I climbed down from the airship in silence, with Danjuro close behind me.
Thumbwood was still standing guard. Mr. Vargus lay on the ground, bound like a bundle of rags. His pale, wedge-shaped face stared up at us with an expression full of poison.
There was no sign of the enemy, but I knew that our peace would not last long.
And I was deeply disappointed by what we had discovered aboard the pirate ship.
“There is still a chance,” Danjuro whispered.
“With your permission, Sir John, I am going to try something.”
I nodded.
He walked over to Vargus, pulled him upright, and propped him against the barrier.
“A small but important part of the airship’s control system is missing,” Danjuro said politely.
Vargus suddenly grinned.
It was a horrible, twisted smile that appeared for only a second.
“And we want that part,” Danjuro continued.
Vargus sneered.
“Then you can go on wanting it, you little monkey’s spawn with a face like putty.”
The hatred in his voice was so intense that it seemed to fill the cavern.
His words were spoken with perfect education and refinement. His forehead, stained with blood, suggested a highly intelligent man. Yet his voice seemed to come straight from some filthy pit beneath the earth.
I felt a chill run through me.
Even Thumbwood’s rifle was trembling in his hands.
Strangely enough, I felt no personal hatred toward Vargus. He had planned a terrible death for me, yet I could not bring myself to hate him.
What I felt instead was something deeper and far worse—a sickening sense that there was something inhuman and unclean inside him.
Danjuro showed no reaction at all.
“I think you will help us,” he said.
Vargus spat directly into his face.
I expected Danjuro to leap upon him and strangle him.
I would not have stopped him.
But he did nothing of the kind.
The little Japanese simply stepped aside and calmly wiped his face with a silk handkerchief that seemed to appear from nowhere.
Then he moved behind Vargus.
His fingers began moving rapidly over the man’s skull, feeling every part of it with strange precision.
“How can you touch him?” I exclaimed.
I hardly knew what I was saying.
The sight was horrible and uncanny. Danjuro looked like some sinister scientist examining the skull of a devil.
After a moment he spoke softly.
“I know what I wanted to know about him.”
He continued feeling Vargus’s head.
“I never doubted his intelligence, Sir John. It is exceptionally strong. He also possesses enormous energy and a certain kind of courage.”
His fingers stopped.
“But our friend here has one weakness.”
Danjuro smiled faintly.
“He is afraid of physical pain.”
“You aren’t going to—”
Danjuro looked directly into my eyes.
There was a cold determination in his expression that told me I could not change his mind.
“I’ll go and see Miss Shepherd,” I said.
I turned and walked quickly toward the inner end of the cavern.
As I went, I heard Danjuro ask Thumbwood for a box of matches.
I know there will be softhearted people who will say I should never have allowed what happened next.
They are entitled to their opinion.
Personally, I believe what Danjuro did was nowhere near as terrible as the treatment prisoners routinely suffered under the cat-o’-nine-tails. And after everything we had endured, I believed it was justified.
Those who condemn me should remember one thing.
They had never seen Mr. Vargus and his dogs.
They had never spent what felt like an eternity inside that pirates’ cave.
When I returned, Constance had recovered wonderfully.
I spent a minute or two with her before going back to the others.
Vargus was speaking rapidly, his breath coming in short gasps.
“Gascoigne,” he said.
“Mr. Gascoigne has it. He was our second pilot. The control piece was always in his possession.”
Danjuro gave his familiar little tired smile.
Then he gently took my arm and led me toward the other side of the cave.
“We shall now summon the honorable Mr. Gascoigne.”
“The young gentleman we saw with the late Mr. Helzephron at the Mille Colonnes.”
“The small piece of machinery we need is what they call the link.”
“But how are we going to—”
Danjuro pointed toward a telephone mounted on a wooden partition.
“This connects with the house,” he whispered.
“You remember that Vargus nearly reached it earlier, just before our good Thumbwood caught him.”
He lifted the receiver.
Within seconds the bell rang.
Then Danjuro began to speak.
I nearly jumped out of my boots.
The words were simple enough, but the voice was unmistakably Vargus’s.
“Gascoigne? Is that you?”
“Yes, this is Vargus.”
“The Chief says you are to come down immediately and bring the control link.”
“What?”
“No, the others are to wait until they are called.”
“What?”
