A Private Duel with Agent Gunn (The Gentlemen of Scotland Yard) (20 page)

  *  *  *  

CATE STIFLED A yawn. It was late, and Dé Riquet was not offering up much in the way of information. After a good long squint at him, she suspected he was not that old. His coat, worn thin in spots, showed signs of mending in numerous places. His Van Dyke beard was patchy at best. And his hair, loosed from under a battered opera hat, turned out to be a wild mass of unruly tangles. Had
he been a more winsome chap, and ten years younger, she might have described Dé Riquet as a youth in dire need of a mother.

She tried one last time to wheedle a bit of information out of him. “I take it you are sympathetic to the plight of . . . the Spanish labor union movement, Monsieur Dé Riquet?”

He set down his empty glass. “I am sympathetic to Dé Riquet, mademoiselle.”

“So you are a mercenary. Up for hire—for a price.”

His gaze traveled far away before returning to her. “What does it matter?”

Cate leaned forward. “Because I will pay you more. I need to know what you know.”

He rose from his chair in a glower, tossing a few coins on the table. He picked up his dilapidated top hat. “I know nothing that would be of help to you, Miss Willoughby.” She watched Dé Riquet wind his way though a maze of café tables.

Cate paid her bill and returned to the hotel via the arcade. She had not walked far when she realized she was closer to the rear of the hotel than the front. One gritty step after another echoed as she kept to the covered walkway. Until this moment, Cate had not been afraid to walk the streets alone. The storm had passed and people were out and about. But not here, in this less-traveled section of backstreet.

She climbed a broad set of carved stone stairs. Perhaps this was a rear entrance to the hotel. She pressed down a heavy latch and pushed hard. The door gave way suddenly, striking someone or something behind it. There was a grunt, she was sure of it.

Cate poked her head in the door. “Sorry—
je suis désolée.”

A man lay crumpled on the tiled floor of the vestibule. Another brawny fellow stood over him, rubbing his head. He gave a kick to the downed man—a warning to stay down. Then he turned and lunged for her.

She smacked him in the face with her umbrella. A wraithlike figure moved from the shadows and grabbed her from behind. Cate swung her umbrella tip back and stabbed her assailant, then she spun herself out of his hold. She reached for the door, and stumbled into the poor bloke who rose from the floor.

She recognized the man, who swayed a bit and staggered toward her. Dé Riquet, with a nasty gash over a bloodied eye. He grabbed hold of her and slipped out the open door.

“¡Ásgala!
Catch her!” The order came from behind, as did the large man who grabbed hold of her arm and held on. Caught in the narrow opening, her assailant slammed her against the door frame. A sharp pain stabbed the back of her head. She cried out as thousands of dark, glittering stars filled her vision. Dé Riquet’s hand slipped down the length of her umbrella, and he was gone.

Vaguely, she felt someone drag her inside the building. She tried to push away, but her legs weren’t working right. Like a string puppet, her knees buckled with every step. Someone tossed her over his shoulder. Her temples throbbed as blood rushed to her head. Her vision blurred. There were glimpses of a narrow corridor and a set of stairs. Her body, a large, limp rag doll, swayed with every turn in the passageway.

Cate fought to stay alert—to make sense of mumbled words. They had arrived somewhere, only where? She tried to raise her head as the floor beneath the man’s boots began to whirl. Darkness finally overtook consciousness.

  *  *  *  

FINN PULLED HIS hat down and shouted over the howling wind. “You will see Sergeant MacGregor loaded onto the first train to La Rochelle—be sure to tip the livery attendant.” He pressed several French coins into the groom’s hand, along with a handwritten note. “This message must be wired ahead, as well.”

“Oui, monsieur.
I will leave right away.”

Finn squinted at the young man. “And no . . .” He scratched his head. How did one say “pottering about” in French? The French dawdled. They couldn’t help it.

“Phineas!” Aurélien and Gilbert waved him aboard.

