CHAPTER XVI
THE GHOSTLY VISITANT
A few moments later the two men were startled by the sound of a human voice, trolling out the words of some German folk-song, and approaching from the same quarter towards the clearing.
"This is our man," exclaimed Keane, as he removed the screen from the fire and stirred the dying embers into a cheerful blaze, piling on more dried twigs, so that the trees about the glade seemed to dance like fairies.
"Some woodman or peasant returning from a party," observed Sharpe.
"I wonder where his cottage is," replied his friend; "it must be somewhere in the neighbourhood."
"We must welcome him to a belated supper. Perhaps this good Rhine wine will open his lips still more, and he may tell us something about the birds of the Schwarzwald."
"Particularly the phantom-bird," facetiously observed Keane with a smile.
Nearer and nearer came the stranger, breaking occasionally into snatches of song, as though he would frighten away the goblins and weird creatures of the forest, for of the superstitious peoples of Europe, the peasantry of the Black Forest are most given to credulous beliefs. Perhaps this is because no other district of Europe is so rich in quaint legend, folklore and ghostly tradition.
Now and then the approaching stranger would stop his singing to address some remark to a companion; evidently some beast of burden trudging beside him. The next moment the figure of a man, leading a pack-horse through the forest, suddenly emerged upon the clearing. Catching a sight of the dancing flames which mounted skyward as one of the airmen stirred the fire into life, and beholding the dark figures of the two strangers, the newcomer, suddenly stopped, apparently half-terrified by the sudden apparition.
"Geistlich!" he muttered, staring with wide-open eyes towards the sudden flame.
"Guten abend, freund!" exclaimed Keane, wishing to draw the man into conversation.
The man's fears departed as soon as he discovered that he was addressed by human beings like himself, for in his first wild flight of fancy he feared it was far otherwise, and that he had suddenly come upon one of those forbidden glades, where the sprites and goblins dance after dark.
"Guten abend!" he replied, and, being asked to join the company, made haste to do so, reining in his loaded horse and tethering him to a tree-stump close by.
"'Tis late to travel these lonely woods, friend," said Keane in excellent German.
"Yes, 'tis late, but the moon will soon be up, and then, why, 'twill be better footing," replied the stranger, whose full, round face and longing eyes were already directed towards a wicker-covered bottle, which seemed to hold something good, so that he smacked his lips once or twice, and in fancy he was already draining the sweet nectar which the bottle contained.
"Have you far to go?" asked Sharpe.
"Why, yes, 'tis another seven miles to my cottage in the woods."
"Then stay with us an hour until the moon shall rise and clear away the goblins of the Schwarzwald," urged Keane, who, by this time, had been able to examine the stranger's face by the light of the fire, and to read it like a book.
"A simple, credulous fellow, a true peasant of the Schwarzwald, untouched by the outer world," he told himself. "He should be useful to us." Then, passing to him the wicker-covered bottle, he said:–
"Good Rhine wine from Bacharach, Hans. Taste it!"
"Ach, from Bacharach on the Rhine,
Comes the finest sort of wine,"
exclaimed the stranger in the rude dialect of the Black Forest, and his round eyes sparkled as he clutched the bottle, raised it to his lips, and drank half a pint without stopping to take breath.
"'Tis a long time since I tasted such rich and luscious wine, gentlemen," said the peasant, handing back the bottle.
"Pray be seated and rest awhile," urged his companions, and nothing loath to keep such excellent company, Hans, if such was really his name, sat down by the fire.
"Pray, what brings you to the lonely Schwarzwald, gentlemen? Have you come to hunt for the wild boar, or to fish the mountain streams?" he asked, "for I can show you where the biggest fish are to be found, and where the wild pig rears her litters."
"Butterflies and birds, especially birds," replied Keane, pointing to his nets, and his neat little boxes for packing specimens.
"Birds? Ach, there is one bird which sometimes flies in these parts which you will never catch," said the peasant, speaking in lowered tones, as though half-frightened by his own words.
"Ha! What bird is that?" asked the others.
"Hist!" exclaimed Hans, raising his forefinger, and looking guardedly around. "It is the phantom-bird!"
"The phantom-bird?" echoed the two airmen, who could scarcely believe their eyes and ears, as they earnestly regarded this solemn, frightened, half-childish man, who had evidently seen the very thing they had come so far to find, but who believed it to be something supernatural.