“Oh, yes. Quite dead.”
“I wish you could have seen it.”
His imitation was perfect.
I shall never forget it.
It was the only time I ever heard that extraordinary man imitate another person’s voice, and I often wondered what other talents he possessed.
“The young gentleman was asking about you, Sir John,” Danjuro continued in Vargus’s voice.
“He seemed very curious about your end of things.”
I smiled grimly.
“What are you going to do?”
Danjuro hurried back toward the entrance.
He crouched down beside the doorway and disappeared into the shadows.
I signaled to Thumbwood.
He dropped behind the barrier directly facing the passage.
I drew my automatic pistol, which I had recovered from Helzephron’s room, and moved to the opposite side of the doorway, staying out of direct view.
For a minute there was complete silence.
Then I heard a distant rumble deep inside the rock.
A gate clanked.
The lift had come down.
Gascoigne was on his way.
A few seconds later, we heard someone whistling cheerfully.
The tune was fresh and carefree, as though the man had not a single worry in the world.
He was whistling a popular song that every street boy seemed to know:
Merry Maudie met her fate at Margate!
What a careless young fool.
In a few moments, his mood would be very different.
I left the matter to Danjuro.
He was an expert in jiu-jitsu, as the terrible death of Helzephron had already proved.
I had little doubt that he could handle Gascoigne.
Indeed, after everything I had endured in that awful cave, I found myself watching with a strange, detached curiosity.
It was almost like watching a prize fight.
I wondered whether Danjuro would kill him.
For one brief moment I saw Gascoigne standing beneath the light, framed by the archway.
It was the same young man I had seen at the restaurant.
He had a dissipated, handsome face—the face of a fallen angel.
As a schoolboy, he must have been remarkably good-looking.
Then the dark shape beside the doorway suddenly moved.
Danjuro sprang forward like lightning.
He seized Gascoigne’s right hand and jerked the arm straight.
As Gascoigne stumbled forward, Danjuro’s left arm shot underneath the trapped arm.
His hand caught the lapel of Gascoigne’s coat.
The young man was completely helpless.
If he moved, Danjuro could have broken his arm instantly.
Gascoigne could not turn around or strike with his left hand.
His mouth fell open in stupid amazement.
Danjuro swept his legs away, and Gascoigne crashed backward with the Japanese on top of him.
I quickly tied Gascoigne’s ankles.
All the while, the young man poured out a stream of filthy curses.
The words came continuously from those refined lips.
Once again I understood what sort of people Helzephron had gathered around him.
When Gascoigne was securely bound, Danjuro removed a small leather case hanging from his shoulders.
He handed it to me.
I opened it.
Inside was the control link we had been searching for.
“You can install it, Sir John?”
“Yes. I don’t think there will be any difficulty.”
“Very good.”
“In a few minutes we can start.”
He paused.
“Assuming you believe you can get the ship out of this place?”
I had already thought about that.
I believed I could do it.
It would be extremely difficult, especially with a ship I had never flown before.
But I had once landed on the deck of a moving battleship.
Very few flying challenges were entirely new to me.
“I don’t think I’ll let you down,” I said.
I hurried back to the ship.
Five minutes later I understood the controls well enough to restore the electrical connection.
I spent another ten minutes examining the machinery and familiarizing myself with everything.
Then I discovered something astonishing.
The ship did not require mechanics to turn the propeller by hand before starting.
Once again, electricity from the ship’s dynamo did the work.
The starting mechanism, controlled from the pilot’s cabin, was an extraordinary piece of engineering.
Vargus refused to walk even after I offered to loosen the ropes around his feet.
Danjuro simply carried him up the ladder and threw him onto the cabin floor like a sack of grain.
Gascoigne was much more cooperative.
He had apparently learned everything from Vargus while they were lying together on the ground.
“I’ll go quietly, sir,” he said as I helped him up.
With my pistol pressed against the small of his back, he could hardly have done otherwise.
Still, he lost nothing by being polite.
“I can’t believe the Chief is dead and it’s all over,” he said with a strange little sob.
I realized then how completely his sense of right and wrong had disappeared.
He had no real sympathy for his victims.
He could understand his own defeat and the punishment waiting for him, but he felt no remorse.
He behaved almost like an officer captured during wartime.
I am certain that, in his mind, that was exactly what had happened.
