It was only too true. A moment"s reflection satisfied me of that, and I stared blankly at my companion.

My gorgeous, if somewhat vainglorious, plan was knocked on the head.

CHAPTER XVII

THE MOMENT OF TRIUMPH

I descended from the airship in silence. Danjuro followed me. Thumbwood was still on guard. The bundle that was Mr. Vargus lay upon the ground, and a face like a white wedge of venom stared up at us. There was no sign of the enemy, but I felt that we should not be left in peace much longer, and my disappointment at the discovery on board the pirate was keen.

"There is still a chance," Danjuro whispered in my ear. "And with your permission, Sir John, I am going to try it."

I nodded, and he stepped up to Vargus and pulled him up into a sitting posture, propping him against the barrier.

"There is a part of the control mechanism of the airship missing,"

Danjuro said, with silky politeness.

Vargus grinned suddenly, a momentary rictus that came and went, utterly horrible.

"And we want that piece of the machine," the j.a.panese went on.

Vargus spoke, in his peculiar oily voice. "Then you may go on wanting, you putty-faced little sp.a.w.n of a monkey."

I cannot hope to describe the depth of poisonous hate the man put into the words. His accent was cultured and refined; the great dome of the blood-stained forehead spoke loudly of intellect, yet the voice somehow reeked of the pit. I know that it struck me cold, and I saw the rifle in Thumbwood"s hands was shaking. Although this was the man who had devised an abominable death for me, I can honestly say that I felt no personal resentment. I can"t account for it, but it was so.

I should have welcomed that, rather than the inward loathing, like a shudder of the soul, at something inhuman and unclean.

What Danjuro felt I don"t know, but he didn"t turn a hair.

"I think you will a.s.sist us," he said.

For answer the thing below spat in his face.

I expected to see Danjuro leap upon him and strangle him where he sat. I shouldn"t have raised a finger to stop it. But it was not so. The little man stepped aside and carefully wiped his face with a silk handkerchief that seemed to come from nowhere. Then he went behind Mr. Vargus and began to feel his head all over, with quick, delicate movements of his fingers.

"How can you touch him?" I cried, hardly knowing what I said, for the thing was ugly and uncanny beyond belief. Danjuro was like some sinister phrenologist in a nightmare, feeling the b.u.mps of a devil.

"I know now what I wanted to know about him," Danjuro purred after a moment. "I never doubted the intelligence, Sir John. It is very marked.

And there is great energy and courage of a sort. But our friend who spits has one little failing. He is afraid of physical pain."

"You"re not going to ...?"

Danjuro looked me full in the eyes, and in his I saw a stony resolution that I was in no state to combat.

"I will go and see Miss Shepherd," I said, and turning on my heel, walked quickly to the inner end of the cavern. As I went I heard Danjuro ask Thumbwood for a box of matches....

I am quite aware that there are lots of softhearted people who will say I ought never to have allowed Danjuro to do what he did. Well, they must have their own opinion, that"s all. I believe it was nothing like so bad as the cat-o"-nine-tails which is constantly administered in our prisons, and under the circ.u.mstances I think it was justifiable. Call me what names you like as you read this--you have not seen Mr. Vargus and his dogs, nor spent a small eternity in the pirates" cave.

... Constance was wonderfully recovered. I spent a minute or two with her, and then returned to the scene of action.

Mr. Vargus was speaking in a quick, panting voice, and these were the words I heard:

"Gascoigne, Mr. Gascoigne; he has it. He was our second pilot. It was always in his charge."

Danjuro gave his little weary smile. Then he put his hand gently upon my arm and drew me away to the other side of the cave.

"We will now summon honourable Gascoigne," he said. "He is the young gentleman we saw with late honourable Helzephron at the "Mille Colonnes." The little necessary piece of the mechanism in his possession is, I have just learnt, generally referred to as "the link.""

"But how ...?" I was beginning, when he pointed to a telephone instrument upon a screen of tongue-and-groove boarding. "This communicates with the house," he whispered. "Mr. Vargus nearly got through recently, you will remember, just before the good Thumbwood caught him."

He raised the instrument to his mouth and ear.

In a second or two a bell rang and Danjuro began to speak. I nearly jumped out of my boots. The words were simple enough, but the voice with its oily refinement was the voice of Mr. Vargus!

"Is that you, Gascoigne? Yes, Vargus speaking. The Chief says you are to come down at once and bring the control link with you. What? No, the others are to wait till they"re sent for. What? Oh, yes, quite dead. I wish you could have seen it!"

It was a triumph of mimicry that I shall never forget, the more so as it was the only occasion on which I heard this marvellous man attempt anything of the sort. Heaven knows what other talents he must have possessed!

"The young gentleman was asking about you, Sir John. He seemed quite curious about your end!"

I smiled grimly. "What are you going to do?" I asked.

In answer he hurried back to the open door and crouched down in the shadow by its side. I motioned to Thumbwood to lie down behind the barrier which was exactly facing the pa.s.sage, and drawing my automatic pistol, which I had regained from Helzephron"s room, I retired to the opposite side of the door and outside the line of direct vision.

There was silence for a minute or so, and then, far away in the rock, I heard a hollow rumble and the clank of a gate. The lift had descended and Gascoigne was on his way. A few seconds afterwards I heard a merry whistle, fresh and sweet, as if the performer had not a care in the world. He was whistling the lilting tune of a popular song which all the street boys were singing at that time:

"_Merry Maudie met her fate at Margate!_"

Callous young dog! In a moment he would not be so cheerful....

I had left it to that concentrated muscle, Danjuro, though I stood ready to help if necessary. But I knew that he was a supreme exponent of jiu-jitsu--_teste_ the hideous death Helzephron died--and I had little fear. Indeed, I found myself looking on with a detached and interested curiosity as one might at a prize-fight. I wondered if Danjuro would kill him or not. And if you had supped so full of horrors as I had in that awful cave, you"d have felt like that, too!

... For a second I saw Gascoigne in the full light from the roof and framed by the archway, like a picture. It was the same young fellow, with the dissipated face, that I had seen at the restaurant, though he had not been among the singing pirates at the inn. He was extremely handsome still, with the face of a lost angel. As a boy at school he must have been beautiful.

Then the squat shadow that crouched by the lintel of the door, like a monstrous toad, expanded swiftly. Danjuro caught Gascoigne by the right hand with the speed of lightning, and pulled the arm out straight with a jerk. Then, as the young man was falling forward, the left arm of the j.a.panese shot out _under_ his captive"s rigid right and the hand seized the lapel of Gascoigne"s coat. He was powerless. If he made the slightest movement Danjuro would have broken his arm like a pipe-stem.

He could not swing round and hit with his left, and I saw his mouth open with foolish amazement like the mouth of a fish, as his legs were kicked from under him, and he fell back with his a.s.sailant on the top of him.

I tied his ankles together with neatness and dispatch, while I listened to a sickening flood of blasphemous profanity that flowed from the clear-cut lips of this _ci-devant_ gentleman in a ceaseless stream. More and more I realized what a crew of utter devils Helzephron had got round him.

At last he was bound, and Danjuro took from him a leather box, which he wore suspended round his shoulders by a strap. He handed it to me, and, opening it, I found it was the control link that we sought.

"You can fit that in all right, Sir John?"

"Oh, yes, I don"t think it presents any difficulty."