Beryl of the Biplane E-Book

William Le Queux

• Herausgeber: Publisher s11838
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Beryl of the Biplane written by William le Queux who was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. This book was published in 1917. And now republish in ebook format. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book.

Leseprobe

Beryl of the Biplane

Being the Romance of an Air-Woman of To-Day

By

William le Queux

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I. THE MYSTERIOUS NUMBER SEVEN.

CHAPTER II. MR. MARK MARX.

CHAPTER III. THE SHABBY STRANGER.

CHAPTER IV. THE THURSDAY RENDEZVOUS.

CHAPTER V. CONCERNS THE HIDDEN HAND.

CHAPTER VI. THE PRICE OF VICTORY.

CHAPTER I.THE MYSTERIOUS NUMBER SEVEN.

“Are you flying ‘The Hornet’ to-night?”

“I expect so.”

“You were up last night, weren’t you? Mac told me so at Brooklands this morning.”

“Yes—Zepp-hunting. I was up three hours, but, alas! had no luck. Two came in over Essex but were scared by the anti-aircraft boys, and turned tail. Better luck to-night, I hope,” and Ronald Pryor, the tall, dark, good-looking young man in grey flannels, laughed merrily as, with a quick movement, he flicked the ash from his after-luncheon cigarette.

His companion, George Bellingham, who was in the uniform of the Royal Flying Corps, wearing the silver wings of the pilot, was perhaps three years his senior, fair-haired, grey-eyed, with a small sandy moustache trimmed to the most correct cut.

Passers-by in Pall Mall on that June afternoon no doubt wondered why Ronald Pryor was not in khaki. As a matter of fact, the handsome, athletic young fellow had already done his bit—and done it with very great honour and distinction.

Before the war he had been of little good to society, it is true. He had been one of those modern dandies whose accomplishments include an elegant taste in socks—with ties to match—and a critical eye for an ill-cut pair of trousers. Eldest son of a wealthy bank-director, Ronnie Pryor had been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. After his career at Oxford, his father, Henry Pryor, who lived mostly at his beautiful old place, Urchfont Hall, a few miles out of Norwich, had given him an ample allowance. He had lived in a bachelor flat in Duke Street, St. James’s, and spent several gay years about town with kindred souls of both sexes, becoming a familiar object each night at the supper-tables of the Savoy, the Carlton, or the Ritz.

This wild oat sowing had, however, been brought to an abrupt conclusion in a rather curious manner.

One Saturday afternoon he had driven in a friend’s car over to the Aerodrome at Hendon, and had there witnessed some graceful flying. He had instantly become “bitten” by the sport, and from that moment had devoted himself assiduously to it.

Four months later he had taken his “ticket” as a pilot, and then, assisted by capital from his indulgent father, had entered business by establishing the well-known Pryor Aeroplane Factory at Weybridge, with a branch at Hendon, a business in which his companion, Flight-Lieutenant George Bellingham, of the Royal Flying Corps, had been, and was still, financially interested.

That Ronnie Pryor—as everyone called him—was a handsome fellow could not be denied. His was a strongly marked personality, clean-limbed, with close-cut dark hair, a refined aquiline face, and that slight contraction of the eyebrows that every air-pilot so quickly develops. On the outbreak of war he had been out with General French, had been through the retreat from Mons, and while scouting in the air during the first battle of Ypres, had been attacked by a German Taube. A fierce and intensely exciting fight in the air ensued, as a result of which he brought his enemy down within our own lines, but unfortunately received a severe wound in the stomach himself, and, planing down, reached earth safely a long distance away and collapsed unconscious.

The condition of his health was such that the Medical Board refused to pass him for service abroad again, therefore he was now devoting his time to building aeroplanes for the Government, and frequently flying them at night, thus assisting in the aerial defence of our coast, and of London.

Ronnie Pryor was known as one of the most daring and intrepid air-pilots that we possessed. Before his crash he had brought down quite a number of his adversaries in the air, for the manner in which he could manipulate his machine, “zumming,” diving, rising, and flying a zigzag course, avoiding the enemy’s fire, was marvellous. Indeed, it was he who one afternoon dropped nine bombs upon the enemy’s aerodrome at Oudenarde, being mentioned in despatches for that daring exploit.

His one regret was that the doctor considered him “crocked.” Discarding his uniform he, in defiance of everybody, flew constantly in the big biplane which he himself had built, and which the boys at Hendon had nicknamed “The Hornet.” The machine was a “strafer,” of the most formidable type, with an engine of two hundred and fifty horse-power, fitted with a Lewis gun and a rack for bombs, while no more daring airman ever sat at a joy-stick than its owner.

“They’re running that new Anzani engine on the bench at Hendon,” Bellingham remarked presently. “I’m going out to see it. Come with me.”

Ronnie considered for a few seconds, and then accepted the suggestion, he driving his partner out to Hendon in his yellow car which had been standing in St. James’s Square.