Some people seem to be born with something terribly wrong inside them.
Gascoigne had once possessed the potential to become a good man.
Instead, he had chosen another path and lost himself completely.
We started toward the ship.
“Good old bird,” he said casually.
“I suppose this’ll be the last cruise I ever take in her.”
“Or the last ship you ever travel in,” I replied.
“I suppose you know what’s waiting for you?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged.
“Probably the gallows.”
I agreed with him.
But, as events would prove, neither of his predictions was correct.
Danjuro and I moved Vargus into the smaller cabin where the tools and spare parts were kept.
We did not want Constance to see him.
Besides, he was so tightly secured that there was no danger of his escaping.
We left Gascoigne sitting on one of the main-cabin seats.
Then I hurried back for the two women.
Thumbwood was still standing guard.
“Everything is ready!” I shouted as I passed through Helzephron’s room.
“We’re flying to Plymouth immediately in the Pirate Ship.”
The maid, Wilson, screamed.
“Oh, Sir John! That terrible ship! I couldn’t go in her again, not for my life!”
“Let’s take a taxi, Miss. Please, let’s take a taxi!”
“I couldn’t possibly go aboard that ship again!”
“You’ll lose your life quickly enough if you stay here,” I snapped.
The poor girl had already suffered enough to drive anyone to panic.
Her mouth opened wide for another scream.
Then I suddenly remembered something.
“Miss Connie will be perfectly safe with me,” I said quickly.
“You will go with Charles Thumbwood.”
“You remember him?”
“He’ll look after you.”
That worked immediately.
I had remembered how attentive Charles had been toward the pretty maid on the train.
“Oh!” Wilson said.
“Mr. Thumbwood is here, Sir John?”
“Very much so.”
“You will be his special responsibility.”
“And the journey will take less than forty-five minutes.”
Wilson picked up the dressing bag she had dropped.
“Well, then, that’ll be all right.”
I wondered whether she imagined that Charles himself would pilot the ship.
It was remarkable how easily hope could move a mountain.
No doubt Constance felt the same kind of trust in me that Mary Wilson felt in Charles.
We had walked only a short distance into the cavern when the telephone ahead of us suddenly began ringing furiously.
It sounded like an alarm clock.
“Wait here,” I told the women.
I ran forward and picked up the receiver.
A voice was shouting so loudly that the words ran together.
I could make out only a few phrases.
“Chief… coastguard… police… rifles… all around the house on the moor… coming down… two of us staying… hold them until the last moment…”
So that was it.
Billy Pengelly, the coastguard, had succeeded.
While we had been fighting our underground battle, the telephone wires had been carrying the alarm.
The police and coastguards were now moving through the gorse and heather.
The remaining pirates were trapped.
“Come on!” I shouted to Constance.
“We haven’t a second to lose!”
Alarmed by the urgency in my voice, the women began running.
As soon as they reached me, I ran with them toward the ship.
Suddenly a tremendous gunshot exploded behind us.
I looked to the right.
Thumbwood was lying flat behind the barrier, taking cover.
The open doorway was only a dim rectangle of yellow light in the distance.
I could not see more than a few feet into the passage.
Thumbwood fired again.
The echo had barely faded when something zipped past my ear.
A bullet struck the granite with a sharp crack.
The pirates were coming down in force.
Caught between the police outside and us inside, they had decided to fight their way out.
I knew Thumbwood could hold them for a minute or two.
I raced toward the ship with Constance beside me.
Wilson had fainted.
We had to drag her between us.
Halfway up the steep, narrow ladder, Danjuro was waiting.
He looked completely calm.
We handed the unconscious maid to him.
He disappeared inside with her almost instantly.
Then Constance climbed aboard.
Behind us, the cavern erupted with the thunder of rapid gunfire.
“The police and coastguards have surrounded the house!” I shouted.
“The rest of the crew have come down and are trying to fight their way into the cave!”
“I expected this, Sir John,” Danjuro replied calmly.
“They must be rather surprised by the reception.”
“We can shoot them all before they reach us.”
His eyes were shining.
There was a terrible excitement in them.
“Perhaps now that rescue is so close, we should simply wait and finish them?”
For a moment I hesitated.
His suggestion made sense.
The danger was relatively small.
We could postpone our escape and destroy the remaining pirates.
