The Admirable Tinker Part 9

As was his practice, Sir Tancred, on his way to bed, looked in on Tinker, and found him sleeping the profound sleep of youth and innocence. But no sooner did he hear his father in bed and still, than he rose from that profound sleep of youth and innocence, dressed, even to his great-coat. He took a letter from his pocket, and put it prominently on the dressing-table. It ran:

DEAR FATHER:

I have taken Bloomenroot to Parris in Herr Shlugst flyingmacheen.

Bring him to meet me at the Ifell Tower.

Your affectionate son TINKER.

Then, with his boots in his hand, he stole across to the financier's room. Thanks to the brandy, the financier looked very much wound up.

Tinker bade him write on a sheet of notepaper, "Don't call me till eleven," pinned it on the outside of his bedroom door, locked it, and took the key. He left the sitting-room door unlocked. Then he opened the window, and, followed by his protege, who was already shivering with dread, he stepped out on to the balcony with the air of the leader of an army. The balcony ran round the hotel, as a way of escape during a fire; it was broad, and since the night was starry, but fairly dark, they were little likely to be seen from below by the detectives watching the hotel doors. They walked round to the back, came through a window into a bathroom, through the bathroom on to the servants'

staircase, and went right down into the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"I get up early in the morning before the servants, and I had to find a way out," said Tinker in an explanatory whisper.

He led the way through the kitchen into a long pa.s.sage, set with the doors of cellars on either side. At the end of the pa.s.sage was a short ladder with rounded iron rungs, by which barrels were lowered, and Tinker, mounting three rungs, pushed back a bolt, raised the heavy trap a little, and peered about from under it.

"The street's clear," he said. "Come on!"

He slipped out on to the pavement, helped the clumsy financier through the trap, caught his hand, and ran him across the street into a narrow lane.

"There!" he said cheerfully. "That's the most difficult part of the business! You're out of the hotel, and not a soul knows it!"

The financier's spirits brightened. Tinker had shown him his mettle, and he began to have confidence. Besides, he had drunk a good deal of the bottle of brandy. They hurried through the town by byways, and up on to the cliffs. As they neared the palisade, and saw the great bulk of the balloon looming through the starlight, the panting financier's spirits sank: his teeth chattered, and his knees knocked together.

"Oh, buck up! Buck up!" said Tinker impatiently. "You're all right!

You're all right!"

It was a matter of a few seconds for him to climb the door of the palisades, drop lightly on the other side, and open it. He steered the financier gingerly round the planes, past the propelling and steering fans, and got him into the car. He set him well forward in the bows of it, and began to let the rope unwind from the windla.s.s which moored the flying-machine. All the while he heard the steady snores of Herr Schlugst, sleeping in his iron hut.

The flying-machine rose slowly with very little creaking for all the greatness of the planes; the last of the rope ran out, and the lights of the town sank like stones in water beneath them.

"Right away!" cried Tinker joyfully, and the financier gasped.

When the lights of the town were a mere blur beneath them, Tinker switched on the electric lamps, and the millionaire saw him sitting on a wicker seat in the stern of the boat-shaped car, surrounded by levers, instruments, and dials. Tinker bade him grip the steel rails on either side of the car, and get ready for a swoop. Then he set the motor going, and steered round the flying-machine on to her course.

She rose and rose, moving steadily forward at the same time, far above the sound of the waves of the Channel.

Now Herr Schlugst did not rely so much on his propeller for speed as on his skilful adaptation of the principle on which the bird swoops. When the aneroid told Tinker that the car had reached the height of 3000 feet, he opened a valve, and let the gas escape slowly from the balloon. The instant she began to sink he switched to a slight downward angle the great planes, some seventy feet long, which were fixed parallel to the car. The machine began to glide downwards on them, gathering momentum from the weight of the car, at a quickly increasing speed, until she was tearing through the air at the rate of forty miles an hour, and sinking a hundred feet in the mile. The financier sat hunched up, gasping and shivering as the air whizzed past his ears and shrilled among the ropes. Tinker, with an air of cheerful excitement, kept the machine on her course, and watched the aneroid: his face of a seraph was peculiarly appropriate to these high alt.i.tudes, though the millionaire was too busy with his fears to observe the fact.

In half an hour the machine had rushed down to five hundred feet above the sea: Tinker switched the planes to the same angle upwards: and the momentum drove her up the incline of the air with little diminished speed. Then he turned a tap and let the stored gas, compressed in an aluminum cylinder, flow into the balloon, and restored the whole machine to its former buoyancy. Moving more and more slowly the higher it rose, the flying-machine once more gained the height of 3000 feet, and once more swooped down from it. At the beginning of the upward sweep, Tinker said, "Another swoop like that will bring us to Paris."

The financier, who had spent the time qualifying for a place among the invertebrates, only groaned. Tinker was disgusted; but he said, "Cheer up! You're the first man who has ever crossed the Channel in a flying-machine. You'll be in the History books!"

The car rose and rose: Tinker had just resolved to swoop from 3500 feet this time, when of a sudden she rose out of the windless area into a stiff breeze, icily chill. They learnt what had happened by the balloon b.u.mping down on their heads with apparent intent to smother them, and in a breath the car was spinning round, and jerking furiously to and fro. The millionaire screamed and b.u.mped about the car, and b.u.mped and screamed. Tinker set his teeth, jammed the flying-machine into the teeth of the wind, switched down the planes, and tried to drive her down. It was no use; she was whirled along like a piece of thistledown. Then he opened the valve and let her sink. In three minutes she had fallen below the wind, and was shooting swiftly on the downward swoop. The financier was staring at him with a frenzied eye.

