Adventure, June 1911 — page 49: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Seeds of Destruction 235 been waiting and waiting and preparing for this opportunity, and it is childish to quarrel with them for being clever enough to foresee it and seize upon it! And in the background—always in the background—is Alsopp Ostermann!” “But we ought to do something! What can we do?” Sterrith asked the question of every one and any one. His nerves were on fire and the thought that England would hold him largely responsible crushed him. “What can we do?” he insisted, appealing to each one of them, little red shoots tinge- ing his pale, shifty eyes, his nervous fingers playing with his high collar. “There’s nothing to be done further than I have done—just yet. I have sent instruc- tions broadcast. Every ship has received orders. There is nothing to do but to sit still and wait.”’ fig ALITTLE silence fell upon the room aeae and each man was busy with his == thoughts. And in that silence, noiselessly, like a phantom figure, Eva Darien walked slowly up the room from behind the screen. Not until she was with- in the yellow circle of light thrown down from the hanging lamp above the table did any ohe speak, and then Algy Brett leaped to his feet and crossed over to her. “Miss Darien,” he said quickly, anxiety in his voice as he looked into the ashen face. “Surely you ought to have rested # She interrupted him with a little gesture. And then, continuing her way across the yellow patch, she walked up to Sir Dean. “T think I have a message for you from my brother,”’ she said simply. Every man was standing and every man’s eyes were on her face. She looked like a woman in a trance, her deep eyes burning blackly in the pale setting of her face, the only sign of consciousness. ‘““A message——” Sir Dean’s voice was almost a whisper, and a wave of compassion passed over his face as he looked down at her. The thought flashed into his mind that the sudden tragedy had upset her brain. He tried to say something, but his tongue formed only the words ‘‘A message?”’ She looked at him steadily. Not an emotion stirred from the frozen chill of her face—only those haunting eyes, blazing with something which he could not read as sorrow, met his and told of life. “Yes, a message. Just now they per- . I suppose they drugged me. mitted me to see him. [I kissed his hand— they would not let me see his face—I kissed his hand and as I pressed my lips to it it opened slowly as though drawing my atten- tion to that which lay within! I think it is a message meant for you—I think it is!” Her voice weakened; she took a step nearer the table and laid upon it a paper— crushed and creased and red in places. Sir Dean picked it up and read it through. Then read it through again and then again. I.am a prisoner in Alsopp Ostermann’s air-ship. I can remember seeing him walk toward me as I was halfway down the terrace, then nothing more. I am supposed to be still insensible, but I have been conscious for the last hour. They have flung me into a lazarette between two steel walls—such a narrow space that makes it agony to breathe and a worse agony to write this message, but I must try and let some one know. The drug still fogs me, yet I can hear them talking quite plainly and clearly in the cabin beyond the inner wall of steel plates—the rivets of the plates are sinking deeper and deeper every moment into my flesh, so tightly am I wedged. Whoever finds me, take this paper to Sir Dean Densham in Whitehall. To him the following Break the news of my fate to my sister. Look in the lower left drawer of your ebony desk and there find the despatches and papers which by this time you will believe to be stolen and in the hands of the enemy. But I had observed strangers following me the last day or so, and as a test I carried faked despatches with me this afternoon. Ostermann’s anger is maniac at the deception; I can hear him raving and wrangling and shouting orders. They are going to murder me—to throw me overboard. It’s horrible, the helplessness of waiting for them to come for me! They have wireless on board and the operator has been working it for the last hour. Once I heard Ostermann say ‘‘ Call up the fleet and tell them: 4s the rest of it was lost. Then another order: ‘‘Strew London with the Seeds of Destruction. Strew them broadcast over England! Sow them on every ship they possess! Seeds of Destruction! Seeds of Death! A sower of the name of Ostermann! A reaper of the name of Gray Ghost, who will sound the last trump!”’ He is laughing now—horrible laughter—and I can hear him emptying bags on the table—bags of some- thing that rattle and roll like quantities of bullets and yet have the sound of stones being heaped together. I’d give the world to be able to see through this impenetrable steel, to warn you more clearly! I think they are coming for me now—the ship is dropping and shooting to earth. Eva, my last thought-—— “He saved the papers, thank God! He save@the papers!” Sir Dean muttered and passed the blood-stained page, torn from a pocket-book, across the table to Schlesinger. Schlesinger read’ it,once and handed it ecomicbooks (C@