Page:The Zeppelin Destroyer.djvu/223

 'But do you share my views?'

'Well—' she responded at last, 'yes, Claude—I do! But,' she added, 'the whole affair is too mystifying—too utterly amazing. When, one day, I can tell you what happened to me you will, I know, stand aghast. Ah! when I think of it all,' she cried hoarsely, 'I often regard it as a miracle that I am alive and at your side again—at the side of the man I love!'

More than this she refused to tell me.

I had, at last, established that the hand of Lionel Eastwell, the popular pilot at Hendon, was the hand of the enemy. I had suspected it, but here was proof!

His association with the mysterious woman was, of course, still an enigma, but I saw that Roseye herself held the key to it, and now that we had agreed that Eastwell was playing us both false, I hoped that this, in itself, would induce her to tell me the frank and open truth.

When Teddy returned he heard from my lips what had happened during our absence, and he stood speechless.

'Let's run the dynamo, light up, and examine the machine,' he suggested, and though it was already midnight we readily adopted his suggestion.

That it had again been tampered with I felt no doubt.

That statement of old Theed's that he had heard 'sawing' made it plain that some devil's work had been done—and by Eastwell no doubt, because he was an expert in aviation. The expert knows exactly the point at which he can weaken the strongest aeroplane.