Tinker closed the valve, and said with a joyous brightness, "She was quite out of control for a good five minutes!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "She was quite out of control for a good five minutes!"]

The financier frankly gave it up; with a rending gasp he fell back in a dead faint.

Tinker shrugged his shoulders, regulated the pace of the machine by letting gas flow from the cylinder into the balloon till it was of the proper buoyancy, then roped the senseless financier to the bottom of the car, and came back to the helm.

The wind they had risen into had been blowing towards the east, so they had not lost ground during their tossing, but they had been driven south of their course, and he did not know exactly how to get back to it. On the dark earth beneath he could see towns as blurs of light on all sides of him, but no one of them was big enough to be Paris. He let the machine swoop on down to five hundred feet, and up again. On the upward course, from fifteen hundred feet he saw a great blur of light on the northern horizon: it was Paris, and he was swooping past it. He steered the machine round without taking the way off her, and swooped down towards the city. At the end of the swoop he was already over the suburbs, and he switched off the electric lamps. He took the way off the machine by switching up the planes; and then, using only the propeller, circled round, seeking for the Eiffel Tower. Presently he saw it looming through the first dim grey light of the dawn, steered over it, let fall a grapnel, and hooked it into the railings which ran round it; took a turn of the rope round the windla.s.s, and wound the machine down to within twenty feet of the top. Then he went to the financier, unroped him, and kicked him in the ribs ungently.

As he kicked, saying, "Get up! Get up!" an astonished voice below cried, "Qui vive?"

Looking over the side of the car Tinker saw dimly the figure of a gendarme, and said briskly, "Santos-Dumont!"

"Vive Santos-Dumont!" cried the gendarme with enthusiasm.

Tinker went back to the financier, and kicked him again.

"Where am I? Where am I?" he murmured faintly.

"On the top of the Eiffel Tower," said Tinker.

"What? Saved! Saved!" cried the financier, for all the world as though he had been in a melodrama; and he sat up.

"I should like the five thousand pounds, please," said Tinker, brought back by the touch of earth from his aerial dreams to cold reality.

"Five thousand pounds!" cried the financier, every faculty alert at the mention of money. "No, no! How am I to get five thousand pounds?

Five hundred now! Five hundred pounds is an enormous sum--an enormous sum for a little boy, or even fifty! Yes, yes; fifty!"

"That's really very tiresome," said Tinker very gently. "I never thought you'd be so foolish as to leave all that money in empty rooms in an hotel. Well, well, we must fly straight back and get it. I hope we shall have as good luck as we had coming over." And he turned to the levers.

"Here! here! here!" screamed the financier; tore a b.u.t.ton off his coat in his haste to get at his breast pocket; whipped out his notecase, and with trembling fingers took five notes from the bundle which stuffed it, and thrust them into Tinker's hand.

Tinker counted them, made sure that each was for a thousand pounds, and put them in his pocket. Then he looked down at the gendarme, and said in French:

"I want to drop my a.s.sistant. Will you conduct him to the bottom of the tower?"

"Mais oui! Avec plaisir, Monsieur le Comte!" cried the gendarme, striking himself hard on the chest to show his eager enthusiasm.

"Merci bien," said Tinker, lowering the rope ladder.

The gendarme held it steady, and the financier descended gingerly.

When he was off it, and the gendarme had loosed it, Tinker said "Au revoir! and mind you wire to my father at once, and let the grapnel rope slip out of the windla.s.s." Lightened of the financier, the machine shot up into the air.

Tinker's task was done: he had only to restore the machine to Herr Schlugst; but he had a long while to wait. He realised suddenly that he was hungry and very, very sleepy. By letting some gas escape, he reduced the machine to a controllable buoyancy, and set about warming the coffee which the thoughtful Herr Schlugst had ready made. Then with brown bread, b.u.t.ter, and German sausage, he made an excellent breakfast. It was light by the time he had finished; and he set about looking for a sleeping-place, for he could not keep awake long. A wood on a hill some miles away seemed to him the spot he sought. He swooped gently for it, and was soon anch.o.r.ed to a tree-top and sleeping peacefully. It was past noon when a shouting awoke him. He looked down to find the wood full of people, four or five bold photographic spirits in the tree to which he was anch.o.r.ed, but nowhere near his grapnel, which was among the smaller branches. The roads leading to the wood were choked with bicycles, motor-cars, and pedestrians; and a station near was disgorging a crowd of people from an excursion train.

It was time to be going.

He cut the grapnel rope, and started leisurely for Paris. He reached it in about an hour, and circled about it, observing it from above.

Then he came to the Eiffel Tower, and practised steering round it, to the great joy of an excited and applauding crowd which thronged its top and stages. It was a great moment. He steered away over Paris, made a meal of the coffee, brown bread, and sausage left, and came back.

He was growing tired of waiting, and was meditating crossing over the top of the tower and pouring a little water from the ballast tank on the sympathetic crowd, when he saw his father and Herr Schlugst forcing their way through it. At once he rose above the tower and let down the grapnel. A dozen hands seized it, and drew down the machine. Tinker let the stored gas flow into the balloon to allow for Herr Schlugst's extra weight; and lowered the rope-ladder. The bursting Teuton came clambering up it, forcing down the car and planes by his weight on to the heads of the crowd, which was forced to hold them up with a thousand hands.

"Ach, you young tevil my machine to sdeal!" he cried, tumbling into the car.