"The young lady, Sir John, and her maid ..."

"Dead, too?"

"No, Sir John. They were taken from among all the other passengers and put aboard the pirate ship, which then flew away with them."

[Pg 55]

[Pg 55]

CHAPTER IV THE NEWSPAPERS IN FULL CRY

CHAPTER IV

THE NEWSPAPERS IN FULL CRY

You are to imagine, if you please, the private room of the Chief Commissioner of Air Police at Whitehall.

A soft Turkey carpet of dull brick-reds and blues covers the parquet floor. The walls are hung with pictures of famous airmen of the past, inventors, fighters, pioneers of the great commercial service of air-liners which now fills the skies and has shrunk the planet—for all practical purposes—to a fifth of its former size. There are two or three huge writing-tables covered with crimson morocco; the chairs are thickly padded and luxurious. A range of tall windows looks down upon the endless stir and movement of the wide street, where the nerves of Empire meet in one central ganglion.

Standing by one of these windows is a light-haired young man of thirty in a lounge suit of dark blue. He wears a rather heavy, carefully-trimmed moustache, and his face is seamed and furrowed with anxiety and grey from want of rest.

Thus you see me in London, two days after[Pg 56] Thumbwood brought the terrible news to my bedroom in the hotel at Plymouth.

[Pg 56]

General Sir Hercules Nichelson, Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Flying Corps, had been with me for half an hour, and was just taking his leave.

"Then all that is satisfactorily arranged, Sir John," he said. "We shall supplement your patrol ships with three war-ships at Plymouth and three at the Scillies. They will, of course, be air cruisers, both faster and better armed than your boats, and between us both we shall put an end to this pest before many days are over."

"I 

 Prev. P 29/175 next