by Sapper
“Something to eat and drink, Mr Gaunt,” said Wilmot, and I followed him in a sort of dull stupor.
He led the way to a luxurious cabin which was fitted up as a dining-room. On the table were champagne and a variety of sandwiches.
“We will regard this as a holiday for you,” he remarked. “And if you behave yourself there is no reason why it shouldn’t prove a very pleasant one. After it is over you will have to refill the tank for us, but for the next three or four days let us merely enjoy ourselves.”
We were flying eastwards – I could tell that by the light; and I peered out of the window, trying to see if I could spot where we were.
“A beautiful sight, isn’t it?” said Wilmot. “And when the sun rises it is even more beautiful. Lord Grayling and the Earl of Dorset both agreed that to see the dawn from such a vantage-point was to see a very wonderful sight.”
“In God’s name,” I burst out, “what does it all mean?”
He smiled as he selected a sandwich.
“Just your scheme, my dear fellow,” he answered. “Your scheme in practice.”
“But there’s no war on,” I cried.
“No. There’s no war on,” he agreed.
“Then why have you filled the ballast tanks with poison?”
“You may remember that I once pointed out to you the weak point in your scheme,” he answered. “There was no money in it. In the course of the next few days you are going to see that defect remedied, I trust.
“Of course,” he went on after a while, “this is only going to be quite a small affair. It’s in the nature of a trial run: just to accustom everyone to what they have to do when the big thing comes along. And that’s why I’ve brought you along. You have had, I gather, a little lesson over not doing what you’re told, and I feel sure that you will give me no further trouble. But one never knows that some little hitch may not occur, and should it do so in your particular department, it will be up to you to rectify it.”
But I haven’t the time to give that devil’s conversation in full. I can see him now, suave and calm, seated at the table smoking a cigar whilst he played with me as a cat plays with a mouse. Utterly ignorant then as to what was going to happen, much of it was lost on me. Now I can see it all.
It conveyed nothing to me then that the British public was keenly interested in the airship: that tours at popular prices were given twice a week: that there was talk of floating a company in the City.
“Not that that is ever likely to come of, my dear Gaunt,” he remarked, “though if it did, of course, I should have no objection to taking the money. But it instils confidence in the public mind: makes them regard me as an institution. And an institution can do no wrong. You might as well suspect the Cornish Riviera express of robbing the Bank of England.”
There lies the diabolical ingenuity of it all. Did I not hear from the cabin where they kept me bound and gagged – guarded by two men – did I not hear him showing two members of the Royal Family over the vessel? That was while we were tied up to the mooring mast before we started.
Did we not go for a four-hour trip with thirty people on board, amongst them some of the highest in the land? He told me their names that night, with a vile mocking smile on his face.
“But why,” I shouted at him, “why?”
“All in good time,” he answered. “I am just showing you what an institution I am.”
That’s it: and will anyone believe what I am going to write down? I see it all now: the tin mine ostensibly being worked as a tin mine; in reality merely a cloak to disguise the making of the poison. As he said, it had to be in a deserted place by the sea, because the ship had to take supplies on board.
He’s told me everything: he knows I’m in his power. He seems to take a delight in tormenting me: in exposing for my benefit the workings of his vile brain. But he’s clever: diabolically clever.
It was two days ago that they let me out of my cabin. The airship was in flight, and looking out I saw that we were over the sea. They took me into the dining-cabin, and there I saw Wilmot and a woman. She was smoking a cigarette, and I saw she was very beautiful. She stared at me with a sort of languid interest: then she made some remark to Wilmot at which he laughed.
“Our friend Helias has a strong right arm,” he remarked. “Well, Gaunt – very soon now your curiosity is going to be satisfied. We have ceased to be commercial: we’re going to go and stop your war. But we still remain an institution. Have you ever heard of Mr Cosmo Miller?”
“I have not,” I said.
“He is an American multi-millionaire, and at the moment he is some forty miles ahead of us in his yacht. If you look through that telescope you will be able to see her.”
I glanced through the instrument, and saw away on the horizon the graceful outlines of a steam yacht.
“A charming boat – the Hermione,” he went on. “It goes against the grain to sink her.”
“To do what?” I gasped.
“Sink her, my dear Gaunt. She is, one might say, your war. She is also the trial run to give us practice for other and bigger game.”
I stared at him speechlessly: surely he must be jesting.
“Considerate of Mr Miller to select this moment for his trip, wasn’t it? Otherwise we might have had to try our ’prentice hand on less paying game. At any rate he has sufficient jewellery on board to pay for our running expenses if nothing more.”
“But, good God!” I burst out, “you can’t mean it. What is going to happen to the people on board?”
“They are going to sink with her,” he replied, getting up and looking through the telescope.
A man came into the cabin and Wilmot swung round.
“No message been sent yet, Chief.”
Wilmot nodded and dismissed him.
