Читать книгу The Amir's Ruby - Percy Francis Westerman - Страница 10
ОглавлениеFoiled!
In a room of a small inn overlooking the harbour of Hyeres five men were conversing in whispers. Although the door was locked, they were taking no chance of being overheard.
Not that they looked like conspirators. Judging by their appearance a stranger would have been inclined to put them down as English tourists. Their faces, taken individually, courted confidence. And yet they were members of the infamous Down 'Em Gang, whose name was familiar to thousands, yet, so far, neither Scotland Yard nor the Prefecture of Paris had been able to lay them by the heels.
At fairly long intervals they had successfully carried off several daring coups. Although in almost every case the stakes were high, they worked for the sheer excitement of criminal adventure rather than the monetary gain resulting therefrom.
And now they had foregathered at this Mediterranean seaport with the express intention of gaining unlawful possession of the Atar-il-Kilk ruby. They explained their presence at Hyeres to a credulous audience, by saying that they were English and American pleasure-seekers engaged upon a cruise round the Mediterranean in a chartered flying-boat, but that owing to slight engine defects they had perforce to remain in harbour until mechanics arrived from Marseilles to make good the trouble.
"Nothing through from Creeper, I suppose?" inquired Tony, whose surname no one there but he knew.
"Not a word," replied Jim, the leading light of the gang. "He's still hanging on at Haxthorpe Hall in the capacity of old Sir Somebody Gorton's chauffeur-pilot. He'll be there when we want him, never you fear. But I have a cablegram from the Major. Took me some time to decipher it, or I would have been here before now. He says that this Standish fellow is starting to-morrow morning for Bakhistan. He has only two with him."
"Well?" prompted a little lean man of about twenty-five, known to his associates as Slimer.
"Well! It's as easy as winking; that is, if Bud will do his celebrated drop-change stunt."
"Waal and why?" drawled Bud, who a few years ago had been a stunt pilot in the employ of a famous American film company. "I sure don't get you."
"It's like this," explained Jim. "Even if the airplane doesn't carry radio she'll have to report at one of the French air-ports on this bit of coast. I've made it all right for an operator at this place to get the report sent in at once. He'll push it across to me, or his relief will if he's off duty. Trust me to see to that. We'll have half an hour's clear warning, perhaps more. I reckon we have twenty miles per hour more than Standish, so in any case we can hold on his track till the chance offers."
"And then?" again prompted Slimer, who was always on the alert, ready to lay a finger upon the weak spot in any of the gang's plans.
"And then we'll sort of sit on the biplane's tail and Bud will drop upon the cabin top with his pistol——"
"No you don't, Jim," expostulated Slimer. "I thought it was an agreed thing that the boys shouldn't use firearms. It's too mighty risky, and I for one don't fancy myself dangling at the end of a rope. If I'm ever unlucky in my get-away and find myself pinched by the narks I'll take my medicine for what I've done. But dashed if I'll ever shoot. That's a mug's game."
"Quite right, Slimer! I admire your sentiments, sure!" exclaimed Bud. "But where do I cut into the pictur', Jim?"
"I wasn't suggesting the use of an automatic, Slimer," explained the leader of the gang. "Now this, I take it, is the situation. If Standish thinks he's going to meet trouble over this ruby stunt it's a dead cert he won't expect it on the outward run. He'd argue that no one would play rough with him until he was returning with the ruby in his possession. Well, that's where we score. Bud will use the gun he did the Allerby Grange business with."
"But where do I cut into the pictur', Jim?" persisted the ex-movie "stunter".
"You can drop upon the cabin top."
"I guess I can," admitted Bud. "Done it twenty times already."
"The short drop—say six feet—is all I want you to do this time, Bud," explained Jim, with a grim smile. "Then all you have to do is to fire one charge through the ventilator into the pilot's cabin. You'll be wearing your gas-mask, of course. Then you nip in—it's certain Standish will be using the stabilizers so there's no chance of the bus stalling or nose-diving. Standish and his pal won't know whether it's Christmas or Easter for the next twelve hours or more. So you take charge and bring the biplane down."
"If there's a guy to do that, Bud's that guy!" declared the American vaingloriously. "I reckon that a cinch. What next?"
"We'll come down alongside you; take Standish and company aboard the seaplane, and you and Fox will run them back here. If necessary you can keep them unconscious for ten days; but it would be better if you paid the skipper of a French tramp to take them for a joy-ride across to Brazil! Meanwhile Tony, Jim, and I will make ourselves at home in the biplane. Standish is bound to have his letter of introduction to the Amir of Bakhistan, and I don't suppose he'll go to the trouble of comparing Standish's photograph with my features. We get the ruby handed over and that's that."
"Is it?" broke in Slimer swiftly. "What do you propose doing with the ruby? It's too big to be marketable."
"In its present form, yes," agreed Jim. "We'll fly, say to Karachi or Bombay, take steamer to the Dutch East Indies—I know a Dutchman out in Batavia who will pay up and ask no questions—and the Atar-il-Kilk will cease to exist as such. So all we have to do is to stand by until the French wireless operator tips us the wink."
They "stood by". At eight next morning a cipher cablegram was received stating that the Condor had left Bere Regis Aerodrome, and that the route would be over Marseilles, Corsica, Messina, Crete, and Alexandria. The message also stated that an account of the projected flight to Bakhistan had appeared in the evening papers.
"How did that leak out?" inquired Tony. "I'll swear Creeper never let out a word. There'll be trouble for Standish at the other end if by any chance he slips through our fingers. But we'll get him right enough."
The morning wore on. No reassuring information came from the bribed French wireless operator at Hyeres Aerodrome, but the midday journals appeared with startling accounts of the "greatest fog within living memory ". All England south of the Trent, Holland, the Rhine valley, and seven-eighths of France were in the grip of the demon fog. In consequence all air-mail services in the affected area were suspended. Pilots of well-equipped craft that were already aloft managed in most instances to find the recognized aerodromes that were provided with anti-fog flares. But of private aircraft the toll of casualties was naturally of alarming proportions. Many pilots, utterly lost, wandered aimlessly until their petrol tanks were exhausted. A few succeeded in making forced landings without losing their lives. Others were able to fly out of the blind areas and descend in favourable conditions; but while the fog persisted—it lasted for sixty hours—there were close on two hundred fatalities to airmen. Coming so unexpectedly, for September was otherwise a quiet month, it brought home to civilization the fact that the air, like the sea, can be a hard taskmistress—but with this important difference: a ship can rest on her natural element, an airplane cannot.
"That's put the brake on!" commented Bud to his fellow gangsters. "I guess that Standish guy's crashed. We'd better make tracks for Yorkshire and pay a call on Sir Rugglestone and offer to fetch the ruby."
"Don't you fear, Bud," rejoined Jim. "Standish has got grit. I happen to have his record. We'll hear about him before very long."
They did. At 6.30 p.m., Mid-European time, the Condor was reported from Brindisi. She was flying in a south-easterly direction at an estimated height of 2000 metres.
"He's done us properly, boys!" declared Jim. "He took that route to throw dust in our eyes and he's won the first round."
"I give the guy full marks for that," agreed Bud thoughtfully. "I reckon he'll work the same stunt on his way back, sure!"
"And we'd better pack up at once and go home," added Slimer.
"I'm with you there," declared the leader of the gang. "Yes, we'll make tracks for York, get in touch with Creeper and find out when Standish is expected at Haxthorpe Hall with the ruby. Slimer will let us in—his lordship thinks no end of Alfred Burt as a devoted servant—and then we'll round the old boy up, give him and Standish a whiff of gas and get away with the Atar-il-Kilk ruby!"