At the busy aerodrome, where all sorts of machines were being assembled and tested, they entered the spacious workshops of the Pryor Aeroplane Factory where, in one corner, amid whirring machinery, a large aeroplane-engine was running at top speed with a hum that was deafening in the confined space.

Half-an-hour later both men went forth again into the aerodrome where several “school ’buses” were being flown by pupils of the flying school. Suddenly Bellingham’s quick airman’s eye caught sight of a biplane at a great height coming from the north-west.

“Why, isn’t that Beryl up in your ’bus?” he exclaimed, pointing out the machine. “I didn’t know she was out to-day.”

“Yes,” was Ronnie’s reply. “She flew over to Huntingdon this morning to see her sister.”

“Was she up with you last night?”

“Yes. She generally goes up daily.”

“She has wonderful nerve for a woman,” declared George. “A pupil who has done great credit to her tutor—yourself, Ronnie. How many times has she flown the Channel?”

“Seven. Three times alone, and four with me. The last time she crossed alone she went up from Bedford and landed close to Berck, beyond Paris-Plage. She passed over Folkestone, and then over to Cape Grisnez.”

“Look at her now!” Bellingham exclaimed in admiration. “By Jove! She’s doing a good stunt!”

As he spoke the aeroplane which Beryl Gaselee was flying, that great battleplane of Ronnie’s invention—“The Hornet,” as they had named it on account of a certain politician’s reassurance—circled high in the air above the aerodrome, making a high-pitched hum quite different from that of the other machines in the air.

“She’s taken the silencer off,” Ronnie remarked. “She’s in a hurry, no doubt.”

“That silencer of yours is a marvellous invention,” George declared. “Thank goodness Fritz hasn’t got it!”

Ronnie smiled, and selecting a cigarette from his case, tapped it down and slowly lit it, his eyes upon the machine now hovering like a great hawk above them.

“I can run her so that at a thousand feet up nobody below can hear a sound,” he remarked. “That’s where we’ve got the pull for night bombing. A touch on the lever and the exhaust is silent, so that the enemy can’t hear us come up.”

“Yes. It’s a deuced cute invention,” declared his partner. “It saved me that night a month ago when I got over Alost and put a few incendiary pills into the German barracks. I got away in the darkness and, though half-a-dozen machines went up, they couldn’t find me.”

“The enemy would dearly like to get hold of the secret,” laughed Ronnie. “But all of us keep it guarded too carefully.”

“Yes,” said his partner, as they watched with admiring eyes, how Beryl Gaselee, the intrepid woman aviator, was manipulating the big battleplane in her descent. “Your invention for the keeping of the secret, my dear fellow, is quite as clever as the invention itself.”

The new silencer for aeroplane-engines Ronnie Pryor had offered to the authorities, and as it was still under consideration, he kept it strictly to himself. Only he, his mechanic, Beryl and his partner George Bellingham, knew its true mechanism, and so careful was he to conceal it from the enemy in our midst, that he had also invented a clever contrivance by which, with a turn of a winged nut, the valve came apart, so that the chief portion—which was a secret—could be placed in one’s pocket, and carried away whenever the machines were left.

“I don’t want any frills from you, old man,” laughed the merry, easy-going young fellow in flannels. “I’m only trying to do my best for my country, just as you have done, and just as Beryl is doing.”

“Beryl is a real brick.”

“You say that because we are pals.”

“No, Ronnie. I say it because it’s the rock-bottom truth; because Miss Gaselee, thanks to your tuition, is one of the very few women who have come to the front as aviators in the war. She knows how to fly as well as any Squadron Commander. Look at her now! Just look at the spiral she’s making. Neither of us could do it better. Her engine, too, is running like a clock.”

And, as the two aviators watched, the great battleplane swept round and round the aerodrome, quickly dropping from twelve thousand feet—the height at which they had first noticed its approach—towards the wide expanse of grass that was the landing-place.

At last “The Hornet,” humming loudly like a huge bumblebee, touched earth and came to a standstill, while Ronnie ran forward to help his well-beloved out of the pilot’s seat.

“Hullo, Ronnie!” cried the fresh-faced, athletic girl merrily. “I didn’t expect to find you here! I thought you’d gone to Harbury, and I intended to fly over and find you there.”

“I ran out here with George to see that new engine running on the bench,” he explained. “Come and have some tea. You must want some.”

The girl, in her workmanlike air-woman’s windproof overalls, her “grummet”—which in aerodrome-parlance means headgear—her big goggles and thick gauntlet-gloves, rose from her seat, whilst her lover took her tenderly in his arms and lifted her out upon the ground.

Then, after a glance at the altimeter, he remarked:

“By Jove, Beryl! You’ve been flying pretty high—thirteen thousand four hundred feet.”

“Yes,” laughed the girl merrily. “The weather this afternoon is perfect for a stunt.”

