Adventure, June 1911 — page 47: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Seeds of Destruction turned the handle noiselessly and stepped within the room with some intention, vague and undefined, of accusing him, of blaming An immense mahogany screen guarded the room from the door and she stood still, hidden by it, trying to choke down the hysteric anger surging up in her throat. And then, even as she stood hesitating, a strange feeling came to her. It was as though the room were charged and alive with electricity—as though a mighty pulse beat somewhere within those lofty, book- lined walls—a mighty pulse drowning the throb of hers and of those pigmy men seated at the distant table. She awoke suddenly to the knowledge that not anxi- ety or regret for her brother’s fate was the vital factor—there was that other some- thing, that unknown, tremendous quantity which had been embodied in Sir Dean’s voice when he called the Prime Minister and the others into his room without even so much as a glance at the shapeless bundle that had been his private secretary a few hours earlier! _ It was a something which she had quite failed to grasp—something which had driven her to futile anger against Sir Dean. And now it seemed to loom up out of the shad- owy room and grip her soul. The papers! It was their fate that mattered! It was their fate menaced a nation! Their fate meant the fate of an empire! The death of her brother was only a little side issue—a pain felt by only one person! She stared at Sir Dean’s face. It was as though she had never seen him before—it was the face of an old, old man. ‘There were four other men in the room, all seated at the table facing Sir Dean—Sterrith, the Prime Minister; Lord Vales of the Ad- miralty; Brett, pale and distressed still, but animated by a deep excitement that burned like molten fire in his youthful eyes; Schles- inger, the famous detective for whom Sir Dean must have sent immediately. Sterrith and Vales were very pale and the same anxiety that lined Sir Dean’s face was becoming visible in theirs and deeper as every moment passed. ‘They were men in the grip of a fear, indefinite in a measure and yet so horribly real. They were men in the grip of an evil, and the evil was very plain— it was panic!—panicf—panic! Even Sir Dean was inclined to be destroyed by it; its influence had marked him unmistakably. 233 Schlesinger—a tall, narrow-shouldered man with an emaciated, clever face and sunken eyes overhung with thick brows— was leaning over the table, his hands loosely clasped before him, his all but invisible eyes never straying from Sir Dean’s haggard face. He was speaking in a soft, monotonous tone that barely penetrated to the recess behind the screen. | “The bald facts are, Sir Dean, that you sent Mr. Darien, unaccompanied, to the Foreign Office with the despatches because you thought it would avert suspicion if there should be suspicion, and because the other and ordinary channels were, in your opinion, being watched and were the most likely to be attacked—if, as I say, an attack was meditated. It has to be taken into account, Sir Dean, that you, and you only, suggest that your late secretary’s death is traceable directly to his possession of the papers. Mr. Sterrith here does not, I take it, believe——’’- “But he must believe it!”’ interrupted Algy Brett, his voice ringing through the room with vibrating earnestness. ‘You must believe it! If you.don’t, how are you going to account for the papers? Where are they? Not at the F. O., not on poor Da- rien’s body. You may take it from me, gen- tlemen, that they are safe in the possession of an old pal of ours! He it is who has waved his magic wand over them! Our old pal, Alsopp Ostermann, whom you, Mr. Schlesinger, are invited to hunt down! “You look supercilious, Mr. Sterrith, but, if you will cast your mind back, you will remember that you looked supercilious once before over the prowess of Mr. Ostermann! On the occasion—exactly a week since—of the affair of the missing war-ships? You scouted the idea that there was any inven- tion under the sun that the impregnable British fighting forces on land and sea did not possess—except in the imagination of the Daily Mail! ‘When Sir Dean suggested to you—when he jolly well tried to poke it down your throats—that this man Ostermann was the owner and inventor of a marvelous air-ship, you smiled and smiled, and Lord Vales here smiled, and the whole Admiralty, and the Minister for War was pointed to the miser- ably few, miserably misunderstood aero- planes which in flat, calm weather manage to fly a few yards or so over Laffan’s Plain and come to earth with a dashed sight more ease than they rise from it! COnmmiclboooks (C©