“A wonderful invention – wireless, isn’t it? But I confess that it renders modern piracy a little difficult. In this case the matter is not one of vital importance, but when we come to the bigger game the question will have to be very carefully handled. Now on this occasion it may be that the two excellent and reliable men who took the place of two members of the Hermione’s crew at Southampton have broken up the instrument already; or it may be that the wireless operator hardly considers it worth while to broadcast the information that he has seen us. However, we shall soon know. My dear!” he added to the girl, “we’re getting very close. I think it might interest you now.”
She got up and stood beside him, whilst I stood there in a sort of stupor. I watched Wilmot go to a speaking-tube: heard him give directions to fly lower. And then, drawn by some unholy fascination, I too went and looked out.
Half-a-mile ahead of us was the yacht, steaming slowly ahead. The passengers were lining the rail staring up at us, and in a few seconds we had come so close that I could see the flutter of their pocket handkerchiefs.
“Come with me, Gaunt,” snapped Wilmot. “Now comes the business. My dear, you stay here.”
He rushed me along the main corridor till we came to one of the central ballast tanks. The engines were hardly running, and I realised that we must be directly over the yacht and just keeping pace with her. Two men clad in rubber suits stood by the tank: two others were by the corresponding tank on the opposite side of the gangway. Wilmot himself was peering into an instrument set close by the first tank, and I saw a duplicate by the second. I went to it and found it was an arrangement of mirrors based on the periscope idea: by looking into it I saw directly below the airship.
And of the next ten minutes how can I tell? Straight underneath us – not a hundred feet below – lay the yacht. Everyone – guests, crew, servants – were peering up at the great airship, which must have seemed to fill the entire sky. And then Wilmot gave an order. Two levers were pulled back, and the rain of death began to fall. The rain that I had invented – Oh, God! – it was unbelievable…
I saw a woman who had been waving at us fall backwards suddenly on the deck and lie there rigid, her face turned up toward
s us. A man rushed forward to her help: be never reached her. The poison got him first. And all over the deck it was the same. Men and women ran screaming to and fro, only to crash forward suddenly and lie still as the death rain went on falling. I saw three niggers, their black faces incongruous against their white ducks. They had rushed out at the sound of the pandemonium on deck, and with one accord, as if they had been pole-axed simultaneously, they died. I saw a man in uniform shaking his fist at us. He only shook it once, poor devil…
And then as if from a great distance I heard Wilmot’s voice – “Enough.”
The rain of death ceased: it was indeed enough. No soul moved on the yacht: only a white-clad figure at the wheel kept her on her course.
Stumbling blindly, I went back to the central cabin. The girl was still there, staring out of the window, and I think I screamed foolish curses at her. She took no notice: she was watching something through a pair of glasses.
“Quite well timed,” she remarked as Wilmot entered. “She’s only about a mile off.”
I looked and saw a vessel tearing through the water towards us: coming to the rendezvous of death.
“I would never have believed,” said Wilmot, “that with her lines she would have been capable of such speed.”
Then he turned to me.
“Put on that suit,” he said curtly. “We’re going down on deck.”
He was getting into one himself, and half unconsciously I followed his example. I was dazed: stunned by the incredible atrocity I had just witnessed.
And if it had been terrible from above, what words can paint the scene on deck as we stepped out of the cage? In every corner lay dead bodies; and one and all they stared at me out of their sightless eyes. They cursed me for having killed them: everywhere I turned they cursed me.
The deck was ringing wet: the smell of the poison lay heavy in the air. And again and again I asked myself – What was the meaning of this senseless outrage? I didn’t know then of the incredible wealth of the wretched people who had been killed: of the marvellous jewels that were on board.
The other vessel lay alongside: a dozen of the crew clothed in rubber suits had come on board the yacht. It was the ruthless efficiency of it all that staggered me: they worked like drilled soldiers. One by one they carried the bodies below and piled them into cabins. And when a cabin was full they shut the door. They damped down the stoke-room fires: they blew off what head of steam remained. They stove in the four ship’s boats and sank them: they moved every single thing that would float and put it below in such a place that when the ship sank everything would go down with her. And all the while the dirigible circled overhead.
Once, and only once, did anything happen to interrupt them. Heaven knows where he had been hidden or how he had escaped, but suddenly, with a wild shout, one of the crew darted on deck. In his hands he held a pick: he was a stoker evidently. Gallant fellow: he got one of them before he died. In the head – with his pick, and then another of the pirates just laid his glove wet with the poison against the stoker’s face. And the work went on.
At last Wilmot appeared again. He was carrying a suit-case, and I saw him signal to the airship. She manoeuvred back into position and the cage was lowered on to the deck of the yacht. And a minute later we were in the dirigible once more.
“A most satisfactory little experiment,” said Wilmot. “We will now examine the spoils more closely.”
Sick with the horror of it all, I stood at the cabin window, whilst he and the woman went over the jewels on the table behind me. We had circled a little away from the yacht, and the other vessel no longer lay alongside, but a hundred yards or so away. And suddenly there came a dull boom, and the yacht rocked a little on the calm sea.
“A sight, my dear, which I don’t think you’ve ever seen,” said Wilmot, and he and the woman came to the window. “A ship sinking.”
