Whatever Holmes' true feelings, and his skin was rather grey, he could not suppress his driving curiosity, his need to know all that was relevant. However, he had to shout at the commodore to be heard above the roar of the warming-up motors.
"The Admiralty ordered it to be outfitted for your use," the commodore said. His expression told us that he thought that we must be very special people indeed if this aeroplane was equipped just for us.
"It's the prototype model of the Handley Page 0/100," he shouted. "The first of the 'bloody paralyser of an aeroplane' the Admiralty ordered for the bombing of Germany. It has two 250-horsepower Rolls-Royce Eagle II motors, as you see. It has an enclosed crew cabin. The engine nacelles and the front part of the fuselage were armour-plated, but the armour has been removed to give the craft more speed."
"What?" Holmes yelled. "Removed?"
"Yes," the commodore said. "It shouldn't make any difference to you. You'll be in the cabin, and it was never armour-plated."
Holmes and I exchanged glances. The commodore continued, "Extra petrol tanks have been installed to give the craft extended range. These will be just forward of the cabin . . ."
"And if we crash?" Holmes said.
"Poof!" the commodore said, smiling. "No pain, my dear sir. If the smash doesn't kill you, the flaming petrol sears the lungs and causes instantaneous death. The only difficulty is in identifying the corpse. Charred, you know."
We climbed up a short flight of wooden mobile steps and stepped into the cabin. The commodore closed the door, thus somewhat muting the roar. He pointed out the bunks that had been installed for our convenience and the W.C. This contained a small washbowl with a gravity-feed water tank and several thundermugs bolted to the deck.*
[*The good doctor probably intended to delete the references to sanitation in the final version of this adventure. At least, he always had been reticent to a Victorian degree in such references in all his previous chronicles. However, this was written in 1932, and Watson may have thought that the spirit of the times gave him more latitude in expression. Editor.]
"The prototype can carry a four-man crew," the commodore said. "There is, as you have observed, a cockpit for the nose gunner, with the pilot in a cockpit directly behind him. There is a cockpit near the rear for another machine gunner, and there is a trap-door through which a machine gun may be pointed to cover the rear area under the plane. You are standing on 'the trap-door."
Holmes and I moved away, though not, I trust, with unseemly haste.
"We estimate that with its present load the craft can fly at approximately 85 miles per hour. Under ideal conditions, of course. We have decided to eliminate the normal armament of machine guns in order to lighten the load. In fact, to this end, all of the crew except, the pilot and co-pilot are eliminated. The pilot, I believe, is bringing his personal arms: a dagger, several pistols, a carbine, and his specially mounted Spandau machine gun, a trophy, by the way, taken from a Fokker E-l which Captain Wentworth downed when he dropped an ash-tray on the pilot's head. Wentworth has also brought in several cases of hand grenades and a case of Scotch whisky."
The door, or port, or whatever they call a door in the Royal Naval Air Service, opened, and a young man of medium height, but with very broad shoulders and a narrow waist, entered. He wore the uniform of the R.N.A.S. He was a handsome young man with eyes as steely grey and as magnetic as Holmes'. There was also something strange about them. If I had known how strange, I would have stepped off that plane at that very second. Holmes would have preceded me.
He shook hands with us and spoke a few words. I was astonished to hear a flat mid-western American accent. When Wentworth bad disappeared on some errand toward the stern, Holmes asked the commodore, "Why wasn't a British pilot assigned to us? No doubt this Yank volunteer is quite capable, but really . . . "
"There is only one pilot who can match Wentworth's aerial genius. He is an American in the service of the Tsar. The Russians know him as Kentov, though that is not his real name. They refer to him with the honorific of Chorniy Oryol, the French call him l'Aigle Noir and the Germans are offering a hundred thousand marks for Der Schwarz Adler, dead or alive."
"Is he a Negro?" I said.
"No, the adjective refers to his sinister reputation," replied the commodore. "Kentov will take you on from Marseilles. Your mission is so important that we borrowed him from the Russians. Wentworth is being used only for the comparatively short haul since he is scheduled to carry out another mission soon. If you should crash, and survive, he would be able to guide you through enemy territory better than anyone we know of, excluding Kentov. Wentworth is an unparalleled master of disguise . . . "
"Really?" Holmes said, drawing himself up and frostily regarding the officer.