The two Englishmen glanced at each other. Had they really found someone who could enlighten them about this mysterious aeroplane, for he could certainly be referring to nothing else? And at that moment Keane blessed his lucky star, which had led him to choose these wild forest regions for their jumping-off ground. Still, they must not appear too curious, lest they should betray the reason of their presence here.
Keane shook his head as, with an apparently incredulous laugh, and a sympathetic motion of the hand, he would banish all tales of ghostly visitants to the realm of limbo. This only had the effect of egging on the speaker to tell his tale, however.
"Ach, Himmel!" he exclaimed. "Es war geistlich!"
"Did you see it, then?"
"Ya, das hab ich!" returned the other.
"Was it in the day or the night-time when you saw it?" asked Sharpe.
"It was night, about this time, and there was but a half-moon above the tree tops."
"Were you very much frightened, Hans?"
"Yes, I was scared to death almost. I thought the old man of the mountains had come for me. I had been to market to sell my little wooden-clocks, and near this very place the huge grey phantom bird swooped down, then circled round and round and disappeared there, over there!" and the peasant, his eyes almost starting out of his head with terror, pointed away to the east.
"Bah! It was no bird, it was an aeroplane, Hans. You should not have been frightened," exclaimed Keane, who had been taking particular note of the direction in which the mysterious machine had disappeared.
"Yes, a ghost-aeroplane!" iterated the Schwarzwalder. "There has never been anything like it before."
"Did anybody else see it?" queried Sharpe, passing the bottle once again to Hans, who stayed but a moment to wipe his lips with his sleeve, and to take another deep drink of the wine.
"Ja, it was seen by Jacob Stendahl the same night, not far from this very place."
"And who is Jacob Stendahl?" asked Keane.
"He is the woodcutter whose cottage is down by the stream, two miles away. That path leads to his house. He was terrified; he said it was an evil omen, and next morning his little Gretchen died."
"And what happened to you, Hans?" asked Sharpe.
"That same night my sow farrowed, and all the litter were dead next morning," replied the peasant gravely.
A deep silence followed this last remark, and the Schwarzwalder brooded over his misfortune, and lamented to himself the loss of his fine litter of young pigs.
The two airmen felt certain now that Hans had really seen the mysterious aeroplane, and they plied him with a dozen further questions as to the noise it made in passing, and the speed at which it travelled, and whether anyone else had seen or heard of it. To some of their questions Hans could give no coherent answer. He said, however, that very few people lived in this part of the forest, and parts of it were seldom or never trodden by human foot. He had spoken to one or two about it, and they also had either seen or heard of it from someone else, and the general opinion amongst the Schwarzwalders in that part, was, that it was one of the dead German airmen, whose spirit came to visit the spot in a ghost-aeroplane.
"Which of the German aces is it, then, that revisits this place, do they think?" asked Keane.
"Some say that it is the ghost of Immelmann, who used to come here before the war to hunt the wild boar; others say that it is the spirit of Richthofen, but I cannot say," replied Hans.
On the question of speed and noise, however, the peasant declared that he was certain.
"It must have been a ghost-aeroplane," he said, "because it was silent, and its speed was like the passing of a spirit when it leaves the body."
A deep silence followed these words, but at the end of a few minutes Hans, pointing to the east, said:–
"Look, friends, the moon is rising already. It is getting lighter, and I must go."
Then, untethering his pack-horse, he thanked the strangers for their hospitality, gave them the direction and situation of his cottage, where they would be welcome, should they care to visit him during their stay in the Schwarzwald, and, bidding them adieu, started off on his journey through the forest.
CHAPTER XVII
THE WATCHERS
They watched the Schwarzwalder and his beast of burden disappear into the forest, then for some minutes the two Englishmen, buried in thought, sat by the embers of the fire. Neither spake to his companion for a while, as, deep in contemplation, each endeavoured to fathom in his own mind this secret of the phantom aeroplane, this riddle of the sphinx. At last Keane addressed his colleague.
"This travelling clock-maker has confirmed our theory, Sharpe," he said.
"Yes, the simple fellow has helped us not a little," replied the other.
"We must continue our search without further delay, lest this talkative peasant should himself encounter this genius, and unwittingly announce the presence of two strangers in the forest. That is my great fear now."
"You don't think this fellow misled us, Keane?"
"Why do you ask? He was too dull-witted to be anything in the nature of an accomplice," replied the captain.
"Quite so, but he might have been a tool in the hands of this mystery man," added Sharpe, as a sudden feeling of suspicion shot across his mind.
