George Gibbs - The Yellow Dove

“But our aviation men—can they do nothing?”

“What? Chase rainbows? Where shall their voyage begin and where end? He’s over the North Sea one minute and in Belgium the next. Our troops in the trenches think he’s a phantom. They say even the bombs he drops are phantoms. They are heard to explode but nobody has ever been hit by them.”

“What will the War Office do?”

Sandys shrugged expressively. “What would you do?”

“Shoot the beggar,” said the Honorable Cyril impassively.

“Shoot the moon, sir,” roared the Earl angrily. “It’s no time for idiotic remarks. If this story is true, a danger hangs over England. No wholesome Briton,” here he glanced again at Hammersley, “ought to go to sleep until this menace is discovered and destroyed.”

“The Yellow Dove is occult,” said Sandys, “like a witch on a broomstick.”

“A Flying Dutchman,” returned Lady Joyliffe.

“There seems to be no joke about that,” said the Earl.

They were still discussing the strange story of Sandys when Lady Heathcote signaled her feminine guests and they retired to the drawing-room. Over the coffee the interest persisted and Lord Kipshaven was not to be denied. If, as it seemed probable, this German spy was making frequent flights between England and the continent, he must have some landing field, a hangar, a machine shop with supplies of oil and fuel. Where in this tight little island could a German airman descend with a thousand horsepower machine and not be discovered unless with the connivance of Englishmen? The thing looked bad. If there were Englishmen in high places in London who could be bought, there were others, many others, who helped to form the vicious chain which led to Germany.

“I tell you I believe we’re honeycombed with spies,” he growled. “For one that we’ve caught and imprisoned or shot, there are dozens in the very midst of us. If this thing keeps up we’ll all of us be suspecting one another. How do I know that you, Sandys, you, Rizzio, Byfield or even Hammersley here isn’t a secret agent of the Germans? What dinner-table in England is safe when spies are found in the official family at the War Office?”

Rizzio smiled.

“We, who are about to die, salute you,” he said, raising his liqueur glass. “And you, Lord Kipshaven, how can we be sure of you?”

“By this token,” said the old man, rising and putting his back to the fire, “that if I even suspected, I’d shoot any one of you down here—now, with as little compunction as I’d kill a dog.”

“I’ll have my coffee first,” laughed Byfield, “if you don’t mind.”

“Coffee—then coffin,” said Rizzio.

“Jolly unpleasant conversation this,” remarked Hammersley. “Makes a chap a bit fidgety.”

“Fidgety!” roared the Earl. “We ought to be fidgety with the Germans winning east and west and the finest flower of our service already killed in battle. We need men and still more men. Any able-bodied fellow under forty who stays at home”—and he glanced meaningly at the Honorable Cyril—“ought to be put to work mending roads.”

The object of these remarks turned the blank stare of his monocle but made no reply.

“Yes, I mean you, Cyril,” went on the Earl steadily. “Your mother was born a Prussian. I knew her well and I think she learned to thank God that fortune had given her an Englishman for a husband. But the taint is in you. Your brother has been wounded at the front. His blood is cleansed. But what of yours? You went to a German university with your Prussian kinsmen and now openly flaunt your sympathies at a dinner of British patriots. Speak up. How do you stand? Your friends demand it.”

Hammersley turned his cigarette carefully in its long amber holder.

“Oh, I say, Lord Kipshaven,” he said with a slow smile, “you’re not spoofing a chap, are you?”

“I was never more in earnest in my life. How do you stand?”

“Haw!” said Hammersley with obvious effort. “I’m British, you know, and all that sort of thing. How can an Englishman be anything else? Silly rot—fightin’—that’s what I say. That’s all I say,” he finished looking calmly for approval from one to the other.

Smiles from Sandys and Rizzio met this inadequacy, but the Earl, after glaring at him moodily for a moment, uttered a smothered, “Paugh,” and shrugging a shoulder, turned to Rizzio and Sandys who were discussing a recent submarine raid.

Hammersley and Byfield sat near each other at the side of the table away from the others. There was a moment of silence—which Hammersley improved by blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling. Captain Byfield watched him a moment and then after a glance in the direction of the Earl leaned carelessly on an elbow toward Hammersley.

“Any shootin’ at the North?” he asked.

Hammersley’s monocle dropped and the eyes of the two men met.

“Yes. I’m shootin’ the day after tomorrow,” said Hammersley quietly. Byfield looked away and another long moment of silence followed. Then the Honorable Cyril after a puff or two took the long amber holder from his mouth, removed the cigarette and smudged the ash upon the receiver.

“Bally heady cigarettes, these of Algy’s. Don’t happen to have any ’baccy and papers about you, do you, Byfield?”

“Well, rather,” replied the captain. And he pushed a pouch and a package of cigarette papers along the tablecloth. “It’s a mix of my own. I hope you’ll like it.”

Hammersley opened the bag and sniffed at its contents.

“Good stuff, that. Virginia, Perique and a bit of Turkish. What?”

Byfield nodded and watched Hammersley as he poured out the tobacco, rolled the paper and lighted it at the candelabra, inhaling luxuriously.

“Thanks,” he sighed. “Jolly good of you,” and he pushed the pouch back to Byfield along the table.

“You must come to Scotland some day, old chap,” said the Honorable Cyril carelessly.

“Delighted. When the war is over,” returned Byfield quietly. “Not until the war is over.”

“Awf’ly glad to have you any time, you know—awf’ly glad.”

“In case of furlough—I’ll look you up.”

“Do,” said the Honorable Cyril.

Hammersley’s rather bovine gaze passed slowly around the room, and just over Lord Kipshaven’s head in the mirror over the mantel it met the dark gaze of John Rizzio. The fraction of a second it paused there and then he stretched his long legs and rose, stifling a yawn.

“Let’s go in—what?” he said to Byfield.

Byfield got up and at the same time there was a movement at the mantel.

“Don’t be too hard on the chap,” Rizzio was saying in an undertone to Kipshaven. “You’re singing the ‘Hassgesang.’ He’s harmless—I tell you—positively harmless.” And then as the others moved toward the door: “Come, Lady Heathcote won’t mind our tobacco.”

Hammersley led the way, with Byfield and Rizzio at his heels. Jacqueline Morley had been trying to play the piano, but there was no heart in the music until she struck up “Tipperary,” when there was a generous chorus in which the men joined.

Hammersley found Doris with Constance Joyliffe in an alcove. At his approach Lady Joyliffe retired.

“Handsome, no end,” he murmured to her as he sank beside her.

“Handsome is as handsome does, Cyril,” she said slowly. “If you knew what I was thinking of, you wouldn’t be so generous.”

“What?”

“Just what everybody is thinking about you—that you’ve got to do something—enlist to fight—go to France, if only as a chauffeur. They’d let you do that tomorrow if you’d go.”

“Chauffeur! Me! Not really!”