CHAPTER VI
THE TRIPLE MIRROR
It was the regular Saturday night dance at the club, a brilliantspectacle, faces that radiated pleasure, gowns that for startlingcombinations of color would have shamed a Futurist, music that set thefeet tapping irresistibly--a scene which I shall pass over because itreally has no part in the story.
The fascination of the ballroom was utterly lost on Craig. "Think ofall the houses only half guarded about here to-night," he mused, as wejoined Armand and McNeill on the end of the dock. I could not helpnoting that that was the only idea which the gay, variegated, sparklingtango throng conveyed to him.
In front of the club was strung out a long line of cars, and at thedock several speed boats of national and international reputation,among them the famous Streamline II, at our instant beck and call. Init Craig had already placed some rather bulky pieces of apparatus, aswell as a brass case containing a second triple mirror like that whichhe had left with Armand.
With McNeill, I walked back along the pier, leaving Kennedy withArmand, until we came to the wide porch, where we joined thewallflowers and the rocking-chair fleet. Mrs. Verplanck, I observed,was a beautiful dancer. I picked her out in the throng immediately,dancing with Carter.
McNeill tugged at my sleeve. Without a word I saw what he meant me tosee. Verplanck and Mrs. Hollingsworth were dancing together. Just then,across the porch I caught sight of Kennedy at one of the wide windows.He was trying to attract Verplanck's attention, and as he did so Iworked my way through the throng of chatting couples leaving the flooruntil I reached him. Verplanck, oblivious, finished the dance; then,seeming to recollect that he had something to attend to, caught sightof us, and ran off during the intermission from the gay crowd to whichhe resigned Mrs. Hollingsworth.
"What is it?" he asked.
"There's that light down the bay," whispered Kennedy.
Instantly Verplanck forgot about the dance.
"Where?" he asked.
"In the same place."
I had not noticed, but Mrs. Verplanck, woman-like, had been able towatch several things at once. She had seen us and had joined us.
"Would you like to run down there in the Streamline?" he asked. "Itwill only take a few minutes."
"Very much."
"What is it--that light again?" she asked, as she joined us in walkingdown the dock.
"Yes," answered her husband, pausing to look for a moment at the stuffKennedy had left with Armand. Mrs. Verplanck leaned over theStreamline, turned as she saw me, and said: "I wish I could go withyou. But evening dress is not the thing for a shivery night in a speedboat. I think I know as much about it as Mr. Verplanck. Are you goingto leave Armand?"
"Yes," replied Kennedy, taking his place beside Verplanck, who wasseated at the steering wheel. "Walter and McNeill, if you two will sitback there, we're ready. All right."
Armand had cast us off and Mrs. Verplanck waved from the end of thefloat as the Streamline quickly shot out into the night, a buzzing,throbbing shape of mahogany and brass, with her exhausts sticking outlike funnels and booming like a pipe organ. It took her only seconds toeat into the miles.
"A little more to port," said Kennedy, as Verplanck swung her around.
Just then the steady droning of the engine seemed a bit lessrhythmical. Verplanck throttled her down, but it had no effect. He shuther off. Something was wrong. As he crawled out into the space forwardof us where the engine was, it seemed as if the Streamline had brokendown suddenly and completely.
Here we were floundering around in the middle of the bay.
"Chuck-chuck-chuck," came in quick staccato out of the night. It wasMontgomery Carter, alone, on his way across the bay from the club, inhis own boat.
"Hello--Carter," called Verplanck.
"Hello, Verplanck. What's the matter?"
"Don't know. Engine trouble of some kind. Can you give us a line?"
"I've got to go down to the house," he said, ranging up near us. "ThenI can take you back. Perhaps I'd better get you out of the way of anyother boats first. You don't mind going over and then back?"
Verplanck looked at Craig. "On the contrary," muttered Craig, as hemade fast the welcome line.
The Carter dock was some three miles from the club on the other side ofthe bay. As we came up to it, Carter shut off his engine, bent over ita moment, made fast, and left us with a hurried, "Wait here."
Suddenly, overhead, we heard a peculiar whirring noise that seemed tovibrate through the air. Something huge, black, monster-like, slid downa board runway into the water, traveled a few feet, in white suds andspray, rose in the darkness--and was gone!
As the thing disappeared, I thought I could hear a mocking laugh flungback at us.