"In that case we ought to have followed him, but I scarcely think it worth while. A dull-witted man of that type would have been too dangerous to his employer, even when used merely as a tool. The only danger I anticipate from that quarter, unless I am utterly mistaken, is that the fellow may encounter someone in the forest who is engaged in the plot, and thus reveal our presence, as I stated previously," observed Keane, as he began to get his traps together, ready for the march.
"Anyhow, we have learned something from the Schwarzwalder."
"By the way, Sharpe, you might tune up your little wireless pocket 'phone, and ascertain if there are any messages floating around."
"So I will; we might pick up something," replied the junior airman, and the next moment he climbed into a straggling, low-branched tree, uncoiled a small aerial, and, starting his little battery, listened attentively for any stray message that might be floating through the ether.
"Anything?" asked Keane, coming to the foot of the tree.
"Nothing," remarked the other.
"Then we'll push off."
Five minutes later, having adjusted their packs, collected their nets, and having stamped out the remains of the fire, they were ready to start.
"Which path shall we take?" asked Sharpe, for there were two ill-defined, grass-grown tracks which led away from the clearing. One led past Jacob Stendahl's cottage, and had been followed by the Schwarzwalder, and the other, the lesser trodden of the two, led they knew not where.
"Let us take the one on the right," said Keane, indicating the latter. "It is more likely to yield us something," and the next moment they were hidden from sight amid the dense undergrowth of this part of the forest.
Scarcely had they disappeared from view when one of the upper branches of a tree near to the edge of the clearing suddenly appeared to move, then to swing loosely for a second, and drop to the ground. Then for a moment there was silence, save for the call of a nightjar which had been disturbed, but a moment later a dark shadow debouched from the edge of the forest and crossed quietly but quickly to where the fire had been burning a few minutes previously.
A low whistle, repeated twice, brought a similar shadow from the opposite side of the clearing, and the two indistinct, but human shapes, met each other face to face.
"Who were they, Professor?" asked the second arrival of the first.
"Himmel! Ich weiss nicht, Strauss," replied his companion, who was none other than the renowned Professor Rudolf Weissmann, "but I fear that they portend us no good."
"Let us examine the ground to see if they have left any clue behind."
So for the next few minutes the professor and his mechanic searched the ground carefully for any little souvenir which the travellers might have left behind them. And whilst they searched, they talked in low, but eager whispers.
"Did you hear that half-witted Schwarzwalder talking aloud about the Scorpion?" asked the professor.
"Yes. He called it a phantom-bird, did he not?" replied Strauss. "I heard nearly all he said, he spoke so loudly and coarsely."
"Could you hear what the others said?"
"Not a word; they spoke so quietly, save once or twice when they spoke to the clock-maker."
"Nor could I, and that is what makes me so suspicious," returned Weissmann.
"They spoke good German, though," ventured the mechanic.
"Bah! Of course they would. Nevertheless, it's my firm opinion that they're foreigners, and that they're here for some special reason."
"And that reason is?"
"To find out about the Scorpion," snarled the mathematician.
"Ach!" exclaimed the other; "the Scorpionis two thousand miles away."
"Then their next business is to find the aerodrome," said the professor.
"Blitz! that they'll never do except by accident. Think of those live wires waiting for them if they get within a hundred yards of it. We have found six dead men there already; I don't want to dig any more graves," returned Strauss.
They had continued the search for fully ten minutes, and the professor, occasionally flashing his pocket torch, was carefully examining the long grass within a radius of some twelve of fifteen feet of the spot where the fire had been. Wise man that he was, he carried out his final investigation to the leeward of the fire, trusting that the breeze might have carried some paper fragment, used in lighting a pipe or starting the fire, in that direction. Nor was he disappointed. He was just about to conclude his search, however, when his sharp eyes caught sight of a piece of half burnt and twisted paper hidden away amongst the longer grass.
"Donnerwetter!" he exclaimed under his breath, as he flashed his torch upon the paper for a second. "I thought so; here is evidence enough for an execution."
"What is it, mein herr?" asked the mechanic, hastening to his side.
"Do you see that?" said his companion, untwisting the paper once again and flashing a light upon it.
"Ja! ja!" replied the other as he strained his eyes in the attempt to decipher the handwriting on the half-burnt sheet. "But I cannot understand it, for it is in a foreign language."
"It is part of a small fragment of an envelope, and the writing, which is in English, is certainly almost undecipherable, but I can distinguish the letters '…eane'."