But then I made my decision.
“We mustn’t kill them all!” I shouted.
“Some of them must be brought to justice.”
“We should leave now and let the police and coastguards deal with them.”
Those were my words.
At the time, I honestly believed I was doing the right thing.
Perhaps I was also influenced by my desperate desire to get Constance away from any more violence.
Whatever the reason, I made the decision.
And I would regret it for the rest of my life.
“Very good,” Danjuro said.
“Get into the pilot’s cabin immediately, Sir John.”
“You are essential there.”
“Prepare for an instant start.”
“I’ll fetch Thumbwood.”
“We’ll have to fire thirty or forty rounds into the passage to keep them back.”
“They are probably firing automatic pistols around the bend now, so they won’t expose themselves.”
“Once we’ve fired, we’ll run for the ship.”
“You’ll hear me shout.”
“When I do, start immediately.”
He slipped past me.
Then he crouched almost to the ground and ran toward Thumbwood like a great hunting cat.
I threw myself aboard.
Constance was looking after Wilson in the main cabin.
Gascoigne lay bound where we had left him.
His eyes were bright with excitement.
I stopped that immediately.
“The rest of your friends are being shot down,” I told him coldly.
“You’re lucky to be here.”
The excitement vanished from his face.
I did not want to leave him alone with Constance.
The very thought of him being in the same place as her disgusted me.
I drew my knife, cut the ropes around his feet, and pushed him into the pilot’s cabin.
I made him lie on the floor beside me as I sat in the swivel chair.
His hands were still tied behind his back.
If he made a move, I could shoot him instantly.
Then I sat rigidly at the controls.
My hand rested on the switch that would start the engines.
The wait was probably only a short time.
To me, it seemed endless.
For the first time during our ordeal, I felt my nerves beginning to fail.
My hand trembled.
I thought about the narrow, twisting passage leading from the cave to the sea.
The ship would have to pass between towering walls of rock before reaching open air.
One careless movement of the wings against those iron-hard cliffs would destroy everything.
The ship could crumple like paper and plunge into the jagged rocks and raging sea below.
Constance, Danjuro, Thumbwood, and I could all die in an instant.
Then Gascoigne spoke from the floor.
“Look here, Sir John.”
“You’ve got a nasty job ahead of you.”
“Getting out of this place is bloody difficult if you don’t know the route and haven’t practiced it.”
Something in his voice told me he was not mocking me.
He was Helzephron’s second pilot.
He had been trained specifically to fly this ship.
“I didn’t ask you to speak,” I replied.
“No, but I’m serious.”
“It’s an extremely difficult maneuver.”
“The controls are ten times more sensitive than those of an ordinary aircraft.”
“Even the best pilot in the world would have trouble with a ship that’s completely new to him.”
“This machine has habits and tricks unlike anything else.”
He was telling the truth.
I knew it.
That made hearing it even more unpleasant.
“I suppose you’re worried about your own damned skin,” I sneered.
“Come on, sir. Don’t take it that way.”
“I only wanted to help.”
“I know when I’ve been beaten, and I don’t hold grudges.”
“If I get you out safely, you’ll only end up at the gallows.”
“Oh, no, I won’t.”
“I’ll turn King’s evidence.”
“There are plenty of things I know that nobody else knows except Vargus.”
“I’ll probably get fifteen years.”
“Bet you five pounds if you like.”
“It’s in my own interest to help you.”
I could usually tell when a man was sincere.
And despite everything about Gascoigne, I knew he meant it.
“Help me?”
“Yes.”
“Get me through the passage.”
“Once we’re in open air, you’ll handle the ship easily enough.”
“You’ll be amazed at what she can do.”
“But let me pilot you through the passage.”
“The lift and that sharp right turn are the difficult parts.”
“Get up,” I ordered.
He scrambled to his feet.
“Stand there.”
He leaned against the wall beside me, his hands still tied behind his back.
He was about to say something when we both suddenly froze.
Something had changed.
For a moment I could not understand what it was.
Then I realized.
The constant roar of rifle fire had stopped.
Everything was silent.
Hardly had I noticed the silence when a loud voice rang through the cavern.
“Let her go, Sir John!”
“Let her go!”
Danjuro stumbled into the cabin, breathing hard like a racing dog.
I pulled down the switch.
Then I pushed the starting lever.