"What is it?" I asked, straining my eyes at what had seemed for aninstant like a great flying fish with finny tail and huge fins at thesides and above.
"'Aquaero,'" quoted Kennedy quickly. "Don't you understand--ahydroaeroplane--a flying boat. There are hundreds of privately ownedflying boats now wherever there is navigable water. That was the secretof Carter's boathouse, of the light we saw in the air."
"But this Aquaero--who is he?" persisted McNeill."Carter--Wickham--Australia Mac?"
We looked at each other blankly. No one said a word. We were captured,just as effectively as if we were ironed in a dungeon. There were theblack water, the distant lights, which at any other time I should havesaid would have been beautiful.
Kennedy had sprung into Carter's boat.
"The deuce," he exclaimed. "He's put her out of business."
Verplanck, chagrined, had been going over his own engine feverishly."Do you see that?" he asked suddenly, holding up in the light of alantern a little nut which he had picked out of the complicatedmachinery. "It never belonged to this engine. Some one placed it there,knowing it would work its way into a vital part with the vibration."
Who was the person, the only one who could have done it? The answer wason my lips, but I repressed it. Mrs. Verplanck herself had been bendingover the engine when last I saw her. All at once it flashed over methat she knew more about the phantom bandit than she had admitted. Yetwhat possible object could she have had in putting the Streamline outof commission?
My mind was working rapidly, piecing together the fragmentary facts.The remark of Kennedy, long before, instantly assumed new significance.What were the possibilities of blackmail in the right sort of evidence?The yeggman had been after what was more valuable than jewels--letters!Whose? Suddenly I saw the situation. Carter had not been robbed at all.He was in league with the robber. That much was a blind to divertsuspicion. He was a lawyer--some one's lawyer. I recalled the messageabout letters and evidence, and as I did so there came to mind apicture of Carter and the woman he had been dancing with. In return forhis inside information about the jewels of the wealthy homes ofBluffwood, the yeggman was to get something of interest and importanceto his client.
The situation called for instant action. Yet what could we do, maroonedon the other side of the bay?
From the Club dock a long finger of light swept out into the night,plainly enough near the dock, but diffused and disclosing nothing inthe distance. Armand had trained it down the bay in the direction wehad taken, but by the time the beam reached us it was so weak that itwas lost.
Craig had leaped up on the Carter dock and was capping and uncappingwith the brass cover the package which contained the triple mirror.
Still in the distance I could see the wide path of light, aimed towardus, but of no avail.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Using the triple mirror to signal to Armand. It is something betterthan wireless. Wireless requires heavy and complicated apparatus. Thisis portable, heatless, almost weightless, a source of light dependingfor its power on another source of light at a great distance."
I wondered how Armand could ever detect its feeble ray.
"Even in the case of a rolling ship," Kennedy continued, alternatelycovering and uncovering
the mirror, "the beam of light which thismirror reflects always goes back, unerring, to its source. It would doso from an aeroplane, so high in the air that it could not be located.The returning beam is invisible to anyone not immediately in the pathof the ray, and the ray always goes to the observer. It is simply amatter of pure mathematics practically applied. The angle of incidenceequals the angle of reflection. There is not a variation of a foot intwo miles."
"What message are you sending him?" asked Verplanck.
"To tell Mrs. Hollingsworth to hurry home immediately," Kennedyreplied, still flashing the letters according to his code.
"Mrs. Hollingsworth?" repeated Verplanck, looking up.
"Yes. This hydroaeroplane yeggman is after something besides jewelsto-night. Were those letters that were stolen from you the only onesyou had in the safe?"
Verplanck looked up quickly. "Yes, yes. Of course."
"You had none from a woman--"
"No," he almost shouted. Of a sudden it seemed to dawn on him whatKennedy was driving at--the robbery of his own house with no lossexcept of a packet of letters on business, followed by the attempt onMrs. Hollingsworth. "Do you think I'd keep dynamite, even in the safe?"
To hide his confusion he had turned and was bending again over theengine.
"How is it?" asked Kennedy, his signaling over.
"Able to run on four cylinders and one propeller," replied Verplanck.
"Then let's try her. Watch the engine. I'll take the wheel."
Limping along, the engine skipping and missing, the once peerlessStreamline started back across the bay. Instead of heading toward theclub, Kennedy pointed her bow somewhere between that and Verplanck's.