Aware that he had made a gaffe, the commodore changed the subject. He showed us how to don the bulky parachutes, which were to be kept stored under a bunk.
"What happened to young Drummond? I asked him. "Lord Greystoke's adopted son? Wasn't he supposed to be our pilot?"
"Oh, he's in hospital," he said, smiling. "Nothing serious. Several broken ribs and clavicle, a liver that may be ruptured, a concussion and possible fracture of the skull. The landing gear of his craft collapsed as he was making a deadstick landing, and he slid into a brick wall. He sends his regards."
Captain Wentworth suddenly reappeared. Muttering to himself, he looked under our blankets and sheets and then under the bunks. Holmes said, "What is it, captain?"
Wentworth straightened up and looked at us with those strange grey eyes. "Thought I heard bats," he said. "Wings fluttering. Giant bats. But no sign of them."
He left the cabin then, heading down a narrow tunnel which had been specially installed so that the pilot could get into the cockpit without having to go outside the craft. His co-pilot, a Lieutenant Nelson, had been warming the motors. The commodore left a minute later after wishing us luck. He looked as if he thought we'd need it.
Presently, Wentworth phoned in to us and told us to lie down in the bunks or grab hold of something solid. We were getting ready to take off. We got into the bunks, and I stared at the ceiling while the plane slowly taxied to the starting point, the motors were "revved" up, and then it began to bump along the meadow. Within a short time its tail had lifted and we were suddenly aloft. Neither Holmes nor I could endure just lying there any more. We had to get up and look through the window in the door. The sight of the earth dropping away in the dusk, of houses, cows, horses and waggons, and brooks and then the Thames itself dwindling, dwindling caused us to be both uneasy and exhilarated.
Holmes was still grey, but I am certain that it was not fear of altitude that affected him. It was being completely dependent upon someone else, being not in control of the situation. On the ground Holmes was his own master. Here his life and limb were in the hands of two strangers, one of whom had already impressed us as being very strange. It also became obvious only too soon that Holmes, no matter how steely his nerves and how calm his digestion on earth, was subject to airsickness.
The plane flew on and on, crossing the channel in the dark, crossing the westerly and then the southwestern part of France. We landed on a strip lighted with flames. Holmes. wanted to get out and stretch his legs but Wentworth forbade that.
"Who knows what's prowling around here, waiting to identify you and then to crouch and leap, destroying utterly?" he said.
"After he had gone back to the cockpit, I said, "Holmes, don’t you think he puts the possibility of spies in somewhat strange language? And didn't you smell Scotch on his breath? Should a pilot drink while flying?"
"Frankly," Holmes said, "I'm too sick to care," and he lay down outside the door to the W.C.
Midnight came with the great plane boring through the dark moonless atmosphere. Lt. Nelson crawled into his bunk with the cheery comment that we would be landing at a drome outside Marseilles by dawn. Holmes groaned. I bade the fellow, who seemed quite a decent sort, good-night. Presently I fell asleep, b
ut I awoke some time later with a start. As an old veteran of Holmes' campaigns, however, I knew better than to reveal my awakened state. While I rolled over to one side as if I were doing it in my sleep, I watched through narrowed eyes.
A sound, or a vibration, or perhaps it was an old veteran's sixth sense, had awakened me.
Across the aisle, illumined by the single bulb overhead, stood Lt. Nelson. His handsome youthful face bore an expression which the circumstances certainly did not seem to call for. He looked' so malignant that my heart began thumping and perspiration poured out from me despite the cold outside the blankets. In his hand was a revolver, and when he lifted it my heart almost stopped. But he did not turn toward us. Instead he started toward the front end, toward the narrow tunnel leading to the pilot's cockpit.
Since his back was to me, I leaned over the edge of the bunk and reached down to get hold of Holmes. I had no need to warn him. Whatever his physical condition, he was still the same alert fox — an old fox, it is true, but still a fox. His hand reached up and touched mine, and within a few seconds he was out of the bunk and on his feet. In his one hand he held his trusty Webley, which he raised to point at Nelson's back, crying out to halt at the same time.