Finn tilted his head back and took in the whole of the magnificent dirigible being guided out of its hangar. Tethered to the ground by safety lines held by estate workers who doubled as ground crew, the blimp bobbed and groaned eerily with each gust of the wind. He left the groom with a simple directive.
“Rapidement.”

Commandant d’Air Deux
was propelled by two airscrew propellers and steered with a sail-like aft rudder. The brothers’ first airship had crashed due to faulty venting. “All corrected now,” Gilbert had assured him.

Finn grabbed his satchel and both long guns and jogged across an expanse of lawn the length of a rugby field. At the rear of the craft, gigantic propellers churned slowly under the gondola, creating their own wind corridor. Running under the blimp, into the long shadow of the oval envelope, he felt swallowed up by the sheer size the dirigible.

Safety lines whined with each gust of wind as the airship strained at its moorings. Finn handed off his valise to one of the ground crew, and climbed the slatted steps of
the ladder. The moment his gear landed on deck, Gilbert gave the order to cut ties and they nosed up into a cloudless sky. In seconds they had climbed several hundred feet in the air. As the ground receded, he took in the mesmerizing view of Cherbourg and the sparkling blue channel beyond.

“Finn.” Aurélien tugged him away to review his crewing responsibilities. He learned how to adjust ballast and open and close the gas vents, as well as the finer points of gathering up tethering line. Working together, they soon had ropes coiled and ready for the next landing.

Gilbert yelled over his shoulder. “We shall set an airship speed record today, and Finn shall be our witness! First, we measure air speed alone. Then I will throttle up the engine, adding to our velocity. Then we measure again,
mais oui?
”

“I wager we make La Rochelle by early afternoon.” Aurélien raised his voice above the hum of the engines belowdecks.

“Twenty francs says before noon.” Gilbert grinned.

Finn swept his coat back with his fists. “If you can get me to La Rochelle by late morning, I’ll gladly double that.”

Aurélien lifted a metal chest behind the steerage and picked through several instruments. Finn recognized a barometer, to measure atmospheric pressure. He pointed to another gauge. “What is that?”

Aurélien carefully lifted out the strange-looking device. “It’s called a cup anemometer, a wind velocity meter.” The instrument featured four small hollow metal cones set to catch the wind and revolve about a vertical rod. “The revolutions of the cups calculate the wind velocity.” The young inventor opened a porthole and clamped the device to the side of the gondola.

“On the Beaufort scale, I would guess we’re near gale winds.” He jotted down the numbers from his metering device, accounting for any added speed they received from the propellers. “Thirty-five knots and climbing. Gale certainly—if not more by midday.”

“With the aid of our eight horsepower electric motor at full throttle . . .” Gilbert leaned over his brother’s shoulder. “We’ll soon be traveling at . . .” Aurélien returned to his calculations. “Less the airship’s drag coefficient, nearly fifty knots.”

“Hoo-hoo!” Gilbert and Aurélien hugged each other and pulled Finn into a three-way embrace.

“Hold on a moment.” Finn scrutinized both young men as his pulse started to race. “How fast does the ship normally travel?”

“Maybe”—Gilbert shrugged—“ten knots, with a light tailwind.”

Finn’s stare moved between Gilbert and Aurélien until both men began to fidget. “Then what we are doing, flying at these speeds, is—”

“Dangerous, of course!” Gilbert’s shoulders moved up and down and he threw his hands up. “Many would say Aurélien and I are
très fou-comme. Déments!”

Finn nodded. “So you’re telling me this bloody airship is built to putter about in the sky like a lark. And here we are, hundreds of feet in the air, flying at fifty knots.”

“Not quite fifty,” Aurélien assured him and opened a second chest. He pulled out a bottle of champagne. “To our next article in the
La Nature
!”

A sudden blast of mistral wind buffeted the airship. Gilbert sprang up and adjusted both the sail and the steerage. “The prevailing winds blow south, southeast. To stay
on course we have to do periodic adjustments, exactly like sailing a ship on the ocean,
oui?
”

Finn took a long pull, direct from the bottle. These two were going to need all the help they could get. “If I could impose, gentlemen, I’d like a crash course in dirigible maneuvering. You never know when you might need an extra hand.”