"Ach, Himmel! That is Keane!" replied Strauss. "He is one of the aerial police, is he not?"
"You are right, Fritz. This letter was addressed through the English post to Captain Keane, one of Tempest's best men, if not indeed his most brilliant 'brain-wave,'" hissed the professor.
"Donner und blitzen! Then he has come here to search for the Scorpion, and the aerodrome."
"Yes, but look, he only left London a few hours ago, for here is the London postmark in the corner, bearing yesterday's date."
"And his companion? Who is he?" asked the mechanic.
"It must be that other scout pilot, Sharpe; they work together. But, mark my word, Friedrich Strauss, they are mistaken if they think to find an easy victim in Professor Rudolf Weissmann. I'll teach them to track me like a murderer through the Schwarzwald. They have come to the Black Forest, and here they shall stay." And for once, the quiet, mild-mannered professor jerked out his words with unusual vehemence.
The mechanic saw that his chief was deeply agitated by this sudden discovery, which confirmed all his recent fears, and to allay his feelings, he said,
"But they will never find the aerodrome, Professor, or, if indeed they find it, they will never enter it alive; think of the preparations you have made for all uninvited guests," and the speaker shuddered, for he knew something of the terrors of that "death-circle" in the lonely forest.
"Bah! it is my secret they want, the secret of that mysterious power which drives the Scorpion."
"Uranis?" ventured the other.
The professor nodded, for he regarded it as the greater success of the two. Without it the Scorpion would be useless; with it a dozen Scorpions could be built, once the facilities were provided. Unfortunately the discovery had been effected too late to win the war for the Fatherland. Besides, he had not received the encouragement from the government that he had deserved, and his soul was consequently embittered.
"Come," he said at last, "we must get back to the aerodrome and watch for these half-witted Englishmen. Once there we can afford to laugh at them. They will soon be held in a vice. But I must send a further message to the Scorpion out on the Hamadian plains, hinting how matters stand. After that communications may have to cease for a while. As for these death-hunters, they will find out presently that they are up against something far more terrible than anything which old Jacob Stendahl or the wood-cutter have ever imagined in their wildest fancy. The secret of the Schwarzwald is not for them. I hold the master-key, Fritz, and when I die that master-key will be broken."
And the two men, who had been aware of the presence of the Englishmen ever since they entered the forest, and had watched them accordingly, now moved off in the same direction which the latter had taken half an hour before.
CHAPTER XVIII
"LIVE WIRES"
Matters in the Schwarzwald were now rapidly nearing a climax; the final contest between German brains and English wit could not much longer be delayed. For the moment Keane and Sharpe, unknown to themselves, were enmeshed in the network of a deathly trap. Nothing less than a miracle, or something approaching the same, could now set them free from their perilous position. One thing was certain, and that was that this clever but unscrupulous mathematician and engineer, who was now their declared enemy, would not hesitate to adopt the most extreme measures to get rid of his unwelcome visitors. Unfortunately his power, which almost approached the supernatural, made him a dangerous and a wily foe.
It was now past midnight, but the two Englishmen, who had left the track some time before at a point where its course was suddenly changed, and had continued their journey by the aid of a luminous compass, and the uncertain light of the moon, came at last to another halt.
"Let us stay here a while, Sharpe," his companion had whispered. "I have a strong premonition of some impending danger."
"The deuce you have!" remarked Sharpe, who well knew what this meant in a man like Keane, whose psychic faculties were not to be sneered at.
"Yes. I cannot explain it, but there is some hidden danger right ahead of us; of that I am as certain as that we are in the Schwarzwald. We had better lie down a while and await developments quietly."
Nothing loath, Sharpe unfastened his shoulder straps, slid his equipment quietly to the ground, and laid himself down beside his companion.
For the moment all was quiet. The moon was hidden behind a bank of clouds, and it was therefore very dark, but sounds travel far in the night air of the forest, and when they conversed, they spoke only in whispers.
"It may be," remarked Keane, "that the spot we seek is just in front of us, though I cannot see any glade or clearing as yet; it is too dark."
"Is it likely that there are any booby-traps hereabouts, set by this wily professor?" asked his companion.
"I cannot say; he may have some outer system of defence."
"Or even a system of ground signals to announce the approach of strangers, whose presence might be undesirable to him," added Sharpe.
"It is possible," whispered Keane, whose mind was actively engaged in preparation for eventualities, in view of his inexplicable premonitions. Suddenly he started and touched his comrade lightly with his raised forefinger.