I do not know if he heard Holmes above the roar of the motors. If he did, he did not have time to consider it. There was a report, almost inaudible in the din, and Nelson fell back and slid a few feet along the floor backward. Blood gushed from his forehead.
The dim light fell on the face of Captain Wentworth, whose eyes seemed to blaze, though I am certain that was an optical illusion. The face was momentarily twisted, and then it smoothed out, and he stepped out into the light. I got down from the bunk and with Holmes approached him. Close to him, I could smell the heavy, though fragrant, odour of excellent Scotch on his breath.
Wentworth looked at the revolver in Holmes' hand, smiled, and said, "So — you are not overrated, Mr. Holmes! But I was waiting for him, I expected him to sneak in upon me while I should be concentrating on the instrument board. He thought he'd blow my a*s off!"
"He is, of course, a German spy," Holmes said. "But how did you determine that he was?"
"I suspect everybody," Wentworth replied.
"I kept my eye on him, and when I saw him talking over the wireless, I listened in. It was too noisy to hear clearly, but he was talking in German. I caught several words, schwanz and schweinhund. Undoubtedly, he was informing the Imperial German Military Aviation Service of our location. If he didn't kill me, then we would be shot down. The Huns must be on their way to intercept us now."
This was alarming enough, but both Holmes and I were struck at the same time with a far more disturbing thought. Holmes as usual, was more quick in his reactions. He screamed, "Who's flying the plane?"
Wentworth smiled lazily and said, "Nobody. Don't worry. The controls are connected to a little device I invented last month. As long as the air is smooth, the plane will fly on an even keel all by itself."
He stiffened suddenly, cocked his head to one side, and said, "Do you hear it?"
"Great Scott, man!" I cried. "How could we hear anything above the infernal racket of those motors?"
"Cockroaches!" Wentworth bellowed. "Giant flying cockroaches! That evil scientist has released another horror upon the world!"
He whirled, and he was gone into the blackness of the tunnel.
Holmes and I stared at each other. Then Holmes said, "We are at the mercy of a madman, Watson. And there is nothing we can do until we have landed."
"We could parachute out," I said.
"I would prefer not to," Holmes said stiffly.
"Besides, it somehow doesn't seem cricket. The pilots have no parachutes, you know. These two were provided only because we are civilians."
"I wasn't planning on asking Wentworth to ride down with me," I mumbled, somewhat ashamed of myself for saying this.
Holmes didn't hear me; once again his stomach was trying to reject contents that did not exist.
3
Shortly after dawn, the German planes struck. These, as I was told later, were Fokker E-III's, single-seater monoplanes equipped with two Spandau machine guns. These were synchronized with the propellors to shoot bullets through the empty spaces between the whirling of the propellor blades.
Holmes was sitting on the floor, holding his head and groaning, and I was commiserating with him, though getting weary of his complaints, when the telephone bell rang. I removed the receiver from the box attached to the wall, or bulkhead, or whatever they call it. Wentworth's voice bellowed, "Put on the parachutes and hang on to something tight! Twelve ****ing Fokkers, a whole staffel, coming in at eleven o'clock!"
I misunderstood him. I said, "Yes, but what type of plane are they?"
"Fokkers!" he cried, adding, "No, no! My eyes played tricks on me. They're giant flying cockroaches! Each one is being ridden by a Prussian officer, helmeted and goggled and armed with a boarding cutlass!"
"What did you say?" I screamed into the phone, but it had been disconnected.
I told Holmes what Wentworth had said, and he forgot about being airsick, though he looked no better than before. We staggered out to the door and looked through its window.
The night was now brighter than day, the result of flares thrown out from the attacking aeroplanes. Their pilots intended to use the light to line up the sights of their machine guns on our helpless craft. Then, as if that were not bad enough, shells began exploding, some so near that our aeroplane shuddered and rocked under the impact of the blasts. Giant searchlights began playing about, some of them illuminating monoplanes with black crosses on their fuselages.
"Archy!" I exclaimed. "The French anti-aircraft guns are firing at the Huns! The fools! They could hit us just as well!"