He made use of the next couple of hours in the air, learning as much as he could about the strange flying vessel. The steerage seemed to be achieved by the manipulation of a large jib sail, acting as a kind of rudder and alternating engine power to the props suspended beneath the rear of the blimp.

By mid-morning the sun glinted through the web of rigging that held the gondola to the balloon, warming the air. As the Air Commander sailed on, doing wonderfully well even in the high wind conditions, his apprehension eased some.

What a marvel this air balloon was, and he suspected many more would come after it. One day not so very long from now, people would traverse the globe in flying machines. Enthralled with the view of the coastline, Finn allowed himself a long moment of wonder.

He and Hardy had once climbed to the top of Ben Loyal in Sutherland—a high peak for the Northern Highlands. The view of his home in Helmsdale had been lovely, but nothing like this breathtaking sight. Land met sea, like a giant topographical map off the starboard side the gondola. Portside, the vast and verdant hills of the French countryside rolled endlessly eastward. And straight ahead lay La Rochelle, less than five miles away.

And Cate. She had to be there, otherwise all this risk
was for naught. Finn exhaled, feeling a bit guilty. Well, perhaps not too guilty. Even though he had placed them all in jeopardy, the Clouzot brothers had achieved their airship speed record.

“The birds have nothing over us, yes?” Gilbert wasn’t frowning exactly, but he did appear less than jubilant.

“Why the long face? What’s the problem?”

“We’re nearly to La Rochelle, and the approach will be tricky—we’re coming in too fast.” Aurélien scratched his head, and the impish grin returned. “To change altitude, you see, a dirigible must adjust its air buoyancy. This new design uses a system of ballast and gas valves to adjust the overall lift of the ship. The vent valves will release lifting gas and decrease altitude while the ballast we shed will increase altitude.” Gilbert pointed to the tanks mounted at each side of the gondola. “I dumped several hundred gallons of water at takeoff.”

A gust of wind buffeted the gondola about and Finn widened his stance for balance. “I take it our problem is not lift with these kinds of winds.”

He missed Aurélien’s reassuring grin. “We will not be able to get you near to the ground without putting you or the airship in danger.”

“Just get me close enough.” Finn opened the door of the enclosure and leaned out over the edge of the gondola. “Another hundred feet down and I can lower myself the rest of the way using a ground tie,” he yelled over the loud rush of air. “Swing me over those rooftops at the edge of the city.”

Gilbert shook his head. “I do not shy from risk,
mon ami,
but this is—I cannot allow it, Phineas. One miscalculation and you slam into the wall of a building.” Gilbert slapped his hands together. “Splat!”

The bottom dropped out from his stomach—and it was not due to the buffeting about by the mistral wind. Finn narrowed his gaze. “How much gas to lower me?”

“We’ve got enough extra gas to vent, but with these winds . . .” Aurélien frowned. “We will need to shed a great deal of ballast to take us up again, quickly. How much do you weigh, Finn?”

“Near thirteen stone.”

Gilbert’s lips moved in silent calculation. “It might work.”

Finn’s gaze slid from one brother to another. “Vent a bit of gas, gentlemen.” Slinging both guns over his shoulder, he stepped onto the ledge of the gondola. “Assuming I land in one piece, how can I get ahold of you?”

“We head for our hydrogen laboratory outside Toulouse.” Aurélien handed Finn a pair of goggles. “Put these on, they will protect your eyes.”

Finn adjusted the protective glasses and tossed the line over the side. He wound the rope through his legs and repelled off the side of the gondola. As the craft descended, he wondered, frankly, who was crazier—the two aeronauts above releasing helium into the air, or the poor bloke dangling from a rope fifty feet below them.

Aurélien called down to him.
“Pour l’amour, mon ami!”

Chapter Fifteen