Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/164

Rh last visible Krupp-Parseval. He had undertaken to destroy all, and he had failed. However great the moral effect of the night's work might be, the one air-ship that had escaped him—now morbidly alert, bitter for revenge, and armed at every point—still dominated the situation. Nor was it by any means certain what course offered the best chance of retrieving the position. The speedy, well-stocked vessel might press on to London, might seek out the fleets and annihilate them, destroy the dockyards, go northwards against the great ports and commercial cities, or adopt any one of a dozen plausible lines of offence. Pursuit was hopeless; chance encounter incredible.

Within thirty seconds he had decided to go back to London and lay everything before the Government. His own motor-car was waiting in readiness for any service. He found it, threw a single word to the driver and got in. The driver, himself an even more taciturn man, merely nodded as he took the wheel.

Reed carefully replaced the charge of thorite in its special receptacle and began to unbuckle his flying-gear. A sudden flood of light sweeping across the interior of the car compelled his attention. He pushed down the window and looked out, just as the taciturn driver brought the car to a standstill on his own initiative.

For an appreciable period of time Reed was unable to grasp the meaning of what he saw, so blank of any hope of the kind had been his mind. High above, but a very few miles distant on the lateral plane, two air-ships rode and manoeuvred in the full blaze of each other’s whirling searchlights. His tired brain clogged at the mystery. He would, in an instant, have leapt to the astounding surpassing luck of Die Schwalbe revealing herself—but two ? The truth slipped into his mind like a keen-edged ray of light. One indeed was Die Schwalbe; the