Then, after the young man had gone to the exhaust, unscrewed the silencer and placed the secret part in his pocket, the pair walked across to the tea-room and there sat tête-à-tête upon the verandah gossiping.

Beryl Gaselee was, perhaps, the best-known flying-woman in the United Kingdom. There were others, but none so expert nor so daring. She would fly when the pylon pilots—as the ornate gentlemen of the aerodromes are called—shook their heads and refused to go up.

Soft-featured, with pretty, fair and rather fluffy hair, and quite devoid of that curious hardness of feature which usually distinguishes the female athlete, her age was twenty-three, her figure slightly petite and quite slim. Indeed, many airmen who knew her were amazed that such a frail-looking little person could manage such a big, powerful machine as Ronnie Pryor’s “Hornet”—the ’bus which was the last word in battleplanes both for rapid rising and for speed.

The way in which she manipulated the joy-stick often, indeed, astonished Ronnie himself. But her confidence in herself, and in the stability of the machine, was so complete that such a thing as possible disaster never occurred to her.

As she sat at the tea-table, her cheeks fresh and reddened by the cutting wind at such an altitude, a wisp of fair hair straying across her face, and her big, wide-open blue eyes aglow with the pleasure of living, she presented a charming figure of that feminine type that is so purely English. They were truly an interesting pair, a fact which had apparently become impressed upon a middle-aged air-mechanic in brown overalls who, in passing the verandah upon which they were seated, looked up and cast a furtive glance at them.

Both were far too absorbed in each other to notice the man’s unusual interest, or the expression of suppressed excitement upon his grimy face, as he watched them with covert glance. Had they seen it, they might possibly have been curious as to the real reason. As it was, they remained in blissful ignorance, happy in each other’s confidence and love.

“Just the weather for another Zepp raid to-night,” Ronnie was remarking. “No moon to speak of, wind just right for them, and a high barometer.”

“That’s why you’re going to Harbury this evening, in readiness to go up, I suppose?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ll let me go with you, won’t you?” she begged, as she poured him his second cup of tea with dainty hand.

“You were up last night, and you’ve been for a long joy-ride to-day. I think it would really be too great a strain, Beryl, for you to go out to-night,” he protested.

“No, it won’t. Do let me go, dear!” she urged.

“Very well,” he replied, always unable to refuse her, as she knew full well. “In that case we’ll fly over to Harbury now, and put the ’bus away till to-night. I’ve sent Collins out there in readiness.”

Then, half-an-hour later, “The Hornet,” with Ronnie at the joy-stick and Beryl in the observer’s seat, rose again from the grass and, after a couple of turns around the pylons, ascended rapidly, heading north-east.

As it did so, the dark-eyed mechanic in the brown overalls stood watching it grow smaller until it passed out of sight.

For some minutes he remained silent and pensive, his heavy brows knit as he watched. Then, suddenly turning upon his heel, he muttered to himself and walked to one of the flying schools where he, Henry Knowles, was employed as a mechanic on the ’buses flown by the men training as air-pilots for the Front.

In a little over half-an-hour the big biplane with its loud hum travelled nearly forty miles from Hendon, until at last Ronnie, descending in search of his landmark, discovered a small river winding through the panorama of patchwork fields, small dark patches of woods, and little clusters of houses which, in the sundown, denoted villages and hamlets. This stream he followed until Beryl suddenly touched his arm—speech being impossible amid the roar of the engine—and pointed below to where, a little to the left, there showed the thin, grey spire of an ivy-clad village church and a circular object close by—the village gasometer.

The gasometer was their landmark.

Ronnie nodded, and then he quickly banked and came down upon a low hill of pastures and woods about five miles east of the church spire.

The meadow wherein they glided to earth in the golden sunset was some distance from a small hamlet which lay down in the valley through which ran a stream glistening in the light, and turning an old-fashioned water-mill on its course. Then, as Ronnie unstrapped himself from his seat and hopped out, he exclaimed:

“Now, dear! You must rest for an hour or two, otherwise I shall not allow you to go up with me after Zepps to-night.”

His smart young mechanic, a fellow named Collins, from the aeroplane works came running up, while Ronnie assisted Beryl out of the machine.

In a corner of the field not far distant was a long barn of corrugated iron, which Ronnie had transformed into a hangar for “The Hornet”—and this they termed “The Hornet’s Nest.” To this they at once wheeled the great machine, Beryl bearing her part in doing so and being assisted by two elderly farm-hands.

Then Collins, the mechanic, having received certain instructions, his master and Beryl crossed the meadow and, passing through a small copse, found themselves upon the lawn of a large, old-fashioned house called Harbury Court. The place, a long, rambling two-storied Georgian one, with a wide porch and square, inartistic windows, was partly covered by ivy, while its front was gay with geraniums and marguerites.

There came forward to meet the pair Beryl’s married sister Iris, whose husband, Charles Remington, a Captain in the Munsters, had been many months at the Front, and was now, alas! a prisoner of war in Germany.