William Le Queux - The Zeppelin Destroyer - Being Some Chapters of Secret History

“Have any spies been lurking about here to-night?” asked Roseye very anxiously.

“That is my firm conviction,” was Teddy’s reply to her. “I believe that there have been two strangers here. One was, perhaps, gazing through his glasses at the pole and, seeing in the darkness the sparking over the insulators set in the steel guys, ejaculated the natural expression of surprise that I overheard. But they got away noiselessly, and all my search failed to discover them.”

“Well – we must be very wary, my dear Teddy,” I repeated. “They must not get at this secret of ours, otherwise from the gondola of a Zeppelin they will be able to use the invisible force against any of our aeroplanes in a stronger and greater degree than we could ever hope to do it. Then we ourselves would be destroyed by the secret power we have invented.”

“They shall never know the secret from me,” was my friend’s fierce reply. “Only we three know it – while Theed has, of course, learnt something. That could, not be helped.”

“We must not forget the words I read out to you the other day from the Berliner Tageblatt ,” I replied. “That paper said: ‘The fires and devastation caused by our Zeppelin squadron in England represented a victory greater and more important than could be achieved in a single battle.’ That,” I added, “is the triumphant boast of Major Moraht, Germany’s most prominent military critic.”

“Yes, and it went further,” exclaimed Teddy, turning to Roseye. “The paper declared that if the Germans were as brutal as they were accused of being, their naval airship squadron could long ago, in memory of the Baralong, have set London afire at all four of her corners.”

“That’s just what we intend to prevent,” I declared very emphatically. “That is what, notwithstanding the efforts of prowling strangers who are seeking to know in what direction our experiments are being conducted, we intend to achieve. To-night, Roseye, we have made one great and astounding discovery – a discovery which has placed within our hands a power which Germany, with all her science and investigation, little dreams. We now know the true secret which will eventually prove the undoing of the Kaiser and his barbarous hordes.”

“Yes, dear,” was my well-beloved’s reply. “At all hazards, no spy of Germany must be allowed to wrest this secret from us.”

“But they are clever – devilishly cunning and entirely unscrupulous. The Invisible Hand, well provided with money, lurks everywhere, ready to grasp what it can in the interest of our octopus enemies,” I declared warningly. “Therefore let us be ever on the alert – ever watchful and mindful, in order to avert the relentless talons with which this unknown and Invisible Hand is furnished.”

It was the night of the fourteenth of October, in the year 1915.

Sir Herbert and Lady Lethmere, with Roseye – who looked charming in pink – were dining en famille in Cadogan Gardens. The only two guests were Lionel Eastwell and myself.

“Terrible – is it not?” Lady Lethmere remarked to me, as I sat on her right. “We were at the Lyric Theatre when the Zeppelins came last night. We heard the guns firing. It was most alarming. They must have caused damage in London somewhere. Isn’t it too awful?”

“And at other places, I fear,” remarked Sir Herbert, a fine outspoken, grey-haired, rather portly man, who had crowned his career as a Sheffield steel manufacturer by receiving a knighthood. He spoke with the pleasant burr of the north country.

“Well, the noise of the guns was terrific,” his wife went on. “Fortunately there was no panic whatever in the theatre. The people were splendid. The manager at once came on the stage and urged us all to keep our seats – and most people did so. But it was most alarming – wasn’t it, Herbert?”

“Yes, dear, it really was,” replied her husband, who, turning to me, asked: “What were you doing at that time, Munro?”

“Well, Sir Herbert, to tell the truth I happened to be out at Hendon with my friend Ashton, preparing for a flight this morning. I got hold of a military biplane which had just been finished and had only had its last tests that afternoon, but as I had no bombs, and not even a rifle, I was unable to go up.”

“And if you had gone?” Eastwell chimed in. “I fear, Claude, that you would never have reached them in time. They flew far too high, and were, I understand, moving off before our men could get up. Our Flying Corps fellows were splendid, but the airships were at too great an altitude. They rose very high as they approached London – according to all reports.”

“And the reports are pretty meagre,” I remarked. “I only know that I was anxious and eager to go up, but as I had not the necessary defensive missiles it was utterly useless to make the attempt.”

“Nevertheless, I believe our anti-aircraft guns drove them off very quickly, didn’t they?” Lionel asked.

“Not before they’d done quite enough damage and killed innocent old persons and non-combatants. Then they went away, and bombed other defenceless towns as they passed – the brutes!” said Lady Lethmere.

“And writers in to-day’s papers declare that all this is really of no military significance,” remarked Sir Herbert, glancing fiercely across the table, a stout, red-faced man, full of fiery fight.

“Military significance is an extremely wide term,” I ventured to remark. “London heard the bombs last night. To-day we are no longer outside the war-zone. We used, in the good old Victorian days, to sing confidently of our ‘tight little island.’ But it is no longer tight. It seems to me that it is very leaky – and its leakage is towards those across the North Sea who have for so long declared themselves our friends. Friends! I remember, and not so very long ago, standing on the Embankment and watching the All-Highest Kaiser coming from the Mansion House with a huge London crowd cheering him as their friend.”

“Friend!” snorted Sir Herbert. “He has been far too clever for us. He has tricked us in every department of the State. Good King Edward knew; and Lord Roberts knew, but alas! our people were lulled to sleep by the Kaiser’s pretty speeches to his brave Brandenburgers and all the rest, and his pious protests that his only weapon was the olive branch of peace.”

“Yet Krupp’s and Ehrhardt’s worked on night and day,” I said. “Food, metals, money and war-materials were being collected each month and stored in order to prepare for the big blow for which the Emperor had been so long scheming and plotting.”

“Yes, truly the menace of the Zeppelin is most sinister,” said Roseye across the table. “How can we possibly fight it? We seem to be powerless! Our lawyers are busy making laws and fining people for not creeping about in the darkness at night, and asking us to save so as to pay ex-ministers their big pensions, but what can we do?”

“Rather ask whom can we trust?” I suggested.

“But, surely, Claude, there must arise very soon some real live man who will show us the way to win the war?” asked Roseye.

I drew a long breath. She knew our secret – the secret of that long dark shed out at Gunnersbury which was watched over at night by the sturdy old Theed, father of my mechanic, he being armed with a short length of solid rubber tyre from the wheel of an old disused brougham – about the best weapon of personal defence that could ever be adopted. A blow from that bit of flexible rubber would lay out a man senseless, far better than any iron bar.

“Well,” said Sir Herbert, re-entering our discussion. “The Zeppelin peril must be grappled with – but who can enter the lists? You airmen don’t seem to be able to combat it at all! Are aeroplanes too slow – or what?”