Slowly the yacht settled down in the water: they had blown a great hole in her bottom. And then at last with a sluggish lurch her bows went under and she turned over and sank. For a time the water swirled angrily to mark her grave: then everything grew quiet. No trace remained of their devilish handiwork: the sea had swallowed it up.
“Most satisfactory,” repeated Wilmot. “Don’t you agree, Gaunt?”
He laughed evilly at the look on my face.
“And you have committed that atrocious crime for those,” I said, pointing at the jewels.
“Not altogether,” he answered. “As I told you before, this is merely in the nature of a trial trip. Of course it’s pleasant to have one’s expenses paid, but the principal value of this has been practice for bigger game… That is what we are out for, my dear Gaunt: bigger game.”
I watched him with a sort of dazed fascination as he lit a cigar. Then he began to examine through a lens the great heap of precious stones in front of him. And after a while the thought began to obsess me that he was not human. His complete air of detachment: his amused comments when he discovered that a beautiful tiara was only paste: above all the languorous indifference of the girl who only an hour before had witnessed an act of wholesale murder made my head spin.
They are devils – both of them: devils in human form; and I told them so.
They laughed, and Wilmot poured me out a glass of champagne.
“You flatter us, Gaunt,” he remarked. “Surely you have not been listening to the foolish remarks of the crew. They, poor simple-minded fellows, do, I understand, credit me with supernatural powers, but I am surprised at you. Merely your antidote, my friend: that’s all.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” I muttered.
“There now,” he said genially, “I am always forgetting that your knowledge of past events is limited. An amusing little story, Gaunt, and one which flatters your powers as a chemist. I may say that it also flatters my powers as a prophet. My men, as you may know, are largely Russians of the lower classes. Docile, good fellows as a general rule, with a strong streak of superstition in them. And realising that in a concern of this sort one has to control with an iron hand, I anticipated that possibly an occasion might arise when some foolish man would question that control. It was because of that, my dear Gaunt, that I took so much trouble to procure that admirable ointment of yours, the existence of which is not known to the members of my crew. In that point lay the little element of – if I may say so – genius, which separates a few of us from the common herd. Though I admit that it was with some trepidation – pardonable I think you will allow – that I put the matter to the test. Of the efficacy of your poison I had no doubt, but with regard to the antidote I had only seen it in action once, and then on a guinea-pig. If I remember aright, my darling,” he said to the girl, “we drank to Mr Gaunt’s skill as a chemist in one of our few remaining bottles of Imperial Tokay, at the conclusion of the episode. A wonderful wine, Gaunt; but I fear extinct. These absurd revolutions that take place for obscure reasons do a lot of harm.”
That’s how he talked: the man is not human. Then he went on.
“But the episode in question will, I am sure, interest you. As I had foreseen, some stupid men began to question my authority. In fact, though you will hardly believe it, it came to my ears that there was a conspiracy to take my life. It is true I had had a man flogged to death, but what is a Russian peasant more or less? Apparently this particular fellow sang folk-songs well, or tortured some dreadful musical instrument better than his friends. At any rate he was popular, and his death was a source of annoyance to the others. So, of course, it became necessary to take the matter in hand at once in a way which should restore discipline, and at the same time prevent a recurrence in the future. My dearest, this caviare is not so good as the last consignment. Another devastating example of the harm done by revolutions, I fear. Even the sturgeons have gone on strike.
“However, to return to my little story. I bethought me of your antidote. ‘Here,’ said I to myself, ‘is an opportunity to test that dear chap Gaunt’s excellent
ointment in a manner both useful and spectacular.’ So I rubbed it well into my face and hands – even into my hair, Gaunt – and strode like a hero of old into the midst of the malcontents. You perceive the beauty of the idea. A man not gifted with our brains might reasonably remark, ‘Why not don a rubber suit, which you know is quite safe?’
“True, but besides being hot and uncomfortable – I think we shall have to try and improve those suits, Gaunt – it is very clumsy in the event of the wearer being attacked with a knife. And though I anticipated from what I had heard that they proposed to use your poison, one has to allow for all eventualities. Also there was that mystic vein in them which I wanted to impress.
“Behold me then, my dear fellow, apparently as I am now, striding alone and unarmed to their quarters. For a moment they stared at me dumbfounded – my sudden appearance had cowed them. And then one of them pulled himself together and discharged a syringe full of the liquid at me. It hit me in the cheek – a most nervous moment, I assure you. I apologise deeply to you now for my qualms; I should have trusted your skill better.
“Nothing happened, and the men cowered back. I said no word; but step by step I advanced on the miscreant who had dared to try and rob the world of one of its chief adornments. And step by step he retreated till he could retreat no further. Then I took his hand and laid it on my cheek. And that evening we tied him in a weighted sack, and buried him at sea.”
He smiled thoughtfully and studied the ash on his cigar.
“It was most successful. Rumours about me vary amongst these excellent fellows. The one I like best is that I am a reincarnation of Rasputin. But there has been no further trouble.”