He tried clumsily to comfort her, and at length she grew more calm.
“There is no time to be lost,” she declared. “We must get over to Paris to-night. I have lately learnt to fly, and my aeroplane is hidden a few miles from Paris. The real problem is to get hold of the jewels and bring them safely out of the hotel. Then the aeroplane can start at once.”
“But what about Lympne?” Dick asked. “You know all aeroplanes entering England from the Continent must land at Lympne for identification and customs examination. And the jewels would certainly be found.”
“You must not land at Lympne,” Yvette declared positively. “You will have to get in unobserved and land somewhere away from any aerodrome. You can abandon the aeroplane; that won’t matter if you get through safely.”
“And leave it to be identified in a few hours’ time by the engine marks?” asked Dick. “No, Yvette, that won’t do. And besides,” he went on, “there wouldn’t be the slightest chance of getting through. The new wireless direction-finders would give me away long before I could even reach the coast, and the Air Police would do the rest. I should simply be shadowed till I landed — or even shot down if I refused to land! Four smuggling planes were picked up last week by the new wireless-detectors, and every one was captured.”
“Then I don’t know what I shall do,” Yvette replied blankly. “I thought you would surely be able to slip over at night.”
Then Dick, even against his better judgment, which warned him he was taking on a foolhardy enterprise, sprang his great surprise.
“Well,” he said, “perhaps I can help you, after all. You know, in Fenways I’m supposed to be only a motor-dealer. Really, I have been working for over two years quite secretly on a combination of aeroplane and motor-car, and now I think I have got it about perfect. You can change the motor-car to a little monoplane in less than half an hour. The wing struts telescope back into the body, so does the propeller-shaft, and the blades fold back along the shaft.”
“Have you really?” she gasped eagerly.
“Yes. Best of all, I’ve got an absolute silencer on the exhaust; I’ve run the engine at top speed on the ground and found I could not hear it a hundred yards away. So far I have only made one or two flights, but they were quite successful. It seats two in little cockpits placed one on each side of the centre line where the propeller shaft runs. Why shouldn’t we try to fly her over tonight? I feel pretty sure we could do it at ten thousand feet without the direction-finders knowing anything about us.”
“Excellent!” cried the girl.
“The great disadvantage is that I can’t get any speed to speak of on the ground. I have had to make everything very light, of course, and I fancy about twenty miles an hour, unless the roads were exceptionally good, would be our limit. We should have no chance of getting away if we were chased on the ground — or in the air, for that matter — if we were spotted. We might fly over to-night and chance getting caught. Of course, I have my pilot’s certificate, and if we were caught I could easily explain that I was making a night flight and my compass had gone wrong. It wouldn’t be a very serious matter the first time as, of course, we should have nothing contraband. If we got over safely we could take the chance of coming back loaded.”
Yvette had become suddenly radiant.
“Why, Dick!” she cried, “that’s the very thing. We simply can’t be caught. And when we land anywhere we can be ordinary motorists. It’s wonderful — wonderful!”
“Don’t be too sure,” replied Dick grimly. “The Air Police are pretty wide awake. However, it’s worth trying. Now, shall we go to-night? There’s a train from Liverpool Street at six-twenty. We shall get down to Fenways by nine. We shall have five miles to walk to the shed where I keep the machine — of course, we daren’t drive out — and we must manage to reach Paris about dawn. If we are too early I cannot land in the dark, and if we are late people will be about and we shall run the risk of being spotted.”
Yvette promptly produced a small but beautifully clear contour map.
“There’s your landing-place,” she said, pointing to a large clearing surrounded by thick woods. “It’s about fifteen miles from Paris, and my own aeroplane is pushed in under the edge of the trees. It is quite a lonely spot in the forest a little to the north of Triel. Of late years the forest has been very much neglected and very few people go there. An old farmer, who lives quite alone, grazes a few sheep in the clearing, and I have, of course, had to arrange with him about my machine. He thinks I am an amateur flyer, and I have told him I am making some secret experiments and paid him to keep quiet. I flew the machine there myself when I bought it from the François Frères, of Bordeaux. Of course, I had my papers all in order when I bought it.”
“All right; that will do well enough,” said Dick. “We will go over to-night. Jules can go by the boat train.”
A few hours later Dick and Yvette were standing in the shed beside the strange motor-car, Dick rapidly explaining the system of converting the machine into a monoplane.
“We must get off the ground as quickly as possible,” he said. “People go to bed early in these parts, but there is always a chance of some one being about, and I don’t want to be caught while we are making the change.”
At a suitable spot on the road, the change was made. It occupied Dick, with Yvette’s skilful help, just twenty minutes.
“We can do it in fifteen,” he declared, “when you are thoroughly accustomed to it.”
As a matter of fact they did it in less on one memorable occasion some weeks later when their pursuers were hot on their heels.
Soon they were speeding swiftly southwards. Dick had set the monoplane on a steep, upward slant, aiming to reach ten thousand feet before he drew abreast of London. Thanks to the clinging mist, they were soon utterly out of sight from below, and Dick had to steer by compass until they sighted thirty miles ahead, and slightly to their right, the great twin beams of light which marked the huge aerodrome at Croydon.
Then Dick veered to the south-east, flying straight for Lympne and the French coast. After all, he argued, the bold course was the best. No one would expect an aeroplane on an illicit errand to venture right above the head-quarters of the Air Police, and should any machine be about on lawful business the noise of their engines would prevent the detectors picking up the throbbing whirr of the propeller, which, of course, could not be absolutely silenced.
Fortune favoured them. As they drew nearer to Lympne, swinging in from the slightly easterly course he had set, Dick caught sight of the navigation lights of the big mail aeroplane heading from London to Paris. His own machine, bearing, of course, no lights, was far above the stranger, the thunder of whose big engines came clearly up to them. A couple of red flares from the big plane signalled her code to the aerodrome, the searchlight blinked an acknowledgment, and the mail plane tore swiftly onward. Dick could not match its hurtling speed, but he followed along its track, confident that he would now be undetected.
They swept silently above the brilliantly lighted aerodrome, then across the Channel, and just as dawn was breaking detected the Triel forest, and dropped lightly to earth almost alongside Yvette’s machine. By eight o’clock the machine, now a motor-car, was safely locked up in a disused stable in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, and Dick, Jules, and Yvette were soon in deep consultation.
That evening, just as dusk was falling, a half-drunken coachman sprawled lazily on a bench set against a wall in the deep courtyard of the “Baton d’Or,” a quiet hotel located in aback street in the market quarter of Paris. By his side was a bottle of vin blanc. Before him, harnessed to a dilapidated carriage, stood his horse, a dejected-looking animal enough.
Directly over his head, at a window of a room on the third floor, two men stood talking. One of them was Otto Kranzler.
Two rooms away, on the same