetos, and all sorts of newly-invented etceteras, all the time risking their lives in a bad nose dive, or with a buckled wing.
Our quartette, all of us enthusiasts, and all holding our own views regarding the British supremacy of aerial navigation in the war, stood chatting for ten minutes, or more, until turning to Roseye, I said:
'Well, I'm going over to see what Theed is up to.'
Then, together, we left Eastwell to go back to his own machine.
Yet, in that second, a strange thing occurred.
Perhaps I may have been unduly suspicious—if so, I regret it and offer apology—but I felt certain somehow that I saw in Roseye's face a look of displeasure that I should have taken her from the man whose sudden appearance had caused her countenance to brighten.
And, at the same time, as I glanced surreptitiously at Lionel Eastwell, while in the act of offering him a 'gasper' from my case, I most certainly saw a strange and distinctly sinister expression—one that caused me through the next hour to reflect very deeply, and ponder over its cause.