Adventure, June 1911 — page 54: what you’re looking at

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

240 “Still, the list isn’t a quarter as bad as it might have been, sir. Only seven. Wool- - wich, Shorncliffe, Aldershot, a Tyneside yard, and unauthenticated reports from Dover and Sheerness and Gravesend! A severe bucketing, but nothing like it might have been! Think of the carnage if Schles- ‘inger had not acted within five minutes of leaving here!”’ _ “A worse bucketing! Aye! And we must swallow it without a murmur because we can do nothing! We have no proof! We have a man like John Sterrith at our head—frightened, intent on keeping his ministerial fingers clean, starving England on his peace-at-all-costs policy! Peace, forsooth, because he is afraid of the sound of shots!” “Well, he’s got some in advance and un- asked for this time. Perhaps it will wake him up. If he had only sanctioned that loan to Hafner and myself we might have had the nucleus of a fine fleet of aerial men-of-war now and could have gone out on the stroke of twelve and fought Ostermann on his own level! Even if I could have managed Star of the Sea I would have at least tried to wing that monster bird of prey, but since Hafner has disappeared the engine has broken down and no one seems able to understand the stupid thing. If only Hafner——”’ ‘‘Hafner? What has become of him? Disappeared?”’ “Yes, immediately we landed after the stolen battleship affair. I had prophesied that his share of the deal would be enough to keep him for the rest of his life and that he could at least enjoy himself building air-ship models. I even suggested to him that the Government might be able to see wisdom in a year or so and that then his fortune would be made. But he didn’t care for anything I said. He seemed dazed. “T think that the excitement of being so close to his hated enemy, being, as it were, within an inch of victory and the consumma- tion of his long-cherished revenge, and then for Ostermann to escape him in the last was too much for his brain. Anyway, he escaped me and, though I have searched everywhere for him, I can’t find him. I suppose he’ll turn up again some day. “There’s one thing that makes me think so and that is he gave me his word of honor that if he possibly could he’d let me in at the death! And if I know anything of Adventure Hafner he’s the kind of beggar to glory in the fact of there being witnesses to his final, . gloating triumph! Oh, Hafner will turn up again, I’ve no doubt, but I wish he’d have done it before this!” The words were scarcely out of Brett’s mouth when the telephone-bell rang sharply at his elbow and, with a nod of assent from Sir Dean, he took off the receiver and listened. : A raucous voice, stifled and barely in- telligible, came through, and at the sound of it Algy’s face flushed up with sudden excitement and he uttered a name for his uncle’s benefit, motioning him to take up the second receiver. Hafner! It was Hafner’s voice! Hafner trying passionately to control his words and failing! They came tumbling and racing through the telephone, tripping one another up, stumbling one upon the other, some- what incoherent, sometimes utterly incom- prehensible, but always thrilling with a fer- vid excitement and a fierce, unholy joy: “T’ve got him! I’ve got him! I have watched all night and wondered what his game.was! Then when Woolwich Arsenal blew up I knew! I watched him still, ’im and ’is purple searchlight, watched him circling and darting away up and out of sight! Then coming back slowly down like a bird, down; down, close as ’e dared to the earth, as though searching for summat he couldn’t find. Sometimes he’d go off for a long time and then swoop back again an’ search again with his purple light. An’ then it ’appened. Something went wrong with ‘Gray Ghost’! I could hear her groaning as she flew—it looked as though she was coming straight in my direction, and flying low and listing badly and one of ’er wings drooping! She’s maimed and broken for the first time in ’er life—a bad break, and Ostermann is in my power = The raucous voice died away in a wild sob and Brett shouted wildly for him to go on— to go on—that every minute was precious —every second meant a chance for Oster- mann! ‘‘Where are you speaking from, Hafner? Where are we to find you?” he yelled, for- getting everything in his wild excitement. ‘Where are you, and where is Ostermann?”’ Hafner laughed like a madman at the other end of the wire and they could hear him gurgling, delirious with the frenzy of his sudden opportunity. COmmiclboooks (C@