"Hist!" he said, in a voice which could not have carried further than a couple of yards Then he carefully raised his head, and, turning his eyes towards the thicket through which they had come, he tried to read the secret which it contained. His alarm was justified, yet was he mystified not a little, for the more immediate danger seemed to come from behind.
"Can you hear it, Sharpe?"
"Yes, the same crackling of twigs; another wild boar," remarked his friend facetiously.
Keane shook his head, for his sensitive ears had told him that the footsteps which he had heard were those of human beings. Nor was he mistaken, for a moment later they both heard distinctly, not merely the crackling of twigs and the rustle of the bracken under heavy footfalls, but voices, human voices, conversing in a guarded and careful manner.
"None of your Schwarzwald peasants this time," he murmured, fingering his Webley already, for he instinctively felt that this time they were beset by danger both before and behind. And indeed, these two men, during all their adventures in the secret service during the war, were never in more deadly peril than at this moment, as they were soon to learn.
Scarcely daring to breathe, much less to whisper now, the two Englishmen watched furtively for the coming of the strangers, who were now less than a score of yards away, but were approaching very stealthily, as though they were searching for something on the ground.
"Who can they be?" wondered Keane. "And what can they be searching for?"
"Poachers," Sharpe was thinking, "merely poachers, searching for their booby-traps."
Nearer and nearer came the dark shadows, and both the airmen had their Webleys trained on them now. In that moment they might have shot them down easily, and before long they would regret they had not done so. But that is not the English way, for the ordinary Englishman would give even a dog his chance, as the saying goes. Still, there are dogs and dogs, and sometimes human dogs are worse than the four-footed ones. But the Englishmen were uncertain; they did not know what world-wide conspirators were these two men. They did not know what fearful deeds would happen even that day on the Hamadian desert, two thousand miles away, but all of it engineered from this spot, and made possible by these two men. And as they did not know, they did not fire, but waited.
"Gott in Himmel, where does that verdammt live wire begin?" asked one of the men in a low but vehement voice. It was the professor himself, searching for one of his own man-traps.
Sharpe glanced at Keane, but the other motioned him not to fire.
"We're learning something, old man!" he whispered. "This is the gateway to the aerodrome."
The two men had passed them now, passed within six yards, and yet had missed them. They were now groping a little way ahead, looking for secret signs and marks lest they should be hoist upon their own petard.
"Donner und Blitzen! Have you found it yet, Fritz?" called the professor a little louder to his friend.
"Here it is, Professor! Be careful … there are six wires already laid for those verdammt Englishmen, Keane and–what is the name of the other?"
"Sharpe!" rapped out the professor, as though he had known the man all his life.
At these words the two Englishmen looked at each other in blank amazement. And before their astonishment could subside, the opportunity which had been given to them of ridding the world of two great conspirators had passed.
"One–two–six!" they heard the mechanic say, as he helped the professor over the deadly maze, scarcely fifteen yards in front of them, and then their dark forms had merged into the trees and disappeared, their voices becoming fainter and fainter.
"Great Scott!" gasped Sharpe, when he recovered from his astonishment; "we've walked right into the hornets' nest."
"We should have done if we'd gone another fifteen yards," replied Keane, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.
"Fortunate you had that presentiment of impending danger," said his friend.
"We should have been lying dead and half grilled over his deadly wires but for that strange, weird feeling of mine," replied Keane.
"But there, after all our attempts at concealment, he knows all about us."
"Even our names seem familiar to him," remarked the senior airman, greatly puzzled.
"I cannot understand it," replied the other. "Who can have given him this information?"
"Who indeed?" asked Keane. "It is as great a mystery as the other matter."
"Can it be the woodcutter or the clockmaker, do you think, for Hans is sure to have called at Jacob Stendahl's cottage and told him the news."
But Keane shook his head, as he remarked: "Neither Hans nor yet the woodcutter could possibly have told the professor our names. This evil genius must have other sources of information at his command. Possibly he has an agent at Mulhausen aerodrome, or even at Scotland Yard. To a man like this, a thousand ways are open. I cannot say, but this I know, we are on the edge of the biggest mystery I have ever encountered."
"And we might easily have shot him. Bah! it would have been better to have fired, Keane," added Sharpe somewhat bitterly. "Cannot we follow him now?"
"No!" replied his companion, firmly. "It is better as it is."
"Why?" demanded the other.
"Rest content, Sharpe," said Keane. "To-day we have discovered the aerodrome; to-morrow we will capture it."