Something flashed by. We lost sight of it, but a moment later we saw a fighter diving down toward us through the glare of the flares and the searchlights, ignoring the bursting shells around it. Two tiny red eyes flickered behind the propellor, but it was not until holes were suddenly punched in the fabric only a few feet from us that we realised that those were the muzzles of the machine guns. We dropped to the floor while the great plane rolled and dipped and rose and dropped and we were shot this way and that across the floor and against the bulkheads.
"We're doomed!" I cried to Holmes. "Get the parachutes on! He can't shoot back at the planes, and our plane is too slow and clumsy to get away!"
How wrong I was. And what a demon that madman was. He did things with that big lumbering aeroplane that I wouldn't have believed possible. Several times we were upside down and we only kept from being smashed, like mice shaken in a tin, by hanging on desperately to the bunkposts.
Once, Holmes, whose sense of hearing was somewhat keener than mine, said, "Watson, isn't that a*****e shooting a machine gun? How can he fly this plane, put it through such manoeuvres, and still operate a weapon which he must hold in both hands to use effectively?"
"I don't know," I confessed. At that moment both of us were dangling from the post, failing to fall only because of our tight grip. The plane was on its left side. Through the window beneath my feet I saw a German plane, smoke trailing from it, fall away. And then another followed it, becoming a ball of flame about a thousand feet or so from the ground.
The Handley Page righted itself, and I heard faint thumping noises overhead, followed by the chatter of a machine gun. Something exploded very near us and wreckage drifted by the window.
This shocked me, but even more shocking was the rapping on the window. This, to my astonishment, originated from a fist hammering on the door. I crawled over to it and stood up and looked through it. Upside down, staring at me through the isinglass, was Wentworth's face. His lips formed the words, "Open the door! Let me in!"
Numbly, I obeyed. A moment later, with an acrobatic skill that I still find incredible, he swung through the door. In one hand he held a Spandau with a rifle stock. A moment later, while I held on to his waist, he had closed the door a
nd shut out the cold shrilling blast of wind.
"There they are!" he yelled, and he pointed the machine gun at a point just past Holmes, lying on the floor, and sent three short bursts past Holmes' ear.
Holmes said, "Really, old fellow . . . " Wentworth, raving, ran past him and a moment later we heard the chatter of the Spandau again.
"At least, he's back in the cockpit," Holmes said weakly. However, this was one of the times when Holmes was wrong. A moment later the captain was back. He opened the trap-door, poked the barrel of his weapon through, let loose a single burst, said, "Got you, you ****ing son of a *****!" closed the trap-door, and ran back toward the front.
Forty minutes later, the plane landed on a French military aerodrome outside of Marseilles. Its fuselage and wings were perforated with bullet holes in a hundred places, though fortunately no missiles had struck the petrol tanks. The French commander who inspected the plane pointed out that more of the holes were made by a gun firing from the inside than from guns firing from the outside.
"Damn right!" Wentworth said. "The cockroaches and their allies, the flying leopards, were crawling all over inside the plane! They almost got these two old men!"
A few minutes later a British medical officer arrived. Wentworth, after fiercely fighting six men, was subdued and put into a straitjacket and carried off in an ambulance.
Wentworth was not the only one raving.
Holmes, his pale face twisted, his fists clenched, was cursing his brother Mycroft, young Merrivale, and everyone else who could possibly be responsible, excepting, of course, His Majesty.
We were taken to an office occupied by several French and British officers of very high rank. The highest, General Chatson-Dawes-Overleigh, said, "Yes, my dear Mr. Holmes, we realise that he sometimes has these hallucinatory fits. Becomes quite mad, to be frank. But he is the best pilot and also the best espionage agent we have, even if he is a Colonial, and he has done heroic work for us. He never hallucinates negatively, that is, he never harms his fellows — though he did shoot an Italian once, but the fellow was only a private and he was an Italian and it was an accident — and so we feel that we must permit him to work for us. We can't permit a word of his condition to get back to the civilian populace, of course, so I must require you to swear silence about the whole affair. Which you would have to do as a matter of course, and, of course, of patriotism. He'll be given a little rest cure, a drying-out, too, and then returned to duty. Britain sorely needs him."*
The Adventure of the Peerless Peer Page 2