"I wish Armand would get busy," he remarked, after glancing now andthen in the direction of the club. "What can be the matter?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
There came the boom as if of a gun far away in the direction in whichhe was looking, then another.
"Oh, there it is. Good fellow. I suppose he had to deliver my messageto Mrs. Hollingsworth himself first."
From every quarter showed huge balls of fire, rising from the sea, asit were, with a brilliantly luminous flame.
"What is it?" I asked, somewhat startled.
"A German invention for use at night against torpedo and aeroplaneattacks. From that mortar Armand has shot half a dozen bombs ofphosphide of calcium which are hurled far into the darkness. They areso constructed that they float after a short plunge and are ignited oncontact by the action of the salt water itself."
It was a beautiful pyrotechnic display, lighting up the shore and hillsof the bay as if by an unearthly flare.
"There's that thing now!" exclaimed Kennedy.
In the glow we could see a peculiar, birdlike figure flying through theair over toward the Hollingsworth house. It was the hydroaeroplane.
Out from the little stretch of lawn under the accentuated shadow of thetrees, she streaked into the air, swaying from side to side as thepilot operated the stabilizers on the ends of the planes to counteractthe puffs of wind off the land.
How could she ever be stopped?
The Streamline, halting and limping, though she was, had almost crossedthe bay before the light bombs had been fired by Armand. Every momentbrought the flying boat nearer.
She swerved. Evidently the pilot had seen us at last and realized whowe were. I was so engrossed watching the thing that I had not noticedthat Kennedy had given the wheel to Verplanck and was standing in thebow, endeavoring to sight what looked like a huge gun.
In rapid succession half a dozen shots rang out. I fancied I couldalmost hear the ripping and tearing of the tough rubber-coated silkenwings of the hydroaeroplane as the wind widened the perforation the gunhad made.
She had not been flying high, but now she swooped down almost like agull, seeking to rest on the water. We were headed toward her now, andas the flying boat sank I saw one of the passengers rise in his seat,swing his arm, and far out something splashed in the bay.
On the water, with wings helpless, the flying boat was no match for theStreamline now. She struck at an acute angle, rebounded in the air fora moment, and with a hiss skittered along over the waves, planing withthe help of her exhaust under the step of the boat.
There she was, a hull, narrow, scow-bowed, like a hydroplane, with along pointed stern and a cockpit for two men, near the bow. There weretwo wide, winglike planes, on a light latticework of wood covered withsilk, trussed and wired like a kite frame, the upper plane about fivefeet above the lower, which was level with the boat deck. We could seethe eight-cylindered engine which drove a two-bladed wooden propeller,and over the stern were the air rudder and the horizontal planes. Thereshe was, the hobbled steed now of the phantom bandit who hadaccomplished the seemingly impossible.
In spite of everything, however, the flying boat reached the shore atrifle ahead of us. As she did so both figures in her jumped, and onedisappeared quickly up the bank, leaving the other alone.
"Verplanck, McNeill--get him," cried Kennedy, as our own boat grated onthe beach. "Come, Walter, we'll take the other one."
The man had seen that there was no safety in flight. Down the shore hestood, without a hat, his hair blown pompadour by the wind.
As we approached Carter turned superciliously, unbuttoning his bulkykhaki life preserver jacket.
"Well?" he asked coolly.
Not for a moment did Kennedy allow the assumed coolness to take himback, knowing that Carter's delay did not cover the retreat of theother man.
"So," Craig exclaimed, "you are the--the air pirate?"
Carter disdained to reply.
"It was you who suggested the millionaire households, full of jewels,silver and gold, only half guarded; you, who knew the habits of thepeople; you, who traded that information in return for another piece ofthievery by your partner, Australia Mac--Wickham he called himself herein Bluffwood. It was you---"
A car drove up hastily, and I noted that we were still on theHollingsworth estate. Mrs. Hollingsworth had seen us and had drivenover toward us.
"Montgomery!" she cried, startled.
"Yes," said Kennedy quickly, "air pirate and lawyer for Mrs. Verplanckin the suit which she contemplated bringing--"
Mrs. Hollingsworth grew pale under the ghastly, flickering light fromthe bay.
"Oh!" she cried, realizing at what Kennedy hinted, "the letters!"
"At the bottom of the harbor, now," said Kennedy. "Mr. Verplanck tellsme he has destroyed his. The past is blotted out as far as that isconcerned. The future is--for you three to determine. For the presentI've caught a yeggman and a blackmailer."